he wants to disappear why should he not?"

"Wants to disappear? But this one has no reason to want anything of the
kind. Some men might, but this one not. You know him, Tyingoza, as
well as I. What do you think?"

There was a comical twinkle in the chief's eyes. He merely answered:

"Who can think in such a case?"

Obviously there was nothing to be got out of Tyingoza--as yet--so I left
the subject. In fact I had a far more interesting subject on my mind
just then, for this was the day the Sewins had fixed upon for their
visit to me, and so I fell to discussing with the chief the arrangements
which were to be made for their entertainment. He had promised that a
goodly number of his people should muster, and I had promised them
cattle to kill in proportion to the number that would require feasting.
This ought to ensure a very good roll up indeed. The disappearance of
Hensley was to me a very secondary matter to-day.

By the way, I was in a state of fidget absolutely unwonted with me; and
my "boy" Tom simply gaped with astonishment at the thorough turn-out I
made him give my hut; and when I fetched a roll of Salampore cloth to
hang around the walls so as to conceal the grass thatching I could see
that he was entertaining considerable doubts as to his master's sanity.

He would have entertained even graver doubts could he have witnessed a
still further stage of imbecility into which I lapsed. I found myself
looking in the glass--not for ordinary purposes of toilet, be it noted,
and I have set out upon this narrative determined to spare none of my
own weaknesses, but because I was anxious to see what sort of fellow I
looked--and I don't know that I felt particularly flattered by the
result; for, confound it, I was no longer in my first youth, and a face
bronzed and roughened by twenty years of knocking about, struck me as
nothing particularly attractive to the other sex. Yet it was only the
roughness of weather and more or less hard times that had told upon it,
for I had always been rather abstemious and had set my face like a flint
against the wild roaring sprees that some of my friends in the same line
were prone to indulge in. If I had not the "clean run" look of Falkner
Sewin, my eye was every whit as clear and I had a trifle the advantage
of him in height, and held myself quite as straight. No, it was absurd
to try and start comparisons with Sewin, who was quite ten years
younger, and had never known