the dark vault of heaven seemed literally to flash and grow with constellations. Shooting stars darted, rocket-like, across the zenith in numbers unknown to our colder skies; and, as he looked, a bright meteor shot athwart the velvety space, leaving a red sinuous trail. But in the dead still solitude a voice seemed to whisper to his now heated imagination, “The Valley of the Eye! The Valley of the Eye!”
Re-entering, he stole a glance at his patient. The latter was now slumbering peacefully. His hand had relaxed its convulsive grasp of the buckskin pouch, and was resting beside him. Now was the time.
The stranger bent over him; then the deft “snick” of a sharp knife. The pouch was in his hand.
For the moment he felt like a common footpad. His heart beat violently as he regained his seat near the window and the light. For some minutes he sat watching the sick man. But the latter slept on peacefully. Now for the secret!
He ripped open one side of the pouch in such wise that it could easily be sewn up again. Then came a waterproof wrapper which, being unrolled, disclosed a large sheet of parchment-like paper covered with writing.
Down this he hurriedly ran his eye prior to a more careful perusal of its contents. But even this cursory glance was enough to make his face flush and his eye glisten. His hand shook so that it could scarcely hold the paper. Here was the key to wealth illimitable.
And then a strange and startling thing happened. The paper was suddenly snatched from his grasp.
So quickly was this done, so absolutely terrifying was his abrupt and wholly unlooked-for turn in the state of affairs, that his glance was hardly quick enough to mark the paper disappearing through the open window beside which he was seated, or the black, claw-like hand which had seized it. Yet he did only just see both.
He fell back in his chair in a cold sweat. Such a thing to happen in the dead midnight, with not a soul but himself astir. Small wonder that, unnerved by the dastardly act of robbery he had just committed, his thoughts should revert straight to Satan himself. The sick man was still slumbering peacefully.
Recovering his nerve to some extent, he rushed to the door and gained the outer air. All was still as death. As his sight became used to the modified gloom of the starlight he went round to the back of the house—made the complete circuit of it. Not a living thing was astir. He went even further afield, peering here, there, and everywhere. In vain. Then, with nerve and system shaken as they had never been before in his life, he returned indoors.
For long he sat motionless, pondering over this extraordinary occurrence. The first shock of surprise, the first involuntary access of superstition past, two considerations obtruded themselves. The prospect of possible wealth had been snatched from his grasp, literally strangled at its birth, for the paper looked genuine, and was certainly lucid enough, but it required studying, and that carefully. For the rest, how should he eventually account to its owner for its disappearance? And at this thought he began to feel exceedingly uncomfortable.
Not for long, however. The bag could easily be replaced, and the chances were that its owner would take for granted the security of its contents, and not go to the trouble of opening it to ascertain. Or he himself might be far enough away by that time, but that he was loth to abandon a fellow-countryman on a lonely sick-bed in that frightful wilderness; and we must, in justice to the man, record that this consideration was genuine and wholly untinged by his own reluctance to turn his back on the place until every effort to recover the precious document had been tried. Should, however, the worst come to the worst, and Renshaw be moved to assure himself of the safety of his secret, what could be easier than to persuade him that he had himself insisted on destroying it in his delirium?
He rose softly to hunt for a needle and some twine. Having found them he re-stitched the pouch, carefully copying the mode of stitching which had held it together before. Then he went over to the bedside to re-fasten it to the sick man’s neck.
This was no easy task. Poor Renshaw began to grow restless again, as though a glimmer of inspiration across his clouded and enfeebled brain warned him that his cherished secret had been tampered with. At last, however, through the exercise of consummate patience and care, the thing was done.
With a feeling of relief the stranger once more sought the outer air.
“What a fool the man must be!” he said to himself. “From the date of that paper he must have been in possession of the clue for at least two years, and yet he hasn’t turned it to account. The place should be easy to find, too; anyway, I’ll lay a guinea I’d have ferreted it out long before this. Rather! Long before!”
Thus he decided, overlooking the trifling probability that if Renshaw Fanning, with lifelong experience as a hunter, treasure-seeker, and adventurer in general, had failed to hit upon the mysterious locality, it was hardly to be supposed that he, Maurice Sellon, new arrival in South Africa, who, for instance, had been unable to travel across the Karroo plains without losing himself, would fare any better.
But then an under-estimate—either habitual or occasional—of his own merits or abilities did not rank among the failings of the said Maurice Sellon.
Chapter Four.
Sunningdale.
A wild, deep, romantic valley, winding between lofty bush-clad hills, their summits broken into many a rugged cliff, which echoes back the muffled roar of a mountain torrent foaming and hissing through its pent-up rocky channel. A lovely valley as travelled in the morning sunshine, melodious with the piping of birds from the cool shade of tangled brake and sylvan recesses on either side. Overhead a sky of the most brilliant blue; around a fresh, clear atmosphere, revivifying as wine; for it is mountain air and the day is yet young.
At its head the valley opens out into a wide basin, where the stream winds and curves through a green fertile bottom, whose rich soil for many acres is covered with growing crops of wheat and maize. Higher up still, in vivid contrast to the darker-hued foliage around, stands forth a group of tall willows, their trailing feathery boughs—affording a nesting-place to a perfect colony of noisy and chattering finks—shading the glassy surface of a large dam. Between this and an extensive orchard, whose well-cared-for trees are groaning beneath the weight of their ripening loads—peaches and apricots, the delicate nectarine, and the luscious pear—stands the homestead.
No bare, rough-and-ready shanty of sun-baked bricks this, but a good and substantial house, rendered picturesque by its surrounding of orange trees and pomegranates; of great red cactus, glowing prismatically, now crimson, now scarlet; of many-hued geraniums; of the royal passion flower twining up the pillars of the stoep, spreading over the roof of the verandah itself. No dead, drear, arid thirst-land this, but a veritable garden of Eden; the murmur of running water in the air, the fruits of the earth glowing and ripening around, the sunlight glinting in a network through the foliage, and a varying chorus of gladsome bird-voices echoing around from far and near. Such is Sunningdale—Christopher Selwood’s farm in the Umtirara Mountains. Nor was it inappropriately named.
Seated on the stoep aforesaid, under the cool shade of the verandah, are two young women—one busily engaged on a piece of needlework, the other reading, or, to be more accurate, pretending to read. Not less dissimilar in appearance are these two than in their present occupation. One tall, fair, grave; the Other of smaller build, dark, espiègle. One deliberate of speech and movement; the other all mirth and vivacity upon any or no provocation.
“How
