VENGEANCE OF JHAPOO THE GOND 247 



A chuckle caused me to glance round. A short way 

 behind me to my right sat the old gentleman whom 

 I had lately so unpleasantly encountered. This time he 

 appeared to be in better temper. 



" Awkward place to land 'em," he observed. 



I nodded. 



" That's an Indian cheroot you're smoking ? " he suddenly 

 said. 



" It is," was my laconic response. 



" Smoking it right down to the end too ! " he soliloquised. 

 "Home on leave?" 



I looked at him again. Why, of course ; he was a 

 retired "Anglo-Indian." "The Colonel," Frazer had called 

 him, had he not? I wondered how I had been so blind. 

 His manner, his hard-bitten looks, the brown and corru- 

 gated appearance of the back of his neck 



"Yes!" I allowed, mollified all of a sudden, so instan- 

 taneous in its effect is that freemasonry that tends to 

 draw together those who have sojourned in the East. 

 " Have one, sir ? " I added, fishing out my cheroot-case 

 and offering it him. And so our acquaintance began. 



It was not long after this that at the invitation of the 

 old Colonel whom I will call Mulligatawny I found my 

 kit transferred from Frazer's inn to the extremely comfort- 

 able shooting-lodge in which my new-found friend was in 

 the habit of spending a large portion of the year. " I was 

 always a jungle-wallah," he said, with a deprecatory smile, 

 " and I find that a run down to town now and then, or a 

 short visit to the few other old fogeys of my time who 

 have settled in England, is quite enough for me. You 

 may call this my home!" and he waved a bronzed and 

 freckled old hand round at the dark hills, the house in its 

 wooded and beautifully kept grounds, and the placid head 

 of the sea-loch reflecting the dark fir trees, where his little 

 steam launch lay moored to her buoy. 



I will not linger over a description of the extremely 



