All these activities had not for the time being made Burungi less ugly, and Roger hated the sight of the place. After a long conference with the two civil-spoken German sergeants, who a year previously had been truly thankful to exchange the military career for employment under his Company, he went through the agony of good-bye—an agony he would not protract by spending the night in this noisy, discomfortable place. He compressed his embraces of wife and children—the latter mystified and yowling with the dim realization of bereavement—his wringing of Maud’s hands, his directions to telegraph at every opportunity till they got on board, and hang the cost—into two hours; after which, though only two more hours of daylight remained, he rode away, back to their camp of the previous night: knowing that further lingering might end in his deciding to accompany these two dear women and prattling babes all the way to the coast and perhaps all the way to England. And it was essential to their future welfare that he should stay where he was and not claim a holiday till certain results had been achieved and certain proofs of easily exploited wealth had been obtained. But it was a melancholy Roger who, six days afterwards, rode back into the lovely amphitheatre in the Iraku hills where he had made his home. His Maskat donkey showed signs of having being hard ridden; his carriers averred that Master, ordinarily so considerate of their fatigue, so jolly on the line of march, had spurred them on remorselessly, had seemed to pass wakeful nights and had eaten his camp meals with poor appetite. Roger himself felt a few more partings like this would make his earthly life unbearable. Oh that there _were_ some truth in the silly hymn chorus that the Stotts delighted in making their pupils sing: "Here we meet to _part no more_, _part_ no more, _part_ no more!" He should have been firm with Lucy and bade her stay till he himself was ready to go. And yet when _would_ he be ready to go, with Phantom Fortune always beckoning yet never disclosing the final hoard? There was something in Lucy’s face which restrained him from insisting that she should stay. Dr. Wiese had hinted at a growing anæmia which should be checked. Her dominating feeling was a fear that she might lose the precious children born to her here in the wilderness and be forgotten by those she had left behind. He must not take the thing too tragically. If Hildebrandt continued to get these satisfactory assays and could trace the gold-bearing reef a sufficient distance towards the western limit of the Concession; or if on the other hand he could find the matrix of the diamonds, and not merely these minute brilliants in the gravel of the mountain streams, their main doubts and difficulties would be relieved and he could depart for a holiday at home.