The room was a common little sitting-room with a table in the centre, at either end of which sat Mrs. van Cannan and Mr. Saxby. Roddy was between the table and the wall, and Christine’s first glance showed him white-faced and staring with fascinated, fearful eyes at a large cardboard box, with a flat-iron on its lid, which stood on the table. The two elder people were each holding small knobkerries, that is, stout sticks with wired handles and heavy heads made by the natives. A revolver lay at Saxby’s elbow.

The little tableau remained stationary just long enough for Christine to observe all details; then everyone acted at once. Roddy flew round the table and reached her at the window, sobbing:

“Oh, Miss Chaîne! Miss Chaîne!”

Saxby laid his knobkerrie on the table and lit a cigarette, and Mrs. van Cannan, rising from her seat with an air of dignity outraged beyond all bounds, addressed Christine.

“What is the meaning of this intrusion, Miss Chaîne? How dare you come bursting into Mr. Saxby’s house like this?”

“I heard Roddy call out,” was the firm answer, “and I consider it my duty to protect him.” She had the boy well within her reach now, and could easily have lifted him out of the low window, but it seemed an undignified thing to do unless it became absolutely necessary.

“Protect him! From what, may I ask?” The woman’s voice was like a knife.

“I don’t know from what. I only know that he was in grave fear of something you were about to do.”

Saxby interposed with a soft laugh.

“You surely cannot suppose Roddy was in any danger from his mother, Miss Chaîne or that I would harm him?”

He certainly did not look very harmful with his full, handsome features and melancholy smile.

“Your action is both ridiculous and impertinent,” continued Mrs. van Cannan furiously. “And I can tell you that I will not stand that sort of thing from any one in my house,” she added, with the air of one dismissing a servant: “You may go. Roddy, come here!”

Roddy gave a wild cry.

“Don’t leave me, Miss Chaîne. They’ve got a snake in that box, and they want me to let it out.”

There was blank silence for a moment; then Christine spoke with deliberation.

“If this is true, it is the most infamous thing I have ever heard.”

Even Isabel van Cannan was silenced, and Saxby’s deprecating smile passed. He said gravely:

“Mrs. van Cannan has a right to use what methods she thinks best to cure her boy of cowardice.”

“Cowardice!” Christine answered him scornfully. “The word would be better applied to those who deliberately terrify a child. I am astonished at a man taking part in such a vile business.”

She was pale with indignation and pity for the boy who trembled in her arms, and in no mood to choose her words.

Saxby shrugged his shoulders with a sort of helpless gesture toward his companion as if to say he had only done as he was told. Mrs. van Cannan gave him a furious glance before returning to Christine.

“Can’t you see,” she said violently, “that we have sticks here ready to kill the thing, and a revolver if necessary? Not that it is poisonous if it had bitten that miserable little worm!” She cast a withering glance at Roddy. He shrank closer to Christine, who judged it time to pull him safely from the room to her side on to the veranda.

“There is nothing miserable about Roddy,” she said fiercely, “except his misfortune in having a step-mother who neither loves nor understands him.”

That blenched the woman at the table. She turned a curious yellow colour, and her golden-brown eyes appeared to perform an evolution in her head that, for a moment, showed nothing of them but the eyeball.

“That will do,” she hissed, advancing menacingly upon Christine. “I always felt you were a spy. But you shall not stay prying here another day. Pack your things and go at once.”

“Come, come, Mrs. van Cannan,” interposed Saxby soothingly; “I am sure you are unjust to Miss Chaîne. Besides, how can she go at once? There is nothing for her to travel by until the cart returns from Cradock.”

But the woman he addressed had lost all control of herself.

“She goes tomorrow, cart or no cart!” she shouted, and struck one clenched fist on the other. “We will see who is mistress at Blue Aloes!”

Christine cast at her the look of a well-bred woman insulted by a brawling fishwife, and with Roddy’s hand tightly in hers, walked out of the veranda without deigning to answer.

But though her mien was haughty as she walked away from Saxby’s bungalow holding Roddy’s hand, her spirits were at zero. She had burned her boats with a vengeance, and come out into the open to face an enemy who would stick at nothing, and who, apparently, had everyone at the farm at her side, including the big, good-natured-seeming Saxby.

It would be difficult to stay on at Blue Aloes and protect Roddy if his stepmother insisted on her departure, and she did not see how she was going to do it. She only knew that nothing and no one should budge her from the place. Something dogged in her upheld her from dismay and determined her to take a stand against the whole array of them. She was in the right, and it was her plain duty to do as Bernard van Cannan had besought, and not go until she could place Roddy in his father’s hands with the full story of his persécutions.

“Tell me about it, Roddy,” she said quietly, as they walked away. “Don’t hide anything. You know that I love you and that your father has trusted you to my care.”

