tal valley.

Superficially it differed in no way from any round dozen of the wild
bushy kloofs on any other part of the farm. There was the same
vegetation, mimosa and other varieties of acacia, spongy spekboem, and
spidery Kafir bean--the geranium and plumbago throwing out a confusion
of scarlet and light mauve--here a row of euphorbia, there a patch of
yellow-woods, from whose limbs depended a tangle of long, straight
monkey-ropes. Here all was dim and cool and delightful, the sunshine
completely shut off or but faintly networked in patches on the ground
and tree trunks. But it was here that every instinctive faculty of
grasp and perception implanted in the up-country man became keenly alert
and awake. For, by a course of intuitive calculations, he had located
this spot as the one where the fell and fatal terror had overtaken its
victims.

The nerve and courage of Harley Greenoak were entirely beyond question,
but that did not dull his imagination or render him dead to the fact
that in this cool and peaceful forest retreat he walked in very great
peril indeed, that if he would escape this hidden death which had
overtaken others, awful in its mysterious suddenness, he would have to
muster every faculty of quick observation, lightning-like decision of
action, and untiring alertness which he possessed.

As he walked, apparently unconcerned, his ears were open to every sound,
and, although he knew that it was from above the peril should come, he
did not look up, at least not directly. Then, suddenly, and without
apparent reason, he leaped nimbly about a yard to his left; for his
trained ear had caught the faintest possible sound overhead, and, as he
did so, there was a soft hiss past his ear. Harley Greenoak had escaped
death that time.

Quick as thought he threw up his gun, but in the moment between that
action and the roar of the piece he glimpsed the most hideous and
revolting object imaginable. The simian face, staring in bestial
ferocity, the horn-like ears, the brown misshapen frame and limbs, were
more suggestive of some forest fiend than of anything human. When the
smoke had cleared away the thing had disappeared.

What did it mean? For the first time Harley Greenoak felt a thrill of
superstitious misgiving as unpleasant as it was strange. He to miss,
and to miss at that short distance, with a charge of buckshot too--for
he had fired the smooth-bore barrel--why, it was incredible! Nothing
human co