error and dejection in every face. And their
thoughts were much the same as those of their would-be deliverer. Had
he the power to make good his word?

The hot morning hours dragged slowly by, and still no sign of attack.
The village was a deserted place, in its brooding, death-like silence,
so still, so complete as to render distinctly audible the sweep of the
wings of carrion birds circling aloft. The severed heads grinned
hideously from the stockade, and the unearthly molten stillness of the
silent noon was such as to get upon the nerves of the ordinary watcher.
But he who now stood there had no nerves--not in a matter of this kind.
His experiences had been such as to kill and crush them out of all
being.

Ha! What was this? The crows and vultures, which, emboldened by the
deathly silence, had been circling nearer and nearer to the tree tops,
suddenly and with one accord shot upward, now seeming mere specks in the
blue ether. Then the silence was broken in appalling fashion. Rending
the air in a terrific note of savagery and blood-thirst, there burst
forth the harsh, hissing war-yell of the Wangoni.

It came from the forest edge on the farther side of the village.
Laurence realized, with vexation and concern, that his merciful plan
would be extremely difficult to carry out. That these ferocious
auxiliaries should be allowed to initiate the attack he had not reckoned
upon; and now to restrain them would be a herculean task.

"Back, back!" he shouted, meeting the crowd of charging savages who,
shield and spear uplifted, were bearing down in full career upon the
village.

In the headlong, exciting moment of their charge they hardly recognized
him. Laurence Stanninghame's life hung upon a hair. Then, with a great
burst of laughter, mocking, half defiant, they surged past him. They
"saw red," and no power on earth seemed able to stop those human wolves
now rushing upon their helpless prey.

"Back, back!" thundered Laurence again. "The village is dead, I tell
you. It is the abode of death!"

This told. Barbarians have a shrinking horror of infectious disease.
Thoughts of smallpox, cholera, what not, arose in the minds of these. No
other consideration on earth could have restrained that charge, yet this
one did. They stopped short.

"Lo! the stillness, the silence," went on Laurence, pointing to the
lifeless village. "Would you, too, travel the voiceless and weaponless
path of death?"

But mutterings both loud a