n England, is to my mind out of all reason."

That is what I said to him, as I did not wish to introduce a new horror
into an affair that was already horrible enough. But, recollecting that
these priests, Harut and Marut, believed the mother of this murdered
infant to be none other than the oracle of their worship (though how
this chanced passed my comprehension), and therefore the great enemy
of the evil elephant-god, I confess that at heart I felt afraid. If any
powers of magic, black or white or both, were mixed up with the matter
as my experiences in England seemed to suggest, who could say what might
be their exact limits? As, however, it has been demonstrated again and
again by the learned that no such thing as African magic exists, this
line of thought appeared to be too foolish to follow. So passing it by I
asked Lord Ragnall to continue.

"For over a month," he went on, "I stopped in Egypt waiting till
emissaries who had been sent to the chiefs of various tribes in the
Sudan and elsewhere, returned with the news that nothing whatsoever had
been seen of a white woman travelling in the company of natives, nor
had they heard of any such woman being sold as a slave. Also through the
Khedive, on whom I was able to bring influence to bear by help of
the British Government, I caused many harems in Egypt to be visited,
entirely without result. After this, leaving the inquiry in the hands of
the British Consul and a firm of French lawyers, although in truth all
hope had gone, I returned to England whither I had already sent Lady
Longden, broken-hearted, for it occurred to me as possible that my wife
might have drifted or been taken thither. But here, too, there was no
trace of her or of anybody who could possibly answer to her description.
So at last I came to the conclusion that her bones must lie somewhere at
the bottom of the Nile, and gave way to despair."

"Always a foolish thing to do," I remarked.

"You will say so indeed when you hear the end, Quatermain. My
bereavement and the sleeplessness which it caused prayed upon me so
much, for now that the child was dead my wife was everything to me,
that, I will tell you the truth, my brain became affected and like Job I
cursed God in my heart and determined to die. Indeed I should have died
by my own hand, had it not been for Savage. I had procured the laudanum
and loaded the pistol with which I proposed to shoot myself immediately
after it was swallowed so that the