"Because it would have been the very acme of insanity to attempt such a thing. Lutali, in common with the rest, is in far too ugly a mood, after yesterday, to be fooled with needlessly. Besides, all that sentiment is simply thrown away. These people, remember, are atrocious brutes, who eat their own fathers and mothers. It is positively a work of charity to enslave them. Once they are off the march they are fairly well treated,--better, in fact, than they treat each other--and, of course, no more cannibalism." "That may be. But I wish to Heaven I could blot out these two years as though they had never been. The recollection of the horrors one has been through will haunt me for life. I feel like blowing my brains out in sheer disgust. Why did I ever come?" It was not the first time Holmes had burst forth in this fashion, as we have shown. Laurence looked keenly at him. "There is a worse thing to haunt one's life than recollection," he said, "and that is anticipation." "Of what?" asked Holmes shortly. The other touched the muzzle of his rifle, then his own forehead. "It's that--or this," he said, pointing to the ghastly trunk and the severed head which lay before them. "You don't suppose I should have adopted this sweet trade from choice, I suppose? No. Hard necessity, my dear chap. If anybody has to go under--and somebody always has to--I prefer that it shall not be me." Holmes made no reply for a while, so they left the spot, walking in silence. Then Laurence went on: "Now we are on the subject, I don't know that you would have come out any the better had we left you behind at Johannesburg. For you were going the wrong way. You were a precious sight too fond of hanging around bars, and that sort of thing grows. In fact, you were more than once a trifle--shall we say 'muddled.' Not to put too fine a point upon it, you were on your way to the deuce. I know it, for I've seen it so often before, and you know it too." "I believe you're right there," assented Holmes. "Well, then, we owe our first duty to ourselves; wherefore, my soft-hearted young friend, it is better to spend a year or two raking in a fortune and ameliorating the lot of humanity, than to die in a state of soak, and a disused shaft, on or around the Rand, even as did Pulman the day before we left." "I don't believe that same fortune will do us any good," urged Holmes gloomily. "There is the curse of blood upon it." "The curse of my grandmother," laughed the other.