“The mail’s just in.”

“Mail from Capetown?”

“Yes.”

Ezra quickened his pace and strode down Stockdale Street into the Main Street, which, as the name implies, is the chief thoroughfare of Kimberley.  He came out close to the office of the Vaal River Advertiser and Diamond Field Gazette.  There was a crowd in front of the door.  This Vaal River Advertiser was a badly conducted newspaper, badly printed upon bad paper, but selling at sixpence a copy, and charging from seven shillings and sixpence to a pound for the insertion of an advertisement.  It was edited at present by a certain P. Hector O’Flaherty, who having been successively a dentist, a clerk, a provision merchant, an engineer, and a sign painter, and having failed at each and every one of these employments, had taken to running a newspaper as an easy and profitable occupation.  Indeed, as managed by Mr. O’Flaherty, the process was simplicity itself.  Having secured by the Monday’s mail copies of the London papers of two months before, he spent Tuesday in cutting extracts from them with the greatest impartiality, chopping away everything which might be of value to him.  The Wednesday was occupied in cursing at three black boys who helped to put up the type, and on the Thursday a fresh number of the Vaal River Advertiser and Diamond Field Gazette was given to the world.  The remaining three days were devoted by Mr. O’Flaherty to intoxication, but the Monday brought him back once more to soda water and literature.

It was seldom, indeed, that the Advertiser aroused interest enough to cause any one to assemble round the Office.  Ezra’s heart gave a quick flutter at the sight, and he gathered himself together like a runner who sees his goal in view.  Throwing away his cigar, he hurried on ad joined the little crowd.

“What’s the row?” he asked.

“There’s news come by the mail,” said one or two bystanders.  “Big news.”

“What sort of news?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Who said there was news?”

“Driver.”

“Where is he?”

“Don’t know.”

“Who will know about it?”

“O’Flaherty.”

Here there was a general shout from the crowd for O’Flaherty, and an irascible-looking man, with a red bloated face and bristling hair came to the office door.

“Now, what the divil d’ye want?” he roared, shaking a quill pen at the crowd.  “What are ye after at all?  Have ye nothing betther to do than to block up the door of a decent office?”

“What’s the news?” cried a dozen voices.

“The news, is it?” roared O’Flaherty, more angrily than ever; “and can’t ye foind out that by paying your sixpences like men, and taking the Advertoiser?  It’s a paper, though Oi says it as shouldn’t, that would cut out some o’ these Telegraphs and Chronicles if it was only in London.  Begad, instead of encouraging local talent ye spind your toime standing around in the strate, and trying to suck a man’s news out of him for nothing.”