handle, and having lit more candles, Alan drew it out and unlocked it,
to be greeted by a smell of musty documents done up in great bundles.
One by one he placed them on the floor. It was a dreary occupation alone
there in that great, silent room at the dead of night, one indeed with
which he was soon satisfied, for somehow it reminded him of rifling
coffins in a vault. Before him so carefully put away lay the records of
a good if not a distinguished life, and until this moment he had never
found the energy even to look through them.

At length he came to the end of the bundles and saw that beneath lay
a number of manuscript books packed closely with their backs upwards,
marked--"Journal"--and with the year and sometimes the place of the
author's residence. As he glanced at them in dismay, for they were many,
his eye caught the title of one inscribed--as were several others--"West
Africa," and written in brackets beneath--"This vol. contains all
that is left of the notes of my escape with Jeekie from the Asiki
Devil-worshippers."

Alan drew it out, and having refilled and closed the box, bore it off to
his room, where he proceeded to read it in bed. As a matter of fact he
found that there was not very much to read, for the reason that most
of the closely-written volume had been so damaged by water, that the
pencilled writing had run and become utterly illegible. The centre
pages, however, not having been soaked, could still be deciphered, at
any rate in part, also there was a large manuscript map, executed in
ink, apparently at a later date, on the back of which was written: "I
purpose, D.V., to re-write at some convenient time all the history of my
visit to the unknown Asiki people, as my original notes were practically
destroyed when the canoe overset in the rapids and most of our few
possessions were lost, except this book and the gold fetish mask which