“Yes,” he assented eagerly; “but how did you know about my real mammie being dead?” His natural resilience had already helped him to surmount the terror just past, and he was almost himself again. “I wanted to tell you, but I had promised mamma not to tell any one.”

It was as Christine had supposed. She explained her finding of the tombstone and the yellow rose, but not the rest of her terrible conclusions.

“I put it there,” he said shyly. “She always loved yellow and red flowers. I was keeping the other two for her and Carol in the graveyard.”

Christine squeezed the warm little hand, but continued her questions steadily.

“What happened after you had been to the outhouse?”

“Mamma was waiting for me on the stoep. She said she wanted me to come with her to see Mrs. Saxby.” He added, with the sudden memory of surprise: “But we didn’t see Mrs. Saxby. I wonder where she was.”

The same wonder seized Christine. Where could the unhappy, distraught creature have been hiding while the trial of Roddy was in process?

“What happened then?”

“We just went into the sitting-room, and Mr. Saxby got the box and the knobkerries and his revolver, and mamma said, ’Now, Roddy, there is a snake in that box, and I want you to prove you are not a coward like last night by taking off the lid.’” He shuddered violently. “But I couldn’t. Oh, Miss Chaîne, am I a coward?” he pleaded.

“No, darling; you are not,” she said emphatically. “Nobody in their senses would touch a box with a snake in it. It was very wrong to ask you to.”

He looked at her gratefully.

“Then you opened the window. Oh, how glad I felt! It was just like as if God had sent you, for my heart felt as if it was calling out to you all the time. Perhaps you heard it and that made you come?”

“I did, Roddy,” she said earnestly, “I ran all the way from the outhouse, because I felt you were in need of me.”

They were nearly home when they saw Saltire and his boys close beside their path. Roddy was urgent to stop and talk, but Christine made the fact that heavy rain-drops were beginning to fall an excuse for hurrying on, and indeed in Saltire’s face there was no invitation to linger, for, though he smiled at Roddy, Christine had never seen him so cold and forbidding-looking.

“He knows that I know,” she thought, “and, base as he is, that disturbs him.” The bitter thought brought her no consolation. She felt desolate and alone, like one lost in a desert, with a great task to accomplish and no friend in sight or sign in the skies. In the house, she collected the little girls, and they spent the rest of the afternoon together. The storm had broke suddenly, and the long-threatened rain came at last, lashing up the earth and battering on the window-panes amid deafening claps of thunder and a furious gale of wind.

When bath-time came for the children, Christine stayed with them until the last moment, superintending Meekie. She would have given worlds to avoid going in to dinner that night. No one could have desired food less, or the society of those with whom she must partake of it. Yet she felt that it would be a sign of weakness and a concession to the enemy if she stayed away, so she dressed as usual and went in to face the dreary performance of sitting an hour or so with people whom she held in fear as well as contempt, for she knew not from moment to moment what new offence she might have to meet. Only great firmness of spirit and her natural good breeding sustained her through that trying meal.

Saltire did not put in an appearance, for which small mercy she was fain to thank God. Deeply as he had wounded and offended her, she hated to see his face as she had seen it that afternoon. Mrs. van Cannan, oddly pallid but with burning eyes, absolutely ignored the presence of the governess, and her lead was followed by all save Andrew McNeil, who was no man’s man but his own, and always treated the girl with genial friendliness. As a matter of fact, there was but little conversation, for the sound of the rain, swishing down on the roof and windows and tearing through the trees without, deadened the sound of voices, and everyone seemed distrait.

Christine was not the only one who finished her meal hurriedly. As she rose, asking to be excused, Mrs. van Cannan, rising too, detained her.

“I wish to make arrangements with you about your departure tomorrow, Miss Chaîne,” she said, loudly enough for everyone’s hearing. “Kindly come to my room.”

There was nothing to be gained by not complying. Christine did not mean to leave the next day, and this seemed a good opportunity for stating her reasons and intentions; she buckled on her moral armour as she followed the trailing pink-and-white draperies down the long passage, preparing for an encounter of steel on steel.

“Close the door,” said Isabel van Cannan, and went straight to a table drawer, taking out a small bag full of money.

“I shall give you a month’s salary instead of notice,” she announced, counting out sovereigns, “though, as a matter of fact, I believe you are not entitled to it, considering the scandalous way you have behaved, plotting and spying and setting the children against me.”

Christine disdained to answer this lying charge. She only said quietly:

“It is useless to offer me money, Mrs. van Cannan. I have no intention of leaving the farm until Mr. van Cannan returns.”

“What do you mean? How dare you?” began the other, with a return of her loud and insolent manner.

“Don’t shout,” said Christine coldly. “You only degrade yourself and do not alarm me. I mean what I have said. Mr. van Cannan engaged me, and entrusted his children to my care, not only when I came but by letter since his departure. I do not mean to desert that trust or relegate it to any hands but his own.”

