thoughts.

"You know something about this treasure business," went on her father.
"Well, this is the tale of it. Years ago, after you and your mother
had gone to England, I went on a big game shooting expedition into the
interior. My companion was an old fellow called Tom Jackson, a rolling
stone, and one of the best elephant hunters in Africa. We did pretty
well, but the end of it was that we separated north of the Transvaal, I
bringing down the ivory that we had shot, and traded, and Tom stopping
to put in another season, the arrangement being that he was to join me
afterwards, and take his share of the money. I came here and bought this
farm from a Boer who was tired of it--cheap enough, too, for I only gave
him £100 for the 6,000 acres. The kitchens behind were his old house,
for I built a new one.

"A year had gone by before I saw any more of Tom Jackson, and then he
turned up more dead than alive. He had been injured by an elephant, and
lay for some months among the Makalanga to the north of Matabeleland,
where he got fever badly at a place called Bambatse, on the Zambesi.
These Makalanga are a strange folk. I believe their name means the
People of the Sun; at any rate, they are the last of some ancient
race. Well, while he was there he cured the old Molimo, or hereditary
high-priest of this tribe, of a bad fever by giving him quinine, and
naturally they grew friendly. The Molimo lived among ruins of which
there are many over all that part of South Africa. No one knows who
built them now; probably it was people who lived thousands of years ago.
However, this Molimo told Tom Jackson a more recent legend connected
with the place.

"He said that six generations before, when his great-great-great