The man whose unbalanced actions had made life complicated for us while he lived with us, who had doubled our work and halved our joys; this intruder from another sphere at the bidding of an

we were not. The man was a sahib; he was of our blood; he was one of us; aye-put it fairly and squarely, we'd grown damn fond of the weird and whimsical old juggins, and not one of us but would gladly have cut off his right hand to see him safely back among us, and late once more for dinner.

The days grew to a week, the week to ten days. It neared a fortnight since he had gone, and we could stand it no longer. Sitting apart, we lapsed into the shepherd tongue of the corries, lest eavesdroppers should overhear, and took counsel. But got no nearer solution.

Next morning, rumours trickled in. The old Subadar was the first; tentatively and cautiously, as of one intruding on a family misfortune. Was it true that Grum Sahib was away, was lost? Had we by chance heard-hem, hem-no matter." "Wha's that, Subadar Sahib ? "Oh, a mere nothing; these junglis tattle... can't be anything in it. Grum Sahib. . . ." By ten o'clock it grew to an insistent rumour. By mid-day it was fairly and squarely out, and the local gam, now in hand

. .

cuffs in the Quarter Guard, had, under considerable pressure, admitted that he had known it for two days. Grant had been murdered; done in.

The truth, and the whole truth, came to us in bits, then and much later, by a dozen devious and independent ways; and as fast as the bits came to us, SO we passed them on swiftly to Pardon-Howe, who waited, like an electric storm in leash, on the southern horizon. So the whole dismal story might as well be told now. Poor old Grant.

To begin with, one must know a peculiar fact about the junglis. Illiterate, unwilling to trust one another with verbal messages, they had evolved a kind of message-letter in their communications. A few grains of rice, a fragment of canematting, a toucan feather, and five pebbles, all done up in a

small basket and sent from one gam to another, would be sufficient to bid him to a dinner (rice) inside the sender's house (cane matting) at five hours past noon on the following day, and it would be a big show involving dressiness (toucan's feather). An arrow-head, a piece of the wood from which canoes are made, a bit of bootlace or anything identifiable with the white man, and an indeterminate lump of clay as a question mark, would read, "War on the white men in the stockade near the river bank; what do you think of it? Answer, two arrow heads, "Rather!" Or half an arrowhead, "Bide a wee!" All

things red mean blood or bloodshed, or an instant call to arms; all things black, death, or any form of emphasised finality. And so it goes on.

Well, as exactly as we could gather it, what had happened was this. Grant, with Ranbir carrying the kit for both of them, and the Erg-one imagines, carrying nothing at all, met on the main northward path out of view of the stockade. Grant had probably planned it all, and shaped up the supplies and kit. From this point they went due north at a fair speed till they reached the limits of what we called Administered Territory, and thereafter steadily into into the northward mountains. Grant probably hoped for all sorts of interesting information by frankly casting loose from our area and diving straight into

the unknown. Possibly he misjudged us enough to think that our chaperonage was a deliberate obstacle put in the way of his researches.

In four days they seem to have covered what was a fair six marches, and reached a large village called Mu Fereang, where Grant walked boldly up to the gam's house, made a leg, and uttered conciliatory noises, and settled in. Jove, the man had a nerve. Not one of us would have cared to do a thing like that. The gam, utterly flabbergasted, seems to have done nothing. The arrival was discussed heatedly in the village parliament, but the situation seemed absolutely without precedent, and nothing came of the talking.

Next day Grant, wise enough not to show himself abroad in the village, started on the gam with his interminable questions. He had picked up a good deal of the jungli speech during his stay at Labêk, and could make himself understood. He seems to have avoided the worst snags of his earlier researches, but there must have been enough in the remainder to drive the gam and his entourage, from day to day, into sullenness, hostility, and finally, a smouldering rage. Who was this confounded white man who plagued them for ever with his pestilent curiosity? What the .. Why the ? The junglis, as ever, dissembled, and Grant knew less and less. of the volcano on which he sat. Word began to go abroad that

slept they searched his kit, found the long official envelope, panicked, and killed him.

session.

About this time Grant began to run short of stores. The cheek of his own outbreaking must have lost its novelty, and the situation normalised by the apparent absence of search or excitement at his departure. Anyhow, quite calmly, he took a sheet of official foolscap (we saw it later) and wrote his amazing request for jam, marmalade, and potted meat. A stickler for the niceties of correspondence, he enclosed it in a long official envelope, gummed it down, and sealed it with a liberal dose of unnecessary seal ing-wax. He gave it to Ranbir, and told him to make a beeline for Labêk and bring back what was wanted.

Ranbir for once lost his way, wandered far, and fetched up at an unknown village. There they took him in and fed him (he had an insinuating way with him, had Ranbir), and gave him liberally of the local barleybrew, he being as near exhausted as makes no matter. His tongue was loosened, and cheerily he descanted on the importance of his sahib and the weighty news which he carried-a bit of unnecessary bombast which cost him his

Now, in those days-and it was long ago-England was in mourning for a sovereign recently dead; and all official envelopes, in addition to the leaded black type of "On His Majesty's Service," bore a heavy black border. The junglis stared at Grant's innocent letter. There it was; black, black, lots of it. Turn it over. Great red blobs-red for blood, red for a call to arms! Everything they had heard of the strange sahib sitting in Mu Fereang now bore sinister confirmation. There would be troops, and fighting, bloodshed, and thereafter a numbering of the people. And taxes.

