foresaw a slump, and he would be actually saving money on the veld. At
this point Teddy Isaacs strolled up and interrupted the oration.

"Where are you off to, then?"

"Manicaland," answered Norris.

"Oh! You had better bring Barrington back."

Teddy Isaacs was a fresh comer to the Rand, and knew no better.
Barrington meant to him nothing more than the name of a man who had
been lost twelve months before on the eastern borders of Mashonaland.
But he saw three pairs of eyebrows lift simultaneously, and heard
three simultaneous outbursts on the latest Uitlander grievance.
However, Norris answered him quietly enough.

"Yes, if I come across Barrington, I'll bring him back." He nodded his
head once or twice and smiled. "You may make sure of that," he added,
and turned away from the group.

Isaacs gathered that there had been trouble between Barrington
and Morris, and applied to his companions for information. The
commencement of the trouble, he was told, dated back to the time when
the two men were ostrich-farming side by side, close to Port Elizabeth
in the Cape Colony. Norris owned a wife; Barrington did not. The story
was sufficiently ugly as Johannesburg was accustomed to relate it, but
upon this occasion Teddy Isaacs was allowed to infer the details. He
was merely put in possession of the more immediate facts. Barrington
had left the Cape Colony in a hurry, and coming north to the Transvaal
when Johannesburg was as yet in its brief infancy, had prospered