man's alive and I can prove it a dozen times over. You were a fool and a bungler.”      

       Trent thought of the night when he had crept back into the bush and had found no trace of Monty, and gradually there rose up before him a lurid possibility Da Souza's story was true. The very thought of it worked like madness in his brains. When he spoke he strove hard to steady his voice, and even to himself it sounded like the voice of one speaking a long way off.     

       “Supposing that this were true,” he said, “what is he doing all this time? Why does he not come and claim his share?”      

       Da Souza hesitated. He would have liked to have invented another reason, but it was not safe. The truth was best.     

       “He is half-witted and has lost his memory. He is working now at one of the Basle mission-places near Attra.”      

       “And why have you not told me this before?”      

       Da Souza shrugged his shoulders. “It was not necessary,” he said. “Our interests were the same, it was better for you not to know.”      

       “He remembers nothing, then?”      

       Da Souza hesitated. “Oom Sam,” he said, “my half-brother, keeps an eye on him. Sometimes he gets restless, he talks, but what matter? He has no money. Soon he must die. He is getting an old man!”      

       “I shall send for him,” Trent said slowly. “He shall have his share!”      

       It was the one fear which had kept Da Souza silent. The muscles of his face twitched, and his finger-nails were buried in the flesh of his fat, white hands. Side by side he had worked with Trent for years without being able to form any certain estimate of the man or his character. Many a time he had asked himself what Trent would do if he knew—only the fear of his complete ignorance of the man had kept him silent all these years. Now the crisis had come! He had spoken! It might mean ruin.     

       “Send for him?” Da Souza said. “Why? His memory has gone—save for occasional fits of passion in which he raves at you. What would people say?—that you tried to kill him with brandy, that the clause in the concession was a direct incentive for you to get rid of him, and you left him in 

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