No fear Jeekie split on Little Bonsa, oh! no fear at all," and still
shaking his head solemnly, for the second time he seized the cold mutton
and vanished from the room.

"A farrago of superstitious nonsense," thought Alan to himself when
he had gone. "But still there may be something to be made out of it.
Evidently there is lots of gold in this Asiki country, if only one can
persuade the people to deal."

Then weary of Jeekie and his tribal gods, Alan lit his pipe and sat a
while thinking of Barbara and all the events of that tumultuous
day. Notwithstanding his rebuff at the hands of Mr. Haswell and the
difficulties and dangers which threatened, he felt even then that it had
been a happy and a fortunate day. For had he not discovered that Barbara
loved him with all her heart and soul as he loved Barbara? And as this
was so, he did not care a--Little Bonsa about anything else. The future
must look to itself, sufficient to the day was the abiding joy thereof.

So he went to bed and for a while to sleep, but he did not sleep very
long, for presently he fell to dreaming, something about Big Bonsa and
Little Bonsa which sat, or rather floated on either side of his couch
and held an interminable conversation over him, while Jeekie and Sir
Robert Aylward, perched respectively at its head and its foot, like the
symbols of the good and evil genii on a Mahommedan tomb, acted as a kind
of insane chorus. He struck his repeater, it was only one o'clock, so he
tried to go to sleep again, but failed utterly. Never had he been more
painfully awake.

For an hour or more Alan persevered, then at last in despair he jumped
out of bed wondering what he could do to occupy his mind. Suddenly he
remembered the diary of his uncle, the Rev. Mr. Austin, which he had
inherited with the Yellow God and a few other possessions, but never
examined. They had been put away in a box in the library about fifteen
years before, just at the time he entered the army, and there doubtless
they remained. Well, as he could not sleep, why should he not examine
them now, and thus get through some of this weary night?

He lit a candle and went down to the library, an ancient and beautiful
apartment with black oak panelling between the bookcases, set there in
the time of Elizabeth. In this panelling there were cupboards, and in
one of the cupboards was the box he sought, made of teak wood. On its
lid was painted, "The Reverend Henry Austin. Passenger to Acra,"