On the following afternoon on the tennis-court in a corner of the parade ground Miss Benson was left with Burke and Wargrave when Mrs. Dermot had taken her children home at sunset.

“You’ve completely won her heart,” the girl said to the subaltern, pointing with her racquet to the disappearing form of her friend.  “Nothing’s too good for you for saving these precious mites.  But she’ll never let them out of her sight again until their big nurse returns.”

“You mean their elephant?  Well, of course he’s a marvellously well-trained animal; but is he really so reliable that he can always be trusted to look after those children?”

“Badshah is something very much more than a well-trained animal.  Perhaps some time out in the jungle you may understand why the natives regard him as sacred and call Colonel Dermot the ‘God of the Elephants.’  You don’t know Badshah as we do.”

“Well, old Burke here has told me some strange yarns about him.  But, as he’s always pulling my leg, I never know when to believe him.”

The doctor grinned.

“We won’t waste words on him, Captain Burke,” said the girl.  “It’s time to go home now.”

They escorted her to the Dermots’ bungalow, where the doctor lingered for a few more minutes in her society, while Wargrave climbed up to the Mess and went to look at the panther’s skin pegged out on the ground under a thick coating of ashes and now as hard as a board after a day’s exposure to the burning sun.

A few days later Miss Benson left the station to rejoin her father in one of the three or four isolated wooden bungalows built to accommodate the Forest Officer in different parts of his district, each one lost and lonely in the silent jungle.  For days after her departure Burke was visibly depressed; and Wargrave, too, missed the bright and attractive girl who had enlivened the quiet little station during her stay.

A fortnight later Colonel Dermot returned from Bhutan; and his gratitude to the subaltern for the rescue of his children was sincere and heart-felt.  He was only too glad to take the young man out into the jungle on every possible occasion and continue his instruction in the ways of the forest.  This companionship and the sport were particularly beneficial to Wargrave just then.  For they served to take him out of himself and raise him from the state of depression into which he was falling, thanks to Violet’s letters, the tone of which was becoming more bitter each time she wrote.

Her reply to his long and cheery epistle describing Ranga Duar’s unusual burst of gaiety during the Envoy’s visit and his own rescue of the children was as follows: