walk up and down in the
veranda, and wait for the coming of the next messengers from the rajah,
for that there would soon be another both felt perfectly convinced.

They had not long to wait before the Tumongong appeared with a small
retinue of men, spear-armed as usual, who were halted by their officer
at the foot of the steps, while the Malay chief ascended to the veranda
to announce briefly that the rajah would honour the ladies with a visit
that evening; after which he turned and left the place as he came, the
dark figures of his escort filing out through the bamboo gate, looking
like shadows in the starlight.

"There is only one thing left," said Mr Braine, as the doctor sat too
much stunned by the intelligence, now it had come, to be able to go in
and communicate it to his wife and child.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

FRANK'S ERRAND.

"What'll I do? What'll I do?" muttered Tim Driscol to himself as he
walked up and down one of the garden paths hidden from his master and
his friends, and unheeded by the Malay guard, who contented themselves
with seeing that he did not pass out of the gate.

"That pretty colleen! Ow, the covetous owld rip, and him wid a dozen
wives at laste, to want our darlin'. What'll I do?--what'll I do?
Faix, I'll have me poipe."

He filled the rough bamboo affair with the coarse native tobacco he
used, and went on smoking, the bowl glowing as if a ruddy firefly were
gliding up and down the garden walk. "Ow, sorrow to uz all!" he
muttered. "An' what are all his wives about? Why, they can't have a
taste o' sperrit in 'em, or they wouldn't shtand it. Why, if they were
ladies from the ould country, and he even thought of taking another,
there wouldn't be a bit of hair left on his wicked head. Oh dear!
sorrow to me, what'll I do at all, at all?--Who's this. To see wan of
the women, I suppose."

He was near the gate where two spearmen stood, and in the full starlight
he saw a Malay woman coming up, and as she drew near, she raised her
hands beneath the veil-like sarong she wore over her head to a level
with her brows, spreading out the plaided silk after the custom of the
women, so that the top and bottom hems were drawn parallel, covering her
face and forming a narrow horizontal slit through which her eyes alone
were seen.

"Yah! Get out. How modest we are. Sure, and ye're an ugly flat-nosed
coffee-coloured one, or ye wouldn't be so moighty particular. Want to
see one of the wom