es of bird or
beast would ring forth, or a falling star dart, in trailing spark,
through the zenith. Suddenly another sound fell upon her ear. Somebody
was approaching the house.

All the blood ran tingling through her frame. She listened--listened
hard. Footsteps! Alaric had returned. He should find her there,
waiting. But the glow of intense thankfulness sank in her heart. But
for the one obsessing idea she would have recognised that those
soft-padded footfalls were not those of any white man.

She advanced a few steps out into the gloom and called softly. A figure
came into sight indistinctly. Even then her heart throbbed to bursting.
This nocturnal visitor must be the bearer of news. But he had halted.
She must go towards him.

"And the news?" she said, speaking quickly.

"If the _Nkosazana_ would hear of him who was missing," was the answer,
"she must go to the chief's kraal alone. This movement must be known to
nobody, not even to U' Ben. Otherwise she would never see or hear of
the missing one again."

All further attempts at questioning the nocturnal visitant met with no
reply. He had delivered the `word' of the chief, and had nothing to add
to it. Only--the _Nkosazana_ would do well to lose no time. If she
could start at daylight it would be highly advisable. But no one must
know. It was in the conditions.

To say that Verna was suddenly lifted from darkness to daylight would be
to say too little. The condition certainly struck her as strange, but
then--the stake at issue! Alaric was not dead, but had perhaps been
obliged to go into hiding, was the solution that occurred to her. That
was it. Sapazani was their friend, and had warned him, and aided in his
concealment. He would get him away out of the country later on, and
she--why, she would go to him, go with him, to the uttermost ends of the
earth, as she had more than once declared when they had been discussing
just such a contingency.

How she got through the night Verna hardly knew. Before dawn she was
astir. She woke her father, and told him she was going to start off on
another search on her own account, and Ben Halse, himself thoroughly
tired out after days spent in the saddle on this bootless quest, had
answered that it was quite useless, but that she had better be doing
something than nothing, and hail turned over again to sleep the sleep of
thorough exhaustion.

As the day dawned, and she was well on her way, Verna b