white men felt
immeasurably more drawn to these.

"So that's the chap who sent the letter!" remarked Elvesdon. "He's an
infernal rascal all the same. `Help'! Fat lot of help he'll give us--
even if he could."

"Don't you be too cock-sure about that, Elvesdon. I've known queerer
things in my time than even that. It's astonishing how things can work
round--not when--but _where_ you least expect them. It's something to
know we have a friend among the enemy let me tell you. He might be of
use to us yet."

"Well if he is I'll forgive him--or try to. These swine, though, are
responsible for nearly all the mischief. I'd hang the whole `Ethiopian
Church' if I had despotic power, or, at any rate, give its infernal
mischievous emissaries a hundred apiece with the cat and then disband
the whole rotten organisation. But, Thornhill. Do you think this
_schelm_ really would help us if he could?"

"I sort of do. You see when these chaps get partly civilised, although
it deteriorates them as savages it has often the effect of making them
all unconsciously cling to the white man. Now this one is a Fingo, and
his traditions would make all that way. He no more wants to set up a
universal black Power than you or I do; he knows where he, and all his
like, would come in under it. At present he's paid to preach it but I'm
perfectly certain he no more believes it possible than you or I do
either. So let's make use of him if we can; though I doubt if we can,
for they don't seem to trust him overmuch here from what we've just
seen."

"`Can the Ethopian change his skin?'" quoted Elvesdon, sourly.

The day wore on. Both men--Elvesdon, especially, being the younger--
were wistfully trying to glean from the talk they could overhear, what
was going on outside. They tried questioning those around them but
without result. They asked too, about their fellow prisoner, the young
Police trooper, who had been so arbitrarily separated from them; but
beyond the fact that no harm had been done him, they could get no
further. The while both were sizing up every chance for effecting an
escape, but even had such offered it was out of the question they should
have availed themselves of it at the price of abandoning a
fellow-countryman--a fellow-countryman, too, who was doubly helpless, in
that, being a new comer, he was entirely unversed in the language and
ways of those who held him in durance.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

A DEVIL-DEED