Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 May 1890 — ALLAN QUATERMAIN. [ARTICLE]

ALLAN QUATERMAIN.

BY H. RIDER HAGGARD,

CHAPTER XXll—Continued. A gasp of wcndor and astonishment rose from all those who witnessed the extraordinary sight, and then somebody cried: ••The prophecy! the prophecy! He has shattered the sacred stone!” and at once a murmuring arose.

- “Ay„” said Nyleptha. with that quick wit which distinguishes her. “Ay, my people, he has shattered the stone, and behold the prophecy is fulfilled, for a stranger king rules in Zu-vendis. Incubu, my lord, hatn beat Sorais back, and I fear her no more, and to him who hath saved the crown it shall surely-be. And this man,” she said, turning to me and laying'her hand upon my shoulder, “wot ye that, though wounded in the fight of yesterday, rode, with the old warrior who lies there, one hundred miles ’twixt sunset and rise to save me from from the plots of cruel men. Ay, and he has saved me, by a very little, and, therefore, because of the deeds that they have done—deeds of glory such as our history cannot show the like—therefore I say that the name of Macumazahn and the name of dead Umslopogaas, ay, and the name of Kara, my servant, who aided him to hold the stair, shall be blazoned in letters of gold above my throne, and shall be glorious forever while the land endures. I, the queen, have said it.”

This spirited speech was met with loud eheering, and I said that after ail we had only done our duty, as it is the fashion of both Englishmen and Zulus to do, and there was nothing to make an outcry about about; at which they cheered still more, and then I was supported across the court card-yard to my old quarters, in order that I might be put to bed. As I went, my eyes lit upon the brave horse Daylight that lay there,.-his white head outstretched on the pavement, exactly as he had fallen on entering the yard; and I bade those who supported me take me near him, that I might look on the good beast once more before he was dragged away. And as I looked, to my astonishment he opened bis eyes and, lift - ing his head a little, whinnied faintly. I could have shouted for joy to find he was not dead, only unfortunately I bad not a shout left in me; but as it was, grooms were sent for and he was lifted up and wine poured down his throat, and in a fortnight he was as well and strong as ever, and is the pride and joy of all the people of Mitosis, who, whenever they S9e him, point him, out to the little children asJbe. “horse which saved the White Queen’s life.”

Then I went on and got off to bed, and was washed and had my mail-shirt removed. They hurt me a good deal in getting it off, and no wonder, for on my left breast and side was a black bruise the size of a -saucer. The next thing that I remember was the tramp of horsemeu outside the palace wall, some ten hours later, I raised myself and asked what was the news, and they told me that a large body of cavalry sent by Curtis to assist the queen had arrived from the scene of the battle, which they had left two hours after sundown. When they left, the wreck of Sorais’s army was in full retreat upon M’Arstuna, followed by all our effective cavalry. Sir Henry was encamping the remains of his worn-out forces on the site (such is the fortune of war) that Sorais had occupied the night before, !and proposed marching on to M’Arstuna on the morrow. Having heard this. I felt that I could die with a light heart, and then everything became a blank. When next I awoke the Srst thing T saw was the round disc of a sympathetic eyeglass, behind which was Good.

'•How are [you getting on, old chap?” said a voice from the neighborhood of the eyeglass.” "What are you doing here?” I asked faintly. "You ought to be at M’Arstuna—have you run away, or what?”* M’Arstuna,” he replied, cheerfully. • ‘Ah, M’Arstuna fell last .week—youv’e been unconscious for a fortnight, you —with all the honors of war, you know;, trumpets blowing, flags flying, just as though they had the best of it, but for all that, weren’t they glad to go. Israel made for his tents. I can tell you—never saw such a sight in my life.” "And Sorais?” I asked. "Sorais—oh, Sorais is a prisoner; they gave her up, the scoundrels,” he added, with a change of tone—"sacrificed the queen to save their skins, you see. She is being brought up here, and no telling what will happen to her, poor soul!” and he sighed. "Where is Curtis?” I asked. He is with Nyleptha. She rode out to meet us to-day, and there was a grand to-do, I can tell you. He is coming to see you to-morrow; the doctors (for there is a medical ‘faculty’ in Zu-vendis as elsewhere) thought that he had better not come to-day.” I said nothing, but somehow I thought to myself that notwithstanding the doctors he might have given me a look; but there, when a man is newly married and has just gained a great victory he is apt to listen to the advice of doctors, and quite right too. Just then I heard a familiar voice informing me that "Monsieur must now couch himself,” and looking up perceived Alphonse’s enormous black mustaches curling away in the distance.

