Wargrave was anxious to hear more of this girl, in whom it appeared to him Burke was very much interested; but Colonel Dermot broke in: 

“Talking of orders, have you any for the butcher’s man, Noreen?” he asked, smiling at his wife.

“Yes, dear; will you please bring me a khakur and some jungle fowl?  And if you can manage it a brace of Kalej pheasants,” said the good housewife seriously.

“Well, Wargrave, we’ve both got our orders and know what to bring back from the jungle,” said the Colonel, turning to Frank, who was sitting beside him.  Then the conversation between them drifted into sporting channels until all adjourned outside for coffee on the verandah.

Next afternoon the subaltern, passing down the road, was hailed from the Dermots’ garden by an imperious small lady with golden curls and big blue bows and ordered to play with her.  Her brother and Badshah had to join in the game, too.  Frank, chasing the dainty mite round and round the elephant, began to think himself in the Garden of Eden.

But that same evening he found that his Himalayan Paradise was not without its serpent.  The three officers of the detachment were seated at dinner on the Mess verandah, Major Hunt with his back to the rough stone wall of the building.  A swinging oil lamp with a metal shade threw the light downward and left the ceiling and upper part of the wall in shadow.

When dinner was ended the Commandant, lighting a cheerot, tilted his chair on its back legs until his head nearly touched the wall.  Frank, talking to him, chanced to look up at the roof.  He stared into the shadows for a moment, then, suddenly grasping the astonished major by the collar, jerked him out of his chair.  And as he did so a snake, a deadly hill-viper, which had been trying to climb up the rough face of the wall, slipped and dropped on to the Commandant’s chair, slid to the floor and glided across the verandah and down into the garden before anyone could find a stick with which to attack it.

Major Hunt, his sallow face a little paler than usual, looked up at the wall to see if any more reptiles were likely to follow, then sat down again calmly.

“Thank you, Wargrave,” he said quietly.  “But for you that brute would have got me.  And his bite is death.  Ranga’s full of snakes, like all these places in the hills.  We’ve killed several in the Mess since I’ve been here; but no one’s had such a close shave as this.  I’ll stand you a drink for that.  Hi, boy!”

But for all this quiet manner of taking it Frank had made a staunch friend that night by his prompt action.

As Burke took the filled glass that the Gurkha mess-servant brought him at the Major’s order he said: 

“I hate snakes worse than the Divil hates holy wather.  They’re the only things in life I’m afraid av.  I never go to bed without looking under the pillow nor put on my boots in the morning without first turning them up and shaking them.  I wish St. Pathrick had made a trip to India and dhriven the sarpints out av the counthry the same as he did in Ireland.”