“My poor wife!” said Sir Harold, with a sobbing breath. “I knew how she loved me. We were all the world to each other, Major. I must be careful how she hears the news that I am living. The sudden shock may kill her. Have you any news of my daughter also?”
“She was still at school when I last heard of her,” answered the major. “There is no more news of your home, Sir Harold. Your family are mourning for you and you will bring back their lost happiness. You ought to have seen your obituaries in the London papers. Some of them were a yard long, and I’d be willing to die to-day if I could only read such notices about myself. That sounds a little Hibernian, but it’s true. And your tenantry put on mourning, and they had funeral sermons and so on. By all the rules, you ought to have been dead, and, by the Lord Harry, I can’t understand why you are not.”
Sir Harold smiled wanly.
“Let me explain why I am not,” he said. “You remember that I was taking my last ride in India, and was about to start for Calcutta, to embark for England, when I disappeared? Some three days before that I had a quarrel, if I might call it so, with the Hindoo Karrah—”
“I know it. He told me about it for the first time this morning.”
“You understand then that I had incurred his enmity by kicking him out of this house? I found him stealing the effects of my dead son. He had also stolen from me. The letters he was stealing he was acute enough to know were precious to me, and there was George’s diary, for which I would not have taken any amount of money. The scoundrel meant to get away with these, and then sell them to me at his own terms. I took back my property, and punished him as he deserved. I have now reason to believe he went away that night to his friends among the hills—”
“He did. He told me he did. But what did he go for?” cried the major excitedly.
“You can soon guess. The next morning Karrah came back, professing repentance,” said Sir Harold. “I reproached myself for having been too harsh upon the poor untaught heathen, and took him back. He accompanied me upon that last ride, and was so humble, so deprecating, so gentle, that I even felt kindly toward him. We rode out into the jungle. I was in advance, riding slowly, and thinking of home, when suddenly a monstrous tiger leaped out of a thicket and fastened his claws in the neck of my horse. I fought the monster desperately, for he had pinned my leg to the side of my horse, and I could not escape from him. We had a frightful struggle, and I must have succumbed but for Karrah, who shot at the tiger, wounding him, I think, in the shoulder, and frightening him into retreat.”
“And so you escaped, when we all thought you killed?” cried the major.
“My horse was dying,” said the baronet, “and I was wounded and bleeding. I thought I was dying. I fell from my saddle to the ground, groaning with pain. Karrah came up, and bent over me, with a devilish smile and moistened my lips with brandy from a flask he carried. Then, muttering words in his own language which I could not understand, he carried me to his own horse, mounted, with me in his arms, and rode off in the direction in which we had been going, and away from your bungalow.”