e narrow path, fearing lest otherwise we should tumble
into some bog hole, until we came to higher land covered with the
scattered thorns of the country.

"Did that bush give you any particular impression?" asked
Anscombe a minute or two later.

"Yes," I answered, "it gave me the impression that we might catch
fever there. See the mist that lies over it," and turning in my
saddle I pointed with the rifle in my hand to what looked like a
mass of cotton wool over which, without permeating it, hung the
last red glow of sunset, producing a curious and indeed rather
unearthly effect. "I expect that thousands of years ago there
was a lake yonder, which is why trees grow so big in the rich
soil."

"You are curiously mundane, Quatermain," he answered. "I ask you
of spiritual impressions and you dilate to me of geological
formations and the growth of timber. You felt nothing in the
spiritual line?"

"I felt nothing except a chill," I answered, for I was tired and
hungry. "What the devil are you driving at?"

"Have you got that flask of Hollands about you, Quatermain?"

"Oh! those are the spirits you are referring to," I remarked with
sarcasm as I handed it to him.

He took a good pull and replied--

"Not at all, except in the sense that bad spirits require good
spirits to correct them, as the Bible teaches. To come to
facts," he added in a changed voice, "I have never been in a
place that depressed me more than that thrice accursed patch of
bush."

"Why did it depress you?" I asked, studying him as well as I
could in the fading light. To tell the truth I feared lest he
had knocked his head when the wildebeeste upset him, and was
suffering from delayed concussion.

"Can't tell you, Quatermain. I don't look like a criminal, do I?
Well, I entered those trees feeling a fairly honest man, and I
came out of them feeling like a murderer. It was as though
something terrible had happened to me there; it was as though I
had killed someone there. Ugh!" and he shivered and took another
pull at the Hollands.

"What bosh!" I said. "Besides, even if it were to come true, I
am sorry to say I've killed lots of men in the way of business
and they don't bother me overmuch."

"Did you ever kill one to win a woman?"

"Certainly not. Why, that would be murder. How can you ask me
such a thing? But I have killed several to win cattle," I
reflected aloud, remembering my expedition with Saduko against
the chief Bangu, a