, but
none looked at the ford itself. And the sound of the rifle seemed to
come from thence."

"But why did he not call out?"

"Dead men could not call, but at least ye might have frightened Nahara
from the body. But perhaps he is wounded, unable to speak, and lies
there still--"

But Puran had found another listener for his story, and speedily
forgot the boy. He hurried over to another of the villagers, Khusru
the hunter.

"Did no one look by the ford?" he asked, almost sobbing. "For that is
the place he had gone."

The native's eyes seemed to light. "_Hai_, little one, thou hast
thought of what thy elders had forgotten. There is level land there,
and clear. And I shall go at the first ray of dawn--"

"But not to-night, Khusru--?"

"Nay, little sinner! Wouldst thou have me torn to pieces?"

Lastly Little Shikara went to his own father, and they had a moment's
talk at the outskirts of the throng. But the answer was nay--just the
same. Even his brave father would not go to look for the body until
daylight came. The boy felt his skin prickling all over.

"But perhaps he is only wounded--and left to die. If I go and return
with word that he is there, wilt thou take others and go out and bring
him in?"

"_Thou_ goest!" His father broke forth in a great roar of laughter.
"Why, thou little hawk! One would think that thou wert a hunter of
tigers thyself!"

Little Shikara blushed beneath the laughter. For he was a very boyish
little boy in most ways. But it seemed to him that his sturdy young
heart was about to break open from bitterness. All of them agreed that
Warwick Sahib, perhaps wounded and dying, might be lying by the ford,
but none of them would venture forth to see. Unknowing, he was
beholding the expression of a certain age-old trait of human nature.
Men do not fight ably in the dark. They need their eyes, and they
particularly require a definite object to give them determination. If
these villagers knew for certain that the Protector of the Poor lay
wounded or even dead beside the ford, they would have rallied bravely,
encouraged one another with words and oaths, and gone forth to rescue
him; but they wholly lacked the courage to venture again into the
jungle on any such blind quest as Little Shikara suggested.

But the boy's father should not have laughed. He should have
remembered the few past occasions when his straight little son had
gone into the jungle alone; and that remembrance should have si