he threw his arms round Lord John's
legs, and rested his face upon them.

"By George!" cried our peer, pulling at his moustache in great
perplexity, "I say--what the deuce are we to do with these people? Get
up, little chappie, and take your face off my boots."

Summerlee was sitting up and stuffing some tobacco into his old briar.

"We've got to see them safe," said he. "You've pulled us all out of
the jaws of death. My word! it was a good bit of work!"

"Admirable!" cried Challenger. "Admirable! Not only we as
individuals, but European science collectively, owe you a deep debt of
gratitude for what you have done. I do not hesitate to say that the
disappearance of Professor Summerlee and myself would have left an
appreciable gap in modern zoological history. Our young friend here
and you have done most excellently well."

He beamed at us with the old paternal smile, but European science would
have been somewhat amazed could they have seen their chosen child, the
hope of the future, with his tangled, unkempt head, his bare chest, and
his tattered clothes. He had one of the meat-tins between his knees,
and sat with a large piece of cold Australian mutton between his
fingers. The Indian looked up at him, and then, with a little yelp,
cringed to the ground and clung to Lord John's leg.

"Don't you be scared, my bonnie boy," said Lord John, patting the
matted head in front of him. "He can't stick your appearance,
Challenger; and, by George! I don't wonder. All right, little chap,
he's only a human, just the same as the rest of us."

"Really, sir!" cried the Professor.

"Well, it's lucky for you, Challenger, that you ARE a little out of the
ordinary. If you hadn't been so like the king----"

"Upon my word, Lord John, you allow yourself great latitude."

"Well, it's a fact."

"I beg, sir, that you will change the subject. Your remarks are
irrelevant and unintelligible. The question before us is what are we
to do with these Indians? The obvious thing is to escort them home, if
we knew where their home was."

"There is no difficulty about that," said I. "They live in the caves
on the other side of the central lake."

"Our young friend here knows where they live. I gather that it is some
distance."

"A good twenty miles," said I.

Summerlee gave a groan.

"I, for one, could never get there. Surely I hear those brutes still
howling upon our track."

As he spoke, from the dark recesses of t