e. I have forsworn it."

"Miss Stella found us by chance and saved our lives."

"By chance, did you say, Allan Quatermain?" he answered. "There is
little chance in all this; such chances spring from another will than
ours. Welcome, Allan, son of my old friend. Here we live as it were in a
hermitage, with Nature as our only friend, but such as we have is yours,
and for as long as you will take it. But you must be starving; talk no
more now. Stella, it is time to eat. To-morrow we will talk."

To tell the truth I can recall very little of the events of that
evening. A kind of dizzy weariness overmastered me. I remember sitting
at a table next to Stella, and eating heartily, and then I remember
nothing more.

I awoke to find myself lying on a comfortable bed in a hut built and
fashioned on the same model as the centre one. While I was wondering
what time it was, a native came bringing some clean clothes on his arm,
and, luxury of luxuries, produced a bath hollowed from wood. I rose,
feeling a very different man, my strength had come back again to me; I
dressed, and following a covered passage found myself in the centre hut.
Here the table was set for breakfast with all manner of good things,
such as I had not seen for many a month, which I contemplated with
healthy satisfaction. Presently I looked up, and there before me was a
more delightful sight, for standing in one of the doorways which led to
the sleeping huts was Stella, leading little Tota by the hand.

She was very simply dressed in a loose blue gown, with a wide collar,
and girdled in at the waist by a little leather belt. In the bosom of
her robe was a bunch of orange blooms, and her rippling hair was tied
in a single knot behind her shapely head. She greeted me with a smile,
asking how I had slept, and then held Tota up for me to kiss. Under her
loving care the child had been quite transformed. She was neatly dressed
in a garment of the same blue stuff that Stella wore, her fair hair was
brushed; indeed, had it not been for the sun blisters on her face and
hands, one would scarcely have believed that this was the same child
whom Indaba-zimbi and I had dragged for hour after hour through the
burning, waterless desert.

"We must breakfast alone, Mr. Allan," she said; "my father is so upset
by your arrival that he will not get up yet. Oh, you cannot tell how
thankful I am that you have come. I have been so anxious about him of
late. He grows weaker and weaker