letter two days later, with Mr. Warden's apologies. Do you know, I am

convinced the ju-ju had something to do with that. If Schwartz had heard who Mr. Warden was, he might have smelt a rat. And isn't it odd, as Bob pointed out, that Southend should come after West-end, and Dale End, and Ostend and Mile End?

The clerk and I had lunch and tea together and he insisted on paying, though I had ever so much more money in my pocket than he. By the time we reached Waterloo he looked rather tired, because we took no more cabs, and I went to lots of places I wanted to see, so I bought him a box of cigarettes as a present, and he said he hoped I would often come to London on business.

Mr. Warden was waiting for me, and the moment the guard set eyes on me he came running up.

"So you're here, are you, Miss Grosvenor?" he cried. "A fine thing you've bin and gone and done. All Dale End is inquirin' after you, an' your pore father is nearly wild."

Mr. Warden gave him a shilling, saying it was all right. But it wasn't. When we reached our station, and began to walk to the Lodge, as Bob was not there to meet us, every person we met turned and followed us, until there was quite a mob at our heels when we crossed the green. We didn't know then that Mr. Banks, our policeman, had all the negroes, including Prince John, locked up in his tiny police-station. Jack and several men from the Manor were helping him to mount guard over them until more policemen arrived, as the Dale-enders wanted to lynch the black men, which would have been a sad job for everybody.

Our escort blocked the road in front of our gate, but they did not venture to come inside the grounds. Dan was the first to hear the noise, and he barked. Then he caught my step on the gravel, and Mam will never again say that a dog can't speak, for he told her quite plainly that I was coming.

Well, you can guess all the crying and kissing that went on, and how Dad tried to be angry while he took me in his arms, but Mr. Warden spoke about the telegram, and declared he would write to the _Times_ and the Postmaster General. Tib climbed up on my shoulder, and Rikki gave my hand such a queer little lick, while Poll did several lightning twists on the cross-bar, and whistled "Won't you come home, Bill Bailey." I heard dear Bob neighing in the stable, and I went to kiss his velvety nose the first minute I could spare.

Mr. Schwartz was really as delighted as anybody that I had turned up, so he failed to notice how cool Mr. Warden was when Dad introduced them. I had hardly got my hat and jacket off, and was hugging Mam for the tenth time, when Dad called me into the morning-room, where he and Schwartz and Mr. Warden were standing.

Solicitors can be very sharp if they like, and our lawyer surprised me with the way he tackled Schwartz.

"My young friend here," he said, meaning me, "tells me she has promised to restore to you a certain article known as a ju-ju, which you lost on Christmas Eve."

"Yes," said Schwartz, quite calmly. You see, he was a smart man of business, and I suppose he was not afraid of lawyers, or he would not have been able to keep all the money he was worth.

"Well," went on Mr. Warden, "she is prepared to hand it to you in return for your quittance of her father's obligation to find you one thousand shares in the Kwantu Mines, Limited."

That staggered Schwartz somewhat, but he said, in a husky voice: "I fail to understand you."

"That is a pity. I wish to avoid a scandal. If you compel candor I shall be obliged to tell you who is the real owner of that property, and the law of England punishes fraudulent conspiracy very heavily. The links in the chain are quite complete; they even include our possession of a letter to you from a certain firm of brokers stating that they had failed to discover the genuine proprietors of the company."

"Eh?" cried Dad, looking at Schwartz, "what is this? Are you sure of your facts, Warden?"

I once read in a paper that some man who was fighting another man "went down and out." I didn't know what it meant, but it seemed to fit Schwartz's case. He went limp all at once.

"Quite sure, Grosvenor," said the solicitor. "You can thank your daughter for putting me on the track of a very discreditable and unsavory business. I have prepared the necessary documents, Mr. Schwartz. Will you execute them without further explanation?"

"Where is the ju-ju?" demanded Schwartz, pulling himself together, and glaring at me with eyes like flint marbles.

"Here," said I, hauling it out of my pocket.

He took it, held it in his left hand, and signed the papers placed before him by the lawyer. Dad signed, too, and Mr. Warden witnessed the signatures. Not a word was spoken. Schwartz went out of the room, and Dad rang for Evangeline to tell Jim to get the victoria ready at once.

