All this takes long to tell, though it was passing in a flash of time. Dropping the diamond (which must have rolled into a crevice of the rock, for I never saw it again), I caught up my double-barrelled rifle (one of Wesson & Smith’s), aimed at the lion on the right hand of the donga with my right barrel, and then hastily fired my left at the alligator. When the smoke cleared away, the man had reached the right side of the donga safe and sound. Seeing that the alligator was dying, I loaded again, bowled over the lioness on the left, settled the eagle’s business (he fell dead into the jaws of the dying alligator, which closed on him with a snap). I then climbed the wall of the donga, and there lay, fainting, the Stranger of last night—the man who feared nothing—the blood of the dead lion trickling over him. His celebrated allegorical walking-stick from the African Farm had been broken into two pieces by the bullet after it (the bullet) had passed through the head of the lion. And, as the “Ingoldsby Legends” say, “nobody was one penny the worse,” except the wild beasts. The man, however, had had a parroty time, and it was a good hour before I could bring him round, during which he finished my brandy. He still wore gloves. What he was doing in Omuborumbunga’s country I do not know to this day. I never found the diamond again, though I hunted long. But I must say that two better right and left shots, considering that I had no time to aim, and that they were really snapshots, I never remember to have made in my long experience. This is the short and the long of the matter, which was talked of a good deal in the Colony, and about which, I am told, some inaccurate accounts have got into the newspapers. I hate writing, as you know, and don’t pretend to give a literary colour to this little business of the shots, but merely tell a “plain, unvarnished tale,” as the “Ingoldsby Legends” say. As to the Stranger, what he was doing there, or who he was, or where he is now, I can tell you nothing. He told me he was bound for “the almighty mountains of Dry-facts and Realities,” which he kindly pointed out to me among the carvings of his walking-stick. He then sighed wearily, very wearily, and scooted. I think he came to no good; but he never came in my way again. And now you know the yarn of the two stuffed lions and the alligator with the eagle in his jaws. Ever yours, ALLAN QUATERMAIN. XXIII. _From the Baron Bradwardine to Edward Waverley_, _Esq._, _of Waverley Honour_. The Baron explains the mysterious circumstances of his affair with his third cousin, Sir Hew Halbert.—“Waverley,” chap. xiv. Tully Veolan, May 17, 1747.