VII
the episode of the arrest of the colonel
How much precisely Charles dropped over the slump in Cloetedorps I never quite knew. But the incident left him dejected, limp, and dispirited.
'Hang it all, Sey,' he said to me in the smoking-room, a few evenings later. 'This Colonel Clay is enough to vex the patience of Job—and Job had large losses, too, if I recollect aright, from the Chaldeans and other big operators of the period.'
'Three thousand camels,' I murmured, recalling my dear mother's lessons; 'all at one fell swoop; not to mention five hundred yoke of oxen, carried off by the Sabeans, then a leading firm of speculative cattle-dealers!'
'Ah, well,' Charles meditated aloud, shaking the ash from his cheroot into a Japanese tray—fine antique bronze-work. 'There were big transactions in live-stock even then! Still, Job or no Job, the man is too much for me.'
'The difficulty is,' I assented, 'you never know where to have him.'
'Yes,' Charles mused; 'if he were always the
