when we turned into Henkel's garden, and the scent of the
flowers beat in our faces like heat. At the veranda steps we met the
servant who had admitted Scott.

"The man was running away. He was a cripple, and he came down the
steps doubled up, bundled past us, and was gone. Somewhere a door
clashed open. There was no other sound. But in a moment the garden
seemed, full of stampeding servants, all maimed, or ill, or aged. They
melted silently into the bushes as rats melt into brushwood, and they
took no notice of us. I heard Pedro catch his breath quickly. But when
a light flared up in one of the rooms it showed no more than Scott
talking with Henkel.

"They showed like moving pictures in a frame, and the frame was of
dark leaves about the window, which was open. I leaned against the
side of it, and Pedro squatted at my feet, his head thrust forward as
if he were at a cockfight. I did not know just why I was there. Henkel
sat at a table, wagging his head backward and forward; Scott was
sitting opposite him. And he looked as Lazarus might have looked when
first he heard the Voice and stirred.

"Henkel was saying, 'Dear me, dear me, but why should this have
happened?' And Scott answered as he had answered me, in that strange,
patient voice:

"'The clocks wouldn't tick.'

"'But they were good clocks,' cried Henkel.

"Scott shook his head. 'No, they were not good clocks,' he explained,
gently; 'they were too cheap. They would not go at all in the jungle.
An Indian of the Mazzaron does not care what time his clock tells, but
he likes it to tick. These were no good. And the food was not good.
The things in tins were bad when we opened them.'

"'Mismanagement, mismanagement,' said Henkel, but Scott went on as if
he had not heard:

"'We followed the river for two days, and then turned east. In a week
after that two of your men were dead. They died of fever. No, the
quinine was no good; there was a lot of flour in it. Two days more,
and another man died, but he would have died anyhow. It was very hard
to see them die and be able to do nothing.

"'The men who were left went so slowly that nearly all our food was
gone when we reached the country of the Indies. We made our camp and
I shot a pig. That gave us strength, but Louis was very bad then with
the fever.

"'The Indies came down, and we spoke with their head men. They thought
we were mad, but the clocks pleased them; and they sat round our tents
and shook them t