I did not sleep well; I slept very badly.  To begin with, Maurice Anscombe, generally the most cheerful and nonchalant of mortals with a jest for every woe, was in a most depressed condition, and informed me of it several times, while I was getting ready to turn in.  He said he thought the place hateful and felt as if people he could not see were looking at him (I had the same sensation but did not mention the fact to him).  When I told him he was talking stuff, he only replied that he could not help it, and pointed out that it was not his general habit to be downcast in any danger, which was quite true.  Now, he added, he was enjoying much the same sensations as he did when first he saw the Yellow-wood Swamp and got the idea into his head that he would kill some one there, which happened in due course.

“Do you mean that you think you are going to kill somebody else?” I asked anxiously.

“No,” he answered, “I think I am going to be killed, or something like it, probably by that accursed old villain of a witch-doctor, who I don’t believe is altogether human.”

“Others have thought that before now, Anscombe, and to be plain, I don’t know that he is.  He lives too much with the dead to be like other people.”

“And with Satan, to whom I expect he makes sacrifices.  The truth is I’m afraid of his playing some of his tricks with Heda.  It is for her I fear, not for myself, Allan.  Oh! why on earth did you come here?”

“Because you wished it and it seemed the safest thing to do.  Look here, my boy, as usual the trouble comes through a woman.  When a man’s single—­you know the rest.  You used to be able to laugh at anything, but now that you are practically double you can’t laugh any more.  Well, that’s the common lot of man and you’ve got to put up with it.  Adam was pretty jolly in his garden until Eve was started, but you know what happened afterwards.  The rest of his life was a compound of temptation, anxiety, family troubles, remorse, hard labour with primitive instruments, and a flaming sword behind him.  If you had left your Eve alone you would have escaped all this.  But you see you didn’t, and as a matter of fact, nobody ever does who is worth his salt, for Nature has arranged it so.”

“You appear to talk with experience, Allan,” he retorted blandly.  “By the way, that girl Nombe, when she isn’t star-gazing or muttering incantations, is always trying to explain to Heda some tale about you and a lady called Mameena.  I gather that you were introduced to her in this neighbourhood where, Nombe says, you were in the habit of kissing her in public, which sounds an odd kind of a thing to do; all of which happened before she, Nombe, was born.  She adds, according to Kaatje’s interpretation, that you met her again this afternoon, which, as I understand the young woman has been long dead, seems so incomprehensible that I wish you would explain.”

“With reference to Heda,” I said, ignoring the rest as unworthy of notice, “I think you may make your mind easy.  Zikali knows that she is in my charge and I don’t believe that he wants to quarrel with me.  Still, as you are uncomfortable here, the best thing to do will be to get away as early as possible to-morrow morning, where to we can decide afterwards.  And now I am going to sleep, so please stop arguing.”