ndevu had come upon them by mere chance or
that he was alone. She remembered their meeting with him near
Sapazani's kraal, and also that Denham had run against him twice at
Ezulwini. Now if they, or either of them, were being watched, to what
end? And here she owned herself puzzled.

Presently Mandevu reappeared with two boys. Meanwhile Denham had been
doctoring his prize with some subtle chemical substance by way of
preservative. He did not notice that none of them looked in the
direction of the skeleton, plainly visible from there. He was too
intent upon his new find. But Verna did. However, as she had said, she
knew the people, so forbore to remark upon it. Yet a muttered
exclamation on the part of one of the two did not escape her.

"_Whau_! The snake of Sebela! It, too, is dead."

And hearing it, a good deal of the mystery of the skeleton was solved.
For she had known Sebela--alive. The forest had its secrets. Its
shades witnessed scenes intensely human--dark as well as golden.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

SERGEANT DICKINSON'S FIND.

Meanwhile some curious and somewhat startling circumstances were
developing. Sergeant Dickinson, N.P., stationed at Makanya, was--as we
heard Harry Stride say in substance--an astute officer. So astute was
he as to render him unpopular with a section of the natives, and notably
with those who were disaffected. Twice, indeed, had his life been
attempted by these, but with firm faith in the proverb, "Threatened men
live long," such attempts had not seriously affected him. They were
"all in the day's work," and only served to create a little excitement
in an otherwise rather monotonous round.

Harry Stride's find of the saddle below the Bobi drift had come to him
as a godsend. Could he work up a case out of it? He thought about it a
good deal, and round and round; but this was after he had started with
one of the four troopers under his command on a patrol immediately, and
the two were threading the several hours of difficult and rugged forest
path in the direction of the find.

He had no difficulty in locating the exact spot. Stride's description
had been lucid and accurate--the drift itself, of course, was well-known
to him.

"The thing to do, Symes," he said, "is to examine both banks right the
way down. If the saddle was here there may be other things further on.
We'll take this side first."

Carefully Dickinson quartered the river bank, the trooper leading b