life."

"I knew it would be something like that," said Kathlyn. "Go on. Tell
it all."

The colonel had recourse to his pipe again. He smoked on till the coal
was dead. The girls waited patiently. They knew that his silence
meant that he was only marshaling the events in their chronological
order.

"The king was a kindly old chap, simple, yet shrewd, and with that
slumbrous oriental way of accomplishing his ends, despite all
obstacles. Underneath this apparent simplicity I discovered a grim
sardonic humor. Trust the Oriental for always having that packed away
under his bewildering diplomacy. He was all alone in the world. He
was one of those rare eastern potentates who wasn't hampered by
parasitical relatives. By George, the old boy could have given his
kingdom, lock, stock and barrel, to the British government, and no one
could say him nay. There was a good deal of rumor the last time I was
there that when he died England would step in actually. The old boy
gave me leave to come and go as I pleased, to hunt where and how I
would. I had a mighty fine collection. There are tigers and leopards
and bears and fat old pythons, forty feet long. Of course, it isn't
the tiger country that Central India is, but the brutes you find are
bigger. I have about sixty beasts there now, and that's mainly why I'm
going back. Want to clean it up and ship 'em to Hamburg, where I've a
large standing order. I'm going first to Ceylon, for some elephants."

The colonel knocked the ash from his pipe. "The old boy used to do
some trapping himself, and whenever he'd catch a fine specimen he'd