I listened to the story with all becoming gravity, and proceeded to perform a surgical operation for the removal of the foreign substances, with the anatomical details of which it is wholly unnecessary to weary my readers. When relieved from his distress of mind and body he was desirous of further explaining the circumstances under which the sad occurrence took place, but as the subject did not particularly interest me I suggested that “time was on the wing,” which hint he promptly took, dividing the _corpora delicti_ by leaving the gold with me and putting the diamond (a thirty-carat stone) in his pocket. Years afterward, when I heard that while sitting among the _Dii majores_ of the Kimberley club this gentleman’s main topic of conversation was his extreme horror of the illicit traffic with its train of evils—I could not help calling to mind the episode of 1872. However, as we are told “the reformed rake makes the best husband,” I hope that my ex-patient believes all he now enunciates, and what is still more important has the courage of his opinions. I shall finish these few sketches of I. D. B. with the recital of an incident which occurred to me personally: the moral to be gathered I leave to my readers. As nearly as I can remember, it was late on a cold winter’s night in June, 187–, that I heard a tapping at my bedroom window. It was a dreadful night. The south wind was blowing the sand from the débris heaps in fitful gusts, whilst the dust clouds were careering along so thickly that to see but a yard or two ahead was impossible. To those who know the mine and its surroundings it will require but a slight stretch of imagination to picture the bottomless pit from which “all hell had broken loose.” Mentally anathematizing my nocturnal visitor, I rose and opened the door, when a Kafir thrust into my hand a piece of paper on which was scrawled in pencil: “DRY DIGGINGS HOSPITAL. “DR. MATTHEWS. _Sir_:—Mr. O. J. is tossing about and very restless to-night, and says he _must_ see you. Will you come quickly—I think he is dying? “Yours obediently, I. P.” Though at the time one of the surgeons of the Dry Diggings hospital, yet as O. J. was not under my treatment I did not much relish the idea of a dreary walk at that time of night. Not wishing, however, to disappoint the poor fellow, who had once worked a claim for me and who was now, so I had heard, dead out of luck, having, as the American gold digger says, struck “the bed-rock,” I dressed quickly and trudged away through the heavy sand to the wattle and daub shanty which then did service as a hospital.