half-tranquil, half-anxious; by him on a slab stood something that looked like a drum, and a spray of azalea flowers.  While I watched, a man of a rather superior rank, with a dark flowered jacket and a curious hat, looked out of a door which opened on the verandah and beckoned him in; a sound of low subdued wailing came out from the house, and I knew that my time was hard at hand.  It was strange and terrible to me at the moment to realise that my life was to be bound up, I knew not for how long, with this remote place; but I was conscious too of a deep excitement, as of a man about to start upon a race on which much depends.  There came a groan from the interior of the house, and through the half-open door I could see two or three dim figures standing round a bed in a dark and ill-furnished room.  One of the figures bent down, and I could see the face of a woman, very pale, the eyes closed, and the lips open, her arms drawn up over her head as in an agony of pain.  Then a sudden dimness came over me, and a deadly faintness.  I stumbled through the verandah to the open door.  The darkness closed in upon me, and I knew no more.

THE END