he_ simply,
who he gave us to understand was the Queen of the Amahagger, and learn
her wishes.

I asked him how long he proposed to be away, and he said that by
travelling hard he might be back on the fifth day, but there were many
miles of marsh to cross before he came to where _She_ was. He then said
that every arrangement would be made for our comfort during his absence,
and that, as he personally had taken a fancy to us, he sincerely trusted
that the answer he should bring from _She_ would be one favourable to
the continuation of our existence, but at the same time he did not wish
to conceal from us that he thought this doubtful, as every stranger
who had ever come into the country during his grandmother's life, his
mother's life, and his own life, had been put to death without mercy,
and in a way he would not harrow our feelings by describing; and this
had been done by the order of _She_ herself, at least he supposed that
it was by her order. At any rate, she never interfered to save them.

"Why," I said, "but how can that be? You are an old man, and the time
you talk of must reach back three men's lives. How therefore could _She_
have ordered the death of anybody at the beginning of the life of your
grandmother, seeing that herself she would not have been born?"

Again he smiled--that same faint, peculiar smile, and with a deep bow
departed, without making any answer; nor did we see him again for five
days.

When he had gone we discussed the situation, which filled me with
alarm. I did not at all like the accounts of this mysterious Queen,
"_She-who-must-be-obeyed_," or more shortly _She_, who apparently
ordered the execution of any unfortunate stranger in a fashion so
unmerciful. Leo, too, was depressed about it, but consoled himself by
triumphantly pointing out that this _She_ was undoubtedly the person
referred to in the writing on the potsherd and in his father's letter,
in proof of which he advanced Billali's allusions to her age and power.
I was by this time too overwhelmed with the whole course of events that
I had not even the heart left to dispute a proposition so absurd, so I
suggested that we should try to go out and get a bath, of which we all
stood sadly in need.

Accordingly, having indicated our wish to a middle-aged individual of
an unusually saturnine cast of countenance, even among this saturnine
people, who appeared to be deputed to look after us now that the Father
of the hamlet had depar