t journey, trying to pierce the realms
of space, but her spirit came back baffled. She could not know what they
were at.

* * *

If Lucy's love had been able to bridge the abyss that parted them, if in
some miraculous way she had been able to see what actions they did at
that time, she would have witnessed a greater tragedy than any which she
had yet seen.

X

The night was stormy and dark. The rain was falling, and the ground in
Alec's camp was heavy with mud. The faithful Swahilis whom he had
brought from the coast, chattered with cold around their fires; and the
sentries shivered at their posts. It was a night that took the spirit
out of a man and made all that he longed for seem vain and trifling. In
Alec's tent the water was streaming. Great rats ran about boldly. The
stout canvas bellied before each gust of wind, and the cordage creaked,
so that one might have thought the whole thing would be blown clean
away. The tent was unusually crowded, though there was in it nothing but
Alec's bed, covered with a mosquito-curtain, a folding table, with a
couple of garden chairs, and the cases which contained his more precious
belongings. A small tarpaulin on the floor squelched as one walked on
it.

On one of the chairs a man sat, asleep, with his face resting on his
arms. His gun was on the table in front of him. It was Walker, a young
man who had been freshly sent out to take charge of the North East
Africa Company's most northerly station, and had joined Alec's
expedition a year before, taking the place of an older man who had gone
home on leave. He was a funny, fat person with a round face and a comic
manner, the most unexpected sort of fellow to find in the wildest of
African districts; and he was eminently unsuited for the life he led.
He had come into a little money on attaining his majority, and this he
had set himself resolutely to squander in every unprofitable way that
occurred to him. When his last penny was spent he had been offered a
post by a friend of his family's, who happened to be a director of the
company, and had accepted it as his only refuge from starvation.
Adversity had not been able to affect his happy nature. He was always
cheerful no matter what difficulties he was in, and neither regretted
the follies of his past nor repined over the hardships which had
followed them. Alec had taken a great liking to him. A silent man
himself, he found a certain relaxation in people like Dick Lomas