“So you are hereP” I Baid. \ “Mawßoiii,. monsieur; ttto war is fIOW finished, my military instincts are srttyffiod, and I return to nurse monsiotfp,”.. • " '**' • • I laujjh&l' or rattier tried to; but whatever may have been Alphonao’s f illlugs as a warrior (and I fear that be did not oome up to the level of h>4

heroic grandlathor in this showing thereby how true the saying .thaiit iaa.Jbad-thing to owed by some great ancestral namey, a better or a kinder nurse never lived. Poor Alphonse! I hope he will always think of me as kindly as I think of him. On the morrow I ’saw Curtis, and Nyleptha with him, and he told me the whole history of what had happened since Umslopogaas and I galloped wildly away from the battle to save the life of the queen. It seemed to me that he had managed the thing exceedingly well, and showed great ability as a general. Of course, however, oiir loss had been dreadfully heavy—indeed, lAm afraid to say how many perished in the desperate battle I have described, but I know that the slaughter has appreciably affected the male population of the country. He was very pleased to see me, dear fellow that he is, and thanked me,with tears in his eyes for the little I had been able to do. I saw him, however, start violently when his eyes felTupon my face.

As for Nyleptha,, she was positively radiant that her “dear lord” had come back with no other injury than an ugly scar on his forehead. I do not believe that she allowed all the tearful slaughter that had taken place to weigh ever so little in the balance against this one fact, or even to diminish her joy; and I cannot blame her for it, seeing that it is the nature of loving women to look at all things through the spectacles of her love, and little does she reck of the misery of the many if the happiness of the one be assured. That is human nature, which the Positivists tell us is just perfection—so no doubt it is all right. “And what art thou going to do with Sorais?” I asked her. Instantly her bright brow darkened to a frown. “Sorais,” she said, with a little stamp of her foot, “ah, but Sorais!” Sir Henry hastened to turn the subject. “You will soon be about aniLal right again now, old fellow,” he said. I shook my head and laughed.

“Don’t deceive yourselves,” I said. •T may be about for a little, but I shall never be all right again. I am a dying man, Curtis. I may die slow, but die I must. Do you know, I have been spitting blood all the morning. I tell you, there is something working away into my lung: l ean feel it. There, don’t look distressed; I have had my day, and am ready to go. Give me the mirror, will you ? I want to look at myself.” He made some excuse, but I saw through it and insisted, and at last he handed me one o£ the disks of polished silver set in a wooden frame like a hand-sereen, which serve as lookingglasses in Zu-vendis. I looked and put it down.

"Ah,” I said, quietly, "I thought so; and you talk of my getting all right!” I did not like to let them see how shocked I really was at my own appearance. My grizzled, stubby hair was turned snow white, and my yellow face was shrunken like an aged woman’s, and had two deep, purple rings painted beneath the eyes. Here Nyleptha began to cry, and Sir Henry again turned the subject,telling me that the artists had taken a cast of the dead body of old Umslopogaas.and that a great statue in black marble was to be erected of him in the act of splitting the sacred stone, which was to be matched by another statue in white marble of myself and the horse Daylight as he appeared when, at the termination of that wild ride, he sunk beneath me in the court yard of the palace. I have since seen these statues, which at the time of writing this, six months after the battle, are nearly Ihisßed; liid very beautiful they &m, especially that of Umslopogaas, which is exactly like him. As for that o myself, it is good, but they have idealzed my ugly face a little, which is, perhaps, as well, seeing that thousands of people will probably look at in the centuries to come, and it is not pleasant to look at ugly things.

Then they told mo that Umslopogaas’s last wish had been carried out, and that, instead of being cremated, as I snail be after the usual custom here, he had been tied up, Zulu fashion, with his knees beneath his chin, and, having been wrapped in a thin sheet of beaten gold, entombed in a hole hollowed out of the masonry of the semicircular space at the top of the stair he defended so splendidly, which faces, as far as we can judge, almost exactly toward Zuiuland. There he sits, and will sit forever, for they embalmed him with spices, and put him in an air tight coffin, keeping his grim watch beneath the spot he held alone against a multitude; and the people say that at night his ghost rises and stands shaking the phantom of Inkosikaasi at phantom foes. Certainly they fear during the dark hours to pass the place where the hero is buried.

Oddly enough, too, a new legend or prophecy has arisen in the land in that unaccountable way in which Buch things do arise among barbarous and semi-civilized people, blowing, like the wind, no man knows froih whence. According to this saying,so long as the old Zulu sits there, looking down the stairway he defended when alive, so Long to ill the new House ol the Stairway, springing from the union of the Englishman and Nyleptha, endure and flourish; but when he is taken from thence, or when, ages after, his bones at last crumble into du6t, the house shall fall, and the stairway Bhall fall, and the nation of the Zu-vendi Bhall cease to be a nation.

