CHAPTER THREE.

CUPID'S ARROW IN AN AFRICAN FOREST.

For several days Captain Montgomery's condition was extremely critical, but the careful nursing and devoted attention of the Izinyanga, or native doctor, aided by his simple, yet efficient remedies, soon restored the patient.

One morning he awoke quite free from pain, the fever broken, and with that sense of restful languor that attends convalescence, pervading his being. As he lay in this condition, with his eyes half closed, he saw standing in the opening of the hut a girl of perhaps sixteen years.

A leopard skin was thrown over her right shoulder, which, falling to the knee, draped her form. A necklace of strands of beads encircled her throat. Her arms and ankles were ornamented with bands of gold. For a moment she gazed on him, and then uttered to her two female attendants a few words consisting of vowel sounds and sharp notes made by clicking the tongue against the roof of the mouth.

On hearing her voice Montgomery widely opened his eyes, when, followed by her women, the girl fled with a springing step like a frightened deer.

Often, after that fleeting vision, during his waking moments would Montgomery feel that those dusky eyes were gazing at him, and when he lifted his own it would be to see her swiftly and silently moving away.

In a short time he was able to walk about in the cool shade of the great forests of paardepis and saffron-wood, where he would at times see the face of the Zulu princess peering out, like some dusky dryad, from behind the hanging boughs, only to disappear, when detected, into the depths of the wood.

After a few weeks had passed she grew less shy, and when he spoke to her she would stand a few moments listening to the unknown tongue, whose accents seemed to charm and draw her to the spot; but if he made a motion as if to approach, she would vanish swiftly as a thought flies.

One morning when his health had become fully restored, the chief who had rescued the captain in his hour of extremity, appeared, and by signs made him understand that he was to follow him. They proceeded to the outer edge of the gloomy forest, where speaking a few words in Zuluese, the native disappeared in the direction they had come. Understanding that the parting speech of his guide instructed him to continue in the course he had pointed out, Montgomery pressed forward on his journey. He had walked alone, perhaps an hour, when he was startled by the sight of the Princess, emerging from the shade of a tall boxwood tree, leading two horses. She motioned him to take one, and as he leaped on its back, she quickly mounted the other, and in a few moments they had passed away from the scene forever.

These two beings were the ancestors of Dainty Laure.

Soon after his arrival in Cape Town, Donald Laure had met Dainty. She was little more than a child in years, but matured in form, and being possessed of dangerous beauty was attractive to this impulsive Scotchman from the cold North, where women of her radiant type are never seen.

From the first moment he saw her, he had only one thought, one idea, which grew to a determined purpose, and that was, to possess her. She was a wild bird and knew little of the world's ways, and as he was the first man who had laid siege to her heart he amused her, and she grew more and more interested in him.

When a few weeks later he asked her to become his wife, she consented with a half wonder, half delight; and when the marriage ceremony had taken place, and they were on their way to Kimberley, she could scarcely realise the fact that she was a wife; it was all so strange and sudden.

Four years after we find her dreaming on her divan, with nothing to do in life but to dream.