But he said one queer thing.

He asked me if I was going to retire, and when I told him "yes," he said I had put it off rather long.

I told him I was as healthy as I ever was, and he laughed in his dirty Portugoose way.

"Yes, Mr Japp," he says, "but the country is not so healthy." I wonder what the chap meant.

He'll be dead of blackwater before many months, to judge by his eyes.' This talk satisfied me about Japp, who was clearly in desperate fear of offending me, and disinclined to return for the present to his old ways.