[a/]
Chapter Ten.
As Good as her Word.
It was post day at Lannercost, and whereas the delivery of Her Majesty’s mails was only of weekly occurrence, the fact constituted a small event. Such delivery was effected by the usual harmless necessary native, who conveyed the mail bag by field and flood from the adjacent Field-cornet’s—in this instance from Earle’s.
“It’s just possible, Bayfield, I may hear something by this post which may necessitate my leaving you almost immediately.”
“Oh, hang it, Blachland! Are you at that game again? Where do you think of moving to next, if not an impertinent question?”
“Up-country again. I’ve interests there still. And things are beginning to look dickey. Lo Ben’s crowd is turning restive again. We’ve most of us thought all along that they were bound to force the old man’s hand. It’s only a question of time.”
“So?” And then they fell to talking over that and kindred questions, until finally a moving object, away down the valley, but rapidly drawing nearer, resolved itself into a mounted native.
The two men were sitting in the shade at the bottom of one of the gardens, where Bayfield had been doing an odd job or two with a spade—cutting out a water furrow here, or clearing one there and so forth—pausing every now and then for a smoke and a desultory chat.
“Hey, September! Bring the bag here,” he called out in Dutch, as the postboy was about to pass.