flask, smelt its contents and threw it away with a
little exclamation of disgust.

"How often have you been coming here on this errand?" he asked sternly.

"Most every day, massa--when him Mr. Price away."

Trent nodded.

"Very good," he said. "Now listen to me. If ever I catch you round here
again or anywhere else on such an errand, I'll shoot you like a dog. Now
be off."

The boy bounded away with a broad grin of relief. Trent walked up to the
house and asked for the missionary's wife. She came to him soon, in what
was called the parlour. A frail, anaemic-looking woman with tired eyes
and weary expression.

"I'm sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Price," Trent said, plunging at once
into his subject, "but I want to speak to you about this old man, Monty.
You've had him some time now, haven't you?"

"About four years," she answered. "Captain Francis left him with
my husband; I believe he found him in one of the villages inland, a
prisoner."

Trent nodded.

"He left you a little money with him, I believe."

The woman smiled faintly.

"It was very little," she said, "but such as it is, we have never
touched it. He eats scarcely anything and we consider that the little
work he has done has about paid us for keeping him."

"Did you know," Trent asked bluntly, "that he had been a drunkard?"

"Captain Francis hinted as much," the woman answered. "That was one
reason why he wanted to leave him with us. He knew that we did not allow
anything in the house."

"It was a pity," Trent said, "that you could not have watched him a
little more out of it. Why, his brain is sodden with drink now!"

The woman was obviously honest in her amazement. "How can that be?" she
exclaimed. "He has absolutely no money and he never goes off our land."

"He has no need," Trent answered bitterly. "There are men in Attra who
want him dead, and they have been doing their best to hurry him off. I
caught a Kru boy bringing him gin this afternoon. Evidently it has been
a regular thing."

"I am very sorry indeed to hear this," the woman said, "and I am sure
my husband will be too. He will feel that, in a certain measure, he has
betrayed Captain Francis's trust. At the same time we neither of us had
any idea that anything of this sort was to be feared, or we would have
kept watch."

"You cannot be blamed," Trent said. "I am satisfied that you knew
nothing about it. Now I am going to let you into a secret. Monty is a
rich man if he had his r