ed back in the
direction of the throne room. I had been hiding in a doorway after the
guard had turned me back, having taken refuge there while his back was
turned, and, as the officer approached me, I withdrew into the room
beyond, which was in darkness. There I remained for a long time,
watching the sentry before the door of the room in which Victory was a
prisoner, and awaiting some favorable circumstance which would give me
entry to her.

I have not attempted to fully describe my sensations at the moment I
recognized Victory, because, I can assure you, they were entirely
indescribable. I should never have imagined that the sight of any
human being could affect me as had this unexpected discovery of Victory
in the same room in which I was, while I had thought of her for weeks
either as dead, or at best hundreds of miles to the west, and as
irretrievably lost to me as though she were, in truth, dead.

I was filled with a strange, mad impulse to be near her. It was not
enough merely to assist her, or protect her--I desired to touch her--to
take her in my arms. I was astounded at myself. Another thing puzzled
me--it was my incomprehensible feeling of elation since I had again
seen her. With a fate worse than death staring her in the face, and
with the knowledge that I should probably die defending her within the
hour, I was still happier than I had been for weeks--and all because I
had seen again for a few brief minutes the figure of a little heathen
maiden. I couldn't account for it, and it angered me; I had never
before felt any such sensations in the presence of a woman, and I had
made love to some very beautiful ones in my time.

It seemed ages that I stood in the shadow of that doorway, in the
ill-lit corridor of the palace of Menelek XIV. A sickly gas jet cast a
sad pallor upon the black face of the sentry. The fellow seemed rooted
to the spot. Evidently he would never leave, or turn his back again.

I had been in hiding but a short time when I heard the sound of distant
cannon. The truce had ended, and the battle had been resumed. Very
shortly thereafter the earth shook to the explosion of a shell within
the city, and from time to time thereafter other shells burst at no
great distance from the palace. The yellow men were bombarding New
Gondar again.

Presently officers and slaves commenced to traverse the corridor on
matters pertaining to their duties, and then came the emperor, scowling
and