“Maine, sir.”
“Oh, just right. Come here. You may as well know. This is a rough scribble from Sergeant Ripsy.”
“Good news, sir?” burst out Archie sharply.
“Not likely, my lad—no. He writes of his safe arrival at what he calls the elephant-pens, and as a matter of course too late. The place is quite deserted—not a man there—and the elephants have all been driven off. But he adds that he is following up the trail as well as he can, and that it is very hard to trace, because the great animals always step into the old tracks, and you can’t tell which are the new; but that he means to follow them until he comes up to where they have been driven. There, I have no more to say.”
Archie, seeing that his presence was not needed, stepped out into the darkness again, walking some minutes without any definite aim, till, finding himself near the Doctor’s bungalow, he thought he would call in there and give him the news, such as it was.
But as he neared the gateway and saw through one of the open windows a bent figure just shown up by the lighted lamp, his heart failed him, for thoughts full of memories of the past came to him with a rush; and he stepped on, when, just as he was at the end of the creeper-burdened bamboo fence, a gruff voice exclaimed:
“Who’s that? You, Maine?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What is it? Want me?”
“No, sir. I was only just going by.”