The Mena weekly star., 1920-03-04
CHAPTER VIII.

steamer had arrived and was already i taking on the, warehouse cargo and could do with three hundred tons more. Andrea had previously thought him a gourmand for work; now she discovered maniac.
 Its cleanup" he declared. "In another month the rains will be here, thcre'H be no working in the forest. the game will scatter, the natives will want to plant. And what's more, with this cargo I'll pass the million-dollar mark. That doesn't mean anything to 1 you but it's my stake-the stake I'd set my heart on."
 He took all hands off production and 1 put them to baling and packing. From the reeds along the river he dragged to light veritable fleet of scows. They 1 calked and pitched One after an l other they were fioated out into waist high water and anchored. The days were no longer enough. Every woman In the camp was set to making long, tightly bound palm-leaf torches and the pickanins from eight years up were organized into squads to light 1 fhe night shift through the short hours of darkness. Msungo took his sleep. i if he took any, leaning against tree near the nest of hand-pressure baling machines.
 All hands were kept steadily at work until il was completed. At it's finish, ..Il hn 1oh fa1 stacked along the edge of the forest in | great ahlong piles that looked like newly ct timber, M'sungo gave great spread.
 Tn eacn fen men ne allotted tin of m8rmalade; to each twenty d box of crackers sack of flour, enc load of sa'; 9na a demijohn of cheup but sound wine. Andrea watched this wholesale depletion of the white mans stores and began to wonder As she wondered her heart went way up and then way down. Was this the begin. ming of another end? Was she sorry or WIS she glad? She looked back on 1 the fcy days of her new life and they seemed already to have stretched into years. She was too young or too care less to have learned that time passes | slowly only to those who are in rut of daily routine, dragging tfagcally under the blows of sorrow and almost forgetting itself entirely when joys are various.
 The day came when the last of the barges, towing little scow stacked with an overflow remnant of bales, was dispatched and M'sungo could take a long breath and turn his at tention to putting the camp in order. This in itself was no small task. All branches, chips, bark. refuse and other rubbish consequent upon the work in the forest was gathered and burned. Then, as squad after squad of labor CTS left for home and the planting. their grass huts. scattered without the limits of the permanent craai, were also set on fire.
 within a week of the first rains" said Msungo to listless Andrea, "the | wilderness will have returned alto 1 gether to it's own to all outward ap- pearance. Three weeks after that, 1 anyone penetrating to the clearing we have made will find nothing beyond a fiourlshing shamba or corn patch, the very natural property of the craal" | On night of downpour Andrea sat in heE room, hands crossed upon dis carded book in her lap and eyes wide | ly fixed on some point of focus far be- yond the encircling walls of her hut. She was frightened. for her soul had come to talk with her and there was no escape. She could not phone up taxi and a party of four and go to show and supper afterward, thus losing the universal guest
 With a childish gesture of despair, she crept into bed, eurled up with her face against the pillow and wept. The more she cried, the more it rained :; the more it rained, the more she cried. There was no end to that--no end--no - Sleep did its best to take and hold Der but tonight its grip was uncertain and long before morning it saw defeat coming aud made dastardly retreat.
 Andrea awoke. not slowly. not swim ming up to consciousness through drowsy gradations. but suddenly with snapping of eyes wide open on q great emptiness. She was alone, ter | ribly alone, and hopelessly awake. She lay staring up at the uncheerful Ian tern that she had purposely left burn ing. Its chimney was smoked. Out side, rain still poured
 She decided to cry little more and found she couldn't. Tears had with drawn before an intellectual rage. Her face hardened. We'll, if she couldn't cry, something must happen: if not on its own, then 1t must be forced. She wondered what the white man was doing. Perhaps he was sound asleep i; perhaps he was even snoring What did she know about this man. anyway Was he human? Had he live points of contact or was he an impalpable crea- tion of her sick brain? Perhaps she wasn't here at all If she screamed, would Aunty Gwen come running in Her eyes, following the sequence of her thoughts. fell upon the barred door
 (To be continued.)
 
 -H