“Now he’s death on niggers,” said Peter Halket, warming his hands by the fire; “they say when he was Prime Minister down in the Colony he tried to pass a law that would give their masters and mistresses the right to have their servants flogged whenever they did anything they didn’t like; but the other Englishmen wouldn’t let him pass it. But here he can do what he likes. That’s the reason some fellows don’t want him to be sent away. They say, ‘If we get the British Government here, they’ll be giving the niggers land to live on; and let them have the vote, and get civilised and educated, and all that sort of thing; but Cecil Rhodes, he’ll keep their noses to the grindstone.’ ‘I prefer land to niggers,’ he says. They say he’s going to parcel them out, and make them work on our lands whether they like it or not--just as good as having slaves, you know: and you haven’t the bother of looking after them when they’re old. Now, there I’m with Rhodes; I think it’s an awfully good move. We don’t come out here to work; it’s all very well in England; but we’ve come here to make money, and how are we to make it, unless you get niggers to work for you, or start a syndicate? He’s death on niggers, is Rhodes!” said Peter, meditating; “they say if we had the British Government here and you were thrashing a nigger and something happened, there’d be an investigation, and all that sort of thing. But, with Cecil, it’s all right, you can do what you like with the niggers, provided you don’t get HIM into trouble.” The stranger watched the clear flame as it burnt up high in the still night air; then suddenly he started. “What is it?” said Peter; “do you hear anything?” “I hear far off,” said the stranger, “the sound of weeping, and the sound of blows. And I hear the voices of men and women calling to me.” Peter listened intently. “I don’t hear anything!” he said. “It must be in your head. I sometimes get a noise in mine.” He listened intently. “No, there’s nothing. It’s all so deadly still.” They sat silent for a while. “Peter Simon Halket,” said the stranger suddenly--Peter started; he had not told him his second name--“if it should come to pass that you should obtain those lands you have desired, and you should obtain black men to labour on them and make to yourself great wealth; or should you create that company”--Peter started--“and fools should buy from you, so that you became the richest man in the land; and if you should take to yourself wide lands, and raise to yourself great palaces, so that princes and great men of earth crept up to you and laid their hands against yours, so that you might slip gold into them--what would it profit you?” “Profit!” Peter Halket stared: “Why, it would profit everything. What makes Beit and Rhodes and Barnato so great? If you’ve got eight millions--” “Peter Simon Halket, which of those souls you have seen on earth is to you greatest?” said the stranger, “Which soul is to you fairest?”