rees he saw
towering up a great mauve thing like the back of a monster,--but that
was nonsense, it was the crest of a steep hillside covered with woods of
teak.

He stood up and stretched himself, and wondered whether he had dreamed
of a tiger.

He tried to remember and retrace the course of his over-night
wanderings.

A flight of emerald parakeets tore screaming through the trees, and then
far away uphill he heard the creaking of a cart.

He followed the hint of a footmark, and went back up the glen slowly and
thoughtfully.

Presently he came to a familiar place, a group of trees, a sheet of
water, and the ruins of an old embankment. It was the ancient tank of
his overnight encounter. The pool of his dream?

With doubt still in his mind, he walked round its margin to the sandy
level beyond, and cast about and sought intently, and at last found, and
then found clearly, imposed upon the tracks of several sorts of deer and
the footprints of many biggish birds, first the great spoor of the
tiger and then his own. Here the beast had halted, and here it had leapt
aside. Here his own footmarks stopped. Here his heels had come together.

It had been no dream.

There was a white mist upon the water of the old tank like the bloom
upon a plum, and the trees about it seemed smaller and the sand-space
wider and rougher than they had seemed in the moonshine. Then the ground
had looked like a floor of frosted silver.

And thence he went on upward through the fresh morning, until just as
the east grew red with sunrise, he reached the cart-track from which he
had strayed overnight. It was, he found, a longer way back to the camp
than he remembered it to be. Perhaps he had struck the path further
along. It curved about and went up and down and crossed three ravines.
At last he came to that trampled place of littered white blossom under
great trees where he had seen the bears.

The sunlight went before him in a sheaf of golden spears, and his
shadow, that was at first limitless, crept towards his feet. The dew had
gone from the dead grass and the sand was hot to his dry boots before he
came back into the open space about the great banyan and the tents. And
Kepple, refreshed by a night's rest and coffee, was wondering loudly
where the devil he had gone.

THE STORY

CHAPTER THE FIRST ~~ THE BOY GROWS UP

1

Benham was the son of a schoolmaster. His father was assistant first at
Cheltenham, and subseq