aside. Then at the commencement of this
year I fell ill. For a while I waited, hoping that I might get better,
but at last I realized that I should never get better, that the hand of
Death was upon me."

"Ah, no, father, not that!" Stella said, with a cry.

"Yes, love, that, and it is true. Now you will be able to forget our
separation in the happiness of a new meeting," and he glanced at me
and smiled. "Well, when this knowledge came home to me, I determined to
abandon this place and trek for the coast, though I well knew that
the journey would kill me. I should never live to reach it. But Stella
would, and it would be better than leaving her here alone with savages
in the wilderness. On the very day that I had made up my mind to take
this step Stella found you dying in the Bad Lands, Allan Quatermain, and
brought you here. She brought you, of all men in the world, you, whose
father had been my dear friend, and who once with your baby hands had
saved her life from fire, that she might live to save yours from thirst.
At the time I said little, but I saw the hand of Providence in this, and
I determined to wait and see what came about between you. At the worst,
if nothing came about, I soon learned that I could trust you to see her
safely to the coast after I was gone. But many days ago I knew how it
stood between you, and now things are determined as I prayed they might
be. God bless you both, my children; may you be happy in your love;
may it endure till death and beyond it. God bless you both!" and he
stretched out his hand towards me.

I took it, and Stella kissed him.

Presently he spoke again--

"It is my intention," he said, "if you two consent, to marry you next
Sunday. I wish to do so soon, for I do not know how much longer will be
allowed to me. I believe that such a ceremony, solemnly celebrated
and entered into before witnesses, will, under the circumstances, be
perfectly legal; but of course you will repeat it with every formality
the first moment it lies in your power so to do. And now, there is
one more thing: when I left England my fortunes were in a shattered
condition; in the course of years they have recovered themselves,
the accumulated rents, as I heard but recently, when the waggons last
returned from Port Natal, have sufficed to pay off all charges, and
there is a considerable balance over. Consequently you will not marry on
nothing, for of course you, Stella, are my heiress, and I wish to make