"Talking of the gloves--that reminds me of another time when Lamont climbed down. That time he put on the gloves with Voss. It was a beautiful spar, and really worth seeing. Then, just as the fun was at its height, Lamont suddenly turned quite white--as white as such a swarthy beggar can turn, that is--and chucked up the sponge then and there." "Yes. I remember that. It looked rum certainly--but all the same I'll maintain that Lamont's no coward. He showed no sign of it in the war of '93 anyway. If anything rather the reverse." "Ah!" exclaimed Clare significantly. "May have lost his nerve since," said her brother-in-law, also significantly. "Well, I like Lamont," said Driffield decidedly. "I don't," said Fullerton, equally so. "Mind you, he's a chap who wants knowing a bit," went on the Native Commissioner. "Then he's all right." "Is he coming to the race meeting, Mr Driffield?" said Clare. "Yes. He didn't intend to, though, until I gave him your message, Miss Vidal. We pointed out to him that he couldn't stop away after that." "Message! But I sent him no message." "Oh, Miss Vidal! Come now--think again." "Really, Mr Driffield, I ought to be very angry with you for twisting my words like that," laughed Clare. "But--you mean well, so let it pass. You are forgiven." "Talking of Lamont," struck in Fullerton, who had a wearisome way of harking back to a subject long after everybody else had done with it, "there's a yarn going about that he had to leave his own neighbourhood in England for showing the white feather. And it looks like it, remembering what a close Johnny he is about himself." Driffield looked up quickly. "I believe I know who put that yarn about," he said. "Wasn't it Ancram--that new man who's putting up at Foster's?" "Most likely," said Fullerton. "I never heard it myself till a day or two ago." "Why, what a sweep the fellow must be," declared Driffield. "Lamont has been putting him up since Peters picked him up in the mopani veldt, nearly dead with thirst. Saved his life, in fact. I know it's Ancram, because he pitched me the same yarn--of course `in strict confidence.' Confidence indeed!" "What a cur!" pronounced Clare. "Oh, what a completely loathsome cur!" "Hear--hear!" ejaculated Driffield. "Cur or not," said Fullerton, who over and above his dislike of Lamont was naturally of a contradictious temperament,--"cur or not, the story has a good deal of bearing on what we know out here--" "If it's true," interjected Clare, with curling lips. "--He left a kid to drown. Said he wasn't going to risk his life for a gutter kid--and wouldn't go in after it even when the girl he was engaged to implored him to. She called him a coward then and there, and gave him the chuck. This chap Ancram saw it all. He was there." "Then why didn't he go in after it himself?" suggested Clare, with provoking pertinence.