“He never wrote to you. I don’t believe a word of it.”

“You are at liberty to believe what you choose. I have the proof, and shall produce it if necessary. In the meantime, please understand plainly that I do not intend to be parted from Roddy.”

A baffled look passed over the other’s features, but she laughed contemptuously.

“We shall see,” she sneered. “Wait till tomorrow, and we shall see how much your proofs and protests avail you.”

“As we both know each other’s minds and intentions, there is no use in prolonging this very disagreeable interview,” answered Christine calmly, and walked out.

The dining-room was silent and dim. The men had evidently braved the rain for the sake of getting early to their own quarters, and no one was about. In the nursery, the lamp by which she sometimes read or wrote at her own table had not been lighted. Only a sheltered candle on the wash-hand stand cast a dim shadow toward the three little white beds under their mosquito-nets. Meekie had gone, but the quiet breathing of the children came faintly to the girl as she sat down by her table, thankful for a little space of silence and solitude in which to collect her forces. She saw violent and vulgar scenes ahead. Mrs. van Cannan, now that her true colours were unmasked, and it was no longer worth while to play the soft, sleepy rôle behind which she hid her fierce nature, would stick at nothing to get rid of Christine and set the whole world against her. Though the girl’s resolution held firm, a dull despair filled her. How vile and cruel life could be! Friendship was a mockery; love, disillusion and ashes; nothing held sweet and true but the hearts of little children. An arid conclusion for a girl from whom the gods had not withdrawn those two surpassing and swiftly passing gifts youth and beauty.

“To be a cynic at twenty-two!” she thought bitterly, and looked at her white, ringless hands. “I must have loved my kind even better than Chamfort, who said that no one who had loved his kind well could fail to be a misanthrope at forty. And I thought I had left it all behind in civilized England! Cruelty, falseness, treachery! But they are everywhere. Even here, on a South African farm in the heart of a desert, I find them in full bloom.”

She bowed her head in her hands and strove for peace and forgetfulness, if for that night only. In the end, she found calmness at least, by reciting softly to herself the beautiful Latin words of her creed. Then she arose and took the candle in her hand for a final look at the children before she retired. The day had been terrible and full of surprises, but fate had reserved a last and staggering one for this hour. Roddy’s bed was empty!

The shock of the discovery dazed her for a moment. It was too horrible to think that she had been sitting there all this time, wasting precious moments, while Roddy was where? O God, where, and in what cruel hands on this night of fierce storm and stress? When was it that he had gone? Why had not Meekie been at her post as usual? She caught up the light and ran from the nursery into one room after another of the house.

All was silent. The servants were gone, the rooms empty. No sound but the pitiless battering of the rain without. At last she came to Isabel van Cannan’s room and rapped sharply. There was no answer, and she made no bones about turning the door-handle, for this was no time for ceremony. But the bedroom, though brightly lighted, was empty. She did not enter, but stood in the doorway, searching with her eyes every corner and place that could conceivably hide a small boy. But there was no likely place. Even the bed stood high on tall brass legs, and its short white quilt showed that nothing could be hidden there. One object, however, that Christine Chaîne had not sought forced itself upon her notice an object that, even in her distress of mind, she had time to find extraordinary and unaccountable in this house of extraordinary and unaccountable things. On the dressing-table was a wig-stand of the kind to be seen in the window of a fashionable coiffeur. It had a stupid, waxen face, and on its head was arranged a wig of blond curly hair with long golden plaits hanging down on each side, even as the plaits of Isabel van Cannan hung about her shoulders as she lay among her pillows every morning. The thing gave Christine a thrill such as all the horrors of that day had not caused her. So innocent, yet so sinister, perched there above the foolish, waxen features, it seemed symbolical of the woman who hid cruel and terrible things behind her babylike airs and sleepy laughter.

Atop of these thoughts came the woman herself, emerging en deshabille from her adjoining bathroom. The moment she saw Christine, she flung a towel across her head, but too late for her purpose. The girl had seen the short, crisp, almost snowy curls that were hidden by day under the golden wig, and realized in an instant that she was in the presence of a woman of a breed she had never known mulatto, albino, or some strange admixture of native and European blood. The golden hair, assisted by artificial aids to the complexion, and her large golden-brown eyes had lent an extraordinary blondness to the skin. But the moment the wig was off, the mischief was out. The thickness of eyelids and nostril, and a certain cruel, sensuous fulness of the lips and jaw told the dark tale, and Christine wondered how she could ever have been taken in, except that the woman before her was as clever as she was cruel and unscrupulous. A tingling horror stole through her veins as she stood there, sustaining a malignant glance and listening dumfounded to an insolent inquiry as to what further spying she had come to do.

