ide stroke,
upstream to where he had entered. But before he was half-way something
startling happened. The crash of a rifle--evidently from the high bank
above him, together with a peculiar thud, followed immediately by the
lashing and churning of the water just behind him. He looked back.
Some large creature was struggling on the surface in its furious death
throes. He shuddered. It was better to fall into the hands of the
savages and take his chance than to consign himself to such a certain
and horrible death as this. So in despair he emerged from the water, to
find himself confronted by two men--a white man and a Zulu.

An indescribable revulsion of joy and security ran through him, nor was
it dashed when he recognised the very mysterious recluse who had shown
him hospitality on the night following the tragedy in that other river.
The other was Mandevu.

"This time you yourself were about to become food for crocodiles," said
the former in a grim, expressionless way, as he emerged dripping from
the stream.

"Wasn't I? Well, you saved my life once, and I throw myself upon your
help to save it again."

"Why should I save it again?"

"Why should you have saved it once, if not again?"

"Not once, twice already, if you only knew it."

Denham stared at him for a moment.

"Ah!" he said, as if a new light had dawned upon him. Then, in his
frank, open, taking way, "Save it a third time, then, before you do so a
fourth, for at present I'm simply starving."

"That's soon remedied." He said a word to Mandevu, and in a minute or
two the latter returned, leading a strong, serviceable-looking horse,
and Denham's eyes grew positively wolfish as they rested upon some bread
and biltong which was unpacked from a saddle bag. "Now sit there in the
sun and you'll be dry in half-an-hour."

The normal hard and cruel expression had given way to a sort of
humanised softness in the brown, sun-tanned face of the stranger as he
watched Denham sitting there in the newly risen sun, voraciously
devouring that which was set before him. At last he said--

"You are a man of your word, Denham."

"Oh, you know my name," said the other cheerfully. Some instinct
restrained him from suggesting that the advantage was all on one side.

"You have kept the condition which I placed upon you. Not even to Ben
Halse's daughter did you break it."

"Now how do you know that?" And the question and the straight, frank
glance accompanying