the effect that he had climbed
a high tree as he had been bidden to do, and from the top of that tree
by the light of the first rays of the rising sun, miles away on the
plain beyond the forest, he had seen the Asiki army in full retreat.

"Thank God!" exclaimed Alan.

"Yes, Major, but that very rum story. Jeekie can't swallow it all at
once. Must send out see none of them left behind. P'raps they play
trick, but if they really gone, 'spose it 'cause guns frightens them
so much. Always think powder very great 'vention, especially when enemy
hain't got none, and quite sure of it now. Jeekie very, very seldom
wrong. Soon believe," he added with a burst of confidence, "that Jeekie
never wrong at all. He look for truth so long that at last he find it
_always_."

Something more than a month had gone by and Major and Mrs. Vernon, the
latter fully restored to health and the most sweet and beautiful of
brides, stood upon the steamship _Benin_, and as the sun sank, looked
their last upon the coast of Western Africa.

"Yes, dear," Alan was saying to his wife, "from first to last it has
been a very queer story, but I really think that our getting that Asiki
gold after all was one of the queerest parts of it; also uncommonly
convenient, as things have turned out."

"Namely that you have got a little pauper for a wife instead of a great
heiress, Alan. But tell me again about the gold. I have had so much to
think of during the last few days," and she blushed, "that I never quite
took it all in."

"Well, love, there isn't much to tell. When that forwarding agent, Mr.
Aston, knew that we were in the town, he came to me and said that he
had about fifty cases full of something heavy, as he supposed samples of
ore, addressed to me to your care in England which he was proposing to
ship on by the _Benin_. I answered 'Yes, that was all right,' and
did not undeceive him about their contents. Then I asked how they had
arrived, and if he had not received a letter with them. He replied that
one morning before the warehouse was open, some natives had brought them
down in a canoe, and dumped them at the door, telling the watchman that
they had been paid to deliver them there by some other natives whom they
met a long way up the river. Then they went away without leaving any
letter or message. Well, I thanked Aston and paid his charges and
there's an end of the matter. Those fifty-three cases are now in the
hold invoiced as ore samples a