as he was free.
"What have you done with her? what have you done with her?" And then,
in a tone of weird and pathetic sorrow, "Where is my little one that I
loved? I have sought her many a year; oh, why did she forsake me? Aha,
Sooka! we were right to send him to the hell whence he came--the lying,
false-hearted scoundrel, to steal away my white dove!"

After which he drew from his finger a solid gold ring which he always
wore, and threw it from him, saying, with a wild laugh, "There! that's
for any one that likes it; I'm a dead man." He then staggered toward his
own room, and I, remembering the loaded revolver which still lay on
the chest of drawers, tried to intercept him. In his rage, for I verily
believe that he also remembered that the weapon was there, he spat in my
face, and struck me with all his force between the eyes; but I stuck to
him, and with the help of the boy, who had been all this time in hiding,
but who came forward at my call, I laid him for the last time upon his
bed. There he lay exhausted for the remainder of the night; but there
was no rest for me; I felt that I had to watch him now for my own
safety.

Toward morning, however, his breathing became, all at once, very heavy
and slow, and I bent over him in alarm. As I did so, I heard him
sigh faintly, "Lucy!" and at that moment the native boy softly placed
something upon the bed. I took it up. It was the ring the sick man had
thrown away in the night, and as I looked at it I saw "James, from Lucy"
engraved on its inside surface, and I knew that the dead woman was his
wife.

As the first faint streaks of dawn stole into the room, the
slow-drawn breathing of the dying man ceased. I listened--it came
again--once--twice--and then all was silence. He was dead, and I
realised in the sudden stillness that had come upon the room that I was
alone. Yet he had passed away so quietly after his fitful fever that I
could not bring myself to believe that he was really gone, and I stood
looking at the body, fearing to convince myself of the truth by touching
it.

So entranced was I by that feeling of awe which comes to almost every
one in the presence of death, that I did not hear the shouting of the
hammock-boy outside, or the footsteps of a white man coming into
the room; and not until he touched me on the shoulder did I turn and
recognise the sallow face of the Portuguese doctor whom I had sent for,
and who had thus arrived too late. However, he served to