“What is it, Lacey? Now, out with it. You have something unpleasant to tell me, and don't like doing it. I'll bet you drinks that I can guess what it is. I saw you start when I mentioned the Capricornian Pastoralists' Bank. Has that 'busted' too?”
“Yes. It smashed yesterday as a result of the Dacre collapse. The news was in my rag this morning.”
“Was it? I didn't look at the Clarion to-day. Is it a bad case?”
“Very bad; about a shilling in the pound is all that will come out of the wreck. Will you be hard hit?”
“Rather! Curls me up like a corkscrew. To pay Mrs Tallis her six thousand pounds I gave a mortgage on Ocho Rios for five thousand pounds as I only had about three or four thousand pounds in the Capricornian. I'm deuced lucky that it wasn't more.”
He rose from his seat and paced angrily to and fro on the verandah for a moment or two, then he stopped suddenly, and a smile lit up his scarred face.
“What an ass I am, Lacey! The thing can't be helped, but only a little while ago I had made up my mind to give Kaburie to my sister; and now I can't pay for Kaburie, for my draft for six thousand pounds is worthless to Mrs Tallis, and all the labouring of mustering and branding has gone for nothing. Poor little woman! I am sorry for her! Isn't it a beastly mess?”
“You think too much of others, Gerrard, and too little of yourself.”
“I don't! I'm very fond of being good to myself, I can assure you. But a smack in the face like this is enough to make a saint swear like an Australian Member of Parliament. Now, I bought Kaburie with the idea of making it a breeding station—prize cattle and all that sort of thing—for Ocho Rios. Then when I received this telegram from my agents in Melbourne telling me that my sister would be left penniless, I made up my mind to write to her by the next mail south, and tell her that Kaburie was for her and my niece Mary. And another thing I wanted to do was to give a man I know a good lift.” (He meant Fraser.) “And now I'll be as good as stony-broke for the next two years.”
“I wish I could help you,” began Lacey, earnestly.