Mr Burton parted from him reluctantly. He went a little way with him on his backward journey, and stood for quite ten minutes looking after the tall figure as it strode away over the veld. Afterwards he was heard to assert that Providence had without doubt moved him to act as he acted that morning. No man was ever more conscientious in the performance of his duties than this man, yet here was he lingering in the sunshine, gazing after a departing acquaintance while his pupils idled their time away waiting for him in vain. Mr Burton held no class that morning. As he was about to turn back to his work he saw a strange sight. The figure he was watching suddenly threw up its arms and fell and lay upon the veld quite motionless, so that had he not seen the falling of it he would not have known that it was there. And galloping away from the spot where the man had fallen was another man seated on a raw-boned white horse. The schoolmaster was no athlete, but he put foot to ground and ran for all he was worth. CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN. Colonel Grey lay in bed smoking his customary before-breakfast cigar. He was not an early riser--or, as he expressed it, he had had so much early rising during his life that he was justified in taking his leisure. He was unaccountably thinking of Lawless and the letters. He still half-trusted and half-doubted his man. That is to say, at times his belief in him was unbounded, and again at other moments, according to his mood, he mistrusted the man's honesty of purpose. Reckless, impecunious, an admitted adventurer, were not the chances even that if he got hold of the letters he would turn them to his own purposes? With such a source of profit in his possession, would he be likely to give it up for the sum originally agreed upon between them? Colonel Grey could not altogether conquer his suspicions; the man's past life had prejudiced him. While he lay thinking, sending clouds of blue smoke-rings up from the pillow like smoke from a sacrificial altar, the bell of his front door was rung loudly and imperatively. As it was not answered with the promptitude that could only have been possible had a doorkeeper been stationed in readiness, the bell pealed again. Colonel Grey got out of bed and went to the window. He had already paddled out of bed once to admit his boy, for no servant slept in the house; and he paddled across the room a second time, jerked open the window, and looked out. It was with an involuntary exclamation of surprise that he recognised Tom Hayhurst. "Good Lord!" he ejaculated. And then, in accents of anger: "What the devil are you pulling that bell down for?" Hayhurst came forward, saluted the irate speaker, and followed him into the bedroom. "I thought I paid you to clear out," the Colonel observed sharply, eyeing with no great favour the spruce, confident young man he had last seen--or so he imagined--with a bandaged head, taking his passage to Durban. "You did, sir."