When Schwartz drove through our gate on his way to the station the mob cheered him. I expect he felt like being cheered. Bob told me afterwards that he said a naughty word to our lame porter when he wanted to carry the small bag in which the ju-ju was placed, I suppose, because gentlemen's pockets are not like mine. Still, from what I heard later, he must have taken it out of the bag when he was safe in the train.

It was then nearly eight o'clock, and Dad sent Mole with a note to Jack to say that the negroes ought to be liberated at once. Jack, who has plenty of brains, brought his uncle with him to congratulate Dad and Mam about me, and they stayed to dinner. Jack and Dorothy sat together, so matters looked all right in that quarter. They did not say a great deal. Just as in Schwartz's case, silence was eloquent. Dad brought me once to see a play at Drury Lane, and I imagined all sorts of terrifying things when the villain crept nearer the defenceless heroine. If either of them spoke it was not half so thrilling. I had just the same feeling when Mr. Warden kept waiting for Schwartz to admit he was beaten.

Prince John rang our bell exactly at nine o'clock.

"Wah!" shrieked Evangeline when she opened the door. Then she fled. I had to rush and grab Dan, but I smiled sweetly at my dark visitor, and asked him to come into the morning-room. I knew that Mr. Warden and Uncle Stanhope were telling each other that every motorist should be sent to penal servitude on a second conviction, so I had no trouble in beckoning Dad to join me for a minute.

He was rather surprised at meeting the negro, but he apologized quite nicely for the Christmas Eve incident, and also for any inconvenience which the other might have undergone owing to the action of the police. I was wondering if Dad meant to put his hand in his pocket and produce some money, but he told me afterwards that he felt exactly the same as I did with regard to Prince John. The man looked every inch a king, and I have reckoned up that he was at least seventy-four inches high.

But, before I could stop him, Dad nearly gave me away badly.

"I ought to tell you," he went on, "that, from circumstances which have come to my knowledge, I now sympathize deeply with you in your search for the--er--curious West African--er--god which you wish to recover, and I must say that if my--er--daughter Millicent had consulted me--"

So Dad was just beginning to tell the Kwantu chief in his best J.P. manner that Schwartz was again the proud possessor of the ju-ju, when I broke in:

"One moment, father dear," I cried, "you will understand things ever so much better when you hear what Prince John and I have to say to each other. Have you kept your part of the bargain?" I asked the black man quickly.

He took from his coat pocket a small bundle tied with pink tape.

"Here are fifty Bank of England notes for £100 each," he said.

"Then here is your ju-ju," I answered, diving into my skirt pocket, and handing him the original piece of ivory, beaded kilt and all complete, and you may now know what a trouble it was to get a fair copy of it made for Schwartz during the few hours I had at my disposal in London.

Dad looked awfully severe, after his first gasp of amazement had passed.

"Millicent," he said, "what have you done?"

"I have served Mr. Schwartz as he tried to serve you, father dear," I replied. "As for Prince John, he offered the man who stole the ju-ju ten thousand pounds if it were given back, so I saw no harm in arranging that half the amount should be paid to you. In any case, I always meant the poor black people to have it. It was a very great shame for Mr. Schwartz to take from them a thing which they thought so much of."

For a little while he could say nothing. Like me, he was watching the black prince, who really treated that absurd--I mean that extraordinary scrap of carved ivory, as if it were the most precious article in the world. It might have been all one blazing diamond by the reverent way he handled it. When he was quite sure that it was his own ju-ju--and he did not take for granted, like Schwartz, that it was the genuine thing until he had looked at every mark--he pressed its funny monkey face to his lips, his forehead, and his breast. He paid not the least heed to us or what we were saying. It was not until he had produced a small, finely woven mat from the pocket in which he kept the notes, and wrapped the ju-ju in it before putting it away, that he gave us any attention.

Of course, Dad started a second time to talk as if he were at a Conservative meeting.

"It has given me the greatest pleasure to observe that my--er--daughter Millicent has restored to you the--er--interesting object which you seem to value so highly, but I need hardly say that--er--the payment of any such--er--astounding reward as five thousand pounds is utterly out of the question."

