moment he was hearing those
familiar evening sounds which no human ear can discern: the muttering
of the day-birds about to seek cover for the night. In the field at
the right of the road stood a lonely tree. It was covered with
brilliant scarlet leaves and blossoms, and justly the natives call it
the Flame of the Jungle. A flock of small birds were gyrating above it.

"Jah, jah, jah! Jah--jah--ja-a-a-h!" cried the parrot, imitating the
Burmese bell-gong that calls to prayer. Instantly he followed the call
with a shriek so piercing as to sting the ear of the man who was
carrying him.

"You little son-of-a-gun," he laughed; "where do you pack away all that
noise?"

There was a strange bond between the big yellow man and this little
green bird. The bird did not suspect it, but the man knew. The pluck,
the pugnacity and the individuality of the feathered comrade had been
an object lesson to the man, at a time when he had been on the point of
throwing up the fight.

"Jah, jah, jah! Jah--jah--ja-a-a-h!" The bird began its interminable
somersaults, pausing only to reach for the tantalizing finger of the
man, who laughed again as he withdrew the digit in time.

For six years he had carried the bird with him, through India and Burma
and Malacca, and not yet had he won a sign of surrender. There were
many scars on his forefingers. It was amazing. With one pressure of
his hand he could have crushed out the life of the bird, but over its
brave unconquerable spirit he had no power. And that is why he loved
it.

Far away in the past they had met. He remembered the day distinctly
and bitterly. He had been on the brink of self-destruction. Fever and
poverty and terrible loneliness had battered and beaten him flat into
the dust from which this time he had had no wish to rise. He had
walked out to the railway station at Jaipur to witness the arrival of
the tourist train from Ahmadabad. He wanted to see white men and white
women from his own country, though up to this day he had carefully
avoided them. (How he hated the English, with their cold-blooded
suspicion of all who were not island-born!) The natives surged about
the train, with brass-ware, antique articles of warfare, tiger-hunting
knives (accompanied by perennial fairy tales), skins and silks. There
were beggars, holy men, guides and fakirs.

Squatted in the dust before the door of a first-class carriage was a
solemn brown man, in turban and clout,