He might have known it, of course. How that fellow toiled and moiled
and gloated over his wretched diamonds! How little he seemed to
think of the stain of blood on his hands, and how much of the mere
chance of making filthy lucre! Pah! Pah! it was pitiable. The man's
whole mind was distorted by a hideous fungoid growth--the love of
gain, which is the root of all evil. For a few miserable stones,
he would plunder his own brother, lying helpless and ill in that
African hut, and make off with the booty himself, saving his own
skin, seaward.
If it hadn't been for the unrequited kindness of these mere savage
Namaquas, Granville cried to himself in his bitterness, he might
have died of want in the open desert. And now he would go down to
the coast, after all, a ruined man, penniless and friendless. It
was a hard thought indeed for a Kelmscott to think he should have
been abandoned and robbed by his own half-brother, and should owe
his life now to a heathen African. The tender mercies of a naked
barbarian in a mud-built hut were better than the false friendship
of his father's son, the true heir of Tilgate.
It was miserable! pitiable! The shock of that discovery threw
Granville back once more into a profound fever.
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