raised his eyes slowly from the observation of his finger-tips
as they rested on the edge of the table before him to those of the
American girl who sat opposite. She had heard his story so far without
any show of attention, and had been watching, rather with a touch of
fondness in her eyes, the clever, earnest face of Arbuthnot, who was
following Gordon's story with polite interest. But now, at Gordon's
last words, she turned her eyes to him with a look of awful
indignation, which was followed, when she met his calmly polite look
of inquiry, by one of fear and almost of entreaty.

"When the man came to," continued Gordon, in the same conventional
monotone, "he begged me to take the chain and locket to a girl whom
he said I would find either in London or in New York. He gave me the
address of her banker. He said: 'Take it off my neck before you bury
me; tell her I wore it ever since she gave it to me. That it has been
a charm and loadstone to me. That when the locket rose and fell
against my breast, it was as if her heart were pressing against mine
and answering the beating and throbbing of the blood in my veins.'"

Gordon paused, and returned to the thoughtful scrutiny of his
finger-tips.

"The man did not die," he said, raising his head. "Royce brought him
back into such form again that in about a week we were able to take
him along with us on a litter. But he was very weak, and would lie for
hours sleeping when we rested, or mumbling and raving in a fever. We
learned from him at odd times that he had been trying to reach Lake
Tchad, to do what we had done, without any means of doing it. He had
had not more than a couple of dozen porters and a corporal's guard of
Senegalese soldiers. He was the only white man in the party, and his
men had turned on him, and left him as we found him, carrying off with
them his stock of provisions and arms. He had undertaken the
expedition on a promise from the French government to make him
governor of the territory he opened up if he succeeded, but he had had
no official help. If he failed, he got nothing; if he succeeded, he
did so at his own expense and by his own endeavors. It was only a
wonder he had been able to get as far as he did. He did not seem to
feel the failure of his expedition. All that was lost in the happiness
of getting back alive to this woman with whom he was in love. He had
been three days alone before we found him, and in those three days,
while he waited for de