making a hollow beating sound among the trees near at hand.
TUNK. . . . TUNK, and out of the dry grass came a twittering.

There was a green light in the east that grew stronger, and the
stars after their magnitudes were dissolving in the blue; only a few
remained faintly visible. The sound of birds increased. Through
the trees he saw towering up a great mauve thing like the back of a
monster,--but that was nonsense, it was the crest of a steep
hillside covered with woods of teak.

He stood up and stretched himself, and wondered whether he had
dreamed of a tiger.

He tried to remember and retrace the course of his over-night
wanderings.

A flight of emerald parakeets tore screaming through the trees, and
then far away uphill he heard the creaking of a cart.

He followed the hint of a footmark, and went back up the glen slowly
and thoughtfully.

Presently he came to a familiar place, a group of trees, a sheet of
water, and the ruins of an old embankment. It was the ancient tank
of his overnight encounter. The pool of his dream?

With doubt still in his mind, he walked round its margin to the
sandy level beyond, and cast about and sought intently, and at last
found, and then found clearly, imposed upon the tracks of several
sorts of deer and the footprints of many biggish birds, first the