The photographs of Jan Steppe which have from time to time appeared in the public press, at once flatter and disparage him. The lens has depicted faithfully the short black beard, the thick black eyebrows, the broad nose and the thick bull neck of him. They missed his immense vitality, the aura of power which enveloped him, his dominant and forceful ego. His voice was thick and deep, sometimes in a moment of excitement guttural, for his grandfather had been a Transvaal Boer, a _byworner_ who had become, successively, farmer and mine owner. Jan Cornelius Steppe, the first, had spoken no English; his son Commandant Steppe, an enlightened and scholarly man, spoke it well. He had been killed at Tugela Drift in the war, whilst Jan the third was in England at a preparation school. "Huh! Beryl! Very good luck, huh? I shall miss my train but it is worth while. Riding? God! I wish I wasn't so fat and lazy. Motor cars are the ruin of us. My grandfather rode twenty miles a day and my father was never off a horse. Huh!" Beryl often asked her father why Mr. Steppe grunted at the end of his every question. But it was not a grunt. It was a throaty growl cut short, a terrifying mannerism of his, meaningless but menacing. She used to wonder whether the impression of ruthless ferocity which he gave, was not more than half due to this peculiarity. He towered above her, a mountain of a man, broad of shoulder and long of arm. There was something simian about him, something that was almost obscene. He was fond of describing himself as fat, but this was an exaggeration. He had bulk, he was in the truest sense gross, but she would not have described him as fat. "Sit down," he commanded, "I haven't seen you since Friday. The doctor came in yesterday morning. Nerves, huh? What's the matter with him?" Beryl laughed. "Father receives a great deal of misplaced sympathy. He is really very well. He has been jumpy ever since I can remember." Steppe nodded. He was sitting by her side in the chair vacated by Ronnie, and Ronnie was standing. "Sit down, Ronnie," she pointed to a chair at the other side of her. "No-no thank you, Beryl," he said hastily, for all the world like a schoolboy asked to sit in the presence of his master. "Sit down," growled Steppe, and to the girl's amazement, Ronnie sat. It was the only notice Jan Steppe took of his presence throughout the interview, and Ronnie neither showed resentment nor made the slightest attempt to intrude into the conversation that followed. Presently Steppe looked at his watch. "I can catch that train," he said, and got up. "You're coming to dinner with me next week--I'll fix the date with the doctor." She said she would be delighted. Something of the mastership extended to her. "You saw Sault?" He turned back after he had taken her hand. "Queer fellow, huh? Big man, huh?" "I thought he was--interesting," she admitted.