Stafford gave an order.  “Take the prisoner to the guard.  They will at once march him back to the prisoners’ camp.”

Now Krool understood, and he made as if to spring on Stafford, but a pistol suddenly faced him, and he knew well that what Stafford would not do in cold blood, he would do in the exercise of his duty and as a soldier before these Rooinek privates.  He stood still; he made no resistance.

But suddenly his voice rang out in a guttural cry—­“Baas!”

In an instant a hand was clapped on his mouth, and his own dirty neckcloth provided a gag.

The storm was over.  The native blood in him acknowledged the logic of superior force, and he walked out quietly between the sentries.  Stafford’s move was regular from a military point of view.  He was justified in disposing of a dangerous and recalcitrant prisoner.  He could find a sufficient explanation if he was challenged.

As he turned round from the doorway through which Krool had disappeared, he saw Al’mah, who had entered from another room during the incident.

A light came to Stafford’s face.  They two derelicts of life had much in common—­the communion of sinners who had been so much sinned against.

“I heard his last words about you and—­her,” she said in a low voice.

“Where is Byng?” he asked anxiously.

“In the kloof near by.  He will be back presently.”

“Thank God!”

Al’mah’s face was anxious.  “I don’t know what you are going to say to him, or why you have come,” she said, “but—­”

“I have come to congratulate him on his recovery.”

“I understand.  I want to say some things to you.  You should know them before you see him.  There is the matter of Adrian Fellowes.”

“What about Adrian Fellowes?” Stafford asked evenly, yet he felt his heart give a bound and his brain throb.

“Does it matter to you now?  At the inquest you were—­concerned.”

“I am more concerned now,” he rejoined huskily.

He suddenly held out a hand to her with a smile of rare friendliness.  There came over him again the feeling he had at the hospital when they talked together last, that whatever might come of all the tragedy and sorrow around them they two must face irretrievable loss.

She hesitated a moment, and then as she took his outstretched hand she said, “Yes, I will take it while I can.”

Her eyes went slowly round the room as though looking for something—­some point where they might rest and gather courage maybe, then they steadied to his firmly.

“You knew Adrian Fellowes did not die a natural death—­I saw that at the inquest.”

“Yes, I knew.”

“It was a poisoned needle.”

“I know.  I found the needle.”

“Ah!  I threw it down afterwards.  I forgot about it.”

Slowly the colour left Stafford’s face, as the light of revelation broke in upon his brain.  Why had he never suspected her?  His brain was buzzing with sounds which came from inner voices—­voices of old thoughts and imaginings, like little beings in a dark forest hovering on the march of the discoverer.  She was speaking, but her voice seemed to come through a clouded medium from a great distance to him.