him
with sleepless centuries of sorrow, when he is also one of those spirits
in which he does not believe."

Then Meyer's rage blazed out. He turned upon the Molimo and reviled
him in his own tongue, saying that he knew well where the treasure was
hidden, and that if he did not point it out he would kill him and send
him to his friends, the spirits. So savage and evil did he look that
Benita retreated a little way, while Mr. Clifford strove in vain to calm
him. But although Meyer laid his hand upon the knife in his belt and
advanced upon him, the old Molimo neither budged an inch nor showed the
slightest fear.

"Let him rave on," he said, when at length Meyer paused exhausted. "Just
so in a time of storm the lightnings flash and the thunder peals, and
the water foams down the face of rock; but then comes the sun again, and
the hill is as it has ever been, only the storm is spent and lost. I
am the rock, he is but the wind, the fire, and the rain. It is not
permitted that he should hurt me, and those spirits in whom he does not
believe treasure up his curses, to let them fall again like stones upon
his head."

Then, with a contemptuous glance at Jacob, the old man turned and glided
back into the darkness out of which he had appeared.

XIII

BENITA PLANS ESCAPE

The next morning, while she was cooking breakfast, Benita saw Jacob
Meyer seated upon a rock at a little distance, sullen and disconsolate.
His chin was resting on his hand, and he watched her intently, never
taking his eyes from her face. She felt that he was concentrating his
will upon her; that some new idea concerning her had come into his
mind; for it was one of her miseries that she possessed the power of
interpreting the drift of this man's thoughts. Much as she detested him,
there existed that curious link between them.

It may be remembered that, on the night when they first met at the crest
of Leopard's Kloof, Jacob had called her a "thought-sender," and some
knowledge of their mental intimacy had come home to Benita. From that
day forward her chief desire had been to shut a door between their
natures, to isolate herself from him and him from her. Yet the attempt
was never entirely successful.

Fear and disgust took hold of her, bending there above the fire, all
the while aware of the Jew's dark eyes that searched her through and
through. Benita formed a sudden determination. She would implore her
father to come away with her.

Of cour