than they ever heard of on the Rand, too."

"Might I ask," interposed the other, "who may 'they' be?"

Thorpe hesitated, and knitted his brows in the effort
to remember names. "Oh, there are a lot of them,"
he said, vaguely. "I think I told you of the way that
Kaffir crowd pretended to think well of me, and let
me believe they were going to take me up, and then,
because I wouldn't give them everything--the very shirt
off my back--turned and put their knife into me.
I don't know them apart, hardly--they've all got names
like Rhine wines--but I know the gang as a whole, and if I
don't lift the roof clean off their particular synagogue,
then my name is mud."

Lord Plowden smiled. "I've always the greatest difficulty
to remember that you are an Englishman--a Londoner born,"
he declared pleasantly. "You don't talk in the least
like one. On shipboard I made sure you were an American--a
very characteristic one, I thought--of some curious
Western variety, you know. I never was more surprised
in my life than when you told me, the other day, that you
only left England a few years ago."

"Oh, hardly a 'few years'; more like fifteen," Thorpe
corrected him. He studied his companion's face with
slow deliberation.

"I'm going to say something that you mustn't take amiss,"