I once saw several similar heads, though, in the British Museum. They had been taken from the debris of a prehistoric cave dwelling."
      From the window of the breakfast room just behind them a wide eyed girl was staring in breathless wonderment at the rude weapon, which to her presented concrete evidence of the reality of the thing she had thought but another hallucination -- the leaping figure of the naked man that had sprung past her into the face of the charging lion an instant before she had swooned. One of the men turned and saw her standing there.
      "Ah, Miss Custer," he exclaimed; "no worse off this morning I see for your little adventure of last night. Here's a memento that your rescuer left behind him in the heart of 'old Raffles'. Would you like it?"
      The girl stepped forward hiding her true emotions behind the mask of a gay smile. She took the spear of Nu, the son of Nu, in her hands, and her heart leaped in half savage pride as she felt the weight of the great missile.
      "What a man he must be who wields such a mighty weapon!" she exclaimed. Barney Custer was watching his sister closely, for with the discovery of the spear in the lion's body had come the sudden recollection of Victoria's description of her dream-man -- "He carried a great spear, stone-tipped -- I should know it the moment that I saw it -- "
      The young man stepped to his sister's side, putting an arm about her shoulders. She looked up into his face, and then in a low voice that was not audible to the others she whispered: "It is his, Barney. I knew that I should know it."
      For some time the young man had been harassed by fears as to his sister's sanity. Now he was forced to entertain fears of an even more sinister nature, or else admit that he too had gone mad. If he were sane, then it was God's truth that somewhere in this savage land a savage white man roamed in search of Victoria. Now that he had found her would he not claim her? He shuddered at the thought. He must do something to avert a tragedy, and he must act at once. He drew Lord Greystoke to one side.
      "Victoria and I must leave at once," he said. "The nervous strain of the earthquake and this last adventure have told upon her to such an extent that I fear we may have a very sick girl upon our hands if I do not get her back to civilization and home as quickly as possible."
      Greystoke did not attempt to offer any remonstrances. He, too, felt that it would be best for Miss Custer to go home. He had noted her growing nervousness with increasing apprehension. It was decided that they should leave on the morrow. There were fifty black carriers anxious to return to the coast, and Butzow and Curtiss readily signified their willingness to accompany the Nebraskan and his sister.
      As he was explaining his decision to Victoria a black servant came excitedly to Lord Greystoke. He told of the finding of a dead ewe in the compound. The animal's neck had been broken, the man said, and several strips of meat cut from its haunches with a knife. Beside it in the soft mud of the enclosure the prints of an unshod human foot were plainly in evidence.
      Greystoke smiled. "The zebra killer again," he said. "Well, he is welcome to all he can eat."
      Before he had finished speaking, Brown, who had been nosing around in the garden, called to him from a little clump of bushes beside the spot where the lion's body had lain.
      "Look here, Clayton," he called. "Here's something we overlooked in the darkness last night."
      The men upon the veranda followed Greystoke to the garden. Behind them came Victoria Custer, drawn as though by a magnet to the spot where they had gathered.
      In the bushes was a little pool of dried blood, and where the earth near the roots was free from sod there were several impressions of a bare foot.
      "He must have been wounded," exclaimed Brown, "by Curtiss's shot. I doubt if the lion touched him -- the beast must have died instantly the spear entered its heart. But where can he have disappeared to?"
      Victoria Custer was examining the grass a little distance beyond the bushes. She saw what the others failed to see -- a drop of blood now and then leading away in the direction of the mountains to the south. At the sight of it a great compassion welled in her heart for the lonely, wounded man who had saved her life and then staggered, bleeding, toward the savage wilderness from which he had come.