It grew
fair, and free, and flower-crowned now, in the midst of a tranquil and
sunlit lake; but was it of more value than a drifted weed bearing the
snake-egg hidden at its root?
He had come so far out of the ordinary route across the plains that
it was two hours or more before he saw the dark, gray square of the
caravanserai walls, and to its left that single, leaning pine growing
out of a cleft within the rock that overhung the spot where the keenest
anguish of all his life had known had been encountered and endured--the
spot which yet, for sake of the one laid to rest there beneath the
somber branches, would be forever dearer to him than any other place in
the soil of Africa.
While yet the caravanserai was distant, the piteous cries of a
mother-goat caught his ear. She was bleating beside a water-course, into
which her kid of that spring had fallen, and whose rapid swell, filled
by the recent storm, was too strong for the young creature. Absorbed
as he was in his own thoughts, the cry reached him and drew him to the
spot. It was not in him willingly to let any living thing suffer, and
he was always gentle to all animals. He stooped, and, with some little
difficulty, rescued the little goat for its delighted dam.
As he bent over the water he saw something glitter beneath it. He caught
it in his hand and brought it up. It was the broken half of a chain
of gold, with a jewel in each link. He changed color as he saw it; he
remembered it as one that Venetia Corona had worn on the morning that
he had been admitted to her.
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