“I beg your pardon,” she stammered. “I knocked, and, getting no answer, opened the door, hardly knowing what I did in my distress. Roddy is missing from his bed, and I don’t know where to look for him.”

The other had turned away for a moment, adjusting the covering on her head before a mirror. She may still have believed that her secret remained unrevealed.

“I haven’t the faintest notion of Roddy’s whereabouts,” she said, “and if he is lost out in this storm, perhaps drowned in one of the kloofs, yours will be the blame, and I will see you are brought to book for it.” She spoke with the utmost malice and satisfaction. “Now, get out of my room!”

Christine went. Indeed, she was convinced that for once the woman spoke truth and that Roddy was not there or anywhere in the house. It was out-of-doors that she must seek him. So back to her room on winged feet to get a waterproof and make her way from the house. For once, the front door was barred! Outside, the rain had ceased as suddenly as it had burst from the heavens. Only the wind swished and howled wildly among the trees, tearing up handfuls of gravel to fling against the doors and windows. Afar off was a roaring sound new to her, that, later, she discovered to be the rushing waters in the kloofs that were tearing tumultuously to swell the river a few miles off. Clouds had blotted out moon and stars. All the light there was came intermittently from whip-like lightning flashes across the sky. It helped Christine a little as she stumbled through the darkness, crying out Roddy’s name, but she found herself often colliding with trees, and prickly-pear bushes seemed to be rushing hither and thither, waving fantastic arms and clutching for her as she passed. The idea had come to her suddenly to seek Andrew McNeil and ask for his help. He was the only friendly soul of all those on the farm that she could turn to. True, another face presented itself to her mind for one moment, but she banished it with scorn, despising herself for even thinking of Dick Saltire.

She fancied that McNeil lodged at the storekeeper’s place, and set herself to find the route she had taken that afternoon no easy task in the darkness that surrounded her. But at last she saw a twinkle of light, and, approaching closer, found that, by great good luck, she had indeed happened on the store. The door stood open, and she could see the man behind the counter talking to McNeil, who, seated on an upturned case, was smoking peacefully. Someone else was there too someone whose straight back and gallant air was very familiar to her. Saltire was buying tobacco from the storekeeper. But Christine had no word for him. She went straight to McNeil with her story.

“Roddy is lost!” she cried. “You must please come and help me find him.”

The men stared, electrified at her appearance. White as a bone, her beautiful violet eyes full of haunting fear; her hair, torn down by the wind and flickering in long black strands about her face, far below her waist, she looked like a wraith of the storm.

“Roddy lost!” McNeil and the storekeeper turned mechanically as one man to Saltire. It was only the girl who would not turn to him.

“Come quickly!” she urged. “He may be drowning somewhere, even now, in one of the swollen streams.” She imagined the tragedy to herself as she spoke, and her voice was full of wistful despair.

“Get her a hot drink.” Saltire, flinging the command to the storekeeper, spoke for the first time. “I’ll round up the boys and get lanterns for a search.” In a few moments there was a flicker of lanterns without, and the murmur of voices.

“Come along, Niekerk!” commanded Saltire, and the storekeeper began to put his lights out. “McNeil, you take Miss Chaîne back to the farm.”

“No, no; I must come, too!” she cried.

“Impossible,” he said curtly. “You will only be a hindrance.”

“Then I will go home alone,” she said quietly, “and free Mr. McNeil to accompany you.”

“Very well if you think you can find your way. Here is a lantern.”

She took it and went her way while they went theirs. Long before she reached the garden round the house, the lantern in her unskilful hands had gone out and she was groping by instinct.

All the weariness and strain of the day had suddenly descended upon her in a cloud. She knew she was near the end of her tether. This life at Blue Aloes was too much for her, after all; she must give it best at last; it was dominating her, driving her like a leaf before the wind. These were her thoughts as she crept wearily through the garden, but suddenly she heard voices and was galvanized into hope, tinged with fear. Perhaps Roddy was found! Perhaps her terror and suffering had been unnecessary. She listened for a moment, then located the speakers close to her in the stoep.

“Dick,” a voice she knew was saying, “I am sick of it. Bernard may die down in East London, but we shall never get rid of the boy while that English Jezebel is here. And she knows too much now. We had better go. Blue Aloes will never be ours to sell and go back to our own dear island. Everything has gone wrong.”

“Nonsense, Issa. You are too impatient. Van Cannan will never come back. He is too full of antimony. As for Roddy, poor kid, he is probably drowned in one of the kloofs and speeding for the river by now just the sort of adventure his queer little mind would embark on. No one can blame us for that, at least. You are far too easily discouraged, my darling. Wait till the morning.” The voice was the soft, sonorous voice of Saxby, and a lightning flash revealed to the girl cowering among the trees that it was he who held Isabel van Cannan in his arms.

