engeance. Am I so
terrible?"

His wide open eyes were fixed upon the uncle of B'chumbiri, and the old
man returned the gaze defiantly.

"Am I so terrible?" Bones went on, gently. "Do men fear me when I walk?
Or run to their huts at the sound of my puc-a-puc? Do women wring their
hands when I pass?"

Again there was a little titter, but M'gobo, the uncle of B'chumbiri,
grimacing now in his rage, was not amongst the laughers.

"Yet the brave one who slew----"

M'gobo sprang to his feet.

"Lord," he said harshly, "why do you put all men to shame for your
sport?"

"This is no sport, M'gobo," answered Bones quickly. "This is a palaver,
a killing palaver. Was it a woman who slew B'chumbiri? so that she is
not present at this palaver. Lo, then I go to hold council with women!"

M'gobo's face was all distorted like a man stricken with paralysis.

"Tibbetti!" he said, "I slew B'chumbiri--according to custom--and I will
answer to Sandi, who is a man, and understands such palavers."

"Think well," said Bones, deathly white, "think well, O man, before you
say this."

"I killed him, O fool," said M'gobo loudly, "though his father turned
woman at the last--with these hands I cut him, using two knives----"

"Damn you!" said Bones, and shot him dead.

* * * * *

Hamilton, so far convalescent that he could smoke a cigarette, heard the
account without interruption.

"So there you are, sir," said Bones at the side. "An' I felt like a
jolly old murderer, but, dear old officer, what was I to do?"

Still Hamilton said nothing, and Bones shifted uncomfortably.

"For goodness gracious sake don't sit there like a bally old owl," he
said, fretfully. "Was I wrong?"

Hamilton smiled.

"You're a jolly old commissioner, sir," he mimicked, "and for two pins
I'd mention you in dispatches."

Bones examined the piping of his khaki jacket and extracted the pins.

CHAPTER XII

THE MAN WHO DID NOT SLEEP

No doubt whatever but that Lieutenant Tibbetts of the Houssas had a
pretty taste for romance. It led him to exercise certain latent powers
of imagination and to garnish his voluminous correspondence with details
of happenings which had no very solid foundation in fact.

On one occasion he had called down the heavy sarcasm of his superior
officer by a reference to lions--a reference which Hamilton's sister had
seen and, in the innocence of her heart, had referred to in a letter to
her br