nk that the thing can be accomplished, for I was a guest of the
raider's before I knew the nature of the man, and those at the camp are
not aware that I turned against him when I discovered his villainy.

"Come! We will make all possible haste to reach the camp before those
who accompanied Achmet Zek upon his last raid have found his body and
carried the news of his death to the cut-throats who remained behind.
It is our only hope, Lady Greystoke, and you must place your entire
faith in me if I am to succeed. Wait for me here a moment while I take
from the Arab's body the wallet that he stole from me," and Werper
stepped quickly to the dead man's side, and, kneeling, sought with
quick fingers the pouch of jewels. To his consternation, there was no
sign of them in the garments of Achmet Zek. Rising, he walked back
along the trail, searching for some trace of the missing pouch or its
contents; but he found nothing, even though he searched carefully the
vicinity of his dead horse, and for a few paces into the jungle on
either side. Puzzled, disappointed and angry, he at last returned to
the girl. "The wallet is gone," he explained, crisply, "and I dare not
delay longer in search of it. We must reach the camp before the
returning raiders."

Unsuspicious of the man's true character, Jane Clayton saw nothing
peculiar in his plans, or in his specious explanation of his former
friendship for the raider, and so she grasped with alacrity the seeming
hope for safety which he proffered her, and turning about she set out
with Albert Werper toward the hostile camp in which she so lately had
been a prisoner.

It was late in the afternoon of the second day before they reached
their destination, and as they paused upon the edge of the clearing
before the gates of the walled village, Werper cautioned the girl to
accede to whatever he might suggest by his conversation with the
raiders.

"I shall tell them," he said, "that I apprehended you after you escaped
from the camp, that I took you to Achmet Zek, and that as he was
engaged in a stubborn battle with the Waziri, he directed me to return
to camp with you, to obtain here a sufficient guard, and to ride north
with you as rapidly as possible and dispose of you at the most
advantageous terms to a certain slave broker whose name he gave me."

Again the girl was deceived by the apparent frankness of the Belgian.
She realized that desperate situations required desperate handling, a