her world was quite empty now.
She had no one in her heart for whom to pray.

Yet for awhile she knelt dumb among the lifeless stones, her face
hidden, her thoughts with the father whose loss she had scarcely
begun to realise. It might be that God would understand and pity her
silence, she thought drearily to herself.

The rush of the water drowned all sound but its own, and the memory
of Nick, waiting above, faded from her consciousness like a dream. Her
brain felt numb and heavy still. She did not want to think. She leaned
her head against a rock, closing her eyes. The continuous babble of
the stream was like a lullaby.

Under its soothing influence she might have slept, a blessed
drowsiness was stealing over her, when suddenly there flashed through
her being a swift warning of approaching danger. Whence it came she
knew not, but its urgency was such that instinctively she started up
and looked about her.

The next instant, with a sound half-gasp, half-cry, she was on
her feet, and shrinking back against her sheltering boulder in the
paralysis of a great horror. There, within a few yards of her and
drawing nearer, ever nearer, with a beast-like stealth, was a tall,
black-bearded tribesman. Transfixed by terror, she stood and gazed
at him, waiting dumbly, cold from head to foot, feeling as though her
very heart had turned to stone.

Nearer he came, and yet nearer, soundlessly over the stones. His eyes,
gleaming, devilish, were to her as the eyes of a devouring monster.
In her agony she tried to shriek aloud, but her voice was gone, her
throat seemed locked. She was powerless.

Close to her, for a single instant he paused; then, as in a lightning
flash, she saw the narrow, sinewy hand and snake-like arm dart forward
to seize her, felt every muscle in her body stiffen to rigidity in
anticipation of its touch, and shrank--shrank in every nerve though
she made no outward sign of shrinking.

But on the instant, with a panther-like spring, sure, noiseless,
deadly, another figure leapt suddenly across her vision. There
followed a violent struggle in front of her, a confused swaying to and
fro, a cry choked instantly and terribly, the tinkling sound of steel
falling upon stone. And then both figures were on the ground almost
at her feet, locked together in mortal combat, fighting, fighting
like demons in a silence that throbbed with the tumult of unrestrained
savagery.

Later she never could remember how long it to