foot after the other. Yet, what is he but a hard-hearted, self-seeking slave-dealer, coining money out of suffering flesh and blood?

The gloom deepens. Lidwell, sitting there in his hut, can make out a knot of his rascally confederates talking earnestly together by one of the fires. A strange instinct warns him. Unless he leaves this place to-night he will never leave it alive. Quickly he stows away a flask and some biscuits in his pockets. Already his gains are secured about his person, carefully sewn up in his clothes—a large sum, partly in gold, partly in the paper currency of several nationalities. For some time past he has been prepared for a sudden flight, and he has a canoe snugly concealed in a convenient place on the river bank. To-night he will cut the whole concern for ever, and woe betide the man who shall try to stop him.

He looks out of the doorway, carelessly. All seems quiet enough, and it is now quite dark. His sheath-knife is ready to his hand in case of need; so, too, is the brace of revolvers without which he never moves.

“Now for a start,” he muses; “but—hang it—I must go round and say good-bye to Anita. Can’t leave without seeing the little one again.”

Down a narrow path through the shadowy forest a few hundred yards, and he reaches a small thatched dwelling, more substantially built than the rest. Within all is silence. But for a lamp burning in one of the windows the place would seem deserted. He imitates the cry of a jackal twice. A moment, and then a dark figure glides swiftly round the corner of the house and stands beside him.

“At last! I wondered when you were coming to see me. You have been back hours, and never came near me.” The voice is low, soft, and musical; but there is resentment in it.

“Didn’t I? Well, I came as soon as I could. Don’t scold me to-night, little one.”

And he looks down at her with a queer expression. Every moment lost is a nail in his coffin; yet he is wasting those precious moments gazing into a pair of dark eyes.

She nestles close to his side. “I hate it so when you are away. And I am always afraid you may get killed, or catch that terrible fever over there, and never come back to me at all.”

“Listen now, Anita,” he says, gravely. “I must go away again—now—to-night, or my life is not worth a pebble, and I don’t feel inclined to throw it away for the benefit of those 

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