pay.
I was obliged to shoot one or two, and the rest deserted. They took my
compass, damn them, and I'm nearly a hundred miles out of my bearings.
You couldn't give me a drink, could you?"

"With pleasure, if the doctor approves," was the courteous answer.
"Here, Jan!"

The boy sprang up, listened to a word or two of brief command in his
own language, and disappeared through the hanging grass which led into
another hut. The two men exchanged glances of rather more than ordinary
interest. Then Dominey laughed.

"I know what you're thinking," he said. "It gave me quite a start when
you came in. We're devilishly alike, aren't we?"

"There is a very strong likeness between us," the other admitted.

Dominey leaned his head upon his hand and studied his host. The likeness
was clear enough, although the advantage was all in favour of the man
who stood by the side of the camp bedstead with folded arms. Everard
Dominey, for the first twenty-six years of his life, had lived as an
ordinary young Englishman of his position,--Eton, Oxford, a few years
in the Army, a few years about town, during which he had succeeded in
making a still more hopeless muddle of his already encumbered estates: a
few months of tragedy, and then a blank. Afterwards ten years--at first
in the cities, then in the dark places of Africa--years of which no man
knew anything. The Everard Dominey of ten years ago had been, without a
doubt, good-looking. The finely shaped features remained, but the
eyes had lost their lustre, his figure its elasticity, his mouth its
firmness. He had the look of a man run prematurely to seed, wasted by
fevers and dissipation. Not so his present companion. His features were
as finely shaped, cast in an even stronger though similar mould. His
eyes were bright and full of fire, his mouth and chin firm, bespeaking a
man of deeds, his tall figure lithe and supple. He had the air of being
in perfect health, in perfect mental and physical condition, a man who
lived with dignity and some measure of content, notwithstanding the
slight gravity of his expression.

"Yes," the Englishman muttered, "there's no doubt about the likeness,
though I suppose I should look more like you than I do if I'd taken care
of myself. But I haven't. That's the devil of it. I've gone the other
way; tried to chuck my life away and pretty nearly succeeded, too."

The dried grasses were thrust on one side, and the doctor entered,--a
little round man, also