"Why, my poor darling! my dear child! my poor little woman!" cried the doctor, raising her head to his breast, and holding her there, kissing her again and again as the tears ran down his ruddy face. "My poor little bairnie! This is dreadful! There, there, there, my dear, you are quite safe now," he continued, patting her and caressing her as a father would a favourite child. "But there; what a milksop I am; crying like a great girl, I declare, when I ought to shout _hooray_! to think I have found you safe, if not quite sound. Why, my dear child, Perowne will hug me for this. Poor old boy, he has been half frantic." "But, Doctor," she sobbed, "they will catch me again, and drag me back to that dreadful place. Look here," she cried, with a mingling of pitiful appeal and angry indignation, and she held out her scratched and torn brown hands, and then turned her face and showed her teeth to him. "I have been cruelly used. They made me look like one of his wretched wives, so that I should not be known." "But who--who did all this?" "Murad, and I have been kept a prisoner here at a dreadful place, deep in the jungle, where I saw no one but his wretched creatures. Oh, Doctor, Doctor, kill me, or I shall go mad!" "Kill you? of course I won't, my dear. The dog! the scoundrel! the smooth-faced hypocrite! I'll blow his brains out! I'll skin him and make a specimen of him to take him back to England and exhibit him as a demon. Hang him! I don't know what I won't do!" cried the doctor, stamping with passion. "Here, you two," he cried, "don't stand staring like that, but bring the young lady some coffee." The two Malay boatmen, who had been terribly puzzled at their master's behaviour with one they took to be an escaped slave, obeyed his orders at once, looking very peculiar the while. "Don't you see who it is, you scoundrels?" cried the doctor, storming. "What are you thinking about?" "Nothing, master," said the elder boatman, submissively, for what so great a man as the doctor--one who could bring people back to life, as he had the reputation of having done before now--chose to do must be good and right. "That's better," exclaimed the doctor, energetically. "Now some biscuits. Come, my dear, try and eat and drink. I wish to goodness my little woman were here! Come, eat; it will give you strength." Helen made a lame effort or two, but the food seemed to choke her. "And I'd come out to find Solomon's gold," muttered the doctor. "Solomon's Ophir; I seem instead to have found Solomon's wives, or rather one of them. Bless my heart! bless my soul! Well, really I never did!" He looked at Helen wonderingly, and then ran mentally over the trouble at the station as he longed to question his "new specimen," as he called her, but felt some delicacy in speaking. "Come, come," he said at last, "you do not eat." "Oh, no, no, Doctor!" she cried, in hysterical tones. "I cannot eat: what shall I do?"