n it up again as a means to get
somewhere.

It was Carlin who helped Skag to a deep understanding of her old
friend, the Scot, and the famous bungalow in which he lived.

"It is 'papered' and carpeted and curtained with the skins of animals,
but you would have to know what the taking of those skins has meant to
the natives and how different it is from the usual hunter-man's house.
The M'Cord bungalow is a book of man-eater tales--with leather leaves."

Carlin, who had been one of M'Cord's favourites since she was a child,
saw the man with the magic of the native standpoint upon him. . . .
With all its richness there was nothing of the effect of the
taxidermist's shop about the place. Altogether the finest private set
of gun-racks Skag had looked upon was in the dim front hall. Bhanah
and Nels had a comfortable lodge to themselves, and there was a tiny
summerhouse at the far end of the lawn that had been an ideal of
Carlin's when she was small. The playhouse had but one door, which was
turned modestly away from the great Highway. It was vined and partly
sequestered in garden growths, its threshold to the west. The Scottish
bachelor had turned this little house over to the child Carlin years
ago, as eagerly as his entire establishment now. Yet the woman was no
less partial to the playhouse than the child had been.

. . . They hardly saw the Scot. In fact it was only a moment in the
station oval. Skag looked into a grey eye that seemed so steady as to
have a life all its own and apart, in the midst of a weathered
countenance both kindly and grim. . . . There was a tiny locked room
on the south side of the bungalow, vividly sunlit--a room which in
itself formed a cabinet for mounted cobras--eight or ten specimens with
marvellous bodies and patchy-looking heads. . . . The place was
heavily glazed, but not with windows that opened. Skag caught the hint
before Carlin spoke--that the display might have a queer attraction for
cobras that had not suffered the art of the taxidermist.

Skag turned to the girl as they stood together at the low heavy door,
leading into the library. Something in her face held him
utterly--something of wisdom, something of dread--if one could, imagine
a fear founded on knowledge. . . . A brilliant mid-afternoon. Bhanah
and Nels had gone to the stockades. Since the chase and rescue of
Carlin, Nels and the young elephant Gunpat Rao were becoming
friends--peculiar dignities and untella