"No. No word yet, Joanna."




CHAPTER IX


Now, God give good going to master o' mine,
God speed him, and lead him, and nerve him;
God give him a lead of a length in the line,
And,--God let him boast that I serve him!

THE dawn was barely breaking yet when things stirred in the little
mission house. The flea-bitten gray pony was saddled by a sleepy
saice, and brought round from his open-sided thatch stable in the rear.
The violet and mauve, that precede the aching yellow glare of day were
fading; a coppersmith began his everlasting bong-bong-bong, apparently
reverberating from every direction; the last, almost indetectable,
warm whiff of night wind moved and died away, and the monkeys in the
near-by baobab chattered it a requiem. Almost on the stroke of sunrise
Rosemary McClean stepped out--settled her sun-helmet, with a moue
above the chin-strap that was wasted on flat-bosomed, black
grandmotherdom and sulky groom--and mounted.

She needed no help. The pony stood as though he knew that the hot wind
would soon dry the life out of him; and, though dark rings beneath
dark eyes betrayed the work of heat and sleepless worry on a girl who
should have graced the cool, sweet, rain-swept hills of Scotland, she
had spirit left yet and an unspent store of youth. The saice seemed