"Oh, you good soul!" cries the grateful mother, feeling her son's arms
and legs; "and you're just as done up as can be. Come in, you poor
young thing, and I'll give you a drink of Zoo to pull you round."

"No, thank you, I don't want anything. I am better now; but let me
help you with the boy. We had better get his things off, and wash the
wounds."

Together the two women tend the child. His leg is strained, not
broken, and they put him to bed and watch him till he falls into a
restless sleep.

Then their eyes meet, and the mother holds out her hand to Eleanor.

"God bless you!" she says; "if anything had happened to Tombo we should
have broken our hearts. He is our only child."

Eleanor has recounted the history of the accident, leaving her share in
the background, and making as light of it as possible.

She thinks, as she looks at the white woman, with her fair hair and
sandy eyelashes, that something in the face brings an indistinct memory
to her mind.

She glances curiously around the hut, adorned by the heads of animals.

"I must go," she says; "it is getting late."

"The boy is sleeping. I will walk home with you."

"No, stay by him. I shall be all right alone."

"They have shot a tiger, and will be all drunk in the village for a
week. You are different to me. I must come."

"Thank you," says Eleanor. "I shall enjoy your companionship. May I
ask your name?"

"Elizabeth Kachin. And yours?"

"Eleanor--Eleanor Quinton."

Mrs. Roche's eyes droop as she turns them away from the sleeping face
of that innocent child.

* Spirits.

CHAPTER XVI.

OH, LOVE! IN SUCH A WILDERNESS AS THIS.

Eleanor grows very fond of Elizabeth Kachin and her dusky son. Since
she rescued him that day from the trap Tombo thinks there is no one
like the beautiful Mrs. Quinton.

Big Tombo, his father, an educated man who has spent many years of his
life in England, also looks upon Eleanor with the same reverence and
admiration as little Tombo.

Carol makes fun of the sandy-haired woman wedded to a native, and
laughs at Eleanor for being friends with her.

"I have not so many friends that I can afford to pick or choose," she
says simply to Quinton, who is smoking in the verandah, his legs
crossed, and a graceful air of abandon in his attitude.

She looks lovingly at his long, slim foot, remembering how it attracted
her in old days.

"No, darling; I am afraid you must be getting bored to death