nterest on his melancholy
features, resumed, in his rough, jocular way--"and said--the 'spirit
voice,' you know--that your soul was struggling to get loose, and is
going away from you to-night. And the long and short of it is that this
young fellow here wants to know if you'll let him save it--keep you from
dying, you know. Says he'll do the job for nothing, because you're a
good man, and a friend to all the people of Mururea."

"Mr. Brown" put his thin hand across his mouth, and his eyes smiled at
Lupton. Then some sudden, violent emotion stirred him, and he spoke
with such quick and bitter energy that Lupton half rose from his seat in
vague alarm.

"Tell him," he said--"that is, if the language expresses it--that my
soul has been in hell these ten years, and its place filled with ruined
hopes and black despair," and then he sank back on his couch of mats,
and turned his face to the wall.

The Seer of Unseen Things, at a sign from the now angry Lupton, rose to
his feet. As he passed the trader he whispered--

"Be not angry with me, Farani; art not thou and all thy house dear to
me, the Snarer of Souls and Keeper Away of Evil Things? And I can truly
make a snare to save the soul of the Silent Man, if he so wishes it."
The low, impassioned tones of the wizard's voice showed him to be under
strong emotion, and Lupton, with smoothened brow, placed his hand on the
native's chest in token of amity.

"Farani," said the wizard, "see'st thou these?" and he pointed to where,
in the open doorway, two large white butterflies hovered and fluttered.
They were a species but rarely seen in Mururea, and the natives had many
curious superstitions regarding them.

"Aye," said the trader, "what of them?"

"Lo, they are the spirits that await the soul of him who sitteth in thy
house. One is the soul of a woman, the other of a man; and their bodies
are long ago dust in a far-off land. See, Farani, they hover and wait,
wait, wait. To-morrow they will be gone, but then another may be with
them."

Stopping at the doorway the tall native turned, and again his strange,
full black eyes fixed upon the figure of Lupton's guest. Then slowly he
untied from a circlet of polished pieces of pearl-shell strung together
round his sinewy neck a little round leaf-wrapped bundle. And with quiet
assured step he came and stood before the strange white man and extended
his hand.

"Take it, O man, with the swift hand and the strong heart, for it is
t