d feet in height. Up they
went, stumbling, scrambling--the ring of the horses' hoofs upon the
stones waking the echoes in the dead silence of the spot. The grey
shades of briefest twilight had already enshrouded the passage in
gathering gloom.

"Well, Fanning, what's the betting on my shot being the right one?"
cried Sellon, whose mercurial spirits had gone up sky-high under the
influence of a new excitement. "We must be more than halfway up this
beastly water-pipe. A few minutes more will decide it. What's the
betting?"

"I still say, don't make too sure, Sellon. I'm sorry to say it occurs
to me that the expression `up there,' on which this new idea of yours
turns, may mean nothing more than when a man talks of `up country'. It
may not mean on top of a mountain, don't you know."

"The devil it mayn't! What an old wet blanket you are, Fanning. Well,
we shall soon see now. Hallo! What have you got there?"

For the other was gazing attentively at something. Then without a word
he dropped the end of his bridle, and clambering over a couple of
boulders, was stooping over the object which had caught his eye.

It was something round and white. Maurice could see that much before
following his companion, which, however, he hastened to do. Then both
men stood staring down at the object.

The latter was embedded in a hole in the ground, firmly wedged between
two rocks, half of it projecting. At first sight it might have been
mistaken for an ostrich egg.

Renshaw bent down and picked up the object. Something of a tug was
necessary to loosen it from the imprisoning rock. He held in his hand a
human skull.

"What's the matter, old chap?" said Sellon, wonderingly, noticing his
companion's face go deadly white, while the hand that held the skull
trembled violently. "You seem rather knocked out of time, eh? A thing
like that is a queerish sort of find in this God-forsaken corner; but
surely your nerves are proof against such a trifle."

"Trifle, do you call it?" replied Renshaw, speaking quickly and eagerly.
"Look at the thing, man--look at it."

"Well, I see it. What then?" said Maurice, wondering if his friend had
gone clean off his head, and uncomfortably speculating on the extreme
awkwardness of such an occurrence away here in the wilds.

"What then? Why, it is a white man's skull."

"How do you know that?" said Sellon, more curiously, bending down to
examine the poor relic which seemed to grin p