you are missing the main
point offered to us in this affair. Don't you see that by all the laws
of reason and common-sense this caravan should be steering due east for
the seaboard, and here we find slaves obviously imported from a distance
(for I never heard of the grey ash colouring being practised anywhere in
this latitude) _being driven due west_. Now, if you will take your map
for what it is worth, or will question any of these frauds of ours
called `Guides,' you will find that there is no town of any kind in this
vicinity, nothing, indeed, of any note at all within hundreds of miles,
so far as is known, let alone any such thing as a slave market.
Whither, then, can this immense caravan possibly be going?

"Another point that impressed itself upon my notice was the fact that
the slave-drive was composed entirely of full-grown men and women (it
positively did not contain one single youth or child), all of which
looks as if the strongest slaves had been purposely selected for severe
labour of some kind in the interior, far or near, their ultimate
destination and precise occupation being what we have to find out."

"Give me to understand your whole theory, Kenyon, and why you connect
these people with my cousin," said Leigh.

"No!" was the curt reply. "I have no theory; at least, I have as yet
only the very faintest suspicion of one, and the possibilities before us
are far too vast for me at present to hazard even the remotest guess at
either the final result of all this, or whither our investigations will
ultimately lead us; only I believe, nay, I am morally certain, that in
following yonder caravan--if follow it we can--we shall be treading in
the steps taken voluntarily by the remnant of the Mormons who escaped
from Grenville's vengeance in East Utah, and who were, I am equally
sure, succeeded at a later date by your cousin, and probably by many of
his Zulu friends, as part and parcel of just such a slave caravan as we
have seen to-night. And now let us stop talking and get to work at some
food, for the light is beginning to grow, and in half-an-hour's time we
ought to be ready to move. I have slipped two of our fellows into the
long grass with orders to keep their wits about them, but I expect the
cowards will lie so close for the sake of their own precious skins that
they will see nothing, however much there may be for them to observe."

"Ay!" said Leigh, bitterly, "I wish we had a handful of our old Zulu