And hearing it, a good deal of the mystery of the skeleton was solved. For she had known Sebela—alive. The forest had its secrets. Its shades witnessed scenes intensely human—dark as well as golden.
Chapter Twenty.
Sergeant Dickinson’s Find.
Meanwhile some curious and somewhat startling circumstances were developing. Sergeant Dickinson, N.P., stationed at Makanya, was—as we heard Harry Stride say in substance—an astute officer. So astute was he as to render him unpopular with a section of the natives, and notably with those who were disaffected. Twice, indeed, had his life been attempted by these, but with firm faith in the proverb, “Threatened men live long,” such attempts had not seriously affected him. They were “all in the day’s work,” and only served to create a little excitement in an otherwise rather monotonous round.
Harry Stride’s find of the saddle below the Bobi drift had come to him as a godsend. Could he work up a case out of it? He thought about it a good deal, and round and round; but this was after he had started with one of the four troopers under his command on a patrol immediately, and the two were threading the several hours of difficult and rugged forest path in the direction of the find.
He had no difficulty in locating the exact spot. Stride’s description had been lucid and accurate—the drift itself, of course, was well-known to him.
“The thing to do, Symes,” he said, “is to examine both banks right the way down. If the saddle was here there may be other things further on. We’ll take this side first.”
Carefully Dickinson quartered the river bank, the trooper leading both horses. It was rough going, but both were young and hard. Suddenly the trooper exclaimed—