d chap?" asked Bones
indignantly. "If I let a chap off, I'm kicked, an' if I punish him I'm
kicked--it's enough to make a feller give up bein' judicial----"

"Bones, you're a goop," said Hamilton, in despair.

"A goop, sir?--if you'd be kind enough to explain----?"

"There's an ass," said Hamilton, ticking off one finger; "and there's a
silly ass," he ticked off the second; "and there's a silly ass who is
such a silly ass that he doesn't know what a silly ass he is: we call
him a goop."

"Thank you, sir," said Bones, without resentment, "and which is the
goop, you or----?"

Hamilton dropped his hand on his revolver butt, and for a moment there
was murder in his eyes.

CHAPTER III

THE LOST N'BOSINI

"M'ilitani, there is a bad palaver in the N'bosini country," said the
gossip-chief of the Lesser Isisi, and wagged his head impressively.

Hamilton of the Houssas rose up from his camp chair and stretched
himself to his full six feet. His laughing eyes--terribly blue they
looked in the mahogany setting of his lean face--quizzed the chief, and
his clean-shaven lips twitched ever so slightly.

Chief Idigi looked at him curiously. Idigi was squat and fat, but wise.
None the less he gossiped, for, as they say on the river, "Even the wise
_oochiri_ is a chatterer."

"O, laughing Lord," said Idigi, almost humble in his awe--for blue eyes
in a brown face are a great sign of devilry, "this is no smiling
palaver, for they say----"

"Idigi," interrupted Hamilton, "I smile when you speak of the N'bosini,
because there is no such land. Even Sandi, who has wisdom greater than
_ju-ju_, he says that there is no N'bosini, but that it is the foolish
talk of men who cannot see whence come their troubles and must find a
land and a people and a king out of their mad heads. Go back to your
village, Idigi, telling all men that I sit here for a spell in the place
of my lord Sandi, and if there be, not one king of N'bosini, but a
score, and if he lead, not one army, but three and three and three, I
will meet him with my soldiers and he shall go the way of the bad king."

Idigi, unconvinced, shaking his head, said a doubtful "_Wa!_" and would
continue upon his agreeable subject--for he was a lover of ghosts.

"Now," said he, impressively, "it is said that on the night before the
moon came, there was seen, on the edge of the lake-forest, ten warriors
of the N'bosini, with spears of fire and arrows tipped with stars,
also----