curdled milk--and, indeed, a large calabash of the latter,
tightly stoppered, was among the stores. Well, whatever was to become of
him, he was not to starve, anyhow. But was he only being fattened for a
worse fate?

Then a thought struck him, which set all his pulses tingling into
renewed life. He, too, had been sent out of the country, and these
stores were to last him for, at any rate, part of his journey. True, the
prospect was anything but an exhilarating one, seeing that he was
unarmed, and had but the vaguest idea which way to turn; that the
Ba-gcatya country was surrounded by ferocious and hostile races. But
then, everything is relative in this world, and to a man who has spent
hours of a long day journeying towards a mysterious, horrible, and
certain death, the discovery of release and life, even with such slender
chances, was joy after the boding dread which those long hours had held
for him. Yes, that was it, of course. Tyisandhlu had not been faithless
to the friendship between them. While openly consenting to his
sacrifice, for even the king dare not, in such a matter, run counter to
the feelings of the nation, Tyisandhlu had given secret orders that he
should be smuggled out of the country.

Having arrived at this conclusion, it occurred to Laurence that he
might as well explore a little. He would leave his stores here for the
present; for a glance served to show that the rift or fissure ended
there, so taking only a handful of the pounded corn, to eat as he
walked, he started at once.

But there was a something, a cold creepiness in the air perhaps, that
quelled much of his new-born hope. The rift seemed to form a kind of
circle, for he walked on and on, ever trending to the right, never able
to see more than a short distance in front; never able to behold the
sky. There was something silently, horribly eloquent in the grim
sameness of those tomblike walls. Just then, to his relief, the
semi-gloom widened into light. The cliffs no longer overhung each other.
A narrow strip of sky became visible, and, in front, the open daylight.

But with the joy of the discovery another sight met his gaze, a sight
which sent the blood tingling through his veins. Yet, at first glance,
it was not a particularly moving one. On the ground, at his feet, lay
two unobtrusive-looking pebbles of a bluish gray. But as the next moment
he held them in his hands, Laurence knew that he held in a moment what
he had gone through yea