The Adventures of Kathlyn

"It is well."

"You have a wonderful elephant out there in the compound," said Bruce,

who had remained a silent listener to all that had gone before.

"Ah! That is a curiosity. He is worshiped by Hindus and reverenced by

my own people. I am his official custodian. There is a saying among

the people that ill will befall me should I lose, sell, or permit him

to be stolen."

"And many have offered to buy?" inquired the colonel.

"Many."

When the colonel appeared at supper, simple but substantial, he was a

new man. He stood up straight, though his back still smarted from the

lash. Kathlyn was delighted at the change.

After the meal was over and coffee was drunk, the Khan conducted his

guests to his armory, of which he was very proud. Guns of all

descriptions lined the walls. Some of them Bruce would have liked to

own, to decorate the walls of his own armory, thousands of miles away.

The colonel whispered a forgotten prayer as, later, he laid down his

weary aching limbs upon the rope bed. Almost immediately he sank into

slumber as deep and silent as the sea.

Kathlyn and Bruce, however, went up to the hanging gardens and remained

there till nine, marveling over the beauty of the night. The Pathan

city lay under their gaze with a likeness to one of those magic cities

one reads about in the chronicles of Sindbad the Sailor. But they

spoke no word of love. When alone with this remarkable young woman,

Bruce found himself invariably tongue-tied.

At the same hour, less than fifty miles away, Umballa stood before the

opening of his elaborate tent, erected at sundown by the river's brink,

and scowled at the moon. He saw no beauty in the translucent sky, in

the silvery paleness of the world below. He wanted revenge, and the

word hissed in his brain as a viper hisses in the dark of its cave.

Dung fires twinkled and soldiers lounged about them, smoking and

gossiping. They had been given an earnest against their long

delinquent wages; and they were in a happy frame of mind. Their dead

comrades were dead and mourning was for widows; but for them would be

the pleasures of swift reprisals. The fugitives had gone toward the

desert, and in that bleak stretch of treeless land it would not be

difficult to find them, once they started in pursuit.

Midnight.

In the compound the moonlight lay upon everything; upon the fat sides

and back of the sacred white elephant, upon the three low caste

keepers, now free of the vigilant eye of their Brahmin chief. The

gates were barred and closed; all inside the house of Bala Khan were

asleep. Far away a sentry dozed on his rifle, on the wall. The three

keepers whispered and chuckled among themselves.