They experienced, indeed, no difficulties whatever, and camped that night by a dam half a mile off the road, five miles out of Potchefstroom. As they had several water-bottles hung under the cart, and a bag of mealies, the horses fared as well as their masters. One of the first questions that Hans had asked after they started was, whether Mr. Chambers had actually promised him five hundred pounds. "It seems impossible," he said, "but that is what I understood him to say." "That is what he intends to give you, Hans." "But it is too much; only for sitting and listening for half an hour, and firing five shots with a rifle." "That is all that it was to you, Hans, but to him it meant saving his life, and the lives of the ladies of his family. As to the gold, he told me how it was concealed, and that the robbers could never have got at it. Still, he values his life and those of the ladies at a large sum; and as he is a very rich man, he does not think it out of the way to make you a handsome present. I told him that I should advise you to carry out what we were saying the other day would be the best-paying thing for a man of small capital--to buy a piece of land near Johannesburg or Kimberley, to sink a deep well, and to put up horse-gear and irrigate the land; and to employ half a dozen Kaffirs to grow vegetables and plant fruit-trees, just as my cousin did. Only, you would do a great deal better than Mr. Allnutt, because the Boer farmers would not pay much for their vegetables or fruit, while you would get splendid prices in either of these towns. The vegetables would begin to pay three months after you started, but of course you would have to wait a couple of years before you got any return for the fruit-trees." Hans was silent for three or four minutes, lost in the contemplation of himself as the owner of such a place.