There were two “Dicks” at Blue Aloes, and Christine, not knowing it, had been guilty of a grave injustice to Richard Saltire! Aghast as she was by the revelation, all her love and faith came tingling back in a sweet, overwhelming flood. For a moment or two she forgot Roddy, forgot where she was, forgot all the world but Saltire, and her attention was withdrawn from the pair in the stoep indeed, she had no desire to hear their words, now that she was sure they knew no more of the boy’s whereabouts than she herself. But the muffled clang of the bar across the front door broke through her thoughts, and she became aware that Saxby had left and Mrs. van Cannan gone in. She was alone in the gaunt darkness, barred out, and with no means of getting into the house; all other doors were locked, as well she knew, and all shutters firmly bolted, including those of the nursery. However, the fact did not worry her greatly, for the thought of being snug and safe while poor Roddy roamed somewhere in the blackness had no appeal for her. Out here, she seemed, somehow, nearer to him, and to the man whom she now knew she had deeply wronged. Lanterns, twinkling like will-o’-the-wisps in every direction, told of the search going forward, and she determined to stay in the summer-house and wait for what news might come. It was very obscure there, and she knew not what loathly insects might be crawling on the seats and table, but, at any rate, it was shelter from the rain, which now again began to fall heavily.

It seemed to her hours that she sat there while the storm swept round her and the rushing of many waters filled her ears. As a matter of fact, it was less than half an hour before she determined that inactivity was something not to be borne another moment and that she must return and join in the search for Roddy. So out she stumbled across the veld again, in the direction of the lanterns, evading as best she could the prickly-pear bushes, stubbing her feet against rocks and boschies, drenched and driven by the storm. It was old Andrew McNeil whom she found first, and he seemed an angel from heaven after the vile and menacing loneliness, although he was but ill pleased to see her.

“You should be in your bed, lassie,” he muttered. “The poor bairn will never be found this night. We’ve searched everywhere. There’s nothing left but the water.”

“Oh, don’t say that!” she cried woefully, and peered, fascinated, at the boiling torrent rushing down a kloof that but yesterday was an innocent gully they had crossed in their walks, in some places so narrow as to allow a jump from bank to bank. Now it was a turbulent flood of yellow water, spreading far beyond its banks and roaring with a rage unappeasable. While they stood there, staring, Saltire came up.

“You, Miss Chaîne! I thought I asked you to return to the farm.” His tones, were frigid, but his eyes compassionate. No one with any humanity could have failed to be touched by the forlorn girl, pale and lovely in the dim light.

“I had to come. I could not stay inert any longer.”

“We have searched every inch of the land inside the aloes,” he said. “He has either fallen into one of the streams or got out beyond the hedge into the open veld which seems impossible, somehow. At any rate, we can do no more until it is light.” He dismissed the natives with a brief: “Get home, boys. Hamba lalla!” then turned to McNeil. “Take Miss Chaine’s other arm, Mac; we must see for ourselves that she goes indoors.”

She made some sound of remonstrance, but he paid no attention, simply taking her arm, half leading, half supporting her. There was a long way to go. They walked awhile in a silence that had hopelessness in it; then Christine asked:

“Did you search every outhouse and barn?”

“Every one, and the cemetery, too,” answered Saltire. “There’s not a place inside or out of the farm-buildings we haven’t been over except Saxby’s bungalow, and he’s hardly likely to be there.”

“He was there this afternoon,” said Christine slowly. It seemed to her time to let them into the truth.

“What!”

Both men halted in amazement. Such a thing as any one but Mrs. van Cannan going to Saxby’s was unknown. Briefly she recounted the incidents of the afternoon. The men’s verdict was the same as hers had been.

“Atrocious!”

“Infamous! After that, we will certainly visit Saxby’s,” decided Saltire. “But, first, Miss Chaîne must go home.”

“No, no; let me come,” she begged. “It is not far. I must know.”

So, in the end, she got her way, and they all approached the bungalow together. It was in utter darkness, and the men had to rap loud and long before any response came from within. At last Saxby’s voice was heard inquiring who the deuce, and what the deuce, etc., etc., at that time of the night followed by his appearance in the doorway with a candle.

“We want to come in and look for Roddy,” said Saltire briefly, and, without further ado, pushed the burly man aside and entered, followed by McNeil. Christine, too, entered, and sat down inside the door. She was very exhausted. Saxby appeared too flabbergasted to move for a moment. Then he remonstrated with considerable heat.

“What do you mean by this? You don’t seem to know that you are in my house!”

But the other two had already passed through the empty sitting-room to the one beyond, and were casting lantern-gleams from side to side, examining everything.

“You must be crazy to think the boy is here,” Saxby blustered, as they re-emerged. They paid not the slightest attention to him, but continued their search into the kitchen, the only other room of the house.

