Part 33 (2/2)

”Lord,” said the man, ”I went into the forest, to the border of the land, and there is no talk of war Chiefs and headreat spy,” scoffed Sanders; ”and how careet you? 'Hail! secret spy of Sandi'? Huh!”

He dis on his helmet went down to the Houssa lines, where the blue-coated soldiers gambled in the shade of their neat white barracks

The Houssa captain was arette papers and a six-ounce bottle of quinine sulphide

Sanders observed his shaking hand, and talked irritably

”There's trouble in the Isisi,” he said, ”I can smell it I don't knohat it is-but there's devilry of sorts”

”Secret societies?” suggested the Houssa

”Secret grandot?”

”Sixty, including the lame 'uns,” said the Houssa officer, and sed a paperful of quinine with a grimace

Sanders tapped the toe of his boot with his thin ebony stick, and was thoughtful

”Iwith these Isisi people”

By the little river that turns abruptly froani, the Lonely One, built a house He built it in proper fashi+on, stealing the wood froe there had beento The Sickness; and it is the custom on the Upper River that whenever a person dies, the house wherein he died shall die also

No man takes shelter under the accursed roof whereunder the Spirit sits brooding; the arrave, and the cooking-pots of his wives are there likewise

By and by, under the cos and sinks, the doorposts rot; elephant-grass, coarse and strong, shoots up between crevices in wall and roof; then come a heavier rain and a heavier wind, and the forest has wiped the foul spot clean

Iani, who said he was of the N'Gombi people, and was afraid of no devils-at any rate, no Isisi devil-stole doorposts and native rope fearlessly He stole theht, when the moon was behind the trees, andnames

Yet he went cautiously to work; for whilst he did not hold spirits in account, he holesomely respectful of the live Isisi, ould have put hiely enough, death was the thing he feared least

So he stole the accursed supports and accursed roof-props, and would have stolen the roofs as well, but for the fact that they were very old and full of spiders

All these things he ca them five miles to the turn of the river, and there, at his leisure, he built a little house In the daytiht fish, but hebats that coh these are very edible, and regarded as a delicacy

One day, just before the sun went down, he went into the forest on the track of zebra He carried two big hunting-spears, such as the N'Go by a strip of hide, a bunch of dried fish he had caught in the river

A ani, spare of build, but broad of shoulder His skin shone healthily, and his step was light As he walked, you saw the muscles of his back ripple and weave like the hbred

He was half an hour's journey within the forest, when he ca a bundle of racefully

When she saw Iani she stopped dead, and the fear of death and worse came in her eyes, for she knew him to be an outcast man, with no tribe and no people Such rass and plunges his poison-fangs in your leg

They stood watching one another, the ainst theani