Perry Thomas stepped in.

“I just happened to be passin’ and thought I’d drop in for a spell,” he said, with a profound bow to Mary, who arose to greet him.

This apology of Perry’s was as absurd as mine had been, for he lived a mile on the other side of the village; and as the next house was over the ridge, a good three miles away, it was odd that he should be wandering aimlessly about thus.  Besides, he had on his new Prince Albert, and there was a suspicion of a formal call in the smoothly oiled hair and tallowed boots.  He carried his fiddle, too.  There was to my mind every evidence that the visit had been preconceived, and to this point had been carried out with an eye on every detail.  Had the contrary been true, there would have been no cause for Perry to glare at me as he did.  The he-ro in blue was anything but welcome now.  Indeed, it seemed that could Perry’s wish have been complied with, I should be back on the “lead-strewn fields of Cuby.”

Mary was most cordial.  She seized his fiddle and his hat and stowed them carefully away together, while Luther, pushing the latest visitor to a place at his side on the settee, told him how fortunate he was to drop in just at that time, as he would hear a few interesting things about the famine in India.

Perry was positively ungrateful.  He declared that he could only stay a minute at the most, and that it was really not worth Luther’s while to begin reading.  Mary said that she would not hear of him leaving.  She had hidden his hat and would insist on his playing; that was, if I did not mind and her uncle gave his permission.  Perry smiled.  There was less fire in his eyes when I vowed that not till I had listened again to the song of his beloved violin would I stir from my chair.  So he settled back to pay the price and hear the story of Flora Martin and the tiger.

Luther repeated his account of the book and the story of Brother Matthias Pennel.  He told Perry of Sister Flora and her saintly character, and of the devastation by the fierce king of the Bengal jungle.  He brought us again to where the frail little woman determined to fight death with death.  And here, in low, rumbling tones, letter by letter, word by word, we took up the narrative of the adventurous Dunker brother.

“Thus armed with only a heavy elephant rifle, the property of the foreign missionary society, and clad only in grace, Flora Martin began her lonely vigil on the roof of the mission-house, which is used both as a dwelling and Sunday-school by those who are carrying light to the heathen in Ballerraderad, which, we must remember, is one of the most populous provinces in all Injy.  This combined dwelling and church edifice stands at the far end of the little village, and as the lonely Indian moon was just rising above the horizon, Sister Flora heard a series of catlike footsteps along the veranda beneath her—­for we must remember that in this part of our globe the nights are strangely still and the sounds therefore carry for a great distance.  Breathlessly Flora Martin, mindful of the slumbering innocent charges sleeping below her, and over whom she was watching, leaned out over the roof, rifle in hand.  The footsteps came nearer and nearer and——­”