o the forest, for he has
since collected the scattered remnant of his nomadic bands, and although
he has never since troubled us, yet he now and then commits depredations
on the borders of the English and French spheres of influence. Ere long
he will overstep the bounds, and one Power or another will certainly send
a punitive expedition to crush and humiliate him, as they have crushed
the arrogant Prempeh of Ashanti.

During many months the means by which the theft of the Treasure of the
Sanoms had been effected remained an inscrutable mystery, and it was only
on the day previous to my departure from the mysterious land for England,
or rather more than six months ago, that the problem was solved and in a
manner entirely unexpected.

In preparation for the annual feast in honour of the Crocodile-god I had
occasion to go secretly and alone to the submerged Treasure-house, in
order to obtain certain jewels which tradition decreed should be worn on
that day by the reigning sovereign. I had emptied the lake, unsealed the
cover of the well-like aperture, locked the mechanism fatal to intruders,
descended and obtained what I sought, when on ascending I was dismayed to
find water pouring in upon me in increasing volumes. Upwards I climbed,
struggling desperately against the inrushing flood thundering down upon
me, and was aghast to find, when I gained the surface, that the
sluice-gates that held back the waters feeding the lake had been opened,
and that it was rapidly refilling. Instantly it occurred to me to replace
the cover, and in breathless haste I succeeded in screwing it down and
dashing for my life back to the bank, the water being up to my arm-pits
ere I reached it.

When next second I glanced upward to the mound where the mechanism was
concealed, I saw standing thereon the wild-looking figure of a woman
with her soiled, tattered garments fluttering in the wind.

Her long scraggy arms were raised high above her head, and she was crying
aloud to me.

Without a moment's hesitation I dashed forward up the hill to secure the
person who had apparently discovered the secret of the Treasure-house,
but on approaching her closely I suddenly halted in astonishment.

The wretched, fiendish-looking virago, upon whose face were the most
hideous distortions of insanity I had ever witnessed, was none other than
the once-powerful tyrannical autocrat, the Great White Queen!

Across her narrow, withered brow, brown almost as a to