ature. Had it been suggested to
Nidia Commerell, say that time the evening before, that she should pass
the night all alone in a hole on the banks of the Umgwane River, her
reply would have been as unhesitating as it was uncompromising. Not for
a fortune--not for ten fortunes--would she have embarked on such an
experience, and that with the house and its inhabitants within half a
mile. Any one of the half-hundred ordinary terrors of the night, actual
or shadowy, potential lions, snakes, leopards--even down to ghosts--
would simply turn her into a lunatic before the hours of darkness were
half through, she would have declared. Now, the house was there just
the same, but turned into a tomb for the awful remains of those with
whom last evening at that time she was in happy and social converse, yet
she welcomed the darkness of this hole as a very haven of refuge.

But as the night wore on the terrors which came upon the unhappy girl
grew more and more acute. Visions of the Hollingworth family, not as
she remembered it in life, but as she had seen it in the mutilation and
agony of savage butchery, rose before her in the darkness, seeming to
point to and suggest her own fate, ghastly and revolting as that which
had overtaken them. Each stealthy rustle in the brake--every weird cry
of night bird or beast, near or for--carried with it a new terror. A
tiger-wolf howled along the river-bank, and although she knew that this
brute is the most skulking and cowardly of carnivora, yet it might be
different where there was only a frightened and defenceless woman to
deal with. Lions, too, were not unknown in that part of the country;
but their movements were sporadic, and there had been no sign of them
anywhere in the neighbourhood for some time. Still, the horrible
bloodshed which had taken place might attract all manner of wild
animals; and she shivered with renewed terror at every sound. Soft
footfalls seemed to be stealing towards her under cover of the foliage,
breathings as of some fierce carnivorum stalking its prey; and there she
lay utterly helpless. And then, the appalling loneliness of those dark
hours!

But she was destined to meet with a very real fright before they were
over. A clinking of stones struck upon her ear, as though something
were coming along the dry river-bed. With despair in her heart she
peered forth. Dawn was at hand, and in its gathering light she made out
a shape--long, stealthy, sinuous--t