augh.

"Er--thank you," he said. "Very kind."

He did not put his pipe back to his lips--keenly alive to the fact
that the exigency of the moment demanded a little polite exchange of
commonplace.

"Children gone to bed?" he asked anxiously.

She paused in her slow, deft arrangement of the little table.

"Yes," she answered.

He nodded as if the news were eminently satisfactory. "Nestorius," he
said, adhering to Meredith's pleasantry, "is the jolliest little chap I
have met for a long time."

"Yes," she answered softly. "Yes--but listen!"

He raised his head, listening as she did--both looking down the river
into the gathering darkness.

"I hear the sound of paddles," she said. "And you?"

"Not yet. My ears are not so sharp as yours."

"I am accustomed to it," the woman said, with some emotion in her voice
which he did not understand then. "I am always listening."

Oscard seemed to be struck with this description of herself. It was so
very apt--so comprehensive. The woman's attitude before the world was
the attitude of the listener for some distant sound.

She poured out his coffee, setting the cup at his elbow. "Now you will
hear," she said, standing upright with that untrammelled dignity of
carriage which is found wherever African blood is in the veins. "They
have just come round Broken Tree Bend. There are two boats."

He listened, and after a moment heard the regular glug-glug of the
paddles stealing over the waters of the still tropic river, covering a
wonderful distance.

"Yes," he said, "I hear. Mr. Meredith said he would be back to-night."

She gave a strange, little low laugh--almost the laugh of a happy woman.

"He is like that, Mr. Meredith," she said; "what he says he does"--in
the pretty English of one who has learnt Spanish first.

"Yes, Marie--he is like that."

She turned, in her strangely subdued way, and went into the house to
prepare some supper for the new-comers.

It was not long before the sound of the paddles was quite distinct, and
then--probably on turning a corner of the river and coming in sight of
the lights of Msala--Jack Meredith's cheery shout came floating through
the night. Oscard took his pipe from his lips and sent back an answer
that echoed against the trees across the river. He walked down to the
water's edge, where he was presently joined by Joseph with a lantern.

The two boats came on to the sloping shore with a grating sound, and by
the light of the wavin