ced, knelt down, found it, and hissed into his ear that if he were
not quiet she would kill him.

This pacified him a little, but no earthly power could persuade him to
enter the tent again.

What was to be done? What could she do? For two minutes or more she
buried her face in her wet hands and thought wildly and despairingly.

Then a dark and dreadful determination entered her mind. The man Muller
should not escape. Bessie should not be sacrificed to him. Rather than
that, she would do the deed herself.

Without a word she rose, animated by the tragic agony of her purpose and
the force of her despair, and glided towards the tent, the great knife
in her hand. Now, ah! all too soon, she was inside of it, and stood for
a second to allow her eyes to grow accustomed to the light. Presently
she began to see, first the outline of the bed, then the outline of the
manly form stretched upon it, then both bed and man distinctly. Jantje
had said that he was sleeping like a child. He might have been; now he
was _not_. On the contrary, his face was convulsed like the face of one
in an extremity of fear, and great beads of sweat stood upon his brow.
It was as though he knew his danger, and yet was utterly powerless to
avoid it. He lay upon his back. One heavy arm, his left, hung over the
side of the bed, the knuckles of the hand resting on the ground; the
other was thrown back, and his head was pillowed upon it. The clothing
had slipped away from his throat and massive chest, which were quite
bare.

Jess stood and gazed. "For Bessie's sake, for Bessie's sake!" she
murmured; then impelled by a force that seemed to move of itself she
crept slowly, slowly, to the right-hand side of the bed.

At this moment Muller woke, and his opening eyes fell full upon
her face. Whatever his dream had been, what he now saw was far more
terrible, for bending over him was the _ghost of the woman he had
murdered in the Vaal!_ There she was, risen from her river grave, torn,
dishevelled, water yet dripping from her hands and hair. Those sunk
and marble cheeks, those dreadful flaming eyes could belong to no human
being, but only to a spirit. It was the spirit of Jess Croft, of the
woman whom he had slain, come back to tell him that there _was_ a living
vengeance and a hell!

Their eyes met, and no creature will ever know the agony of terror that
he tasted of before the end came. She saw his face sink in and turn
ashen grey while the cold sweat ran