her.

Mr. Wallace heard her out, then, without making any comment, he rose,
saying that he must try to shoot some meat for the camp, and begged that
they would make themselves comfortable until his return that evening.

Before sundown he reappeared, and, coming straight to the tent, asked
their pardon for his incredulity.

"I have been up yonder," he said, "following your spoor backwards. I
have seen the snow-bridge and the stones, and the nicks which the dwarf
cut in the ice. All is just as you told me, and it only remains for me
to congratulate you upon having escaped from the strangest series of
dangers that ever I heard of"; and he held out his hand, which both
Leonard and Juanna shook warmly.

"By the way," he added, "I sent men to examine the gulf for several
miles, but they report to me that they found no spot where it would be
possible to descend it, and I fear, therefore, that the jewels are lost
for ever. I confess that I should have liked to try to penetrate
into the Mist country, but my nerves are not strong enough for the
ice-bridge, and if they were, stones won't slide uphill. Besides, you
must have had about enough of roughing it, and will be anxious to turn
your faces towards civilisation. So after you have rested another couple
of days I think that we had better start for Quilimane, which, barring
accidents, is about three months' march from here."

Shortly afterwards they started accordingly, but with the details of
their march we need not concern ourselves. An exception must be
made, however, in the case of a single event which happened at the
mission-station of Blantyre. That event was the wedding of Leonard and
Juanna in conformance with the ceremonies of their own church.

No word of marriage had been spoken between them for some weeks, and
yet the thought of it was never out of the minds of either. Indeed, had
their feelings been much less tender towards each other than was the
case, it would still have been desirable, in view of the extraordinary
intimacy into which they had been thrown during the past months, that
they should become man and wife. Leonard felt that alone as she was in
the wide world, nothing short of mutual aversion would have justified
him in separating from Juanna, and as it was love and not aversion
that he entertained towards her, this argument came home to him with
overmastering force.

"Juanna," he said to her on the day of their arrival at Blantyre, "you
remember s