“Let him talk,” said the calm, quiet voice; “I like these people, and like to hear them talk—better than I would most white men.”
Then, with his dark, dilated eyes moving from the pale face of the white man to that of Lupton, the native wizard and Seer of Unseen Things spoke. Then again his eyes sought the ground.
“What does he say?” queried Lupton's guest.
“D———rot,” replied the trader, angrily.
“Tell me exactly, if you please. I feel interested.”
“Well, he says that he was asleep in his house when his 'spirit voice' awoke him and said”—here Lupton paused and looked at his guest, and then, seeing the faint smile of amused interest on his melancholy features, resumed, in his rough, jocular way—“and said—the 'spirit voice,' you know—that your soul was struggling to get loose, and is going away from you to-night. And the long and short of it is that this young fellow here wants to know if you'll let him save it—keep you from dying, you know. Says he'll do the job for nothing, because you're a good man, and a friend to all the people of Mururea.”
“Mr. Brown” put his thin hand across his mouth, and his eyes smiled at Lupton. Then some sudden, violent emotion stirred him, and he spoke with such quick and bitter energy that Lupton half rose from his seat in vague alarm.
“Tell him,” he said—“that is, if the language expresses it—that my soul has been in hell these ten years, and its place filled with ruined hopes and black despair,” and then he sank back on his couch of mats, and turned his face to the wall.
The Seer of Unseen Things, at a sign from the now angry Lupton, rose to his feet. As he passed the trader he whispered—