nd there on the bank above sat
Arlo's mistress.

She had a drawing block in her hand and a colour box beside her.
Quickly she rose, and I could have sworn I saw a flush of pleasure steal
over the beautiful face. I was off my horse in a twinkling. The tall,
graceful form came easily forward to meet me.

"Welcome home," she said, as our hands clasped. "I am so glad to see
you again. And you have kept your promise indeed. Why we hardly
expected you before to-morrow or the day after."

"It was a great temptation to me to come over with Falkner yesterday," I
answered. "But, a man must not neglect his business."

"Of course not. It is so good of you to have come now."

"Good of me! I seem to remember that you would look forward to it--that
last night I was here," I answered, a bit thrown off my balance by the
manner of her greeting. That "welcome home," and the spontaneous
heartiness of it, well it would be something to think about.

"Well, and that is just what I have been doing," she answered gaily.
"There! Now I hope you feel duly flattered."

"I do indeed," I answered gravely.

"And I am so glad we have met like this," she continued, "because now we
shall be able to have a good long talk. The others are all more or less
asleep, but I didn't feel lazy, so came down here to reduce that row of
stiff euphorbia to paper. I have taken up my drawing again, and there
are delightful little bits for water-colour all round here."

The spot was as secluded and delightful as one could wish. The high
bank and overhanging bushes gave ample shade, and opposite, with the
scarlet blossoms of a Kafir bean for foreground, rose a small cliff, its
brow fringed with the organ pipe stems of a line of euphorbia.

"Lie down, Arlo," she enjoined. "What a fortunate thing it was you were
able to recover him. I don't know how to thank you."

"Of course you don't, because no question of thanking me comes in," I
said. "I would sooner have found him as we did, than make anything at
all out of the trip, believe me."

"And your trip was not a great success after all, Falkner tells us?"

"Oh we did well enough, though I have done better. But to return to
Arlo. The mystery to me--to both of us--was how on earth he ever
managed to let himself be stolen."

"Ah. That dreadful witch doctor must have been at the bottom of it. I
only know that one morning he--Arlo not Ukozi--had disappeared, and no
inquiry of ours could get at t