n--see, there it is, 'Tagari, Latta.'"

"What place you go you finish along white marster?" Joan asked.

"Bangoora," the man replied; and Joan wrote it down.

"Ogu!" Joan called.

The black stepped down, and another mounted to take his place. But
Tagari, just before he reached the bottom step, caught sight of Sheldon.
It was the first horse the fellow had ever seen, and he let out a
frightened screech and dashed madly up the steps. At the same moment the
great mass of blacks surged away panic-stricken from Sheldon's vicinity.
The grinning house-boys shouted encouragement and explanation, and the
stampede was checked, the new-caught head-hunters huddling closely
together and staring dubiously at the fearful monster.

"Hello!" Joan called out. "What do you mean by frightening all my boys?
Come on up."

"What do you think of them?" she asked, when they had shaken hands. "And
what do you think of her?"--with a wave of the hand toward the _Martha_.
"I thought you'd deserted the plantation, and that I might as well go
ahead and get the men into barracks. Aren't they beauties? Do you see
that one with the split nose? He's the only man who doesn't hail from
the Poonga-Poonga coast; and they said the Poonga-Poonga natives wouldn't
recruit. Just look at them and congratulate me. There are no kiddies
and half-grown youths among them. They're men, every last one of them. I
have such a long story I don't know where to begin, and I won't begin
anyway till we're through with this and until you have told me that you
are not angry with me."

"Ogu--what place b'long you?" she went on with her catechism.

But Ogu was a bushman, lacking knowledge of the almost universal beche-de-
mer English, and half a dozen of his fellows wrangled to explain.

"There are only two or three more," Joan said to Sheldon, "and then we're
done. But you haven't told me that you are not angry."

Sheldon looked into her clear eyes as she favoured him with a direct,
untroubled gaze that threatened, he knew from experience, to turn
teasingly defiant on an instant's notice. And as he looked at her it
came to him that he had never half-anticipated the gladness her return
would bring to him.

"I was angry," he said deliberately. "I am still angry, very angry--" he
noted the glint of defiance in her eyes and thrilled--"but I forgave, and
I now forgive all over again. Though I still insist--"

"That I should have a guardian," she interrupted.