The photograph he liked most of all, for the eyes were

smiling, and the face was open and frank. It was his father.

The locket, too, took his fancy, and he placed the chain

about his neck in imitation of the ornamentation he had seen

to be so common among the black men he had visited. The

brilliant stones gleamed strangely against his smooth, brown hide.

The letters he could scarcely decipher for he had learned

little or nothing of script, so he put them back in the box

with the photograph and turned his attention to the book.

This was almost entirely filled with fine script, but while

the little bugs were all familiar to him, their arrangement and

the combinations in which they occurred were strange, and

entirely incomprehensible.

Tarzan had long since learned the use of the dictionary,

but much to his sorrow and perplexity it proved of no avail

to him in this emergency. Not a word of all that was writ in

the book could he find, and so he put it back in the metal

box, but with a determination to work out the mysteries of it

later on.

Little did he know that this book held between its covers

the key to his origin--the answer to the strange riddle of

his strange life. It was the diary of John Clayton, Lord

Greystoke--kept in French, as had always been his custom.

Tarzan replaced the box in the cupboard, but always thereafter

he carried the features of the strong, smiling face of his

father in his heart, and in his head a fixed determination to

solve the mystery of the strange words in the little black book.

At present he had more important business in hand, for his

supply of arrows was exhausted, and he must needs journey

to the black men's village and renew it.

Early the following morning he set out, and, traveling

rapidly, he came before midday to the clearing. Once more he

took up his position in the great tree, and, as before, he saw

the women in the fields and the village street, and the cauldron

of bubbling poison directly beneath him.