imself in the jungle to keep from killing a man whose pardon he
wanted to ask for betraying his wife was new.

"I sympathized with him, of course, telling him he was too young to let
the world go by; that when the husband got cool he would give up the
chase--had given it up long ago, no doubt, now that he realized how good
for nothing the woman was--said all the things, of course, one naturally
says to a man you suspect to be slightly out of his head.

"The next night Judson returned. He brought newspapers and letters, and
word from the outside world; among other things that he had met a man
at the landing below who was on his way to the camp above us. He had
offered to bring him with him, but he had engaged some Zanzibari of his
own and intended to make a shorter route to the north of our camp
and then join one of the bands in charge of an Arab trader-some of
Tippu-Tib's men really. He knew of the imminence of the rainy season
and wanted, to return to Zanzibar before it set in in earnest. Judson's
news--all his happenings, for that matter--interested the young Belgian
even more than they did me, and before the week was out the two were
constantly together--a godsend in his present state of mind--saved
him in fact from a relapse, I thought--Judson's odd way of looking
at things, as well as his hard, common sense, being just what the
high-strung young fellow needed most.

"Some weeks after this--perhaps two, I can't remember exactly--a party
of my men whom I sent out for plantains and corn (our provisions were
running low) returned to camp bringing me a scrap of paper which a white
man had given them. They had found him half dead a day's journey away.
On it was scrawled in French a request for food and help. I started
at once, taking the things I knew would be wanted. The young Belgian
offered to go with me--he was always ready to help--but Judson had gone
to a neighboring village and there was no one to leave in charge but
him. I had now not only begun to like him but to trust him.

"I have seen a good many starving men in my time, but this lost stranger
when I found him was the most miserable object I ever beheld. He lay
propped up against a tree, with his feet over a pool of water, near
where my men had left him. His eyes were sunk in his head, his lips
parched and cracked, his voice almost gone. A few hours more and he
would have been beyond help. He had fainted, so they told me, after
writing the scrawl, and only