that he was talking with his Spirit, Macumazahn?" (I
had rendered "the merciful Lord" as the Good Spirit.) "Well, he has gone
and doubtless his Spirit will take care of him. It is finished."

"At any rate we cannot, Baas," broke in Hans, who I think feared that I
might send him out to look for Robertson. "I can follow most spoors, but
not on such a night as this when one could cut the blackness into lumps
and build a wall of it."

"Yes," I answered, "he has gone and nothing can be done at present,"
though to myself I reflected that probably he had not gone far and would
be found when the moon rose, or at any rate on the following morning.

Still I was most uneasy about the man who, as I had noted for a long
while, was losing his balance more and more. The shock of the barbarous
and dreadful slaughter of his half-breed children and of the abduction
of Inez by these grim, man-eating savages began the business, and I
think that it was increased and accentuated by his sudden conversion to
complete temperance after years of heavy drinking.

When I persuaded him to this course I was very proud of myself, thinking
that I had done a clever thing, but now I was not so sure. Perhaps it
would have been better if he had continued to drink something, at
any rate for a while, but the trouble is that in such cases there is
generally no half-way house. A man, or still more a woman, given to this
frailty either turns aggressively sober or remains very drunken. At
any rate, even if I had made a mess of it, I had acted for the best and
could not blame myself.

For the rest it was clear that in his new phase the religious
associations of his youth had re-asserted themselves with remarkable
vigour, for I gathered that he had been brought up almost as a
Calvinist, and in the rush of their return, had overset his equilibrium.
As I have said, he prayed night and day without any of those reserves
which most people prefer in their religious exercises, and when he
talked of matters outside our quest, his conversation generally revolved
round the devil, or hell and its torments, which, to say the truth, did
not make him a cheerful companion. Indeed in this respect I liked him
much better in his old, unregenerate days, being, I fear, myself a
somewhat worldly soul.

Well, the sum of it was that the poor fellow had gone mad and given us
the slip, and as Hans said, to search for him at once in that darkness
was impossible. Indeed, even if it h