“There is no need,” said the familiar voice.  “You have seen enough.  I don’t want to haunt you, even though I am dead.  What put it into your head to come in search of me?  You must have known I should be long past any help from you.”

“I—­wanted to know,” Herne said.  He was feeling curiously helpless, as if, in truth, he were talking with a mummy.  All the questions he desired to put remained unuttered.  He was confronted with the impossible, and he was powerless to deal with it.

“What did you want to know?  How I died?  And when?  It was a thousand years ago, when those damned Wandis swallowed up the Zambas.  They took me first—­by treachery.  Then they wiped out the entire tribe.  The poor devils were lost without me.  I always knew they would be—­but they made a gallant fight for it.”  A thrill of feeling crept into the monotonous voice, a tinge of the old abounding pride, but it was gone on the instant, as if it had not been.  “They slaughtered them all in the end,” came in level, dispassionate tones, “and, last of all, they killed me.  It was a slow process, but very complete.  I needn’t harrow your feelings.  Only be quite sure I am dead!  The thing that used to be my body was turned into an abomination that no sane creature could look upon without a shudder.  And as for my soul, devils took possession, so that even the Wandis were afraid.  They dare not touch me now.  I have trampled them, I have tortured them, I have killed them.  They fly from me like sheep.  Yet, if I lead, they follow.  They think, because I have conquered them, that I am invincible, invulnerable, immortal.  They cringe before me as if I were a god.  They would offer me human sacrifice if I would have it.  I am their talisman, their mascot, their safeguard from defeat, their luck—­a dead man, Herne, a dead man!  Can’t you see the joke?  Why don’t you laugh?”

Again the grim voice thrilled as if some fiendish mirth stirred it to life.

Herne moved and groaned, but spoke no word.

“What?  You don’t see it?  You never had much sense of humour.  And yet it’s a good thing to laugh when you can.  We savages don’t know how to laugh.  We only yell.  That is all you wanted to know, is it?  You will go back now with an easy mind?”

“As if that could be all!” Herne muttered.

“That is all.  And count yourself lucky that I haven’t killed you.  It was touch and go that night you attacked me.  You may die yet.”

“I may.  But it won’t be your fault if I do.  Great Heaven, I might have killed you!”

“So you might.”  Again came that quiver of dreadful laughter.  “That would have been the end of the story for everyone, for you wouldn’t have got away without me.  But that was no part of the program.  Even you couldn’t kill a dead man.  Feel that, if you don’t believe me!” Suddenly one of the shrivelled, mummy hands came down to his own.  “How much life is there in that?”

Herne gripped the hand.  It was cold and clammy; he could feel every separate bone under the skin.  He could almost hear them grind together in his hold.  He repressed another shudder; and even as he did it, he heard again the bitter cry of a woman’s wrung heart, “Bobby is still alive and wanting me.”