He wondered first whether his mother would ever get the letter he had posted the week before, and whether it would be brought to her cottage or she would go to the post office to fetch it. And then, he fell to thinking of the little English village where he had been born, and where he had grown up. He saw his mother’s fat white ducklings creep in and out under the gate, and waddle down to the little pond at the back of the yard; he saw the school house that he had hated so much as a boy, and from which he had so often run away to go a-fishing, or a-bird’s-nesting. He saw the prints on the school house wall on which the afternoon sun used to shine when he was kept in; Jesus of Judea blessing the children, and one picture just over the door where he hung with his arms stretched out and the blood dropping from his feet. Then Peter Halket thought of the tower at the ruins which he had climbed so often for birds’ eggs; and he saw his mother standing at her cottage gate when he came home in the evening, and he felt her arms round his neck as she kissed him; but he felt her tears on his cheek, because he had run away from school all day; and he seemed to be making apologies to her, and promising he never would do it again if only she would not cry. He had often thought of her since he left her, on board ship, and when he was working with the prospectors, and since he had joined the troop; but it had been in a vague way; he had not distinctly seen and felt her. But tonight he wished for her as he used to when he was a small boy and lay in his bed in the next room, and saw her shadow through the door as she bent over her wash-tub earning the money which was to feed and clothe him. He remembered how he called her and she came and tucked him in and called him “Little Simon,” which was his second name and had been his father’s, and which she only called him when he was in bed at night, or when he was hurt. He sat there staring into the blaze. He resolved he would make a great deal of money, and she should live with him. He would build a large house in the West End of London, the biggest that had ever been seen, and another in the country, and they should never work any more. Peter Halket sat as one turned into stone, staring into the fire. All men made money when they came to South Africa,--Barney Barnato, Rhodes--they all made money out of the country, eight millions, twelve millions, twenty-six millions, forty millions; why should not he! Peter Halket started suddenly and listened. But it was only the wind coming up the kopje like a great wheezy beast creeping upwards; and he looked back into the fire.