nd--asleep--she cannot see him in the room below, a
look of excitement on his face while he writes with feverish haste on a
large sheet of flimsy paper.

The words reel rapidly off his quill, he never pauses, and his eyes are
aglow with the fire of energy.

Quamina, who has been in the verandah, enters with a tray of cooling
drinks and places them by his elbow. She has never seen the Sahib
writing before, she did not know he could hold a pen, and his engrossed
attitude awakes her curiosity and suspicion. He does not hear her come
in till she puts the glasses beside him, then he pushes them away and
tells her to go.

Quamina steals across the room.

Why is the Sahib writing? It is not his way. His quill flies like a
thing possessed across the paper, and when he pauses it is to wipe the
drops of perspiration from his heated brow.

"This is the Sahib's hour for sleep," thinks Quamina. "It is a secret
message that he writes at such a time, when his wife is absent,
dreaming in the other room." She steals into the verandah and watches.
A sudden idea comes to her ignorant mind, which, as she turns it over
in her brain, amounts to a firm conviction.

[Illustration: She steals into the verandah and watches.]

"The Sahib is making a compact with the devil. He is frightened of
that tall spirit in the black mask, and is coming to terms with him.
Maybe he will offer his house and his servants, his wife even, to be
himself released from the terror of that grim presence."

Quamina shakes from head to foot. Her white teeth rattle. Surely the
Sahib's face is taking the likeness of the Evil one, as he sits alone,
or why does a sinister smile flit across his lips, while he perpetually
pauses to listen, and look nervously towards the door? Once he rises,
opens it, standing a moment, looking towards Eleanor's room. But there
is no sound, and he returns to his desk reassured.

Finally the letter ends. He folds it carefully, looking at the dashing
signature with some pride. He takes up a red seal, strikes a light,
and drops a huge round of burning wax upon the envelope.

"The deed is done," thinks trembling Quamina; "the devil has been
written to. He will scan those hasty words in his unholy abode, and
bargain with the Sahib, till an arrangement shall be made."

Her suspicions increase as Quinton, listening once more at the door,
snatches up a hat with a guilty air, creeping out into the broiling sun.

Quamina by t