! I
thought you did not kill white men!"

"He was not as other white men," came the unmoved reply. "The Wandis
feared his magic. Fire alone can destroy magic. He died slowly but--he
died!"

"You devil!" Herne said again.

His hand was fumbling feverishly at his bandaged shoulder. He scarcely
knew what he was doing. In his impotent fury he sought only for freedom,
not caring how he obtained it. Never in the whole of his life had he
longed so overpoweringly to crush a man's throat between his hands.

But his strength was unequal to the effort. He sank back, gasping,
half-fainting, yet struggling fiercely against his weakness. Suddenly he
was aware of the blood welling up to his injured shoulder. He knew in an
instant that the wound had burst out afresh; knew, too, that the bandage
would be of no avail to check the flow.

"Fetch Hassan!" he jerked out.

But the man before him made no movement to obey.

"Are you going to stand by, you infernal fiend, and watch me die?" Herne
flung at him.

A thick mist was beginning to obscure his vision, but it seemed to him
that those last words of his took effect. Undoubtedly the man moved,
came nearer, stooped over him.

"Go!" Herne gasped. "Go!"

He could feel the blood soaking through the bandage under his hand,
spreading farther every instant.

This was to be the end, then, to lie at the mercy of this madman till
death came to blot out all his efforts, all his hopes. He made a last
feeble effort to stanch that deadly flow, failed, sank down exhausted.

It was then that a voice came to him out of the gathering darkness,
quick and urgent, speaking to him, as it were, across the gulf of years:

"Monty, Monty, lie still, man! I'll see to you!"

That voice recalled Herne, renewed his failing faculties, galvanized him
into life. The man with the mummy's hands was bending over him,
stripping away the useless bandage, fashioning it anew for the moment's
emergency. In a few seconds he was working at it with pitiless strength,
twisting and twisting again till the tension told, and Herne forced back
a groan.

But he clung to consciousness with all his quivering strength,
bewildered, unbelieving still, yet hovering on the edge of conviction.

"Is it really you, Bobby?" he whispered. "I can't believe it! Let me
look at you! Let me see for myself!"

The man beside him made no answer. He had snatched up the first thing he
could find, a fragment of a broken tent-peg, to tighten