For long he sat thus. Then a faint rustling sound in the dry wood of an immense fallen tree-trunk caught his ear. Ha!—the snake which had been the cause of her death! It, at any rate, should die. Gently he laid her down, then snatching up a stick which had been used to carry one of the loads he advanced towards the sound.
Something was struggling among the dry bark; with the stick he broke this away. There fell out an enormous spider.
He started back in horror and loathing. The hairy monster brought back too gruesome a reminiscence. Then he noticed that it looked as if it had received injury through crushing, two or three of the hideous tentacles being partially or wholly broken off.
Then, as he gazed with loathing upon the sprawling thing, it seemed that the missing link was supplied. Lindela, in her sleep, must have moved over on to this horror, though not heavily enough to crush it. It had buried its venomous nippers in her shoulder, prior to crawling away to die.
A shiver ran through his frame as he beat to death the great noisome insect—and his blood seemed to chill with a superstitious fear. It seemed too strange, too marvellous to be a mere coincidence. Lindela had defied the traditions of her race, and now she had met her death through the agency of the very embodiment of those traditions. She, a daughter of the Kings of the People of the Spider, had met her death through the Spider's bite. It was horrifying in its sinister appropriateness. Was it really a thing of witchcraft? Did the Fiend have actual bodily power here, in "the dark places of the earth"? Had this demoniacal influence followed her to wreak its vengeance here, at such a distance from the home and country to which she would return no more?
When Laurence Stanninghame resumed his journey the next day he left behind him a grave—a deep, secure grave—a solitary grave in the heart of the untrodden forest. His journeyings henceforth must be alone; but ofttimes his thoughts would go back to that nameless grave, and to her who rested forever therein. Only a savage! Only a heathen! Yes—but if brave, devoted, self-sacrificing love is of any account at all in the scheme of Christian virtues, where would this savage, this heathen, come in at the day of awards? Where indeed, among the multitude of gold-worshipping, form-adoring Pharisees? Truth to tell, Laurence believed but dimly in the day of awards. Yet did it exist, he thought he knew the answer to his own question.
FOOTNOTE:
[7] Tutelary spirit.