Pastoral Affair

* * * * *

It was quite dark by the time they had reached the summit of the ridge, but Colonel Glinka still marched along behind Abdul, high good humor restored, prodding him from time to time with the Malacca cane and lecturing him upon social equalities and other Party doctrine.

"Are we nearly there?" he would interrupt himself to ask from time to time.

"I do not know."

"Call out, then."

"I am afraid."

A savage poke with the cane, a war whoop from Abdul Hakkim ben Salazar. No answer.

"We'll get him," Colonel Glinka would say. "Oh, my, yes."

But an hour had passed and still they had encountered no living thing upon the path.

At last Abdul stopped abruptly. They were in a little, narrow ravine, high above the sea, with looming red cliffs all about them, and the booming of the surf upon the distant, windward shore of the island plainly aud