hero. I'm very proud to
think that I have been on your back."

"It was really wonderful," said Daleham. "How I should have liked to see
the fight! I say, all our servants have come out to look at him. By Jove!
any amount of coolies, too. One would think that they'd never seen an
elephant before."

"I'm sure they've never seen such a splendid one," said his sister
enthusiastically. "He is well worth looking at. But--oh, what is that man
doing?"

One of the crowd of coolies that had collected had gone down on his knees
before Badshah and touched the earth with his forehead. Then another and
another imitated him, until twenty or thirty of them were prostrate in the
dust, worshipping him.

"I must stop this," exclaimed Daleham. "If old Parr sees them he'll be
furious. They ought to be at their work."

He ran down the steps of the verandah and ordered them away. His servants
disappeared promptly, but the coolies went slowly and reluctantly.

"What were they doing, Major Dermot?" asked Noreen. "They looked as if they
were praying to your elephant. Hadn't they ever seen one before?"

He explained the reason of the reverence paid to Badshah. Daleham,
returning, renewed his thanks as his sister went into the bungalow to see
about breakfast. When she returned to tell them that it was ready, Dermot
hardly recognised in the dainty girl, clad in a cool muslin dress, the
terrified and dishevelled damsel whom he had first seen standing in the
midst of the elephants.

During the meal she questioned him eagerly about the jungle and the ways of
the wild animals that inhabit it, and she and her brother listened with
interest to his vivid descriptions. A chance remark of Daleham's on the
difficulty of obtaining labour for the tea-gardens in the Terai interested
Dermot and set him trying to extract information from his host.

"I suppose you know, sir, that as these districts are so sparsely populated
and the Bhuttias on the hills won't take the work, we have to import the
thousands of coolies needed from Chota Nagpur and other places hundreds of
miles away," said Daleham. "Lately, however, we have begun to get men from
Bengal."

"What? Bengalis?" asked Dermot.

"Yes. Very good men. Quite decent class. Some educated men among them. Why,
I discovered by chance that one is a B.A. of Calcutta University."

"Do you mean for your clerical work, as _babus_ and writers?"

"No. These chaps are content to do the regular coolie work. Of