Well, sufficient for the day is the evil thereof, had always been his guiding maxim, and for the present, as he took his way down the mountain side--the great crags rising higher and higher to the moon, the black billowy roll of the forest country drawing nearer and nearer, the voices of the wild creatures of the waste, raised weird and ravening on the night, the thunderous boom of the voice of the forest king ever and anon dominating all others--Laurence felt conscious of a wild, exhilarating sense of freedom. There was music in these sounds after the ghastly, awed silence of the horrible place from which he had been delivered. And, was it due on his part to the frame of mind of the hardened adventurer, trained to take things as they come, the good with the ill--but never, during the days and weeks that followed, did the daughter of the line of the Ba-gcatya kings feel moved to any qualm of regret over the sacrifice of name and home and country which she had made for this man's sake. CHAPTER XXIX. "A DEEP--A SOLITARY GRAVE." They were now on the other slope of the great mountain chain which shut in the Ba-gcatya country on that side, and, judging by the landmarks, it seemed to Laurence that the surroundings wore an aspect not absolutely unfamiliar, and that they could not be far out of the way by which he had been brought in a captive. There was the same broad belt of desolate land which took many days to traverse--a land of gloomy forest and sluggish river, reed-fringed, crocodile-haunted; and night after night they would build their camp-fire, resting secure in the red circle of its cheery flame--while the howling of ravening beasts kept up dismal chorus in the outer darkness beyond. It was a primeval idyll, the wandering of these two--the man, the product of the highest _fin-de-siecle_ civilization; the woman, the daughter of a savage race. Yet in such wandering, savage and civilized were curiously near akin. They were free as air--untrammelled by any conventionality or artificial needs. The land furnished ample subsistence, animal and vegetable. The wild game which supplied them with food could not have been more free. "Would you rather have been rescued some other way, Nyonyoba?" said the girl one evening, as they were sitting by the camp-fire. "No. There is no other way I should have preferred. See now, Lindela. What if we were to return to your people? Surely they would believe now in the Sign of the Spider--and that the conqueror is greater than the conquered?" "Not so," she answered, and her eyes, which had brightened at the first words of his reply, became clouded and sad. "They would put us to death now--both of us. But were it otherwise--would you really desire to return?" "One might do worse. I don't know that the blessings of civilization are such blessings after all, which to you is a riddle."