ri who had ever before been in the country, took sick
and died. We could find no natives to guide us, and so I simply swung
back straight north. We have been living on the fruits of our guns for
over a month. Didn't have an idea there was a white man within a
thousand miles of us when we camped last night by a water hole at the
edge of the plain. This morning I started out to hunt and saw the
smoke from your chimney, so I sent my gun bearer back to camp with the
good news and rode straight over here myself. Of course I've heard of
you--everybody who comes into Central Africa does--and I'd be mighty
glad of permission to rest up and hunt around here for a couple of
weeks."

"Certainly," replied Bwana. "Move your camp up close to the river
below my boys' camp and make yourself at home."

They had reached the verandah now and Bwana was introducing the
stranger to Meriem and My Dear, who had just come from the bungalow's
interior.

"This is Mr. Hanson," he said, using the name the man had given him.
"He is a trader who has lost his way in the jungle to the south."

My Dear and Meriem bowed their acknowledgments of the introduction.
The man seemed rather ill at ease in their presence. His host
attributed this to the fact that his guest was unaccustomed to the
society of cultured women, and so found a pretext to quickly extricate
him from his seemingly unpleasant position and lead him away to his
study and the brandy and soda which were evidently much less
embarrassing to Mr. Hanson.

When the two had left them Meriem turned toward My Dear.

"It is odd," she said, "but I could almost swear that I had known Mr.
Hanson in the past. It is odd, but quite impossible," and she gave the
matter no further thought.

Hanson did not accept Bwana's invitation to move his camp closer to the
bungalow. He said his boys were inclined to be quarrelsome, and so
were better off at a distance; and he, himself, was around but little,
and then always avoided coming into contact with the ladies. A fact
which naturally aroused only laughing comment on the rough trader's
bashfulness. He accompanied the men on several hunting trips where
they found him perfectly at home and well versed in all the finer
points of big game hunting. Of an evening he often spent much time
with the white foreman of the big farm, evidently finding in the
society of this rougher man more common interests than the cultured
guests of Bwana possessed for hi