'Where do your people live in London?' she asked.
'Oh, I am sorry!' she exclaimed. 'What are you going to do?'
'Well,' I said, 'I don't quite know till I get there.'
'I wish I could tell Uncle,' she said. 'You know he is most awfully nice, only I am afraid he might put you in the motor-car and drive after the cab--we could catch it easily if we tried.'
'Uncle will be wondering why I am so long,' she continued. 'I expect we shall go straight back now the motor-car has gone wrong.'
'Where to?' I inquired, from sheer curiosity to learn as much about her as possible.
'Uncle lives at Colebrook Park,' she answered.
'About a mile this side of Hazleton,' she said, on the point of going away. 'I do hope those people won't catch you,' she continued, 'and that you will reach London all right, though it doesn't seem much use if you haven't got any people. I never knew any one who had run away before,' she added, regarding me with evident interest, and with that to my great regret Jacintha walked away.
'Thank you ever so much,' I cried, and then in order to see the last of her, I came round into the road, standing on the path watching until a bend took her out of sight. Even then I did not at once set out on my journey, but, having taken the precaution to bring some bread and cheese in my pocket, I sat down to eat it, near the spot where Jacintha had recently stood, when I saw something shining on the path.
Taking it in my hand, I found that it was a heart-shaped locket, which doubtless belonged to Jacintha. I imagined that she had worn it suspended from a chain round her neck, that it had caught in one of the twigs of the hedge and been broken off when she started back in astonishment on first seeing me lying amidst the corn.
Ignoring any possible risk from her uncle, I now thought only of returning the locket, and accordingly set forth at a run, nor stopped until I reached the farrier's shop, opposite the footpath to Barton. Then I saw, to my extreme disappointment, no sign of a motor-car before the door.
Sir H. M. Stanley, the famous African explorer, once had a strange and unpleasant experience, from which he was saved by his presence of mind and readiness of resource. He was travelling in Africa, and had to stay some time at a village. The people here were extremely ignorant and superstitious and quite unused to the ways of white men. After a time some of them noticed him making entries in his note book--for this was new country to him, and it was important that he should remember what he saw--and not understanding what he was doing they jumped to the conclusion that he was bewitching them in some mysterious way. This report spread all over the village, and a crowd of about five hundred savages collected, and threatened to kill the explorer at once unless he destroyed the book. Stanley was, naturally, very unwilling to give up all the notes which had cost him so much trouble and danger to collect, but on the other hand it would be very much worse to lose his life. Suddenly he had a bright idea. He happened to have with him a volume of Shakespeare's plays: he thought that in all probability the savages would not know one book from another, so he offered it to them instead of his note-book. The natives were quite taken in. They accepted the Shakespeare, and, amid much rejoicing, burnt it to ashes, thus breaking, as they thought, the spell that Stanley had cast upon them.