ights, and I want to help him to them. I shall
take him back to England with me, but I can't leave for a week or so. If
you can keep him till then and have some one to watch him day and night,
I'll give your husband a hundred pounds for your work here, and build
you a church. It's all right! Don't look as though I were mad. I'm a
very rich man, that's all, and I shan't miss the money, but I want
to feel that Monty is safe till I can start back to England. Will you
undertake this?"

"Yes," the woman answered promptly, "we will. We'll do our honest best."

Trent laid a bank-note upon the table.

"Just to show I'm in earnest," he remarked, rising. "I shall be
up-country for about a month. Look after the old chap well and you'll
never regret it."

Trent went thoughtfully back to the town. He had committed himself now
to a definite course of action. He had made up his mind to take Monty
back with him to England and face the consequences.

CHAPTER XXV

On the summit of a little knoll, with a pipe between his teeth and
his back against a palm-tree, Trent was lounging away an hour of the
breathless night. Usually a sound sleeper, the wakefulness, which had
pursued him from the instant his head had touched his travelling pillow
an hour or so back, was not only an uncommon occurrence, but one which
seemed proof against any effort on his part to overcome it. So he had
risen and stolen away from the little camp where his companions lay
wrapped in heavy slumber. They had closed their eyes in a dense
and tropical darkness--so thick indeed that they had lit a fire,
notwithstanding the stifling heat, to remove that vague feeling of
oppression which chaos so complete seemed to bring with it. Its embers
burnt now with a faint and sickly glare in the full flood of yellow
moonlight which had fallen upon the country. From this point of vantage
Trent could trace backwards their day's march for many miles, the white
posts left by the surveyor even were visible, and in the background rose
the mountains of Bekwando. It had been a hard week's work for Trent. He
had found chaos, discontent, despair. The English agent of the Bekwando
Land Company was on the point of cancelling his contract, the surveyors
were spending valuable money without making any real attempt to start
upon their undoubtedly difficult task. Everywhere the feeling seemed to
be that the prosecution of his schemes was an impossibility. The road
was altogether in the