"Good, man!" cried Rosser.
"And what about my block of South Rands?"
This was Carson's hold-by. The biggest stone in his box. He had bought these fifty shares at a sheriff's sale for twenty pounds each, years before, and though he had often wanted the money, some indefinable superstition had kept him cheerfully paying up licences and hanging on. Now rumour went, the Big House wanted them.
"What will you take for them?" asked Rosser, grinning. "Cost?"
"No!" said Carson violently, "nor double, nor quadruple. I'll do or die by those damned things."
Rosser regarded him cynically, but with affection. It had not escaped the grim eyes that Carson here present was not the notoriously careless, indifferent Carson of the past.
"You sound to me like a man who wants to buy a trousseau for himself," he remarked, but his gibe brought no blush to the brazen cheek before him, and he did not dream that he had made a bull's-eye.
"But you're quite right, Karri.... You're going to make a big bag out of that little preserve ... only keep cool ... and if Wallerstein asks you about them, say they're not for sale ... I haven't time to tell you any more now." He was looking at his watch. "By Cli! I must get away to 'Change. Where shall we meet afterwards?"
"At the Club," said Carson briefly. "One sharp. My table is third on the left as you go in ... don't be late."
They parted. Rosser for 'Change, and Carson to walk swiftly away down Commissioner Street towards Jeppestown, past the City-and-Suburban-Township-blocks, with the fine buildings that look so substantial and impressed every new-comer with the stability and security of life and fortune in the great mining centre. The place was teeming with life and apparent prosperity. But a grim smile hovered on Carson's lips. He knew, as well as Rosser, that things, so far from being secure and stable, were, under the corrupt Boer Government, rotten to the core, and could never be on a sound basis until England intervened. But this was '98, and the time was not yet.