irst of many. Every day the litters were waiting
and they visited some new place, although into the town itself they
never went. Moreover, if they passed through outlying villages, though
Alan was forced to wear his mask, their inhabitants had been warned to
absent themselves, so that they saw no one. The crops were left untended
and the cattle and sheep lowed hungrily in their kraals. On certain
days, at Alan's request, they were taken to the spots where the gold was
found in the gravel bed of an almost dry stream that during the rains
was a torrent.

He descended from the litter and with the help of the Asika and Jeekie,
dug a little in this gravel, not without reward, for in it they found
several nuggets. Above, too, where they went afterwards, was a huge
quartz reef denuded by water, which evidently had been worked in past
ages and was still so rich that in it they saw plenty of visible gold.
Looking at it Alan bethought him of his City days and of the hundreds
of thousands of pounds capital with which this unique proposition might
have been floated. Afterwards they were carried to the places where
the gems were found, stuck about in the clay, like plums in a pudding,
though none ever sought them now. But all these things interested the
Asika not at all.

"What is the good of gold," she asked of Alan, "except to make things
of, or the bright stones except to play with? What is the good of
anything except food to eat and power and wisdom that can open the
secret doors of knowledge, of things seen and things unseen, and love
that brings the lover joy and forgetfulness of self and takes away the
awful loneliness of the soul, if only for a little while?"

Not wishing to drift into discussion on the matter of love, Alan asked
the priestess to define her "soul," whence it came and whither she
believed it to be going.

"My soul is I, Vernoon," she answered, "and already very, very old. Thus
it has ruled amongst this people for thousands of years."

"How is that?" he asked, "seeing that the Asika dies?"

"Oh! no, Vernoon, she does not die; she only changes. The old body dies,
the spirit enters into another body which is waiting. Thus until I was
fourteen I was but a common girl, the daughter of a headman of that
village yonder, at least so they tell me, for of this time I have no
memory. Then the Asika died and as I had the secret marks and the beauty
that is hers the priests burnt her body before Big Bonsa and suffoc