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The squatty Englishman eyed him in amazed disgust. Evidently he had never seen a teetotaller before. It was as if Mr. Grinnell had said, "I am a cannibal."

"God blime me!" he cried. "I knowed some'at were wrong with yer!"

He edged off in a wary circle, insultingly making believe that he thought Mr. Grinnell might spread a vile contagion, like small-pox. But at a distance he turned and shouted through the gloomy grounds, "If you stay sober th' worry o' it will kill yer!" He had weakened into giving the young fellow the best of his parting advice.

At the end of nearly two years it had nearly killed Mr. Grinnell; but he was chock-a-block with Dr. Lemaitre's quinine, and in a state of preoccupied worriment over weeds, bugs, failing crops, the lack of manures, the ineradicable laziness of labourers.

The one point of conflict between Combe and his manager lay in Mr. Grinnell's opinion of Seibert; for the young fellow, having that backbone Brundage had seen, bluntly told his employer:

"Seibert knows more about tropical agriculture than any man north of Australia. And he works harder. Pulotu loafers all hate him; they jolly well hate anybody that gets ahead."