CHaPTER xxiil

I HAVE SPOKEN. It was a week after Nyleptha’s visit when I had begun to get about "a lifctle in the middle, of the day, that a message came to me from Sir Henry to t ; that Sorait would be brought be-

j fore them in the queen’s first anW chamber at midday, and requesting my attendance, if possible*.—Accordingly, greatly drawn byourioaifey to see this unhappy woman once more. I made shift, with the help of that kind little fellow, Alphonse, who is a perfect treasure to me, and that of another waiting man, to reach the ante-cham-ber. I got there, indeed, before anybody else, except a few of the great court officials wno bad’been bidden to be present; but I had scarcely seated myself before Sorais was brought in by a party of guards, looking as beautiful and defiant as ever, but with a worn expression on her proud face. She was, as usual, dressed in her royal, “kaf,” emblazoned with the emblem of the Sun, and in her right hand she still held the toy spear of silver. A pang of admiration and pity went through me as I look«l at bar, . and struggling to my feet, I bowed deeply, at the same time expressing my sorrow that I was not able, owing to my condition, to remain her. She colored a little, and then laughed bitterly. “Thou dost forget, Macumazahn,” she said, “I am no more a queen, save in blood; lam an outcast and a prisoner; one whom all men should scorn, and none should show deference to.”

“At least,” I replied, “thou art still a lady, and one to whom deference is due. Also thou art in an evil case, and therefore it is doubly due.” “Ah!” she answered, with a little laugh, “thou dost forget that I would have wrapped thee in a sheet tof gold and hung thee to the angol’s trumpet at the topmost pinnacle of the temple.” “No,” I answered, “I assure thee I forgot it not; indeed, I often thought, of it when it seemed to me that the battle of the Pass was turning against us; but the trumpet is there, and I am still here, though perchance not for long, so why talk of it now?”. i “Ah!” she went on, “the battle! the battle! Oh, would that I were once more a queen, if only for one little hour, and I would take such an accursed vengeance on those accursed jackals who deserted me in my need,; that it should only be spoken of in whispers; those women, those pigeonhearted half-breeds who suffered themselves to be overcome!” and she 1 choked in her wrath.

"Ay,” and that little coward beside thee,” she went on, pointing at Alphonse with the silver spear, whereat lie looked very uncomfortable, ‘ ‘he escaped and betrayed my plans. I tried to make a general of him, telling the soldiers it was Bougwan, and to scourge valor into him, ” (here Alphonso shivered at some unhappy recollection), "but it was of no avail. He hid beneath a banner in my tent, and thus overheard my plans. I would that I had slain him, but, alas! I held my hand.” 1 ‘And thou, Macumazahn, I have heardof what thou didst; thou art a braver man, and hast a loyal? heart. And the black one., too. Ah, be was a man. I would fain have seen him hurl Nasta from the stairway.” "Thou art a strange woman, Sorais,” I said. "I pray thee, now plead with the Queen Nyleptha, that perchance she may show mercy unto thee.” She laughed out loud. "I plead for mercy,” she said, and at £hat moment the queen entered, accompanied by Sir Henry and Good, and took her seat with an impassive face. As for poor Good, he looked intensely ill at ease. "Greeting, Sorais!” said Nyleptha, after a brief pause. "Thou hast rent the kingdom like a rag; thou hast put thousands of my people to the sword; thou hast twice basely plotted to destroy my life by murder, thou hast sworn to slay my lord and his companions, and to hurl me from the stairway. What hast thou to say why thou should not die? Speak, oh, Sorais!” "Methinks my sister has forgotten the chief count of the indictment.” answered Sorais, in her slow, musical tones. "It runs thus: *Thou didst strive to win the love of my lord Incubu.’ It is for this crime that my sister will slay me, not because I levied war. It is, perhaps, happy for thee that I fixed my mind upon his love too late.

TO BE CONTINUED. A New Story About Lincoln. Chicago Tribune. Although Mr. Lincoln was methodical in many things, he wa3 lovenly in some of the details of his business. He had no particular place for anything, for the reason, may be, that he didn’t have the particular place. One smiles as he sees a yellow bit of paper which was evidently a binding for a bundle of papers,on which are written these grinning words: “When you can’t find it anywhere else look in this.’’ “It” meant something which Mr. Lincoln know would be wanted some time, and as there was no particular place for “it,” “it” was liablo to be slipped into the bundle around which was this binding. Working Like a Gaily Slave. Eondon Truth. r ‘. No galley slave was ever harder worked than was the Frinco of Wales during his week’s stay at Berlin,*| and must have been truly delighted to get away from that city. From morning night the Prince was either paying formal visits or receiving them, or else witnessing military parades. These visits, moreover, require constant changes of costume, for some must bo paid or received in plain dross, others in Prussian uniform, and others in a British uniform. There, id also a some etiquette qbout the wearing of orders which is very troubfesome. 1; ’ What the papers call “racy" testimony in a divorce oase Is generally given by fast people.