ipment for jungle work arrived bit by bit. They
lived some distance from the city and back from the great
Highway-of-all-India, in Malcolm M'Cord's bungalow, a house to remember
for several reasons.

The Indian jungles were showing Skag deep secrets about wild
animals--knowledge beyond his hopes. Some things that he thought he
knew in the old days as a circus-trainer were beginning to look curious
and obsolete, but much still held good, even became more and more
significant. The things he had known intuitively did not diminish.
These had to do with mysterious talents of his own, and dated back to
the moment he stood for the first time before one of the "big cat"
cages at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. That was his initiation-day
in a craft in which he had since gone very far as white men go--even
into the endless fascination of the cobra-craft.

Skag was meeting now from time to time in his jungle work some of the
big hunters of India, men whose lives were a-seethe with tales of
adventure. When they talked, however, Skag slowly but surely grasped
the fact that what they had was "outside stuff." They knew trails,
defensive and fighting habits, species and calls; they knew a great
collection of detached facts about animals but it was all like what one
would see in a strange city--watching from outside its wall. There was
a certain boundary of observation which they never passed. All that
Skag cared to know was across, on the inner side of the wall.

As for the many little hunters, they were tame; only their bags were
"wild." They never even approached the boundary. Skag reflected much
on these affairs. It dawned on him at last, that when you go out with
the idea of killing a creature, you may get its attitude toward death,
but you won't learn about how it regards life.

The more you give, the more you get from any relation. This is not
only common knowledge among school-teachers, but among stock-raisers
and rose-growers. Almost every man has had experience with a real
teacher, at least once in his life--possibly only a few weeks or even
days, but a bit of real teaching--when something within opened and
answered as never before. It was like an extension of consciousness.
If you look back you'll find that you loved that teacher--at least,
liked that one differently, very deep.

Skag wanted a great deal. He wanted more from the jungle doubtless
than was ever formulated in a white man's mind before. H