ds the tiger which crouched, growling softly, with its tail
sweeping the ground.

Did she hypnotise the brute, or did her supreme courage build an
invisible barrier between the two?

Who knows!

Anyway she calmly approached within five yards, raised her rifle, took
deliberate aim, and fired just as, with a hoarse-coughing roar, the
tiger sprang.

There was the dull thud of a bullet, a snarl, and the animal fell back
across the boy's body, twitching convulsively.

Without one moment's hesitation, while the rest of the party stood
helpless owing to her position, Leonie, letting fall her rifle and
drawing her revolver, walked right up to the writhing brute and fired
straight into the terrible mouth.

With one supreme effort the tiger reared itself on its hind legs, gave
a choking, strangled cough ending in a spurt of blood and froth which
drenched Leonie, and fell back dead; and the entire native staff,
shouting in wonder and joy, tore across the clearing and prostrated
themselves, in grateful layers around the girl's heavily booted feet.

CHAPTER XXXI

"For her house inclineth unto death!"--_The Bible_.

We lie beneath the mosquito net, we undress behind the purdah, we sit
on the verandah, or stroll in the compound; we dance, we ride, we eat,
we sleep, ever heedless of the eyes watching, and of the hidden form;
but above all of that relentless will which causes some of us
uncontrollably to do odd things at odd moments under the Indian stars,
to our subsequent disgust and wonderment.

Leonie, with Jan Cuxson behind her, stopped outside the temple door,
which, hanging upon one hinge, moved slowly to and fro in the night
breeze.

And at the side of the altar, in the black shadows of the doorway which
led to the secret places of the temple, a pock-marked native woman,
draped in an orange coloured _sari_ embroidered in silver, laid one
hand upon the priest's arm and pointed with the other.

"Behold the Sahib," she whispered with a snarl of hate at the corners
of her mouth, stained crimson with betel juice. "He who seeks her in
wife," she continued, pushing the _sari_ back from about her head so
that the thirteen silver rings she wore in her crumpled left ear
tinkled faintly, and her nose-ring of gold set with small but real
turquoise gleamed dully, "and once wedded she will return across the
Black Water. O father of the people, O wise one, I love her and thou
didst promise."

She suddenly beat her