hed at him with a shout that sounded like a triumphant
yell. Seeing this, and that his friend stood unarmed, as well as
unmoved, regarding Baderoon with a fixed gaze, Nigel stepped a pace in
advance to protect him, but Van der Kemp seized his arm and thrust him
violently aside. Next moment the pirate was upon him with uplifted
knife, but the hermit caught his wrist, and with a heave worthy of
Samson hurled him to the ground, where he lay for a moment quite
stunned.

Before he could recover, the natives, who had up to this moment held
back, sprang upon the fallen man with revengeful yells, and a dozen
knives were about to be buried in his breast when the hermit sprang
forward to protect his enemy from their fury. But the man whose wife had
been the last victim came up at the moment, and led an irresistible rush
which bore back the hermit as well as his comrades, who had crowded
round him, and in another minute the maniac was almost hacked to pieces.

"I did not kill him--thank God!" muttered Van der Kemp as he left the
market-place, where the relatives of those who had been murdered were
wailing over their dead.

After this event even the professor was anxious to leave the place, so
that early next morning the party resumed their journey, intending to
make a short stay at the next village. Failing to reach it that night,
however, they were compelled to encamp in the woods. Fortunately they
came upon a hill which, although not very high, was sufficiently so,
with the aid of watch-fires, to protect them from tigers. From the
summit, which rose just above the tree-tops, they had a magnificent view
of the forest. Many of the trees were crowned with flowers among which
the setting sun shone for a brief space with glorious effulgence.

Van der Kemp and Nigel stood together apart from the others,
contemplating the wonderful scene.

"What must be the dwelling-place of the Creator Himself when his
footstool is so grand?" said the hermit in a low voice.

"That is beyond mortal ken," said Nigel.

"True--true. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor mind conceived it.
Yet, methinks, the glory of the terrestrial was meant to raise our souls
to the contemplation of the celestial."

"And yet how signally it has failed in the case of Baderoon," returned
Nigel, with a furtive glance at the hermit, whose countenance had quite
recovered its look of quiet simple dignity. "Would it be presumptuous if
I were to ask why it is that this