water-jars which stood before it, and followed the child into the sleeping-room. Her unerring scent guided her to the cot where Carl lay tossing. He had thrown off the thin covering, and was fighting away the mosquito-net which enveloped his cot. She seized the child in her teeth, and was over the purdah with a bound.

Kathleen's wild shriek of terror called back the ayah.

The first fault gray of the summer twilight entered with her, and rested on Kathleen's long fair hair, but the empty bed in the other corner was still in shadow.

"Carl! Carl!" gasped Kathleen, and fainted in her nurse's arms.

The hubbub that arose among the coolies who were sleeping in the veranda, the frantic cries of "Sahib! sahib!" brought Mr. Desborough to the scene of dismay.

He had reloaded his gun, and snatched it up as he came, out of all patience at the ill-timed noise, when he had enjoined silence on every one whilst his darling boy was sleeping at last—a sleep which, undisturbed, meant life.

Seeing nothing to account for the consternation among his servants, he was on the point of refusing to listen to their entreaty.

"Shoot, sahib, shoot! a booraba by the nursery!"

"A booraba—a wolf!" he repeated, discharging his gun into the air with the rapidity of lightning, as anger changed to fear.

"Unloose the dogs!" he cried, preparing to give it chase, as his keen eye detected a break in the bushes of the garden, and the trampled heads of the flowers, which marked the track of the wolf. He knew very well that not one of his Hindu servants would dare to kill it, even if they had the chance. It was a matter of conscience with them. It was a thing they would not, dare not do, under any circumstances; but they flew like the wind to obey his commands.

The hounds came bounding round him, and were soon on the trail of their midnight visitor. They scented the wolf to the edge of the pool, and then paused at fault, poking with their noses among the water-lilies, and looking round at their master with short, angry barks.

Evidently the wolf had once more taken to the water, and the scent was lost. Mr. Desborough saw something moving on the other side of the pool, among the reeds and grasses.

He quickly readjusted the barrel of his gun, and was preparing to fire, when his chuprassie, the Hindu servant who carried messages in the day and watched the premises at night, caught his arm, exclaiming, "No, no, sahib! no shoot booraba."

Mr. Desborough shook him off angrily, and levelled his gun.

"Shoot booraba, shoot baby!" cried out another of his servants, who had just overtaken him. The poor fellow was trembling like a leaf.—-"Come to the beebee, Kathleen!" he entreated. "Come quickly!"

The truth flashed upon the father's mind—the wolf had already entered his nursery. He rushed to his wife's tent. His servants stopped him.

"The mem-sahib" (for so they called their mistress)—"the mem-sahib knows nothing yet. Spare her till we are sure."

One stride, and Mr. Desborough was over the veranda railing, parting the chintz curtains of the nursery purdah. The ayah threw herself at his feet, and began to tear her hair.

Now Mr. Desborough knew very well that his black servants exaggerated dreadfully. Their excited imaginations magnified everything. It is the way in the East, and a bad way it is. Having had two or three false alarms, he never believed more than half they told him. Could he believe them now? "Where is Kathleen?" he demanded sternly.

In another minute Kathleen's face was buried on his shoulder, as she sobbed out her piteous story. "A dog, papa—a huge, horrid, lean, lank dog—rushed out of the bathroom, and ran away with Carl."

CHAPTER II.

IN PURSUIT.

It was all too true. The punkah coolie was fanning an empty cot—the child was gone.

With Kathleen fainting in her lap, even the ayah had not missed poor Carl in the moment of her return. It was but a moment ere the alarm was raised, yet the wolf had carried off her prey.

Charging the servants on no account to let the mother discover that her boy was missing, until he returned, Mr. Desborough started in pursuit.

Like most English gentlemen in India, he was a keen sportsman, and loved to hunt the wild hogs in the bamboo swamps, with a party of his friends, and plenty of native trackers and beaters to find the game and drive it out of the thickets.

But he dare not wait to call his friends to his help. He started forth alone with his coolies, to find which way the wolf had gone.

Tall trees were growing on either side of the high-road, upon which his gate opened. A broad ditch behind them drained the road in the rainy season, when floods arose so easily. It was many feet deep; and now the water ran low between its banks, dried up by the great heat. The jackal pack had retired with the growing daylight; the tiger had slunk away before the rising sun. Well might Mr. Desborough shudder and turn away from the remnants of the dead buffalo, as he trembled for the fate of his child. The country all around him was well cultivated. Rice and dall (another kind of grain much grown by the Hindu villagers) covered large fields along the course of the stream. They were interspersed by clumps of trees and groves of date-palms growing amidst patches of jungle and tangle.

But the increasing heat had reduced the watercourse to a succession of glistening pools, connected by a muddy ditch.

Already the hounds were busy among the fringe of bushes which overhung its margin. Mr. Desborough mounted his horse, and galloped after them, with the broad white hat belonging to the lost child in his hand.

He soon came up with the dogs, and whistling them to his side, he leaned down from his saddle, and made them smell the hat and sun-veil (or puggaree) little Carl had worn the evening before.

They sniffed it well over, looked up in their master's face with their keen, intelligent eyes, and started once again in swift pursuit.

They had passed the closed gates of the indigo factory, but encountered one or two of the native workers there, who had risen with the sun, and were watering their fields and gardens before the business of the day began. The district was studded with wells. The water was drawn by bullocks into huge skins.

But they left their skins on the brink of the well, and joined the servants, who were throwing stones among the bushes, and howling with all their might, to make the wolf show.

The noise brought out old Gobur from his little homestead by the riverside. Mr. Desborough paused by the bamboo paling which surrounded the little enclosure, which was neither yard nor garden, but partly both. He knew the aged Hindu had been a chakoo, or look-out, in his prime. The different hunting-parties in the neighbourhood used to hire Gobur to go before them into the jungle, to watch which way the wild beasts were