o-morrow I send you back to your people."

"Lord, I stay with Tibbetti who loves women and is happy to talk of
them. Also some day I shall be his wife, for this is foretold." She shot
a tender glance at poor Bones.

"That cannot be," said Hamilton calmly, "for Tibbetti has three wives,
and they are old and fierce----"

"Oh, lord!" wailed Bones.

"And they would beat you and make you carry wood and water," Hamilton
said; he saw the look of apprehension steal into the girl's face. "And
more than this, D'riti, the Lord Tibbetti is mad when the moon is in
full, he foams at the mouth and bites, uttering awful noises."

"Oh, dirty trick!" almost sobbed Bones.

"Go, therefore, D'riti," said Hamilton, "and I will give you a piece of
fine cloth, and beads of many colours."

It is a matter of history that D'riti went.

"I don't know what you think of me, sir," said Bones, humbly, "of course
I couldn't get rid of her----"

"You didn't try," said Hamilton, searching his pockets for his pipe.
"You could have made her drop you like a shot."

"How, sir?"

"Stuck your finger in her eye," said Hamilton, and Bones swallowed hard.

CHAPTER VII

THE STRANGER WHO WALKED BY NIGHT

Since the day when Lieutenant Francis Augustus Tibbetts rescued from the
sacrificial trees the small brown baby whom he afterwards christened
Henry Hamilton Bones, the interests of that young officer were to a very
large extent extremely concentrated upon that absorbing problem which a
famous journal once popularized, "What shall we do with our boys?"

As to the exact nature of the communications which Bones made to England
upon the subject, what hairbreadth escapes and desperate adventure he
detailed with that facile pen of his, who shall say?

It is unfortunate that Hamilton's sister--that innocent purveyor of home
news--had no glimpse of the correspondence, and that other recipients of
his confidence are not in touch with the writer of these chronicles.
Whatever he wrote, with what fervour he described his wanderings in the
forest no one knows, but certainly he wrote to some purpose.

"What the dickens are all these parcels that have come for you for?"
demanded his superior officer, eyeing with disfavour a mountain of
brown paper packages be-sealed, be-stringed, and be-stamped.

Bones, smoking his pipe, turned them over.

"I don't know for certain," he said, carefully; "but I shouldn't be
surprised if they aren't clothes, dear old