of her white teeth in the darkness betrayed her.

"It's no laughing matter," he said. "Listen, darling, you don't really
want to get rid of me?"

"It would be better if you were to go, dearest," she answered, slipping
her hand into his. "Believe me, it would."

The softness of her voice, the thrill of her touch simply intoxicated
him with ecstasy, and there was an unsteadiness in his tone as he
answered--

"Surely in the wilds of Mashunaland we can chuck conventionalities to
the winds. If it was any one else who asked you for a shakedown you
wouldn't turn him out. Why me, then?"

"Because it is you, don't you see?" was the reply, breathed low and
soft, as the pressure of her fingers tightened.

They could hear each other's heart-beats in the still dead silence--
could see the light of each other's eyes in the gleam of the myriad
stars. The trailing streak of a meteor shot across the dark, velvety
vault, showing in its momentary gleam to each the face of the other.
Suddenly Hermia started violently.

"Hark! what is that?" she cried, springing to her feet.

For a loud harsh shout had cleft the stillness of the night. It was
followed by another and another. Coming as it did upon the dead
silence, the interruption was, to say the least, startling: all the more
so to these two, their nerves in a state of high-strung tension.

"Nothing very alarming," returned Spence. "You must have heard it
before. Only a troop of baboons kicking up a row in the kopjes."

"Of course; but somehow it sounded so loud and so near."

It was destined to do so still more. For even as she spoke there arose
a most indescribable tumult--shrieks and yells and chattering, and over
all that harsh, resounding bark: and it came from the granite kopje
nearest the house--where Spence had found the troop of guinea-fowl that
afternoon.

"What a row they're making!" he went on. "Hallo! By Jove! D'you hear
that?"

For over and above the simian clamour, another sound was discernible--a
sound of unmistakable import. No one need go to Mashunaland to hear it,
nor anything like as far. A stroll across Regent's Park towards feeding
time at the Zoo will do just as well. It was the deep, throaty,
ravening roar of hungry lions.

"Phew! that accounts for all the shindy!" said Justin. "Now do you want
me to go, Hermia? There isn't much show for one against a lion in the
dark, and, judging from the racket, there must be several. Well, sh