has for so many years been a mother to him, will now also prove his
grave and the grave of those who accompanied him, for the quest upon
which he and they have started is a wild one indeed.

But while he was in England for those three years or so between his
return from the successful discovery of the wise king's buried
treasures, and the death of his only son, I saw a great deal of old
Allan Quatermain. I had known him years before in Africa, and after he
came home, whenever I had nothing better to do, I used to run up to
Yorkshire and stay with him, and in this way I at one time and another
heard many of the incidents of his past life, and most curious some of
them were. No man can pass all those years following the rough
existence of an elephant-hunter without meeting with many strange
adventures, and in one way and another old Quatermain has certainly
seen his share. Well, the story that I am going to tell you in the
following pages is one of the later of these adventures, though I
forget the exact year in which it happened. at any rate I know that it
was the only trip upon which he took his son Harry (who is since dead)
with him, and that Harry was then about fourteen. And now for the
story, which I will repeat, as nearly as I can, in the words in which
Hunter Quatermain told it to me one night in the old oak-panelled
vestibule of his house in Yorkshire. We were talking about gold-
mining--

"Gold-mining!" he broke in; "ah! yes, I once went gold-mining at
Pilgrims' Rest in the Transvaal, and it was after that that we had the
business about Jim-Jim and the lions. Do you know Pilgrim's Rest?
Well, it is, or was, one of the queerest little places you ever saw.
The town itself was pitched in a stony valley, with mountains all
about it, and in the middle of such scenery as one does not often get