“No,” said Saltire, very quietly, as he came back into the room and set the light on the table; “the boy is not here. But where is Mrs. Saxby?”

Saxby’s face had grown rather pallid, but his jaw was set in a dogged fashion.

“That is my business,” he said harshly.

It was Saltire whose face and manner had become subtly agreeable.

“Oh, no, Saxby; it is all of our business at present. What I find so strange is that nowhere in the house is there any sign or token that a woman lives here, or has ever lived here. It seems to me that needs a little explaining.”

“You’ll get no explanation from me,” was the curt answer.

“I think you had better tell us something about it,” said Saltire pleasantly. He held the lantern high, and it lighted up a shelf upon which stood some curious glass jars with perforated stoppers. “I see you have a fine collection of live tarantulas and scorpions. I remember now I have often seen you groping among the aloes. Curious hobby!”

“Get out of my house!” said Saxby, with sudden rage.

“And is the snake still in the box?” asked Saltire, approaching the table where the cardboard box still occupied its central position, with the heavy iron on top of it.

“Don’t touch it, for God’s sake!” shouted Saxby, lunging forward to stop him, but the deed was already done, though Saltire himself was unprepared for what followed on his lifting the iron. The lid flew up, and, with a soft hiss, something slim and swift as a black arrow darted across the air, seemed to kiss Saxby in passing, and was gone through the open door into the night.

The big man made a strange sound and put his hand to his throat. He swayed a little, and then sank upon a long cane lounge. Christine noticed that his eyes rolled with the same curious evolution as the eyes of Mrs. van Cannan had performed that afternoon. It was as though they turned in his head for a moment, showing nothing but the white eyeball. She wondered why the other men rushed to the sideboard and opened a brandy-bottle, and while she stayed, wondering, Saxby spoke softly, looking at her with his beautiful, melancholy brown eyes.

“I shall be dead in half an hour. Fetch Isabel. Let me see her face before I die.”

She knew him for a bad man, false friend, one who could be cruel to a little child; yet it seemed he could love well. That was something. She found herself running through the darkness as she had never run in her life, to do the last behest of Richard Saxby.

When she and Isabel van Cannan returned, they found him almost gone. Saltire and McNeil had worked over him until the sweat dripped from their faces, but he who has been kissed by the black mamba, deadliest of snakes, is lost beyond all human effort. The light was fast fading from his face, but, for a moment, a spurt of life leaped in his eyes. He held out his aims to the woman, and she fell weeping into them. Christine turned away and stared out at the darkness. Saltire had been writing; a sheet of paper upon which the ink was still wet lay upon the table, and in his hand he held a packet of letters.

“I have told everything, Issa,” muttered the dying man. “I had to clean my soul of it.”

She recoiled fiercely from him.

“‘Told everything?’” she repeated, and her face blanched with fury and despair. It seemed as if she would have struck him across the lips, but McNeil intervened.

“Have reverence for a passing soul, woman,” said he sternly. “Black as his crimes are, yours are blacker, I’m thinking. He was only the tool of the woman he loved his lawful wife.”

“You said that?” she raved. But Saxby was beyond recriminations. That dark soul had passed to its own place. She turned again to the others, foaming like a creature trapped.

“It is all lies, lies!” then fell silent, her eyes sealed to the newly written paper on the table under Saltire’s hand. At last, she said quietly: “I must, however, insist upon knowing what he has said about me. What is written on that paper, Mr. Saltire?”

“If you insist, I will read it,” he answered. “Though it is scarcely in my province to do so.”

“It is only fair that I should hear,” she said, with great calmness. And Saltire read out the terse phrases that bore upon them the stamp of Death’s hurrying hand.

“I am a native of the island Z in the West Indies. Isabel Saxby, known as van Cannan, is my wife. While travelling to the Cape Colony on some business of mine, she met van Cannan and his wife and stayed with them at East London. When she did not return to Z , I came to look for her and found that, Mrs. van Cannan having died, she had bigamously married the widower and come to live at Blue Aloes. I loved her, and could not bear to be parted from her, so, through her instrumentality, I came here as manager. The eldest boy was drowned before my arrival. The youngest died six months later of a bite from one of my specimen tarantulas. The third boy is, I expect, drowned tonight. I take the blame of all these deaths and of Bernard van Cannan’s, if he does not return. It was only when all male van Cannans were dead that Blue Aloes could be sold for a large sum enabling us to return to Z . We would have taken the little girls with us.

“With my dying breath, I take full blame for all on my shoulders. No one is guilty but I.

“[Signed.] RICHARD SAXBY.”

“Poor fellow!” said the listening woman gently. “Poor fellow to have died with such terrible delusions torturing him!” She passed her hands over her eyes, wiping away her tears and with them every last trace of violence and anger. Subtly her face had changed back to the babylike, laughing, sleepy face they all knew so well the face that had held the dead man in thrall and made Bernard van Cannan forget the mother of his children.

