“He will soon be back, dear Mr. Girdlestone,” she said.  “You must not be uneasy about him.”

As she stood beside him in her white dress, with a single red ribbon round her neck and a band of the same colour round her waist, she was as fair a specimen of English girl-hood as could have been found in all London.  The merchant’s features softened as he looked down at her fresh young face, and he put out his hand as though to caress her, but some unpleasant thought must have crossed his mind, for he assumed suddenly a darker look and turned away from her without a word.  More than once that night she recalled that strange spasmodic expression of something akin to horror which had passed over her guardian’s features as he gazed at her.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE LAND OF DIAMONDS.

The anxious father had not very long to wait before he heard tidings of his son.  Upon the first of June the great vessel weighed her anchor in the Southampton Water, and steamed past the Needles into the Channel.  On the 5th she was reported from Madeira, and the merchant received telegrams both from the agent of the firm and from his son.  Then there was a long interval of silence, for the telegraph did not extend to the Cape at that time, but, at last on the 8th of August, a letter announced Ezra’s safe arrival.  He wrote again from Wellington, which was the railway terminus, and finally there came a long epistle from Kimberley, the capital of the mining district, in which the young man described his eight hundred miles drive up country and all the adventures which overtook him on the way.

“This place, Kimberley,” he said in his letter, “has grown into a fair-sized town, though a few years ago it was just a camp.  Now there are churches, banks, and a club in it.  There are a sprinkling of well-dressed people in the streets, but the majority are grimy-looking chaps from the diggings, with slouched hats and coloured shirts, rough fellows to look at, though quiet enough as a rule.  Of course, there are blacks everywhere, of all shades, from pure jet up to the lightest yellow.  Some of these niggers have money, and are quite independent.  You would be surprised at their impertinence.  I kicked one of them in the hotel yesterday, and he asked me what the devil I was doing, so I knocked the insolent scoundrel down.  He says that he will sue me, but I cannot believe that the law is so servile as to bolster up a black man against a white one.

“Though Kimberley is the capital of the dry diggings, it is not there that all the actual mining is done.  It goes on briskly in a lot of little camps, which are dotted along the Vaal River for fifty or sixty miles.  The stones are generally bought by licensed agents immediately after they have been found, and are paid for by cheques on banks in Kimberley.  I have, therefore, transferred our money to the Standard Bank here, and have taken my licence.  I start to-morrow for Hebron, Klipdrift, and other of the mining centres to see for myself how business is done and to make friends with the miners, so as to get myself known.  As soon as the news comes I shall buy in all that offers.  Keep your eyes on that fellow Dimsdale, and let him know nothing of what is going on.”