oor girl! poor girl!" Good cried in his distress; and then, as he
could do nothing else, he fell to kissing her.

"Bougwan," she said, after a pause, "is Macumazahn there? It grows so
dark, I cannot see."

"Here I am, Foulata."

"Macumazahn, be my tongue for a moment, I pray thee, for Bougwan cannot
understand me, and before I go into the darkness I would speak to him a
word."

"Say on, Foulata, I will render it."

"Say to my lord, Bougwan, that--I love him, and that I am glad to die
because I know that he cannot cumber his life with such as I am, for
the sun may not mate with the darkness, nor the white with the black.

"Say that, since I saw him, at times I have felt as though there were a
bird in my bosom, which would one day fly hence and sing elsewhere.
Even now, though I cannot lift my hand, and my brain grows cold, I do
not feel as though my heart were dying; it is so full of love that it
could live ten thousand years, and yet be young. Say that if I live
again, mayhap I shall see him in the Stars, and that--I will search
them all, though perchance there I should still be black and he
would--still be white. Say--nay, Macumazahn, say no more, save that I
love--Oh, hold me closer, Bougwan, I cannot feel thine arms--_oh! oh!_"

"She is dead--she is dead!" muttered Good, rising in grief, the tears
running down his honest face.

"You need not let that trouble you, old fellow," said Sir Henry.

"Eh!" exclaimed Good; "what do you mean?"

"I mean that you will soon be in a position to join her. _Man, don't
you see that we are buried alive?_"

Until Sir Henry uttered these words I do not think that the full horror
of what had happened had come home to us, preoccupied as we were with
the sight of poor Foulata's end. But now we understood. The ponderous
mass of rock had closed, probably for ever, for the only brain which
knew its secret was crushed to powder beneath its weight. This was a
door that none could hope to force with anything short of dynamite in
large quantities. And we were on the wrong side!

For a few minutes we stood horrified, there over the corpse of Foulata.
All the manhood seemed to have gone out of us. The first shock of this
idea of the slow and miserable end that awaited us was overpowering. We
saw it all now; that fiend Gagool had planned this snare for us from
the first.

It would have been just the jest that her evil mind would have rejoiced
in, the idea of the three white men, whom