liberately until the contents of the bowl were aglow. Even then,
however, he did not speak. That which had been on his mind trembled now
at the tip of his tongue. The one for whose ear the information was
intended was waiting, listening; yet he delayed. With the suddenness of
a revelation, in those last minutes, there had come to the old
storekeeper an appreciation of the other he had never felt before. The
message of the artificial pond and the harmless watcher at its edge had
begun the alteration. A glimpse of the barren interior of the tent, with
a pathetic little group of valueless trinkets arranged with infinite
care on a tiny folding table, added its testimony. The sight of the man
himself, standing erect in the doorway, gazing immovably out over the
sunlit earth, looking and waiting, but asking no question, completed the
impression. He had known this repressed human long and, as he fancied,
well; but now of a sudden he realised that in fact he had not known him
at all. Fearless unquestionably he had found him to be. That in a
measure he was civilised, he had taken for granted; but more than this,
that he was an individual among individuals, that beneath that
emotionless exterior there lay a subtle, indescribable something
inadequately termed soul, with the supercilious superiority of the white
he had ignored. Before he had been merely a puppet: the play actor of an
inferior, conquered race. Injustice, horrible, unforgivable injustice,
with this being one of the injured, had been done in the white man's
sight; and instinctively he had come to him as the agent of Providence
calculated to mete out retribution. That an irresponsible, relentless
savage lurked beneath the thin veneer of alien civilisation he had taken
for granted, and builded thereon. Now with disconcerting finality he
realised the thing he was doing. It was not a mere agent of divine
punishment he was calling to action; but a fellow human being, an equal,
with whose affairs he was arbitrarily meddling. Whatever the motive that
had inspired his coming, however justifiable in itself, his
interference, as a mere spectator, was under the circumstances
unjustified and an impertinence. This he realised with startling
suddenness; and swift in its wake came a new point of view, a
readjustment absolute in his attitude. Under its influence the
dissimulation of a moment ago vanished. From out of concealment he came
fair into the open. What he knew he would reveal-