Well, I examined his instep and leg very carefully and found that Rodd was right.  Although it still hurt him to walk, the wound was quite healed and all inflammation had gone from the limb.  Now it was only a question of time for the sinews to right themselves.  While I was thus engaged he held forth on the virtues and charms of Heda, I making no comment.

“Lie down and get to sleep, if you can,” I said when I had finished.  “The door is locked and I am going on to the stoep, so you needn’t be afraid of the windows.  Good-night.”

I went out and sat myself down in such a position that by the light of the hanging lamp, which still burned, I could make sure that no one could approach either Heda’s or my room without my seeing him.  For the rest, all my life I have been accustomed to night vigils, and the loaded revolver hung from my wrist by a loop of hide.  Moreover, never had I felt less sleepy.  There I sat hour after hour, thinking.

The substance of my thoughts does not matter, since the events that followed make them superfluous to the story.  I will merely record, therefore, that towards dawn a great horror took hold of me.  I did not know of what I was afraid, but I was much afraid of something.  Nothing was passing in either Heda’s or our room, of that I made sure by personal examination.  Therefore it would seem that my terrors were unnecessary, and yet they grew and grew.  I felt sure that something was happening somewhere, a dread occurrence which it was beyond my power to prevent, though whether it were in this house or at the other end of Africa I did not know.

The mental depression increased and culminated.  Then of a sudden it passed completely away, and as I mopped the sweat from off my brow I noticed that dawn was breaking.  It was a tender and beautiful dawn, and in a dim way I took it as a good omen.  Of course it was nothing but the daily resurrection of the sun, and yet it brought to me comfort and hope.  The night was past with all its fears; the light had come with all its joys.  From that moment I was certain that we should triumph over these difficulties and that the end of them would be peace.

So sure was I that I ventured to take a nap, knowing that the slightest movement or sound would wake me.  I suppose I slept until six o’clock, when I was aroused by a footfall.  I sprang up, and saw before me one of our native servants.  He was trembling and his face was ashen beneath the black.  Moreover he could not speak.  All he did was to put his head on one side, like a dead man, and keep on pointing downwards.  Then with his mouth open and starting eyes he beckoned to me to follow him.

I followed.

CHAPTER VIII

RODD’S LAST CARD