“It has been running three months.  Two months’ proceeds are here, and pay dividends of four shillings, and it is good for two shillings per month for years; with machinery doubled, good for four shillings per month for years to come.  The stock has gone to L6; it will go to L10 so soon as it is well understood.  And I lost it all, because I had not the sense to find that way out from ze mine.  The road by the trail would have cost L75,000 or L100,000, and I believed only impassable mountains were to ze west.”

“How did you find all this out?” asked Jenvie.

“From ze Secretary, McGregor.  He was master of ze ship that carried the machinery from San Francisco, and he brought ze Americans from Port Natal.  One was very sick with the fever, and came near dying.  He had, besides, one wound which he received with ze Boers coming out to the coast from the mine.  They are two devils.  Ten or a dozen Boers attacked them to get the first month’s bullion, and they two killed five of them, and drove ze rest away.”

“I wish the Boers had killed them both,” said Jenvie.

“They are hard men to kill,” said Emanuel.  “McGregor says, when ashore one day at D’Umber, there was a chicken-shooting match.  The chickens were buried in the ground all but their heads, and the people were shooting at ten paces when these men passed.  They asked about it, and asked if they might shoot with their own pistols; and when permission was given, they drew their weapons and killed six chickens each in a minute, and were laughing all the time as though it were nothing.  They are devils, shure enough.”

“Do you think Browning knew all about this from the first?” asked Hamlin.

“Not at all,” said Emanuel.  “No one in London knew where the Americans had gone, except his wife.  Browning thought he had gone back to America.  His wife knew.  She got a dispatch from Australia, and letters from Port Natal ze same day, saying he was going to San Francisco to order machinery, and would return this way and be with her in four months, and then she left at once and beat him a week into San Francisco.

“And I am ruined.  My little stock is all gone.  A mine worth L2,000,000 I sold for L2,000.”  And he went out.

“What can we do?” asked Jenvie.  “I expect a notice every moment to call at the broker’s and settle.”

“Can we not assign our property?” asked Hamlin.

“We could,” said Jenvie, “but to-morrow we should all be looking through the bars of a prison.”

“And even Grace was in the conspiracy to rob us,” said Hamlin, in an injured tone.

“She is a brave, true woman, I think,” said Jenvie, “and as it looks to me, she is the only one to whom we can now appeal.”

“May be so,” said Hamlin.  “Her husband worships her, I am told.”

“Suppose we go to your house and persuade your wife to go and bring her home where we can see her,” said Jenvie.