there's a police warrant out for him. Hartley spoke of it to-night. She
will be gone before morning, and a good job for her."

The throbbing hot night wore on, and July the 29th became July the 30th,
and Mangadone awoke to a fierce, tearing thunder-storm that boomed and
crashed and wore itself out in torrents of heavy rain.




II

TELLS THE STORY OF A LOSS, AND HOW IT AFFECTED THE REV. FRANCIS HEATH


Half-way up a low hill rise on the far side of the Mangadone Cantonment
was the bungalow of Hartley, Head of the Police. It was a tidy,
well-kept house, the house of a bachelor who had an eye to things
himself and who was well served by competent servants. Hartley had
reached the age of forty without having married, and he was solid of
build and entirely sensible and practical of mind. He was spoken of as
"sound" and "capable," for it is thus we describe men with a word, and
his mind was adjusted so as to give room for only one idea at a time. He
was convinced that he was tactful to a fault, nothing had ever shaken
him in this belief, and his personal courage was the courage of the
British lion. Hartley was popular and on friendly and confidential terms
with everybody.

Mangadone, like most other places in the East, was as full of cliques as
a book is of words, but Hartley regarded them not at all. Popularity was