ist. That fact was enough for
Felix, and next moment he was gone, and the moonlight cast his black
shadow as he ran, making northeast, a darkness let loose on life and on
the land.

Adams awoke at sun-up to find the gun and the cartridge bag gone. The
porters knew nothing. He had picked up enough of their language to
interrogate them, but they could only shake their heads, and he was
debating in his own mind whether he ought to kick them on principle, when
Berselius made his appearance from the tent.

His strength had come back to him. The dazed look of the day before had
left his face, but the expression of the face was altered. The half smile
which had been such a peculiar feature of his countenance was no longer
there. The level eye that raised to no man and lowered before no man, the
aspect of command and the ease of perfect control and power--where were
they?

Adams, as he looked at his companion, felt a pang such as we feel when we
see a human being suddenly and terribly mutilated.

Who has not known a friend who, from an accident in the hunting field, the
shock of a railway collision, or some great grief, has suddenly changed;
of whom people say, "Ah, yes, since the accident he has never been the
same man"?

A friend who yesterday was hale and hearty, full of will power and brain,
and who to-day is a different person with drooping under-lip, lack-lustre
eye, and bearing in every movement the indecision which marks the inferior
mind.

Berselius's under-lip did not droop, nor did his manner lack the ordinary
decision of a healthy man; the change in him was slight, but it was
startlingly evident. So high had Nature placed him above other men, that a
crack in the pedestal was noticeable; as to the injury to the statue
itself, the ladder of time would be required before that could be fully
discovered.

So far from being downcast this morning, Berselius was mildly cheerful. He
washed and had his wound dressed, and then sat down to a miserable
breakfast of cold tinned meat and cassava cakes, with water fetched from
the pool in a cracked calabash.

He said nothing about the mist in his head, and Adams carefully avoided
touching on the question.

"Sleep has put him all right," said Adams to himself. "All the same, he's
not the man he was. He's a dozen times more human and like other men.
Wonder how long it will last. Just as long as he's feeling sick, I
expect."

He rose to fetch his pipe when Berselius, who