“You have not read any of the newspapers?” asked Howard, gravely, bracing himself for the task from which his soul shrank.

Stafford shook his head.

“No; I have not been able to.  I have not been able to do anything, scarcely to think.  The blow came so suddenly that I have felt like a man in a dream—­dazed, bewildered.  If I have been able to think at all it is of his love for me, his goodness to me.  There never was such a father—­” His voice broke, and he made a gesture with his hand.  “Even now I do not realise that he is gone, that I shall never see him again.  I was so fond of him, so proud of him!  Why do you hesitate?  If it is bad news, and I suppose it is, do you think I can’t bear it?  Howard, there is nothing that you could tell me that could move me, or hurt me.  Fate has dealt me its very worst blow in taking him from me, and nothing else can matter.  The cablegram, this that the paper says, what does it mean?”

Howard sat on the table so that he could lay his hand, with a friend’s loving and consoling touch, on Stafford’s arm.

“I’ve come to tell you, Staff,” he said.  “I know that you ought to know—­but it’s hard work—­that cablegram contained news that the Zulus had risen en masse, and that for a time, perhaps for years, the railway scheme was blocked, if not utterly ruined.  It was the one weak link in the chain, and your father was aware of it and had taken what measures he could to guard against the danger; but Fate, circumstances, were too much for him.  A silly squabble, so silly as to be almost childish, between some squatters on the border and the discontented natives, upset all his carefully laid plans, and turned a gigantic success, at its very zenith, into a tragic failure.”

Stafford leant his head upon his hand and looked steadily at Howard.

“It was that that killed him?” he said.  “It meant ruin, I suppose, ruin for him and others?”

Howard nodded.

“Yes; he had staked all upon this last throw, and the sudden reverse came at a moment when his nerves were strained to the utmost, when he was excited with the honour and glory he had achieved.  The blow was too sudden, the revulsion of feeling from exultation to despair too swift, too great.  It is one of the most awful things of which I have ever heard or read.  Men are speaking about it with bated breath.  There is nothing but pity for him, nothing but regret at the stroke of misfortune which cut him down in the moment of his triumph.”

“And others?” repeated Stafford.  “It has brought ruin upon others.  What, can I do?  Is there anything I can do?  I am so ignorant, I do not even know whether I sit here absolutely penniless, or whether there is anything left that I can give them.”

“Mr. Falconer and Murray and the lawyer are in the library,” said Howard.  “They have been going into affairs.  They would have liked to have had you with them; but I begged you off.  I knew you would be of no use to them.”