urs.'

'I wish he were back,' said the Colonel; 'for I like him and believe
he likes me.'

That evening, to cheer our souls, Learoyd, Ortheris, and I went into
the waste to smoke out a porcupine. All the dogs attended, but even
their clamour--and they began to discuss the shortcomings of
porcupines before they left cantonments--could not take us out of
ourselves. A large, low moon turned the tops of the plume-grass to
silver, and the stunted camelthorn bushes and sour tamarisks into the
likenesses of trooping devils. The smell of the sun had not left the
earth, and little aimless winds blowing across the rose-gardens to the
southward brought the scent of dried roses and water. Our fire once
started, and the dogs craftily disposed to wait the dash of the
porcupine, we climbed to the top of a rain-scarred hillock of earth,
and looked across the scrub seamed with cattle paths, white with the
long grass, and dotted with spots of level pond-bottom, where the
snipe would gather in winter.

'This,' said Ortheris, with a sigh, as he took in the unkempt
desolation of it all, 'this is sanguinary. This is unusually
sanguinary. Sort o' mad country. Like a grate when the fire's put out
by the sun.' He shaded his eyes against the moonlight. 'An' there's a
loony dancin' in the middle of it all. Quite right. I'd dance too if I
wasn't so downheart.'

There pranced a Portent in the face of the moon--a huge and ragged
spirit of the waste, that flapped its wings from afar. It had risen
out of the earth; it was coming towards us, and its outline was never
twice the same. The toga, tablecloth, or dressing-gown, whatever the
creature wore, took a hundred shapes. Once it stopped on a
neighbouring mound and flung all its legs and arms to the winds.

'My, but that scarecrow 'as got 'em bad!' said Ortheris. 'Seems like
if 'e comes any furder we'll 'ave to argify with 'im.'

Learoyd raised himself from the dirt as a bull clears his flanks of
the wallow. And as a bull bellows, so he, after a short minute at
gaze, gave tongue to the stars.

'MULVAANEY! MULVAANEY! A-hoo!'

Oh then it was that we yelled, and the figure dipped into the hollow,
till, with a crash of rending grass, the lost one strode up to the
light of the fire, and disappeared to the waist in a wave of joyous
dogs! Then Learoyd and Ortheris gave greeting, bass and falsetto
together, both swallowing a lump in the throat.

[Illustration: There pranced a Portent in the fac