"My people pay the money gladly," said the negro prince, dragging himself up in the grandest way imaginable. "I tell you, too, that your daughter's name will be honored in my country, and when I and my friends return home we shall not fail to send her other tokens of our regard and good will."

"We cannot accept this money," said Dad, firmly.

"It is quite essential that you should," said the other with equal coolness. "If you refuse it now, I shall simply be compelled to send it to you through the post. We lost our ju-ju owing to the remissness of its guardians. We must atone for that, and the payment must be made in treasure--or blood."

You can have no idea how he uttered those last two words. He spoke quietly, and in a low voice, but somehow I could feel in them the edge of one of those sharp, heavy choppers--called "machetes," Polly says--which the maids in the Marquis o' Granby saw in the negroes' bedrooms.

So it ended in our shaking hands with Prince John, and in Dad's bringing the notes into the drawing-room to show them to Mam and the others before he put them away in the silver safe. Everybody made a tremendous fuss over me, and Poll sang "The man who broke the Bank at Monte Carlo," but I was only too delighted that we had had such a jolly Christmas, and were all good friends again, though it looked rather glum at one time. They made me talk nearly all this story before I went to bed, and I heard old Mr. Stanhope growl that if Dorothy was in such a hurry to get married he didn't see why she shouldn't.

Dad did not tell me until long after, but he sent Mr. Schwartz his fifty-five pounds next day, when he also bought me the loveliest bay pony to ride. I christened him "Prince John" when I introduced him to the gang.

And that reminds me. In the morning paper the day afterwards, I found a most exciting paragraph. I whistled Dan, took Tibbie and Rikki under each arm, and asked Mole to carry Poll's cage to the stable.

Bob and Prince John looked round in their stalls to see what was the matter, and Bob said:

"What is it now? Has a North American Indian arrived in Dale End, or what?"

"You listen," I said. "I came across this in the paper just now: 'An extraordinary outrage was committed in the precincts of Waterloo Station on Thursday evening--'"

"Thursday evening!" cried Tib. "Why, that's the evening Schwartz--"

"Don't interrupt," I said, and went on reading: "'Mr. Montague Schwartz, the well-known West African millionaire, was leaving the station in a four-wheeled cab when two gigantic negroes rushed to the near side of the vehicle as it was descending the steep slope into Waterloo Road, and threw it bodily over.'"

"Ha! ha!" roared Dan, but I silenced him with a look.

"'The cabman was, of course, flung headlong from his seat; Mr. Schwartz was imprisoned inside, and ran grave risk of serious injury owing to the plunging of the frightened horse.'"

"Silly creatures, some horses," observed Poll, and Bob didn't like it, but I continued:

"'In the darkness and confusion no one seems to have noticed the negroes, who made off with Mr. Schwartz's luggage, even appropriating a leather dressing-case which was on the front seat inside, and had fallen on top of the alarmed occupant. Mr. Schwartz, when extricated from his dangerous position, behaved with admirable coolness. He felt in his pockets, and declared that the rascals who had adopted this novel and exceedingly daring method of highway robbery had only secured some clothing and other articles which could be easily replaced. He was naturally somewhat shaken, however. After liberally compensating the cab-driver, Mr. Schwartz sought the escort of two policemen, when he entered another vehicle to proceed to his house in Brook-street. During the course of yesterday the police arrested several negroes, but neither the cabman nor Mr. Schwartz could identify any of them, and they were set at liberty.' I think that's rather fine; don't you? Please don't all speak at once."

But they did, and lost their tempers because nobody could get a hearing; Bob and Prince John stamped and rattled the chains of their head-stalls, Dan chased Tibbie up the loft ladder, and Poll shrieked at Rikki:

"You're a miserable, cat-whiskered _soor-ka butcha_, that's what you are, and I mean it this time, whatever it is!"

And that is all, I think, for this time.

Transcriber's Notes:

Minor changes have been made to regularize hyphenation and correct minor printer errors.

Illustrations have been moved below paragraphs to allow smoother reading in this e-book. Additionally, the titles of the Illustrations from the "List of Illustrations" have been added to the illustration line to make it more apparent what the illustration contained.