“When shall it be?  Quick, man, let us have no delay.  The time, Lablache—­the time and place.”

Lablache wheezed unctuously.

“That’s the spirit I like, John,” he said, fingering his watch-chain with his fat hands.  “To business.  The place—­er—­yes.”  A moment’s thought whilst the rancher waited with impatience.  “Ah, I know.  That implement shed on your fifty-acre pasture.  Excellent.  There is a living room in it.  You used to keep a man there.  It is disused now.  It will suit us admirably.  We can use that room.  And the time—­”

“To-morrow, Lablache.  It must be to-morrow.  I could not wait longer,” broke in the other, in a voice husky with eagerness and liquor.  “After dark, when no one can see us going out to the shed.  No one must know, Lablache, mind—­no one.  Jacky will not dream of what we are doing.”

“Very well.  To-morrow, then.  At eleven o’clock at night, John.  And as you say in the meantime—­mum.”

Lablache was pleased with the rancher’s suggestion.  It quite fell in with his own ideas.  Everything must be done quickly now.  He must get away from Foss River without delay.

“Yes—­yes.  Mum’s the word.”  “Poker” John indicated his approval with an upward leer as Lablache rose from his chair, and a grotesque pursing of his lips and his forefinger at the side of his nose.  Then he, too, struggled to his feet, and, with unsteady hand, poured out two stiff “horns” of whisky.

He held one out to the money-lender and took the other himself.

“I drink to the game,” he said haltingly.  “May—­fortune come my way.”

Lablache nodded comprehensively and slowly raised his glass.

“Fortune is yours anyhow.  Therefore I trust that I win the game.”

The two men silently drank.  After which Lablache turned to go.  He paused at the French window and plunged his hand into his coat pocket.

The night was dark outside, and again he became a prey to his moral terror of the half-breed raider.  He drew out his revolver and opened the chamber.  The weapon was loaded.  Then he turned to old John who was staring at him.

“It’s risky for me to move about at night, John.  I fear Retief has not done with me yet.  Good-night,” and he passed out on to the veranda.

Lablache was the victim of a foreboding.  It is a custom to laugh at forebodings and set them down to the vagaries of a disordered stomach.  We laugh too at superstition.  Yet how often do we find that the portentous significance of these things is actually realized in fact.  Lablache dreaded Retief.

What would the next twenty-four hours bring forth?

CHAPTER XXV

UNCLE AND NIECE

“Poker” John’s remorse came swiftly, but not swiftly or strongly enough to make him give up the game.  After Lablache had taken his departure the old rancher sat drinking far into the night.  With each fresh potation his conscience became less persistent in its protest.  He sought no bed that night, for gradually his senses left him and he slept where he sat, until, towards daybreak he awoke, partially sober and shivering with cold.  Then he arose, and, wrapping himself in a heavy overcoat, flung himself upon a couch, where he again sought sobriety in sleep.