“You will please give me that paper, Mr. Saltire,” she pleaded, “and you will please all of you forget the ravings of poor Dick Saxby. It is true that I knew him in the past, and that he followed me here, but the rest, as you must realize, are simply hallucinations of a poisoned brain.”

Andrew McNeil’s dour face had grown bewildered, but softened. Christine if she had not seen a little too much, if she had not known that lovely golden hair hanging in rich plaits about the woman’s shoulders covered the crisped head of a white negress, if she had not overheard impassioned words at midnight, if she had not loved Roddy so well might have been beguiled. But there was one person upon whom the artist’s wiles were wasted.

“I’m afraid it can’t be done, Mrs. Saxby,” said Saltire gravely. “The testimony of a dying man is sacred and Saxby’s mind was perfectly clear.”

“How could it have been? And do not call me ‘Mrs. Saxby,’ please.” She still spoke patiently, but a smouldering fire began to kindle in her eyes.

“You see,” he continued, exhibiting the packet of letters to which he now added the testimony, “I have here the certificate of your marriage to Saxby six years ago in the West Indies and also proof of the possession by you of a large amount of antimony. You may, of course, be able to explain away these things, as well as Saxby’s testimony, but you will understand that I cannot oblige you by handing them over.” A silence fell, in which only her rapid breathing could be heard. “There is one thing, however, you can do, that will perhaps help a little. Tell us where Roddy is if you know.”

The smouldering fires leaped to flame. She glared at him like a tigress.

“Oh, you, and your Roddys!” she cried savagely. “If I knew where he was, I would kill him! I would kill any one I could who stood in my way do you understand? That is how we are made in my land. Oh, that I ever left it, to come to this vile and barren desert!”

She gave one swift, terrible look at the dead man and swept from the house. That was the last time any one of them ever saw her.

When, a little later, Saltire, McNeil, and Christine came out of the dead man’s house and left him to his long silence, the black wings of night were lifted, the storm was past, and a rose-red dawn veiled in silver bedecked the sky. The hills were tender with pearl and azure. The earth smelled sweet and freshly washed. A flock of wild duck rose from the dam and went streaking across the horizon like in a Japanese etching. All the land was full of dew and dreams. It was almost impossible to despair in such an hour. Christine felt the wings of hope beating in her breast, and an unaccountable trust in the goodness of God filled her.

“Joy cometh in the morning,” she said, half to herself, half to the men who walked, sombre and silent, beside her, and the shadow of a smile hovered on her lips. They looked at her wonderingly. The night of terror had taken toll of her, and she was pale as the last star before dawn. Yet her white beauty framed in hanging hair shone like some rare thing that had passed through fire and come out unscathed and purified in the passing. “Il faut souffrir pour être belle” is a frivolous French saying, but, like many frivolous phrases, has its basic roots in the truth. It was true enough of Christine Chaîne in that hour. She had suffered and was beautiful. Dour old Andrew McNeil gave a sigh for the years of life that lay behind him, and a glance at the face of the other man; then, like a wise being, he said,

“Well, I’ll be going on down.”

So Christine and Dick Saltire walked alone.

“Let us hurry,” she said suddenly, quickening her pace. “I feel as though something may have happened.”

But all was silent at the farm. It was still too early even for the servants to be astir, and the big front door stood open as she and the other woman had left it an hour or so agone.

She left Saltire in the stoep and went within. The little girls slept peacefully, ignorant of the absence of their brother.

All seemed unchanged, yet Christine’s searching eye found one thing that was unusual a twist of paper stuck through the slats of the shutter. In a moment, she had it untwisted and was reading the words printed in ungainly letters upon it.

“Do not worry. Roddy quite safe. Will come back when his father returns.”

“I knew,” she whispered to herself, “I knew that joy cometh.” She looked in the mirror and was ashamed of the disarray she saw there, yet thought that, even so, a man who loved her might perhaps find her fair. As a last thought, she took Roddy’s two yellow roses and stuck them in the bosom of her gown. Then she went back to the stoep and, showing Saltire the paper, told him the story of the whispering thing that had sighed so often for Roddy’s safety outside her window.

“I feel sure, somehow, that, after all, he is safe, and with that friend who knew more than we did, who knew all the tragedy of the mother and the other two little sons, and feared for Roddy from the first.”

Saltire made no answer, for he was looking at the roses and then into her eyes; and when she tried to return the look, the weight of the little stones was on her lids again, and her lips a-quiver. But he held her against his heart close, close crushing the yellow roses, kissing the little stones from her lids and the quiver from her lips. Then he left her swiftly; for it is a sweet and terrible thing to kiss the lips and crush the roses and go, and a better thing to hasten the hour when one may kiss the lips and crush the roses and stay.

