It was with mingled feelings that I regarded Brother Matthias Pennel.  As I had stood on the tavern porch that night, looking up the white road that led to Mary’s home, I had dared to picture to myself a different scene from the one before me.  From that scene Luther Warden had been removed entirely.  Of Robert Weston, of Perry Thomas, of Tim, I had taken no account.  They had not even been dreamed of, for Mary and I were to sit alone in the quiet of the evening.  The flash of her eyes was to be for me—­for me their softer glowing.  At my calling the rich flames would blaze on her cheeks.  I was to light those flames.  I was to fan them this way and that way.  I was to smother them, kindle them, quench them.  Playing with the fire of a woman’s face!  Dangerous work, that!  And up the white road I had hobbled to the fire, as a simple child crawls to it.  But Luther Warden was there to guard me with Brother Matthias Pennel, and in my inmost heart I hated them both for it.  Then Perry Thomas blundered in, and compared to him, old Luther and his learned brother were endurable.  As to Robert Weston, I knew that beside him Matthias Pennel was my dearest friend.  Then Tim came! and as I looked at the long settee where Luther was droning on and on through the story of Sister Flora, where Perry Thomas seemed to sit beneath the judgment seat, where Weston shifted wearily to and fro, where Tim was suffering the tortures of the thumb-screw, I cried to my inmost self, “Verily, Brother Matthias, thou art a mighty joker!”

It took a long time to kill that tiger.  There was so much recalling to be done, so much remembering needed, and reviewing of statistics concerning the flora and the fauna of the far East, that when at last the rifle’s cry rang out on the still night air, which, as we had learned, in India carries sound to a much greater distance than in our cold, Northern climes; when the mighty Bengal reeled and fell dying, and Sister Flora sprang from her hiding place on the roof to sing a hymn of praise; when all this had been told, Luther Warden banged the book shut, arose, and looked at the clock.

[Illustration:  The tiger story.]

“Mighty souls!” he cried.  “It’s long past bed-time.  It’s half-past nine.”

Back over the white road we went, Weston and Perry, Tim and I.

“Good-night, boys!” called the strange man cheerily from the gloom of the tavern porch.

It was the first word he had spoken on our walk home.

“Is it two million five hundred and sixty thousand, or two hundred and fifty-six thousand persons that are bitten annually by snakes in India?” cried Tim, suddenly awaking from his moody silence.

“You can go back to-morrow and find out,” came from the porch.

“Good-night, Mr. Weston,” returned my brother sharply.

Perry Thomas parted from us at the gate, and we stood watching his retreating figure till we lost it at the bend.  Then we went in.