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"He's had a pretty stiff day," said the Colonial. "I expect he's glad enough to turn in." Then all the men round the fire chatted freely over his concerns. Would the Captain stick to his word tomorrow? Was Halket going to do it? Had the Captain any right to tell one man off for the work, instead of letting them fire a volley?
"The Captain; well, you know the smallest thing sets him off swearing all round the world; but he just stood there with his arms hanging down at each side of him, and his eyes staring, and his face getting redder and redder: and all he could say was, 'My Gawd! my Gawd! I thought he'd burst. And Halket stood there looking straight in front of him, as though he didn't see a soul of us all there."
Nor did William Halket to whom for his merits we accord the full Christian name do any discredit to the perspicacity of his master, if it was not that he rather exceeded the hopes of his benefactor, for he was attentive to the horses, civil to the farmers, and handy at anything that came in his way.
Peter Halket looked upward silently. And the stranger said: "Certain men slept upon a plain, and the night was chill and dark. And, as they slept, at that hour when night is darkest, one stirred. Far off to the eastward, through his half-closed eyelids, he saw, as it were, one faint line, thin as a hair's width, that edged the hill tops.
"Peter Simon Halket," he said, "can you bear the weight?" And Peter said, "Give me work, that I may try." There was silence for a time; then the stranger said, "Peter Simon Halket, take a message to England" Peter Halket started "Go to that great people and cry aloud to it: 'Where is the sword was given into your hand, that with it you might enforce justice and deal out mercy?
A communication this which, if it had been made at an earlier period, would have prostrated Halket altogether, but it was softened by his long foreign anticipations, and he was thereby the more easily inclined to resign his saddened soul to the further dominion of the said god, Mammon; for, as to the notion of putting any of those beautiful half-castes he sometimes saw about the planter's house at Peach Grove, in the place of her of the golden ringlets, it was nothing better than the desecration of a holy temple.
"What do you want?" he cried out quiveringly. From the darkness at the edge of the kopje a figure stepped out into the full blaze of the firelight. Trooper Peter Halket looked up at it. It was the tall figure of a man, clad in one loose linen garment, reaching lower than his knees, and which clung close about him. His head, arms, and feet were bare.
"Now he's death on niggers," said Peter Halket, warming his hands by the fire; "they say when he was Prime Minister down in the Colony he tried to pass a law that would give their masters and mistresses the right to have their servants flogged whenever they did anything they didn't like; but the other Englishmen wouldn't let him pass it. But here he can do what he likes.
If you had five or six millions you could go where you liked and do what you liked. You could go to Sandringham. You could marry anyone. No one would ask what your mother had been; it wouldn't matter. A curious dull sinking sensation came over Peter Halket; and he drew in his broad leathern belt two holes tighter.
When the Englishman came, the other men, who knew he had been a medical student, made way for him. He knelt down by Peter Halket. "He's dead," he said, quietly. When they had turned him over, the Colonial knelt down on the other side, with a little hand-lamp in his hand. "What are you fellows fooling about here for?" cried the Captain.
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