eager discussion; some were contradicting the old man's assertion, others were asking questions none of them could answer. Had any one heard the child cry? No, not even the coolies in the veranda. Why, they kept on fanning the empty cot! The child had been spirited away in its sleep. Only a clever old wolf could have done it.

"That scratch on its shoulder—was the blood dropping from it?" asked Gobur, almost breathlessly. "Wherever a drop has fallen you will find the black ants covering it by this time. Run and look."

Up sprang Mr. Desborough's own syce, followed by half-a-dozen others, gesticulating and talking all at once at the top of their voices.

"Stop that row!" exclaimed Mr. Desborough, who was bending over the cot of his other little boy, trying to prepare its mother for the dread disclosure.

Out went the major. "Two wolves indeed! Preposterous!"

The syce pointed to the patches of tiny black ants which he had found along the veranda and across the grass, as Gobur expected.

"Sahib," he asked suggestively, "is it from the wolf or from the child?"

"From the child," answered the major, examining the rhododendron bushes, where the crushed flowers and broken stalks were thickly covered by the busy insects.

Both believed they had found the fatal spot to which the wolf had retreated.

Oliver had gone up to the fountain on the lawn, and was deluging his bandaged arm.

"Go indoors, my boy, and rest," said the major, as he passed him, "or you will suffer for it with that arm."

Oliver walked slowly on towards the veranda, examining for himself the little black patches that marked the trail of the wolf. He traced its course from the rhododendron to the window of the bathroom, then he discovered a second trail leading from the veranda to the pool.

He pointed it out to the gardener, who was returning.

"Wasn't old Gobur right after all?"

The punkah coolie joined them. He was certain he must have heard the snap of the wolf's teeth if he were behind that bush. For a wolf, they both asserted, bites with a snap, and clashes its teeth with as much noise as a steel trap. No; it had carried off the child alive to its lair.

Oliver bounded up the steps of the veranda, and ran into the hall. Kathleen was flitting restlessly from room to room.

"Be comforted, dear!" he exclaimed; "your brother is not killed. We may find him yet, alive in the jungle."