“Right!” the young man answered. “I don’t know you from the devil. Got a lantern, anyone?”
Someone handed him a lantern through the window, and he rode away, whistling. One of the men laughed.
“Old Tom has been missing lately. Wonder where he’s been?” he mused.
“There are plenty of us can’t always account for our movements,” someone else answered, amid a fresh guffaw of mirth. “But wherever he’s been in the interval, he’s always good company. Say, baas, you’ve got a picnic to-night.”
Lawless made no reply. The name of Tom Hayhurst had roused memories, had taken him back to a lonely bungalow in Cape Town, where a man had related to him briefly how Tom Hayhurst had failed him in an important mission. He had been for wringing Tom Hayhurst’s neck at the time. He did not feel especially friendly towards him on that particular night; but Hayhurst had happened upon his dwelling out of the darkness, and claimed his hospitality, as was customary in the veld.
He moved back to the ring round the fire, and seated himself on an upturned box and stared thoughtfully into the flame. The arrival of the new-comer was strangely annoying to him.
Hayhurst came in noisily, and shaking hands with the man who had been at the diggings with him, nodded to the rest. They made way for him at the fire. He stood in front of it, looking curiously at Lawless while he warmed his hands at the blaze. The scar on Lawless’ face seemed to hold his attention.
“My name’s Hayhurst,” he remarked somewhat pointedly.
Lawless surveyed him with an air of quiet aloofness, and, without removing the pipe from his mouth, replied:
“So you said before.”