in trouble. What is wrong?"

Mr Braine walked to the door to see that Hamet was out of hearing, and
then returning, he said in a low voice: "Look here, Murray; it is of no
use to mince matters; we are all prisoners here, at the mercy of as
scoundrelly a tyrant as ever had power to make himself a scourge to the
district round."

"Well, it is as well to call a spade a spade," said Murray.

"Both Barnes and I were doing badly, and we were tempted by the offers
we received from the rajah, and certainly I must own that, from a
worldly point of view, we have both prospered far better here than we
could have done in an English settlement. But we are not free agents.
We never know what mine may be sprung upon us, nor how the chief people
among the rajah's followers may be affected toward us through petty
jealousies."

"I see--I see," said Murray.

"So far we have got on well. For years and years Barnes, who is very
clever in his profession, has made himself indispensable to the rajah,
and has also gained some very good friends by the way in which he has
treated different chiefs and their families in serious illnesses, and
for accidents and wounds. While on my part, though mine is a less
satisfactory position, I have by firmness and strict justice gained the
respect of the rajah's fighting men, whom I have drilled to a fair state
of perfection, and the friendship of the various chiefs by acting like
an honourable Englishman, and regardless of my own safety, interceding
for them when they have offended their master, so that now they always
come to me as their counsellor and friend, and I am the only man here
who dares to tell the tyrant he is unjust."

"I see your position exactly," said Murray; "but what is behind all
this. What is wrong?"

"Perhaps nothing--imagination, may be, and I don't know that I should
have spoken to you yet, if it had not been for an admission--I should
say a remark, made by my son just now."

"I do not understand you. What did he say?"

"That Miss Barnes--Amy--had been devoting herself to the preparation of
some of the tiny gems of our forests."

"Yes, yes, and very strange behaviour on the part of a young lady too."

"I do not see it," said the Resident, gravely. "She is a very sweet,
true-hearted, handsome womanly girl. Let me see: she is past one and
twenty now, and has always displayed a great liking for natural
history."

"Yes, of course," said Murray, hurriedly. "The collec