So she did not see him again for three days. But from the faithful McNeil she heard that the flooded river had been forded and a telegram sent recalling Bernard van Cannan, that a search had been instituted for the mistress of Blue Aloes, who was missing, that a party of farmers had been collected to “sit” upon the body of Richard Saxby, and had pronounced him most regrettably dead from the bite of a black mamba. Whereafter he was buried in a quiet spot near the hedge of blue aloes, from which he had collected so many rare specimens of poisonous reptiles and insects.

On the third day, one of the kloofs on the farm gave up a wig of golden hair, all muddy and weed-entangled. The natives hung it on a bush to dry, and there was much gossip among them that day, hastily hushed when any European person came by.

At nine o’clock the same evening, Roddy was found peacefully sleeping in the bed with Meekie carefully adjusting the mosquito-curtains over him as though he had never been missing. In the morning, he told Christine he had had an awfully funny dream.

“I dreamed I was with my old ‘nannie’ again you know Sophy. She was all covered up, and I could only see her eyes looking through holes in a white thing. She was living all by herself in a hut. I didn’t stay with her, but with another old woman, but she used to come and see me every day, and sometimes Meekie used to come, too, and Klaas and Jacoop and all the farm-boys to talk to me. The old woman kept giving me some tea made of herbs that made me feel very quiet and happy, and Sophy told me I should come back soon to the farm when daddy was home again. She was always covered up with white clothes, and I could only see her eyes, and I love Sophy very much, Miss Chaîne, but I can’t say she smelled very nice in my dream. It was a very funny dream, though, and lasted an awful long time.”

It had indeed lasted three days, but Roddy would never know that, during those three days, he had been incarcerated in the Kafir kraal on the hillside, outside the aloe hedge. It was only when the golden wig was washed up from the river that the mysterious kraal people, silent and impassive, seemingly ignorant of all but their duties, yet knowing every single thing that passed at the farm, even down to the use of the false hair (though Bernard van Cannan himself had never suspected this), gave him back to those who awaited.

If Dick Saltire had not so thoroughly understood the native mind and inspired the confidence of his boys, the truth might never have been known. As it was, it lay in his power to relate to those whom it concerned that a certain woman named Sophy Bronjon, formerly nurse to the van Cannans, and sent away by them to be conveyed to Robin Island because she had developed leprosy, had never left the precincts of the farm, but stayed there, brooding over the little ones she loved. The kraal people to whom (though a mission-educated woman) she belonged had hidden and sheltered her. Through Meekie’s instrumentality, she undoubtedly knew all that passed on the farm, and as surely as she had noted the fate of the van Cannan heirs, she recognized Christine as an ally and friend, and had warned her as best she could of the dangers that beset Roddy. It was she who had sighed and whispered through the closed shutters, frightening Christine at first, but in the end engendering trust, and it was she who, on hearing of the narrow escape of Roddy from the tarantula, had made up her mind to spirit him, with the aid of Meekie and the storm, from the farm and its dangers until the return of his father.

With the disappearance of Mrs. van Cannan and the death of Saxby, the menace was removed and the child brought back as silently as he had been taken away. Even he knew no more than that he had dreamed a strange dream.

Saltire went to meet Bernard van Cannan at Cradock, taking with him the papers left in his care by Richard Saxby. There was not so much to explain to the owner of Blue Aloes, as might have been expected. The doctor who treated him for neuritis and found him dying of slow poisoning by antimony had lifted the scales from his eyes, and a little clear thought, away from the spell of the woman known as Isabel van Cannan, had done much to show him that the sequence of tragedies in his home was due to something more than the callousness of fate. Thus he was, in some measure, prepared for Saxby’s confession, though not for the fact that the woman he had adored to fanaticism had never been his wife, or more to him than might have been an adder gathered from his own aloe hedge, with all the traits and attributes peculiar to adders who are gathered to the bosom and warmed there.

He came back to a home from which the spell of the golden, laughing woman was lifted. The evil menace that had hung for so long over the old farm was lifted for ever. Part was buried by the blue-aloe hedge; part of it, plucked from the dregs of an ebbing river, lay in a far grave with no mark on it but the plain words, “Isabel Saxby.” While the sad watcher in the kraal had no more need to walk and whisper warnings by night.

It was the children who laughed now at Blue Aloes, merry and free as elves in a wood. There was a glow came out of Christine Chaîne that communicated itself to all. She and Saltire were to be married as soon as a Quentin aunt, who was on her way, had settled down comfortably with the children. Afterward, Roddy would live with them at the Cape until his schooldays were over. In the meantime, they walked in a garden of Eden, for the rains had made the desert bloom, and life offered them its fairest blossoms with both hands.