CHAPTER

     I the golden girl
    II the unwelcome throne
   III the two ordeals
    IV how time moves
     V the court of the lion
    VI the temple
   VII quicksands
  VIII the slave mart
    IX the colonel in chains
     X waiting
    XI the white elephant
   XII the plan of Ramabai
  XIII love
   XIV the veiled candidates
    XV the seven leopards
   XVI the red wolf
  XVII lord of the world
 XVIII patience
   XIX magic
    XX battle, battle, battle
   XXI the white goddess
  XXII behind the curtains
 XXIII remorse
  XXIV the invincible will
   XXV on the sloop
  XXVI the third bar

ILLUSTRATIONS

   It will be a hard trek (Frontispiece)

   Where did you get this medal?

   Ahmed salaamed deeply.

   So they comforted each other.

   You’ll know how to soothe him.

   My arm pains me badly.

   And thus Umballa found them.

   Kathyln turned the tide.

THE ADVENTURES OF KATHLYN

CHAPTER I

THE GOLDEN GIRL

Under a canopied platform stood a young girl, modeling in clay.  The glare of the California sunshine, filtering through the canvas, became mellowed, warm and golden.  Above the girl’s head—­yellow like the stalk of wheat—­there hovered a kind of aureola, as if there had risen above it a haze of impalpable gold dust.

A poet I know might have cried out that here ended his quest of the Golden Girl.  Straight she stood at this moment, lovely of face, rounded of form, with an indescribable suggestion of latent physical power or magnetism.  On her temples there were little daubs of clay, caused doubtless by impatient fingers sweeping back occasional wind blown locks of hair.  There was even a daub on the side of her handsome sensitive nose.

Her hand, still filled with clay, dropped to her side, and a tableau endured for a minute or two, suggesting a remote period, a Persian idyl, mayhap.  With a smile on her lips she stared at the living model.  The chatoyant eyes of the leopard stared back, a flicker of restlessness in their brilliant yellow deeps.  The tip of the tail twitched.

“You beautiful thing!” she said.

She began kneading the clay again, and with deft fingers added bits here and there to the creature which had grown up under her strong supple fingers.

“Kathlyn!  Oh, Kit!”

The sculptress paused, the pucker left her brow, and she turned, her face beaming, for her sister Winnie was the apple of her eye, and she brooded over her as the mother would have done had the mother lived.  For Winnie, dark as Kathlyn was light, was as careless and aimless as thistledown in the wind.