Before poor Ranbir's body had even been decently hustled into the jungle, runners were off at top speed. Dawn found Grant, surprised in his sleep, bound hand and foot, and doubly bound in swathe on swathe of tough cane.

The Erg, poor worm, raised a silly outcry; they seem to have swiped him out of existence, as you would a fly.

Things moved quickly. For once there was no chinwag. Bomlaw the gam and Lapok the wizard took Grant in charge. A mob of grimy savages grabbed him and carried him at a run, shoulder high, to the dumbang, the village place of sacrifice, beneath the big Rami tree in the sacred grove near-by, the place where they made their

fices to the nats of the tree, a time-worn fowl, a jungle rat, or what-not.

They untied his legs and stood him up; the villagers retired, and left the three of them.

Grant, dry-as-dust savant, most superfluous highbrow in the street-arab pigsty of jungledom, was clean grit all though. He stood there and faced it out, a dingy and a lonely death. It is good to think of him, at the last, holding up his head and looking it all fairly and squarely in the face, a Highlander and a gentleman. Grant, a-Grant! Stand fast, Craigellachie!

As I was saying, the gam of Labêk village lay, in handcuffs, in the Quarter Guard of Labêk stockade. He had known of it for two days, and had said nothing.

And even now we could get nothing definite out of him. The sahib had been killed. When? Ki - jané. Where? Ki-jané. BY WHOM, damn you? Ki-jané; somewhere up north, not us. How far? Who did it? . . . I'm afraid we lost our tempers.

Rotten thing to do, because it set loose just that very electricity which it was allimportant to suppress. The men caught it from us, and for an angry half-hour there was pandemonium.

Crooke dictated the bare information and crisp orders, copied to half a dozen copies,

and west, to the other stockades; and a duplicate to Pardon-Howe saying what he was doing. The movable column from each stockade, ever kept in fire-brigade readiness; a driving, sweeping, converging movement from all sides, northwards. Search everywhere; go far, go fast; search every village, every yard of jungle; put to the keenest question every soul found; burn nothing; kill nobody; but search for, and find quickly, the vil-· lage and the men who killed Grant Sahib.

In twenty minutes the Labêk column was off. We passed through the village; deserted; every soul had fled to the jungle, and everything living and movable with them, save only the Rhode Island Red, safely fenced in, as we found in several other places, against the mischief he might do. (Lord, what would they have done with the patent reversible Frizzles if they'd had them!) The desertion was a bad look-out for the future; where were we to get people to question?

By afternoon every movable column was out, and on a hundred mile front such a search went forward as the jungle had never known. Each column broke up into squads, and each squad fanned out on its broadest practicable front. Up hill, down dale, through every thicket and tangle we searched and ferreted, white man and Gurkha; all silent, grim, and intensely set on

finding anything, anybody, who could be made to give up the secret of Grant's end. Paths were negligible, except that they led to villages; and every village, as we came to it, lay empty and deserted as a last year's bird's nest.

At nightfall we halted and bivouacked on an irregular predetermined front. No need for concealment; we had the gloves off to them now; but the grim silence persisted, and all went about their jobs in soft footfall and whispers. I pity the jungli who had the temerity to attack one of those groups just then; he would have been torn to shreds.

Next morning before daylight, off again. It is easy to describe jungle as dense, as gloomy, rain-soaked, all but impassable; but until our language is enriched with verbs and adjectives still to come, it will be impossible to describe the frank solidity of that tangled mass. The Gurks melted through it, silently, as only born jungle-men can, and the white officers followed strenuously in their trail; led, not leading. It was inevitable that patches and bolt-holes should be left, where every

square yard of tangle was cover for a grown man; and yet, as near as might humanly be, we sorted that jungle as with a comb, and kept on sorting it. The very sambhar and barking-deer fled before us, as before a line of beaters.

We climbed, we scrambled, we wedged our way through, over, and under countless obstacles; self-contained in all necessaries; silent, and growing more grim and more determined as, day by day, we drove northward, and, night by night, we bivouacked and sent back word of our unsuccess.

And as the Labêk column searched, so did the columns from Mu Plos, 'Srosheng, Amili, and a dozen others, all on the one same broad front, driving ever northward. Silent, sodden, leech-bitten, and with a growing vindictiveness filling us all. . .

Where the junglis went to, I know not. They must have fled northwards by families, by droves, and by tribes. For just once, the Fear of God stalked gaunt and grim through their sodden wilderness, and, hushed and hurrying, the naked villains forbore to chatter and slunk away before it.

Pardon-Howe sat at River Headquarters, deliberately refusing to butt in. He trusted us all, and, at best, could only have been one more searcher.

He reported briefly enough,

the finality of Grant's loss, and the steps taken to find his slayers. Thereafter, silence; not to be broken by the indescribable sequel to which he was treated, on reams of paper,