Through the heavy clouds behind him there came the first break of the sunshine transforming the veldt.  It acted like a goad upon him.  He wanted to start back before the sun rose high.  The track that led to Bill Merston’s farm was even rougher than his own, but it did not daunt him.  He suffered the horses to take their own pace, and they travelled superbly.  They had scarcely slackened during the whole ten-mile journey.

He smiled faintly to himself as he sighted the hideous iron building that was Bill Merston’s dwelling-place.  He wondered how Sylvia appreciated this form of life in the wilderness.  He slowed down the animals to a walk as he neared it, peering about for some sign of its inhabitants.  The clouds had scattered, and the son was shining brilliantly behind him.  He reflected that Merston was probably out on the lands.  His wife would be superintending the preparation of breakfast.  And Sylvia——­

Something jerked suddenly within him, and a pulse awoke to a furious beating in his throat.  Sylvia was emerging at that very moment from the doorway of the humble guest-chamber.  The sun was in her eyes, blinding her, and she did not see him.  Yet she paused a moment on the threshold.

Burke dragged in his horses and sat watching her across the yard.  She looked pale and unspeakably weary in the searching morning light.  For a second or two she stood so, then, slightly turning, she spoke into the room behind her ere she closed the door: 

“Stay here while I fetch you something to eat!  Then you shall go as soon as you like.”

Clearly her voice came to him, and in it was that throb of tenderness which he had heard once before when she had offered him her dreaming face to kiss with the name of another man upon her lips.  He sat quite motionless as one transfixed while she drew the door after her and stepped forth into the sunshine.  And still she did not see him for the glory of the morning.

She went quickly round to the back of the bungalow and disappeared from his sight.

Two minutes later Burke Ranger strode across the yard with that in his face which made it more terrible than the face of a savage beast.  He reached the closed door, opened it, and stepped within.

His movements were swift and wholly without stealth, but they did not make much sound.  The man inside the room did not hear immediately.

He was seated on the edge of the bed adjusting the strap of one of his gaiters.  Burke stood and watched him unobserved till he lifted his head.  Then with a curt, “Now!” he turned and bolted the door behind him.

“Hullo!” said Guy, and got to his feet.

They stood face to face, alike yet unlike, men of the same breed, bearing the same ineradicable stamp, yet poles asunder.

The silence between them was as the appalling pause between the lightning and the thunder-clap.  All the savagery of which the human heart is capable was pent within its brief bounds.  Then Burke spoke through lips that were white and strangely twisted: