em smote Steve to the heart, and left him incapable
of expression, beyond that which looked out of his eyes. Words would
have been impossible. He realized she was on her deathbed. It required
only the poor creature's obvious intense sufferings to tell him that. It
was a matter of perhaps hours before little Marcel would be robbed of
his second parent.

The brief daylight was pouring in through the double glass window of the
room. It lit an interior which had only filled him with added wonder at
these folks, and the guiding hand which inspired everything he beheld.
The furnishing of the room was simple enough. But it was of the
manufacture of civilization, and he could only guess at the haulage it
had required to bring it to the heart of Unaga. Then there was distinct
taste in the arrangement of the room. It was the taste of a woman of
education and refinement, and one who must have been heart and soul with
her husband, and the enterprise he was embarked upon.

An-ina had left him there to talk with the mother of those things which
it was her care should not reach the ears of little Marcel.

Steve told her at once that he was a police officer, and that he was on
a mission of investigation into the--he said "disappearance"--of Marcel
Brand, who, he explained, was supposed to be a trader, with his partner
Cyrus Allshore, somewhere in the direction north of Seal Bay in the
Unaga country. He told her that he had travelled one thousand miles
overland to carry out the work, and that something little short of a
miracle had brought him direct to her door.

And the woman had listened to him with the eagerness of one who has
suddenly realized a ray of hope in the blackness of her despair.

After his brief introduction she breathed a deep sigh and her eyes
closed under the pain that racked her broken body.

"Then my message got through," she said, almost to herself. "Lupite must
have reached Seal Bay." Then her eyes opened and she spoke with added
effort. "I didn't dare to hope. It was all I could do," she explained.
"Lupite said he'd get through or die. He was a good and faithful neche.
I--I wonder what's happened him since. He's not got back, and--the
others have all deserted me. There's no one here now but An-ina, and my
little boy, and," she added bitterly, "What's left of me. Oh, God, will
it never end! This pain. This dreadful, dreadful pain."

After a moment of troubled regard, while he watched the cold dew of
agony b