he sufferer over the brink and into
safety, for he was a powerful man.

"So that's what it was all about?" he went on, as he cut loose the dead
eagle. "The _dasje-vanger_ nearly revenged itself. How do you feel,
Musgrave, old chap?"

"Like an idiot," said Roden faintly, as he took a liberal pull at the
flask the other had been swift to tender him, and began to feel the
better therefor. "I never could stand being hurt. Though hard enough
in other ways, anything in the way of pain turns me sick. But,
Suffield, if it had not been for Mona I should have been a dead man."

"Oh, `Mona,' is it?" thought Suffield, with an internal grin. Then
aloud, rather anxiously, "Anything else besides the wrist?"

"I've banged up a knee a good bit; but I expect it's only bruised. Now
we'd better start. I seem to be getting all right."

He was ghastly pale as he tottered to his feet, evidently still in great
pain.

"No, never mind," he went on; "I don't want any help, I can walk all
right."

But as they began the descent of the gully, Suffield, carrying both
rifles and the dead eagle, leading the way, he felt faint and dizzy. In
an instant Mona's hand had closed upon his. Hitherto she had stood
silently aloof in the revulsion of feeling. He was safe now. The words
which had been wrung from her by the extremity of his peril must be
regarded as unsaid. So she resolved--but was it a revolution that came
within her power to keep? The volcanic fires of her strong, passionate,
sensuous temperament had lain dormant beneath an egotistic and
inconsiderate vanity, had lain dormant, unknown even to herself. Now
they were to burst forth with a force, and to an extent, unsuspected by
herself, and as startling as they had been hitherto unknown. But on one
point there was no room for any more self-deception. Whatever
half-truth there might have been in Grace Suffield's oft-uttered
prediction, now it had become all truth. Mona realised that her tarn
had indeed come--for good and for ill, for once and for ever.

CHAPTER TEN.

"I HAVE WON YOU!"

The alarm and concern felt by Grace Suffield on the return of the trio,
Roden with his arm in a sling, and looking rather pale and, as he
jocosely put it, interesting, almost beggars description; and the way in
which her concern found expression in rating, womanlike, the person
whose chief _raison d'etre_ was to be rated--viz., her husband, was
beautiful to behold.

Why had he allo