m next Saturday, when you are paid."

"Then you are going to shoot the elephant," cried Glyn, "because you
don't know how to manage him?"

"What!" half-shrieked the man. "Here, I say, where do you go to school?
Things are coming to a pretty pass when boys like you begin teaching
me, who've been nigh forty year in the wild-beast trade! What next?"

"Glyn Severn's right," said Singh sternly.

"Here's another of them!" cried the man, looking round from face to
face.

"Quite right," continued Singh. "Why, the poorest coolie in my father's
dominions would manage one of the noble beasts far better."

"Ho!" said Ramball sarcastically. "Then perhaps the biggest swell out
of my father's dominions would like to show me how to do it himself."

"I don't know that I can," said Singh quietly; "but I dare say the poor
beast would obey me if I tried."

"Oh, pray try, then, sir.--Only, look here, governor," continued the
man, addressing Morris, who was not far off, "I don't know whether he's
your son or your scholar--I wash my hands of it. I warn you; he's a
vicious beast, and I aren't a-going to pay no damages if my young
cock-a-hoop comes to grief."

Singh laughed a curious, disdainful laugh. Then he took a step in the
direction of the elephant, but Glyn caught him by the arm.

"Don't do that, Glyn," said the boy quietly. "I don't believe he would
hurt me. Come with me if you like. You know what he'll do if he's
going to be savage, and you run one way and I'll run the other."

This was in a low voice, unheard by any one but him for whom it was
intended; and the next moment, amidst a profound hush, the two boys
moved towards the elephant, who was swaying his head slowly from side to
side, and looking "ugly," as the man Jem afterwards said.

Then out of the silence, urged by a sense of duty, Morris cried in a
harsh, cracked, emotional voice, not in the least like his own, "Severn!
Prince! Come back! What are you going to do?"

His last words came as if he were half-choked, and then like the rest he
stood gazing, with a strange clammy moisture gathering in his hands and
upon his brow, for as the two boys drew near, the elephant suddenly
raised its head, threw up its trunk, and uttered a shrill trumpeting
sound.

As the defiant cry ceased, Singh stepped forward in advance of his
companion, and shouted a few words in Hindustani.

The elephant lowered its trunk and stood staring at the boy, as if
wonderingly, be