fe enabled him to support to perfection the somewhat
difficult, because exquisitely simple, character, which his supreme
audacity had undertaken. The extreme darkness of the night was,
however, favourable to his enterprise, as there were but few people
about, and the detective found himself in the very centre of Equatoria
without being accosted by anyone. The town, to his surprise, proved to
be very compactly built, and consisted of perhaps five hundred houses,
mostly composed of wood and roofed with iron, the only exceptions to
this rule being what were evidently the public offices of the place,
which were built of a mixture of sand and gravel, a composition going
amongst the natives by the name of "swish," and which presented, so far
as he could see by the light of the oil-lamps hung round the buildings,
an extremely handsome appearance.

Just as Kenyon was about to move forward after carefully taking stock of
the place, a young girl started out from a side street, and laid a
gently detaining hand upon his arm.

"Father," she said, "I have looked and longed for thee every night, and
feared that thou wert ill. Come and see my boy, I beseech thee, good
father, for he dies--he dies before my face, and here is none to help
but thee."

With a sign of brief assent, the detective turned and halted slowly
along, despite the manifest impatience of the young and anxious mother.

Turning into a small house some little way along the street, she led him
through a comfortably but roughly furnished parlour, into a bed-room at
the rear, where lay a baby boy not more than eighteen months old, and
whom his medical experience soon assured him was suffering from a slight
attack of that most malignant disease, diphtheria.

Knowing, through Grenville, that the old hermit had acted in the
capacity of physician and surgeon to both slavers and natives, Kenyon,
before he left the cavern, had provided himself with several articles,
including a small case of phials, likely to be of use in supporting his
assumption of the character of a medical practitioner; and, briefly
directing the young mother to keep the child quiet and supply him with
cooling drinks, he carefully painted the tonsils with perchloride of
iron, and left her instructions to continue this treatment.

As Kenyon, however, was moving away, the grateful mother again stopped
him. "Father," she said, "I call thee such by permission; canst thou do
naught for yon poor woman wh