“I mean,” he answered, with a flash of his dark eyes, “great wealth, and the power that wealth brings. Ah! I see you think me very sordid and materialistic, but money is God in this world, Miss Clifford—money is God.”
She smiled and answered: “I fear, then, that he is likely to prove an invisible god on the high veld, Mr. Meyer. You will scarcely make a great fortune out of horse-breeding, and here there is no one to rule.”
“Do you suppose, then, that is why I stop at Rooi Krantz, just to breed horses? Has not your father told you about the great treasure hidden away up there among the Makalanga?”
“I have heard something of it,” she answered with a sigh. “Also that both of you went to look for it and were disappointed.”
“Ah! The Englishman who was drowned—Mr. Seymour—he spoke of it, did he not? He found us there.”
“Yes; and you wished to shoot him—do you remember?”
“God in Heaven! Yes, because I thought he had come to rob us. Well, I did not shoot, and afterwards we were hunted out of the place, which does not much matter, as those fools of natives refused to let us dig in the fortress.”
“Then why do you still think about this treasure which probably does not exist?”
“Why, Miss Clifford, do you think about various things that probably do not exist? Perhaps because you feel that here or elsewhere they do exist. Well, that is what I feel about the treasure, and what I have always felt. It exists, and I shall find it—now. I shall live to see more gold than you can even imagine, and that is why I still continue to breed horses on the Transvaal veld. Ah! you laugh; you think it is a nightmare that I breed——”
Then suddenly he became aware of Sally, who had appeared over the fold of the rise behind them, and asked irritably: