“Maybe he will take less,” said Mr Timson.
Very little could be got out of the boer. Somehow or the other he seemed to have hit upon ten thousand pounds as the price the farm was worth, and he would take no less.
Then the two had another conversation. Curiously enough Timson could just raise eight thousand pounds, Mr Hardman had two. After all, thought Mr Timson to himself, he would have four-fifths of the mine instead of only one-half, so perhaps it would be all the better for him that Ziederman had stuck out for his price. At last, after much conversation, the bargain was struck and they drove home, it having been agreed that Ziederman should come into Kimberley a few days afterwards, and having given transfer of the farm, receive the ten thousand pounds.
“Well, we are going our piles on it, eh, partner?” said Hardman as they drove back to Kimberley; “but I don’t mind owning that I feel pretty confident. Lord! I am sorry for the Kimberley people; it will just about bust up their mine when we open ours.”
Chapter Three.
Mr Ziederman arrived at Kimberley on the appointed day. Transfer was duly given, and the ten thousand pounds were paid over to him. Timson could not help feeling rather a twinge as he parted with his money. It did not leave him more than a few hundred pounds, still he was very pleased with his bargain; he had bought the farm, he hoped, for very much less than one hundredth of its value, and had got the best of Mr Hardman, who would only have a fifth share. The next day the news was all over the camp. It created a good deal of excitement, and at eleven in the forenoon, an hour when splits and other drinks, long and short, are in much request, quite a crowd of the leading citizens of Kimberley dropped into the bar of the Queen’s Hotel, where Mr Timson was to be found at that hour, reading the local morning paper and criticising the manners and customs of the place. On this occasion there was a look of unusual importance about him, and he was laying down the law more authoritatively than he generally did. He had just been discussing the value of claims in the Kimberley mine, and chuckling to himself as he thought how startled the claimholders would be when they heard of his discovery.
“Well, Mr Timson, so I hear you have been speculating in farms,” said a man who was standing at the bar.
“I don’t know why people should interest themselves in my affairs so much,” answered Timson; “but I don’t mind owning that I have bought a farm called Boschfontein.”
“You’re going to make your fortune farming?” said the first speaker, a digger who had dropped in on his way from the mine to get a drink and to interview Timson.