"Then go and weigh those kernels, one-time. Then come back here and make up your books. D'ye think I'm going to have my whole machinery of commerce held up because you want to go and shave, and oil your head, and put on clean whites and a crimson belly-band and otherwise make yourself fetching for the benefit of Miss O'Neill?" "Miss-a O'Neill?" said the Portuguese in surprise. "I do not care a banana-skin----" "Here, don't try and fill me up," said Carter bluntly. "And don't put on time. Take a lamp and go out and weigh those kernels, and see you don't set the shed on fire, and when you're through, and have posted your books, come out and fetch me. I'm going to smoke a cigar out in the open." "The dew-a is heavy. There is fever about." "Take your advice to the devil." "Which fever," said Cascaes, "I should have added, if you had-a not interrupted me--which fever I hope you will get." "That's all right. I like you dagos better when you spit venom openly. Now, you hurry up and go through those kernels, and see you get the weights right." The dew was thick on the grass in the clearing and stood in sleek greasy drops on all the patches of bare stamped earth. Moon and stars were all eclipsed. Even the fireflies, although the dark would have given full value to their manoeuvres, were absent. The unhealthy phosphorence of rotting dead wood here and there was the only illumination, except here and there a glow from a window in the factory. Carter went out through a gate of the fort and walked up and down with restless energy. He was wet to the knees with dew; the damp Canary cigar between his teeth had long since gone out; but he cared for no small things like these. He kept repeating to himself that "a man must play the game." "A man must play the game." And presently, when the tom-toms and the jangling iron suggested some tune to his ear, he changed this to a jangle which stated "I could--not love--thee dear--so much--loved I--not hon--or more." And as the tune beat out into the hot steamy night, so did the words keep time to them with irritating repetition. Once he stopped and shook a fist at the invisible sky above. "I am going to marry Laura," he declared, "if she was ten times as black. I am going to marry her though I know my father will never speak to me again, and I can't take her home. I am going to marry her though the heaven's fall. I am going to marry her for one reason that can't be got over, and that is because I said I would. A man must play the game. But my God! why did I never guess that Kate was on earth somewhere?" There was an old cotton-wood stump in the clearing, and he stood against it so thoughtful and still that he became the object of attention of bats. He hit at them angrily and recommenced his prowl.