t they would be
likely to renew the attack that day; then, as usual when in difficulties,
he retired to his tent for a smoke. As he browsed upon his estimable
friend Burton, his eyes caught a paragraph upon cures for love melancholy
recommended by the amiable doctor.

"Lemnius, imstit. cap 58. admires rue and commends it to have excellent
virtues, to expel vain imaginations, devils and to {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} Other things are much
magnified by writers, as an old cock, a ram's head, a wolf's heart borne
or eaten, which Mercurialis approves: Prosper Altinus, the water of the
Nile; Gomesius, all sea water, and at seasonable times to be sick {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} the
bone in a stag's heart, a monocerot's horn {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}"

He glanced up to see Bakuma squatting disconsolately by the fire listening
to the hundredth repetition of his wonder working according to Mungongo.
The outline of her rounded back and hunched shoulders, the bronze hands
clasped beneath the chin and the misty brown eyes apprehensively regarding
the trail was a sculpture of melancholy. He smiled as he reflected that
the devils and witches of Chrysostom and Paracelsus were as real to them
as the forest spirits and the magic of Bakahenzie to this girl. After all
some of these concoctions sounded as if they should most certainly appeal
to Bakahenzie and his brethren of the craft. He wandered off into a
reverie, wondering why it was that superstition is so hard to eradicate
from the human mind. In Birnier was a strain of humorous melancholy which
appreciated the comedy of human marionettes made to dance to the legion of
devils and bugaboos invented by themselves, and as a stimulant to the
dominant scientific absorption was the knowledge that upon him and his
fellows depended their only hope of release--which was the greater reason
that Bakahenzie should slay him, he added whimsically, did he but know it!

Moved by the ever-present curiosity to know what was going on inside other
people's minds, he called Bakuma and Mungongo to him, observing the
sprightly action of the boy moved by his faith in him for his good in
contrast to the dull movements of the girl in her lack of confidence to
make for her good. And when they were come to him and were seated on the
ground at his feet he said to Bakuma:

"Wherefore hast thou the black bird within thy breast, O Bakuma?"

She gazed up at him with the pathetic pleading of a gazelle.

"Do not bir