grip about his body as Nut Kut held him high. It
looked as if he were being crushed. But when he got his hands on the
trunk again, he laughed. Now Nut Kut lowered him quickly--holding him
before his own red eyes. The touch of the elephant was the touch of a
master. But the eyes of the man were mastership itself.

. . . They were just so, when Ram Yaksahn--with a ghastly haggard
face--lurched from behind Nut Kut, fairly sobbing. Nut Kut jerked Skag
tight (it was like a hug), released him deliberately and turning, put
his own sick mahout up on his own neck, with a movement that looked
like a flick of his trunk.

"Now easy, Majesty, go easy with me--indeed I am very ill!" Ram Yaksahn
protested in plaintive tones, as Nut Kut wheeled away with him.

Seeing Horace in the hands of a strange native--and certainly
recovering--Skag looked away toward Hurda and wonder aloud if Nut Kut
would be punished. It was the master-mahout who answered him:

"Nay, Sahib. He has done no harm."

"I'd like to have a chance with him," said Skag.

The master-mahout smiled--a mystic-musical smile, like his voice.

"I have come from my place for a moment," he said, looking intently
into Skag's eyes, "for a purpose. We have heard of you, Son-of-Power.
The wisdom of the ages is to know the instant when to act; not too
late, not too soon. We have seen you work this day; and the fame of it
will go before and after you, the length and breadth of India--among
the mahouts."

He turned, pointing toward the elephant regiment. Many mahouts were
shouting something together; their right hands flung high.

"It is right for you to know," the master-mahout went on, "that mahouts
are a kind of men by themselves apart. Their knowledges are of
elephants--sealed--not open to those from without. Yet I speak as one
of my kind, being qualified, if in the future you have need of anything
from us--it is yours."

And without giving Skag a chance to answer him, but with a stately
gesture of salaam, the master-mahout had returned to his place and was
calling another elephant.

Skag turned toward Horace, who was drawing a fine looking
native forward by the hand. The boy spoke with repressed
excitement--otherwise showing no sign of Nut Kut's strenuous handling:

"Skag Sahib, I want you to know Kudrat Sharif, the malik of the Chief
Commissioner's elephant stockades. It is not known, you
understand--meaning my father--but the malik has always been ve