On one side of Staines were two swells, who lay on their backs and talked opera half the day, but seldom condescended to work without finding a diamond of some sort.

After a week’s deplorable luck, his Kafir boy struck work on account of a sore in his leg; the sore was due to a very common cause, the burning sand had got into a scratch, and festered.  Staines, out of humanity, examined the sore; and proceeding to clean it, before bandaging, out popped a diamond worth forty pounds, even in the depreciated market.  Staines quietly pocketed it, and bandaged the leg.  This made him suspect his blacks had been cheating him on a large scale, and he borrowed Hans Bulteel to watch them, giving him a third, with which Master Hans was mightily pleased.  But they could only find small diamonds, and by this time prodigious slices of luck were reported on every side.  Kafirs and Boers that would not dig, but traversed large tracts of ground when the sun was shining, stumbled over diamonds.  One Boer pointed to a wagon and eight oxen, and said that one lucky glance on the sand had given him that lot:  but day after day Staines returned home, covered with dust, and almost blinded, yet with little or nothing to show for it.

One evening, complaining of his change of luck, Bulteel quietly proposed to him migration.  “I am going,” said he resignedly:  “and you can come with me.”

“You leave your farm, sir?  Why, they pay you ten shillings a claim, and that must make a large return; the pan is fifteen acres.”

“Yes, mine vriend,” said the poor Hollander, “they pay; but deir money it cost too dear.  Vere is mine peace?  Dis farm is six tousand acres.  If de cursed diamonds was farther off, den it vas vell.  But dey are too near.  Once I could smoke in peace, and zleep.  Now diamonds is come, and zleep and peace is fled.  Dere is four tousand tents, and to each tent a dawg; dat dawg bark at four tousand other dawgs all night, and dey bark at him and at each oder.  Den de masters of de dawgs dey get angry, and fire four tousand pistole at de four tousand dawgs, and make my bed shake wid the trembling of mine vrow.  My vamily is with diamonds infected.  Dey vill not vork.  Dey takes long valks, and always looks on de ground.  Mine childre shall be hump-backed, round-shouldered, looking down for diamonds.  Dey shall forget Gott.  He is on high:  dere eyes are always on de earth.  De diggers found a diamond in mine plaster of mine wall of mine house.  Dat plaster vas limestone; it come from dose kopjes de good Gott made in His anger against man for his vickedness.  I zay so.  Dey not believe me.  Dey tink dem abominable stones grow in mine house, and break out in mine plaster like de measle:  dey vaunt to dig in mine wall, in mine garden, in mine floor.  One day dey shall dig in mine body.  I vill go.  Better I love peace dan money.  Here is English company make me offer for mine varm.  Dey forgive de diamonds.”

“You have not accepted it?” cried Staines in alarm.