A YOUNG man sat against the rough stone beacon that marks the highest point of the Witwatersrand, and gazed dreamily through the smoke from his pipe at the minecovered Western extension of the Main Reef.

Southward the landscape lay like a flat map seen through that crystalline South African haze that seems to make the atmosphere even clearer, and adds a beauty that no words have adequately described or painter caught on canvas. The line of reef extended east and west, the monotony of the softly undulating country only accentuated by the tall slender smoke-stacks, the framework head-gear, and the

VOL. CLXXVI.—NO. MLXIX.

clumps of corrugated iron buildings that are the outward and visible sign of the wealth that lies beneath, and render the surface works of a gold-mine the most unpicturesque and prosaic of the evidences of human industry.

The young man was a stranger to the district, or the knowledge that he was in the centre of the most historic and interesting spot in the Transvaal might have compensated for the absence of poetic suggestion in the physical environment and his own mental horizon. He did not know that within the proverbial gunshot of the ridge whereon he moodily nursed his knees and his gloomy thoughts 2 Q

one of the two mother rivers of South Africa had its source; that, away to the right, hidden behind the shoulder, stood the inartistic plinth that surmounts the heap of loose stones piled by the Burghers of 1881 as sign and token of the oath they had taken to win and maintain their independence; nor that on the southern horizon before him, over the ugly intervening minebuildings, was just visible to the trained eye the low kop with its solitary thorn - tree that has given its name to that other spot which shares with 'Majuba the perpetuation of a memory that Englishmen would fain forget.

The monument at Paardekraal is the centre whence radiate two great rivers-the Limpopo and the Orange-and two great events-'Majuba and Doornkop.

These and a dozen other history-making details lay on the page spread out within range of the eyes of the young man who sat meditatively puffing his pipe; but he was in no humour for historical retrospect. His mind was occupied by the very matter-of-fact certainties of the present and the more prosaic uncertainties of the immediate future,-a condition in which few men are philosophical enough to find solace in the contemplation of history, however pregnant with romance. Graham Wilmot saw in the mines before him only the deceptive mirage that had raised his hopes in the morning to dispel them at noon; and the horizon-bounded ex

panse of solitary veld beyond symbolised too poignantly the eventless, desolate future that seemed to lie before him.

He was passing through one of those hours of soul-travail that come to every man who takes his fate in his hands too delicately. The long-lurking anticipation of failure in the struggle had arrived at realisation. With his back against the beacon, his hands clasped round his knees, and his eyes fixed vacantly on the diaphanous horizon, he abandoned himself to that listless melancholy that, in some passive natures, is the sole protest against the last fell stroke of adverse destiny. He knew and cared not that his fate was too common on the stony Rand to justify his taking it seriously. With the self-consciousness of an inexperienced and too-softly nurtured youth, he looked compassionately upon himself as the chosen child of misfortune, and his heart overflowed with bitterness against all things.

For the first time in his uneventful life of twenty-five years he had been brought face to face with the stern fact that he was a failure, superfluous and insignificant, and that the little world of the Rand, which he came out with light heart to conquer, neither regarded nor wanted him. Ignorance and pride prevented his knowing that he was but a very ordinary type of a species too common on the Rand, as in most new countries. Bred to a life of inert ease, on the strength of expectations never fulfilled,

he had found himself at fiveand-twenty forced to earn his bread, yet totally unprovided with any special knowledge or fitness that would enable him to hold his own against the keen competitors in the struggle for life in great cities. Then came the too frequent sequel. It was decided by his friends that, having been a failure at home, he was precisely the kind of man a new and strenuous country like the Transvaal needed; and to it he was consigned, with a greater share of the paternal savings than than justice to the rest of the family warranted, an outfit that contained nearly everything likely to be most useless in South Africa, a letter of introduction to a Johannesburg mining magnate, and an implicit faith and hope that talents, unguessed and undeveloped at home, would bud and fructify in the arid atmosphere of the Goldfields.

Of the rest, is it not written in the Book of Failures in every British colony?

The first chapter of the new life opened at the best hotel in the Gold Reef City, and detailed a round of such gaieties as the place provided. Succeeding chapters narrated the progress of the downgrade slide, from swagger hotel to second-class caravansary; next to the " respectable boarding - house"; finally to the ten-by-ten hutchlike bedroom in the yard of a small hotel with a pretentious name, where the accommodation is secondary to the bar, and all bedrooms are doublebedded and paid for in advance.

Is it necessary to say that the letter of introduction, on which his friends set such store, proved as valuable as such things are on the Rand ?-evidence that the person presenting it relies more upon the good offices of others than on his own merits and ability.

With the end of six months came the changing of the last five-pound note, and the realisation that the time had come for him to wait no longer for Fortune, but call upon her in person. His room-mate was an illiterate bricklayer, earning from forty to fifty pounds amonth, and on his advice Wilmot determined to try his luck along the Reef.

He did not put on his best clothes, for, as the bricklayer explained, they were too suggestive of the "remittanceman," the horror of minemanagers. But, despite his past experience of the impotency of letters of introduction, he did put into his pocket one such, given him by an exemployee of a West Rand mine, and addressed to the manager thereof; took a second-class return ticket to Krugersdorp, and began the wearying round of managerial offices.

At the property to which his letter directed him he was received by a dapper, consequential little Cornishman, who sat in a well-furnished office, and paused in the bullying of a huge Kafir to glance superciliously at Wilmot. His trained eye immediately detected the tenderfoot in search of a soft job, and he dealt with him accordingly.

"Captain's name?"

Wilmot told his name, and produced the letter.

"I'll tell the captain you're here. He's busy with Pass Inspector. Wait outside bit."

a

Ten minutes later Wilmot was arrested by a "Here, you!" shouted from the secretarial department.

"Captain 'll see you; go in there," said the secretary, jerking his cigar in the direction of an inner room, whence came the sound of laughter and the odour of good cigars. Wilmot walked boldly in. A big shaggy man lounged back in a chair, and three Hollander officials sat about, smoking and sipping champagne.

The captain was holding the letter of introduction at arm'slength, peering at it with an amused expression. Without looking up at at Wilmot he addressed him brusquely

"Mornin'. Engineer, eh?" "Unfortunately, no," Wilmot answered, smiling.

"Not an engineer, eh?" The captain seemed very surprised.

Assayer or chemist, I pre

sume.

"I have no technical qualifications, I'm sorry to say.'

The captain seemed still more surprised.

"Sorry there's no place on the Board of Directors. We've too many there already, haven't we, Trelawney?"

The secretary, who had entered behind Wilmot, giggled assent and helped himself to champagne.

Clarkson, eh? Is he sober

yet?"

The secretary giggled shrilly and the officials added a guffaw. Wilmot felt the blood rush to his face. Three months ago he would have resented the flippancy, but his short experience of Johannesburg life had shown him the folly of carrying too much dignity. He simply answered, "Perfectly."

The captain handed him the letter, and for the first time looked at him.

"Tell you what, mister. I suppose you'll be going into the Dorp presently to look at a canteen. If you see my battery manager there, tell him you've come to take his job, unless he sobers up this week. Take a cigar. No? Have a drink, then?"

Wilmot declined both, and left.