A year had gone by.  In the villages perched on the steep sides of the mountains the Bhuttia women rejoiced to know that the peace of the Borderland would never be broken again while the dread hand of a god lay on it.  And in their bamboo huts they tried to hush their little children with the mention of his name.  But the sturdy, naked babies had no fear of him.  For they all knew him; and he was kind and far less terrible than the gods and demons that the old lama showed them in the painted Wheel of Life sent him from Tibet.  Moreover, the white god’s wife was kinder even than he.  But that was because she was not a goddess.  Only a girl.

On the high hills, up above the villages, a couple stood.  No god and goddess:  just a man and a woman.  And the woman looked down past the huts, down to the great Terai Forest lying like a vast billowy sea of foliage far below them.  Then, as her husband’s arm stole round her, she turned her eyes from it and gazed into his and whispered: 

“I love it more than even you do.  For it gave you to me.”

A crashing in the clump of hill bamboos at their feet attracted their attention; and with a smile he pointed down to the great elephant with the single tusk who was dragging down the feathery plumes with his curving trunk.

But Noreen looked up at Dermot again and said: 

“I love you more than even Badshah does.”

And their lips met.

THE END

A Selection from the Catalogue of

G.P.  PUTNAM’S SONS

Complete Catalogues sent on application

Rosa Mundi

By

Ethel M. Dell

Author of

“The Top of the World,” “The Lamp in the Desert,” “The Way of an Eagle,” etc.

Some of the finest stories ever written by Miss Ethel M. Dell are gathered together in this volume.  They are arresting, thrilling, tense with throbbing life, and of absorbing interest; they tell of romantic and passionate episodes in many lands—­in the hill districts of India, in the burning heart of Africa, and in the colonial bush country.  The author’s vivid and vigorous style, skillfully developed plots, her intensely sympathetic treatment of emotional scenes, and the strongly delineated character sketches, are typical of Ethel M. Dell’s best work, and this volume will be found to contain some of the most remarkable of her shorter romances.

G.P.  Putnam’s Sons

New York London

Prairie Flowers

By

James B. Hendryx

Author of “The Texan”

When Tex Benton said he’d do a thing, he did it, as readers of “The Texan” will affirm.  So when, after a year of drought, he announced his purpose of going to town to get thoroughly “lickered up,” unsuspecting Timber City was elected as the stage for a most thorough and sensational orgy.