.

"The cubs were hungry," Carlin had said.

Still they did not leave the door-way of the cobra room. Skag saw that
something more was coming. Once more he was drawn to the mystery of
the holy men by her tale:

". . . I was a little girl. It was here in Hurda. . . . I had strayed
away into the open jungle, not toward our monkey glen, but farther
south where the trees were scarce. . . . Of course I shouldn't have
been alone--"

Skag was staring straight at one of the cobras. Carlin turned and
placed her hand upon his sleeve. She knew that he was fighting that
old dread that had come upon him on the day of the elephant pursuit--a
dread well enough founded, grounded upon many tragedies--of the
pitfalls and menaces and miasmas of old Mother India; the infinite
variety, craft, swiftness and violence of her deaths. (White hands
were certainly clinging to Skag.) One's vast careless attitudes to
life are fearfully complicated when life means two and not the self
alone.

"This isn't a horrible story--" she said.

He cleared his throat; then laughed.

"I'll get past all this," he muttered. "Go on, Carlin--"

"I heard a step behind," she said. "It was my uncle--the most
wonderful of many uncles. I have not seen him since that day. He is a
little older than my eldest brother--possibly thirty at that
time--tall, dark, silent; a frowning man, but not to me. Even then he
belonged to one of the little brotherhoods of the Vindhas--lesser, you
know, in relation to the great brotherhoods of the Himalayas. In fact
it is from the Vindha Hills that they move on when they are called--up
the great way and beyond--"

Another of Carlin's themes--always the dream in her mind of climbing to
the heights.

"We walked on together through one of the paths--some time I will show
you. It was not like anyone else coming to find a child, or coming to
take it back. A most memorable thing to a little one, this elaborate
consideration from a great man. He did not suggest that I turn. He
made himself over to my adventure."

She waited for Skag to see more of the picture from her mind than her
words suggested:

"Ahead on the path--leisurely, like nothing else, a cobra reared, a
king cobra, as great as any of these. He barred our way. There comes
a penetrating cold from the first glance. It's like an icy lance to
the centre of consciousness. Then I felt the man's presence beside me.
My confidence was that which only a chi