It was near noon, and there were few people stirring on the road, which was moreover but a bypath leading to a neighbouring village, so that I was no sooner fairly out of the town than I found myself in complete solitude. I looked before and behind, and seeing that no living being was in sight, I drew out my knife with a trembling hand and slipped the cord of the _laiya_ from around my neck. It was sewn, as was usual, with fine thongs of skin, but the stitching had evidently been renewed, and that by a hand less skilful than that of the Hausa leather-worker. With the point of my knife I cut through one stitch after, another until three sides were unfastened and I could lay the case open. As I did so, a mass of wadding fell out, in which was a small paper packet which I opened with feverish haste. Inside it was a plain gold locket, and on the paper was written in Isabel’s handwriting:--“May God bless you and keep you and bring you safely through all your perils. Think sometimes of us, who have you constantly in our thoughts.” The flutter of anticipation with which I unfastened the clasp of the locket merged into a thrill of intense emotion as my eyes fell upon its contents. From one side of it looked out the old-world cavalier-like visage of Pereira; from the other the calm and lovely face of Isabel. I cannot describe the feelings which surged through me as I gazed at those beautiful and beloved features. For months--long months filled with peril and suffering that made them seem like years--I had not looked upon the face of a European; I had not even seen my own face since the day on which I fled from Annan. Gradually my standard of human beauty had become accommodated to my surroundings, until Aminé--by far the handsomest African woman I had ever seen--had come to represent a quite satisfying type of feminine comeliness. And now this vision of beauty burst upon me, dispelling in a moment the bias of recent experience, and I stood, in my turban and _riga_, the same Richard Englefield who had looked upon the setting sun as it sank in a crimson glow behind the palms of Jella Koffi.