Owen laughed.

"I should be sorry for anything to disappear. The poor mother is speared, for she will fight for her little one; ugly as he may be in our eyes he is beautiful in hers."

"But you didn't do this, Owen?"

"No; after two or three days in a forest one wearies of it; and after all it wasn't very likely that I should have got a snapshot. The camera is my weapon."

"And after the orang-outang which you failed to meet?"

"I spent some time in Japan."

"And then?"

"Well, then, I went to Manchuria, to the Amur, a country almost forgotten." And he told her how the eagles drove the wild sheep over the precipices, and of a wolf hunt with eagles."

"You have seen now everything the world has to show?"

"Very nearly, and after seeing it all I come back to the one thing that interests me."