n's last
dispensable possession had gone as a reward for the service.

Terry's joyous urge carried him swiftly, so that in an hour he dropped
out of the foothills and into the heat of the jungled lowlands. At
noon he climbed Sears' steps and dropped into a porch chair, his
clothes wet with perspiration and torn by contact with brush and
thorn, for he had cut straight through the woods.

He had nearly emptied Sears' water bottle when he saw the big planter
coming out of a wonderful growth of hemp. Sears advanced slowly, deep
in thought, not looking up till he had mounted the last step. At sight
of Terry's grinning features he recoiled violently, then as the lad
rose, he jumped forward to wring his hand furiously. Incapable of
coherent speech for several minutes, he at last mastered his vocal
cords.

"Man! I thought you were a ghost!" he cried.

Terry sketched his journey into the Hills, and added a brief account
of the experiences he and the Major had undergone. Learning that the
Major was also safe, Sears called a Bogobo boy and issued instructions
that sent him scurrying into one of the Bogobo huts. In a few minutes
he returned bearing a small agong and striker.

Under Sears' directions he hung it upon a pole in front of the house
and struck it sharply, again and again. As the deep notes carried out
through the still, hot woods Sears motioned to him to desist and
turned to Terry.

"Listen!" he exclaimed, intent, his hand on Terry's shoulder.

In a moment another agong, somewhere close to the south, sounded
several times, then another further away, then another, another. Soon
the noon stillness of the brush pulsed with the mystic multi-tones of
scores of far agongs rung from plantations. Slowly the murmur grew as
hundreds of agongs rung by Bogobos in the foothills took up the
signal, flooding the hemplands with a glad, bronze chorus.

Sears gripped Terry's shoulder hard, his eyes brimming.

"That's the signal we fixed up," he said. "Welcome home!"

He hovered over Terry, questioning, commenting, incredulous over the
Major's marriage, overjoyed that the quinine he had given Terry had
been a factor in his recovery. After lunch Terry borrowed Sears' best
pony and rode away with the planter's profane benedictions in his
ears.

He rode hard, but each familiar landmark, each twist in trail, each
sight of river, each expanse of glistening hemp plants, thrilled him
with a sense of homecoming. Once, drawing up to c