o this house, or they may be stopped. I will do the same to
you to the address you give. Good-bye, dearest Alan, my true and only
lover. I wonder where and when we shall meet again. God be with us both
and enable us to bear our trial.

"P.P.S. I hear that the Sahara flotation was _really_ a success,
notwithstanding the _Judge_ attacks. Sir Robert and my uncle have made
millions. I wonder how long they will keep them."

A week after he received this letter Alan was on the seas heading for
the shores of Western Africa.

CHAPTER VIII

THE DWARF FOLK

It was dawn at last. All night it had rained as it can rain in West
Africa, falling on the wide river with a hissing splash, sullen and
continuous. Now, towards morning, the rain had ceased and everywhere
rose a soft and pearly mist that clung to the face of the waters and
seemed to entangle itself like strands of wool among the branches of
the bordering trees. On the bank of the river at a spot that had been
cleared of bush, stood a tent, and out of this tent emerged a white man
wearing a sun helmet and grey flannel shirt and trousers. It was Alan
Vernon, who in these surroundings looked larger and more commanding than
he had done at the London office, or even in his own house of Yarleys.
Perhaps the moustache and short brown beard which he had grown, or
his skin, already altered and tanned by the tropics, had changed his
appearance for the better. At any rate it was changed. So were his
manner and bearing, whereof all the diffidence had gone. Now they were
those of a man accustomed to command who found himself in his right
place.

"Jeekie," he called, "wake up those fellows and come and light the
oil-stove. I want my coffee."

Thereon a deep voice was heard speaking in some native tongue and
saying:

"Cease your snoring, you black dogs, and arouse yourselves, for your
lord calls you," an invocation that was followed by the sound of kicks,
thumps, and muttered curses.

A minute or two later Jeekie himself appeared, and he also was much
changed in appearance, for now instead of his smart, European clothes,
he wore a white robe and sandals that gave him an air at once dignified
and patriarchal.

"Good-morning, Major," he said cheerfully. "I hope you sleep well,
Major, in this low-lying and accursed situation, which is more than we
do in boat that half full of water, to say nothing of smell of black man
and prevalent mosquito. But the rain it over and gone, and