At Tabora there had been a long halt, a delay forced upon the travellers by the conditions of climate, by the sickness and the idleness of their caravan; but this interval of rest had not been altogether disagreeable. The place was a place of fatness, a settlement in the midst of a fertile plan where the flocks and herds, the Arab population, the pastoral life suggested those familiar pictures in that first book of ancient history which the child takes into his newly awakened consciousness; and which the hard and battered wayfarer--believer or agnostic--loves and admires to the end of life. In just such a scene as this Rebecca might have given Isaac the fateful draught of water from the wayside well; upon just such a level pasture Joseph and his brethren might have tended their flocks and watched the stars. The visions of the young dreamer would have shown him this pale milky azure, over-arching the rich level where the sheaves bowed down to his sheaves; and in just such a reposeful atmosphere would he have laid himself down for the noontide siesta, and let his fancy slide into the dim labyrinth of dreamland. At Tabora there had been overmuch time for thought, and the yearning for a far-away face must needs have been in the hearts of both those young Englishmen, whose bronzed features were sternly and steadily set with the resolute calm of men who do not mean to waste in despair and die for love of the fairest woman upon earth. Often and often in the dusk, Allan heard his comrade's rich baritone rolling out that old song-- "Shall I, wasting in despair, Die, because a woman's fair? Or make pale my cheeks with care Because another's rosy are?" The voice thrilled him. What a gift is that music which gives a man power over his fellow-men? Geoffrey's fiddle talked to them nearly every night beside the camp-fire, talked to them sometimes at daybreak, when its owner had been sleepless; for that restless spirit had watched too many long blank hours in the course of his travels. It had been hard work to convey that fiddle-case across the rolling woods, through swamp and river, guarded from the crass stupidity of native porters--from the obstinacy of the African donkey--the curiosity of the inhabitants of the villages on the way. Geoffrey had carried it himself for the greater part of the journey; refusing to trust Arab or Negroid with so precious a burden. Riding or walking, he had managed to take care of his little Amati, the smallest but not the least valuable of all his fiddles.