lost to my eyes, and the thoughts that it roused were erased. The waves
in man's brain are like those of the sea, rushing on, rushing over the
wrecks of the vessels that rode on their surface, to sink, after storm, in
their deeps. One thought cast forth into the future now mastered all in
the past: "Was Lilian living still?" Absorbed in the gloom of that
thought, hurried on by the goad that my heart, in its tortured impatience,
gave to my footstep, I outstripped the slow stride of the armed men, and,
midway between the place I had left and the home which I sped to, came,
far in advance of my guards, into the thicket in which the bushmen had
started up in my path on the night that Lilian had watched for my coming.
The earth at my feet was rife with creeping plants and many-coloured
flowers, the sky overhead was half-hid by motionless pines. Suddenly,
whether crawling out from the herbage, or dropping down from the trees, by
my side stood the white-robed and skeleton form,--Ayesha's attendant, the
Strangler.

I sprang from him shuddering, then halted and faced him. The hideous
creature crept towards me, cringing and fawning, making signs of humble
good-will and servile obeisance. Again I recoiled,--wrathfully,
loathingly; turned my face homeward, and fled on. I thought I had baffled
his chase, when, just at the mouth of the thicket, he dropped from a bough
in my path close behind me. Before I could turn, some dark muffling
substance fell between my sight and the sun, and I felt a fierce strain at
my throat. But the words of Ayesha had warned me; with one rapid hand I
seized the noose before it could tighten too closely, with the other I
tore the bandage away from my eyes, and, wheeling round on the dastardly
foe, struck him down with one spurn of my foot. His hand, as he fell,
relaxed its hold on the noose; I freed my throat from the knot, and sprang
from the copse into the broad sunlit plain. I saw no more of the armed
men or the Strangler. Panting and breathless, I paused at last before the