nse of duty that prompted Hatteras, of that he was
certain, and he waited--he waited from darkness to daybreak in his
compound for three successive nights. On the fourth he heard the
scuffling sound at the corner of the fence. The night was black as the
inside of a coffin. Half a regiment of men might steal past him and he
not have seen them. Accordingly he walked cautiously to the palisade
which separated the enclosure of the Residency from his own, felt
along it until he reached the little gate and stationed himself
in front of it. In a few moments he thought that he heard a man
breathing, but whether to the right or the left he could not tell;
and then a groping hand lightly touched his face and drew away again.
Walker said nothing, but held his breath and did not move. The hand
was stretched out again. This time it touched his breast and moved
across it until it felt a button of Walker's coat. Then it was
snatched away and Walker heard a gasping in-draw of the breath and
afterwards a sound as of a man turning in a flurry. Walker sprang
forward and caught a naked shoulder with one hand, a naked arm with
the other.

"Wait a bit, Dick Hatteras," he said.

There was a low cry, and then a husky voice addressed him respectfully
as "Daddy" in trade-English.

"That won't do, Dick," said Walker.

The voice babbled more trade-English.

"If you're not Dick Hatteras," continued Walker, tightening his grasp,
"You've no manner of right here. I'll give you till I count ten and
then I shall shoot."

Walker counted up to nine aloud and then--

"Jim," said Hatteras in his natural voice.

"That's better," said Walker. "Let's go in and talk."

III.

He went up the step and lighted the lamp. Hatteras followed him and
the two men faced one another. For a little while neither of them
spoke. Walker was repeating to himself that this man with the black
skin, naked except for a dirty loincloth and a few feathers on his
head was a white man married to a white wife who was sleeping--Nay,
more likely crying--not thirty yards away.

Hatteras began to mumble out his usual explanation of duty and the
rest of it.

"That won't wash," interrupted Walker. "What is it? A woman?"

"Good Heaven, no!" cried Hatteras suddenly. It was plain that that
explanation was at all events untrue. "Jim, I've a good mind to tell
you all about it."

"You have got to," said Walker. He stood between Hatteras and the
steps.

"I told you how this co