man exclaimed, at Hurda station;
and Skag saw the two meet, perceiving at once that it was a friendship
between men of very different type.

Then Dickson Sahib promptly gathered them both into that Anglo-Indian
hospitality which is never forgotten by those who have found it. Skag
was made to feel as much at home as the evidently much-loved Cadman; not
by word or gesture, but by a kindly atmosphere about everything. He met
a slender lad of twelve years, presented to him by Dickson Sahib as "My
son Horace," whose clear grey eyes attracted him much.

After dinner Cadman told the story of Dhoop Ki Dhil. There was perfect
silence for minutes when he finished. Skag was groping on and on--his
quest already begun. Dickson was smoking hard, till he startled them
both:

"Of course, it's altogether right; I'd like to be with you."

"Then will you direct us?" Cadman asked.

"As an officer in a land-department, you understand--" Dickson answered
slowly, "I'm not supposed to send men into a place like that, to their
death. But I want you to know that my responsibility has nothing
whatever to do with my concern. Because I value your lives as men--I
want to be careful. You must let me think it out loud. It's a maze. I
may place you, as I get on."

"We appreciate your care," Cadman said earnestly.

"The 'great' Grass Jungle is the proper name for vast territory--not all
in one piece," Dickson Sahib began. "It comes in rifts between parallel
rivers among the mountains. Seepage back and forth between the streams,
gives the moisture necessary for such growth--year round.

"When white men come to the edge of one of those rifts, they turn back.
It's pestilential with wild beasts. Natives call it the Place-of-Fear.
White men don't challenge it--they go round. Government has named one
part of it--over toward the eastern end of the Vindhas--the Bund el
Khand, the closed country; that name tells its own story."

Dickson Sahib stopped, frowning.

"The native with silks to exchange goes down to Bombay?" he went on.
"That means, not Calcutta-way. It also means, not anywhere in the
Deccan--which clears us away from large tracts. Yet he usually calls it
'great'--that should mean, the Bund el Khand. No one knows how far in;
but you'll best approach it from this side. I'm not dissuading you; I'd
like to be along. I'm offering you choice of my assortment of
firing-pieces. I'll work you out some running lines--they'll be re