g away to
die.

A shiver ran through his frame as he beat to death the great noisome
insect--and his blood seemed to chill with a superstitious fear. It
seemed too strange, too marvellous to be a mere coincidence. Lindela had
defied the traditions of her race, and now she had met her death through
the agency of the very embodiment of those traditions. She, a daughter
of the Kings of the People of the Spider, had met her death through the
Spider's bite. It was horrifying in its sinister appropriateness. Was it
really a thing of witchcraft? Did the Fiend have actual bodily power
here, in "the dark places of the earth"? Had this demoniacal influence
followed her to wreak its vengeance here, at such a distance from the
home and country to which she would return no more?

When Laurence Stanninghame resumed his journey the next day he left
behind him a grave--a deep, secure grave--a solitary grave in the heart
of the untrodden forest. His journeyings henceforth must be alone; but
ofttimes his thoughts would go back to that nameless grave, and to her
who rested forever therein. Only a savage! Only a heathen! Yes--but if
brave, devoted, self-sacrificing love is of any account at all in the
scheme of Christian virtues, where would this savage, this heathen, come
in at the day of awards? Where indeed, among the multitude of
gold-worshipping, form-adoring Pharisees? Truth to tell, Laurence
believed but dimly in the day of awards. Yet did it exist, he thought he
knew the answer to his own question.

FOOTNOTE:

[7] Tutelary spirit.

CHAPTER XXX.

"GOOD-BYE--MY IDEAL!"

Johannesburg once more. The great, restless gold-town had passed through
many changes, many booms and rumours of booms--the latter for the most
part--since that quiet _trek_ now four years ago. Many of those who then
were among its busiest inhabitants had departed, some to a land whence
there is no return, others to the land of their respective births. Many,
who then had been on the verge of millionaires, "buzzing" their rapidly
acquired gains with a lavish magnificence which they imagined to be
"princely"--were now uncertificated bankrupts, or had blown their brains
out, or had come within the meshes of the law and the walls of a convict
prison; while others, who at that time lived upon hope and the "whiff of
an oiled rag," now fared sumptuously every day, and would do so unto
their lives' end. But for those who had held on to the place through
good