ltimate cost of my own
life. Still, in such a service two are better than one. If you--can care
enough--if you----"

But the lady had already turned away, and was murmuring her farewell in
accents that sounded like a sob. Love and faith after this sort were not
given to her.

Of all Owen's trials this was the sharpest. Of all his sacrifices this
was the most complete.

CHAPTER III

THE TEMPTATION

Two years have gone by all but a few months, and from the rectory in a
quiet English village we pass to a scene in Central, or South Central,
Africa.

On the brow of a grassy slope dotted over with mimosa thorns, and close
to a gushing stream of water, stands a house, or rather a hut, built
of green brick and thatched with grass. Behind this hut is a fence of
thorns, rough but strong, designed to protect all within it from the
attacks of lions and other beasts of prey. At present, save for a
solitary mule eating its provender by the wheel of a tented ox-waggon,
it is untenanted, for the cattle have not yet been kraaled for the
night. Presently Thomas Owen enters this enclosure by the back door of
the hut, and having attended to the mule, which whinnies at the sight
of him, goes to the gate and watches there till he sees his native boys
driving the cattle up the slope of the hill. At length they arrive, and
when he has counted them to make sure that none are missing, and in a
few kind words commended the herds for their watchfulness, he walks
to the front of the house and, seating himself upon a wooden stool set
under a mimosa tree that grows near the door, he looks earnestly towards
the west.

The man has changed somewhat since last we saw him. To begin with, he
has grown a beard, and although the hot African sun has bronzed it
into an appearance of health, his face is even thinner than it was, and
therein the great spiritual eyes shine still more strangely.

At the foot of the slope runs a wide river, just here broken into rapids
where the waters make an angry music. Beyond this river stretches a
vast plain bounded on the horizon by mountain ranges, each line of them
rising higher than the other till their topmost and more distant peaks
melt imperceptibly into the tender blue of the heavens. This is the land
of the Sons of Fire, and yonder amid the slopes of the nearest hills is
the great kraal of their king, Umsuka, whose name, being interpreted,
means The Thunderbolt.

In the very midst of the foaming rapid