monarch trees, swept past the front of the
grounds. Several times from here, he had seen a big elephant go
joyously rolling by. He could tell it was joyous; and the man on its
neck was usually singing.

The very smell of elephants had always stirred Skag--like all clean
good earth-smells in one. When he was animal trainer in the circus,
the elephants had not been his special charge; but he had seen a good
deal of them. They looked to him like convicts; or manikins--moving to
the pull of the hour-string. They were incessantly being loaded,
unloaded, made to march; cooped in small, stuffy places--chained.

He wanted to see elephants--herds of them! He wanted to see them in
multitudes, working for men in their own way; using their own
intelligence. He wanted to see them in their own jungles--living their
own lives.

Sooner or later he meant to see them, all ways. He had come to India,
the land of elephants, partly for that reason; but in the Mahadeo
mountains he had found none--nor in the great Grass Jungle. Yet he had
learned that when he wanted anything--way back in the inside of
himself--he was due to get it. To-day this thing was gnawing more than
ever before; he wanted elephants--hard.

Dickson Sahib came out on his way back to the offices and stopped to
finish their tiffin conversation:

"I'm glad you're interested in young Horace; you're going to be no end
good for him, I can see that. You'll find him far too mature for his
years. His brain's too active; but he's not abnormal. His tutors call
him insatiable; but from his babyhood the breath of his life has been
elephants. He's taken a lot from the learned natives; they talk with
him as if he were quite grown--half of it I couldn't follow myself."

"That is extraordinary to me," said Skag.

"Of course it is. But there's been nothing else for it. My own days
are quite tied up, and his mother--the climate, you know. So you see
what I mean, he's really needing--just you."

Dickson's eyes turned on a little fellow who stood alone, further down
the verandah. Then his face shadowed, as he spoke in a lower tone:

"I said he's not abnormal--that should be qualified. Several years ago
he was carried home from the Chief Commissioner's elephant stockades by
their governing mahout, Kudrat Sharif. The servants said he was crying
and fighting to go back; but otherwise seemed quite himself. When I
came from the offices in the evening, however, he was