d up under his body. He had been unwell for some days with some kind
of native fever, and I suppose he fainted. These mangrove swamps are very
unwholesome. Every drop of blood, they say, was taken out of him by the
jungle-leeches. It may be that very plant that cost him his life to
obtain."

"I think none the better of it for that."

"Men must work though women may weep," said Wedderburn with profound
gravity.

"Fancy dying away from every comfort in a nasty swamp! Fancy being ill of
fever with nothing to take but chlorodyne and quinine--if men were left to
themselves they would live on chlorodyne and quinine--and no one round you
but horrible natives! They say the Andaman islanders are most disgusting
wretches--and, anyhow, they can scarcely make good nurses, not having the
necessary training. And just for people in England to have orchids!"

"I don't suppose it was comfortable, but some men seem to enjoy that kind
of thing," said Wedderburn. "Anyhow, the natives of his party were
sufficiently civilised to take care of all his collection until his
colleague, who was an ornithologist, came back again from the interior;
though they could not tell the species of the orchid, and had let it
wither. And it makes these things more interesting."

"It makes them disgusting. I should be afraid of some of the malaria
clinging to them. And just think, there has been a dead body lying across
that ugly thing! I never thought of that before. There! I declare I cannot
eat another mouthful of dinner."

"I will take them off the table if you like, and put them in the
window-seat. I can see them just as well there."

The next few days he was indeed singularly busy in his steamy little
hothouse, fussing about with charcoal, lumps of teak, moss, and all the
other mysteries of the orchid cultivator. He considered he was having a
wonderfully eventful time. In the evening he would talk about these new
orchids to his friends, and over and over again he reverted to his
expectation of something strange.

Several of the Vandas and the Dendrobium died under his care, but
presently the strange orchid began to show signs of life. He was
delighted, and took his housekeeper right away from jam-making to see it
at once, directly he made the discovery.

"That is a bud," he said, "and presently there will be a lot of leaves
there, and those little things coming out here are aerial rootlets."

"They look to me like little white fingers poking o