Sanders was never a great conversationalist, and the three days the professor spent at headquarters were deadly dull ones for the Commissioner. On one subject alone did the professor grow talkative. "I want to study the witch-doctor," he said. "I think there is no appointment in the world that would give me a greater sense of power than my appointment by a native people to that post." Sanders thought the scientist was joking, but the other returned to the subject again and again, gravely, earnestly, and persistently, and for his entertainment Sanders recited all the stories he had ever heard of witch-doctors and their tribe. "But you don't expect to learn anything from these people?" said Sanders, half in joke. "On the contrary," said the professor, seriously; "I anticipate making valuable scientific discoveries through my intercourse with them." "Then you're a silly old ass," said Sanders; but he said it to himself. The pale professor left him at the end of the fourth day, and beyond an official notification that he had established himself on the border, no further news came of the scientist for six months, until one evening came the news that the pale-faced old man had been drowned by the upsetting of a canoe. He had gone out on a solitary excursion, taking with him some scientific apparatus, and nothing more was heard of him until his birch-bark canoe was discovered, bottom up, floating on the river. No trace of Sir George was found, and in the course of time Sanders collected the dead man's belongings and forwarded them to England. There were two remarkable facts about this tragedy, the first being that Sanders found no evidence either in papers or diaries, of the results of any scientific research work performed by the professor other than a small note-book. The second was, that in his little book the scientist had carefully recorded the stories Sanders had told him of witch doctors. (Sanders recognised at least one story which he had himself invented on the spur of the moment for the professor's entertainment.) Six more or less peaceful months passed, and then began the series of events which make up the story of the Devil Man. It began on the Little River. There was a woman of the Isisi people who hated her husband, though he was very good to her, building her a hut and placing an older wife to wait upon her. He gave her many presents, including a great neck-ring of brass, weighing pounds, that made her the most envied woman on the Isisi River. But her hatred for her husband was unquenched; and one morning she came out from her hut, looking dazed and frightened, and began in a quavering voice to sing the Song of the Dead, mechanically pouring little handfuls of dust on her head, and the villagers went in, to find the man stark and staring, with a twisted grin on his dead face and the pains of hell in his eyes.