“My Son Leo,—­When you open this, if you ever live to do so, you will have attained to manhood, and I shall have been long enough dead to be absolutely forgotten by nearly all who knew me.  Yet in reading it remember that I have been, and for anything you know may still be, and that in it, through this link of pen and paper, I stretch out my hand to you across the gulf of death, and my voice speaks to you from the silence of the grave.  Though I am dead, and no memory of me remains in your mind, yet am I with you in this hour that you read.  Since your birth to this day I have scarcely seen your face.  Forgive me this.  Your life supplanted the life of one whom I loved better than women are often loved, and the bitterness of it endureth yet.  Had I lived I should in time have conquered this foolish feeling, but I am not destined to live.  My sufferings, physical and mental, are more than I can bear, and when such small arrangements as I have to make for your future well-being are completed it is my intention to put a period to them.  May God forgive me if I do wrong.  At the best I could not live more than another year.”

“So he killed himself,” I exclaimed.  “I thought so.”

“And now,” Leo went on, without replying, “enough of myself.  What has to be said belongs to you who live, not to me, who am dead, and almost as much forgotten as though I had never been.  Holly, my friend (to whom, if he will accept the trust, it is my intention to confide you), will have told you something of the extraordinary antiquity of your race.  In the contents of this casket you will find sufficient to prove it.  The strange legend that you will find inscribed by your remote ancestress upon the potsherd was communicated to me by my father on his deathbed, and took a strong hold in my imagination.  When I was only nineteen years of age I determined, as, to his misfortune, did one of our ancestors about the time of Elizabeth, to investigate its truth.  Into all that befell me I cannot enter now.  But this I saw with my own eyes.  On the coast of Africa, in a hitherto unexplored region, some distance to the north of where the Zambesi falls into the sea, there is a headland, at the extremity of which a peak towers up, shaped like the head of a negro, similar to that of which the writing speaks.  I landed there, and learnt from a wandering native, who had been cast out by his people because of some crime which he had committed, that far inland are great mountains, shaped like cups, and caves surrounded by measureless swamps.  I learnt also that the people there speak a dialect of Arabic, and are ruled over by a beautiful white woman who is seldom seen by them, but who is reported to have power over all things living and dead.  Two days after I had ascertained this the man died of fever contracted in crossing the swamps, and I was forced by want of provisions and by symptoms of an illness which afterwards prostrated me to take to my dhow again.