us! Johannes.'

I went to Mrs. Browne at once. I remember I found her sitting under a flaming hibiscus bush. She looked very pale and washed-out against it. I told her that her husband wanted to extend his tour. She burst into tears, and said she could not understand it. Then I told her that I meant going after him in the morning to try to hasten his return. She brightened up at that, and fell to planning what I should take with me. What comforts could she send Gerald in the comfortless desert without overloading me? I showed Johannes' note to Drayton after dinner. He whistled, and, to his credit, looked grave.

'I'm to go after him to-morrow,' I said. 'I've thought over it, and I think you may as well come too. You may be useful, as knowing his ways.'

He nodded. 'Rather bad about his running out of skoff, isn't it?' he asked. 'I wonder if he's out of baccy and just breaking his heart.' His plump face was pitiful.

'Don't you fret,' I answered. 'It only means he's run out of our food. They'll surely buy monkey-nuts or sweet-potatoes or rice in the kraals. He's probably developed a passion for native food by now, also for native snuff. He'll be able to buy some of that, surely.'

'Just so,' said Drayton. He began to quote again in a sort of droning chant as if he were a chorus recording the onsweep of a tragedy:

'I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she lean, and sing A faery's song.

'She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said I love thee true.'

In the morning we got a flying start after all, though Drayton was in bed when I came back from church. We went away at eight, and soon found, to our joy, that we were really well mounted. It was joy, too, to remember what a stubborn mule Browne had for pacing steed. He had not got away far, we assured ourselves. But we did not catch him that night.

We asked at kraals as we went along, and struck a hot scent about three in the afternoon. A white man had passed that morning a white man riding a dappled mule, with a boy carrying blankets behind him. Straightway we gave our ponies an off-saddle.

Afterwards we rode on hard in what we deemed to be the right direction till darkness fell: We sought shelter at a village then. There was no village gossip, alas! about the passing of a white man that day! They were good to us, though, those villagers, and gave us beans and monkey-nuts for supper and mealies for our ponies. After we had finished eating we spread out the rush-mat they had lent us and lay down to smoke and meditate and surmise as to our passionate pilgrim. They had given us a hut that was old and grimy with fires. Its floor teemed with life.

Therefore we changed our resting-place and went out to camp under a rocky eminence. There with a bedrock of austere granite we slept in peace. At glimmer of dawn we were saddling up. We rode to another kraal, but the folk there had no news for us.

We were close on the hills now at last. We came to a low river at the foot of them. We chose a landlocked pool that seemed to be immune from crocodiles, for a plunge. Next I girded myself for Sacrifice, and he served me. Then we made a fire and cooked a huge breakfast in the hungry morning air. Drayton grew quite lyrical as to the charm of the country before the meal was over.

'Browne's not far wrong about her,' he said; 'but there's reason in all things.'

That whole day we heard no news and found no spoor or sign. The hill-country gave us stiff climbing and rocky paths to ride. Kraals and clusters of gardens places where we might hope to hear tidings how few they were in that hill-country! We camped disconsolately at last in a forlorn garden among grey boulders where stumps of trees were burning. We found no trouble in building up a good night fire of half-burnt logs. We gave our ponies their nosebags and ate our own bread and bully rather silently. Then we surmised with some weariness and gloom over our pipes. At last we slept under the many eyes of the heavens.

About first cock-crow, when a chill struck through my blanket, I opened my eyes and looked towards the fire. Someone was sitting beside it watching me. Now that he saw me stirring he greeted me.

It was Johannes. 'I saw your fire but just now,' he said. 'Our fire is up there beyond great rocks. The white man has been very sick. I think he will come home now.'

I sprang to my feet and roused Drayton. He would not get up for a long time. I suspect he combined breakfast and lunch fairly often at Oxford. But I roused him mercilessly. I told him the news.

He argued in desperate fashion at first. 'How far's the sick bed,' he asked.

'Not more than a mile or so,' said I.

'Need we go till morning?' said he.

'Shame!' said I.

At last he sprang up.

As we clambered among the boulders, piloted by Johannes, he droned away at his chorus part:

'She took me to her elfin grot, And there she wept, and sighed full sore, And there I shut her wild, sad eyes With kisses four.

'And there she lulled me asleep, And there I dream'd Ah woe betide! The latest dream I ever dream'd On the cold hill's side.'

We found Browne in a nook among the rocks. A fire was burning beside him. He seemed to be sleeping.

'He looks as if he'd been sick,' I said. 'We'd better let him sleep on!'

'Yes; let's go to bed ourselves,' said Drayton, yawning.

So we lay down on opposite sides of the fire. Such a red and splendid fire that cold cock-crow time!

Browne kept giving sharp little moans in his sleep, just as a dog will do of nights.

'He's started a nightmare,' said I. 'I wish we could help him to better dreams. I'd like to see what he sees just now.'

Drayton began to drone from his side of the fire:

'I saw pale kings and princes, too; Pale warriors death-pale were they all. They cried, "La Belle Dame sans Merci" hath thee in thrall.

'I saw their starved lips in the gloom With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke and found me here On the cold hill's side.'

I asked a question: 'What will Browne like for breakfast,
Drayton?'

'If he's come back to his civilized tastes, you'd better open that tin of sausages,' he said. 'You've got some squish, too, haven't you? Don't give him that bush-tea of yours!'

I was up long before Drayton. I had secured Browne's confidences before the sun had been risen an hour. 'I've had a sort of miserable ague,' he said. 'A cold and hot fever has been plaguing me. Some part of this last night has been savagely horrible. But I've sweated pounds of my weight away, and my fever's gone. Strange, isn't it?'

'Quite ordinary in this part of Africa,' I said, sharply and minimizingly. I handed him a shirt, and he doffed his drenched one. He did not tell me any more just then. His eyes watched me in a dazed, miserable way. I asked him to excuse me, and went off with Johannes to my service. When I came back his eyes were clearer, they had less of their look of wan-hope.

'Sinister country, this Africa,' he said. 'I was infatuated with her yesterday. Today I can't understand just what the attraction was. Her desolate moors seemed to make me drunk. See how she's served me! I never felt quite so sick as I've done most of this last day and night. Just before I woke it seemed to me I saw them in my dreams tens and twenties of her victims; men she's charmed