the impressive personality, the man of honourable pedigree, looked a guilty cur. Then Gam faced round towards the advancing men and stepped out from the shelter of the rock.

For an awful period of moments, Torlo suffered the upheaval of his nature. A moment was close when he must be a man, or a cur-must choose one part or the other, and either meant torment. He advanced one foot, then swayed back, then forward, then back again. The line of men was drawing nearer-Gam was going farther-and-and-God! Which should he be? Cur? Man? Cur ?-He could hear the soft thud of the men's feet on the sun-baked road. He swayed as a shaken pendulum. But the last sway was backward.

Paul Trench met a man coming back along the Karroba Road and his face was the colour of clay, and his eyes were mad. When he was quite close he saw that the man was Torlo Saunderson, and that his teeth were chattering. "Hullo, Torlo! Ill?" he exclaimed.

Torlo tried to smile, but the clay face was stiff. 'Sun, I think," he stammered. "I'll get-home."

"I was just looking about for you and Gam. My mother sent messages -By-the-bye, where is Gam?”

Torlo faced round, and Trench felt that he had never seen anything so ghastly as the shaking lips when they tried to make words. "Ga-in troub-" Then he laughed. "Ga-little hill-gir-" stopped and stood against the rock, then his head fell forward. Trench wisely gave up questioning and took to ambulance work.

Torlo
And

When Torlo Saunderson was safely stretched upon his bed with wet bandages about his head, Gam Brown was marching upwards to his unknown reward between two lines of glittering-eyed gaolers. The ground was hard, and bare, and hot to the feet, and the sun glared upon the rocks, radiating and scorching till the way they trod seemed as a voyage through an interminable furnace. They had left the Karroba Road, and were winding up by almost unknown passes. Gam did not think very much as he trod on, and on, and on, in the almost unbearable heat. Now and then, an odd little corner of his old room in England would come starting up in his brain, and he could see the old catapult, the best he had ever made, hanging on the nail above the faded old photograph of his mother feeding the pony in the paddock. Then the scene would snap out of sight again, and he would wonder what they had done to the little hill-girl.

At length, when his feet were blistered, and his head was throbbing as if the skull must gape soon, they came to a halt. Gam's eyes seemed unable to see things very clearly, or his brain to realise them, but he was conscious of a towering white rock, with a huge unshapely figure squatting on the summit, At the base of the rock was a cave, and he looked into the cave. Then Gam knew what had happened to the little hill-girl. She-it-was lying in dark, discoloured patches upon a pile of fire-smoked stones.

Then, as he looked, he felt the sharp, intolerable pain of a knife drawn from his right shoulder to his wrist, then a sharp hacking cut fell across the spirting wound. He looked quickly down at the arm as it was held by the enemy, and he realised that it was a sickening sight.

And then the pain, and the sight, and the trouble of the past days, and the heat of the march, brutal though they had been in turn, were merciful to him in the end, for he was quite

And Miss Trench said no more; after all Mr. Brown had been only an acquaintance.

"So he'd laid his plans," thought Trench to himself. "He's probably sneaked across to one of the colonies, where he'll get the licking he deserves when he plays the fool again." And then he dismissed the "ungrateful young cub" from his mind.

When Torlo Saunderson arose from his bed of sickness he became much occupied by his wooing. After which, he got a remove, and was still more occupied. He had no time even to remember that on a certain afternoon on the Karroba road he had forgotten to say "Thank you" for a service rendered.

F

"MY LORD STRIPES."

BY GAMBIER BOLTON, F.Z.S., AND ARTHUR LAWRENCE.
(ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY GAMBIER BOLTON.)

OLLOWING the article in last month's IDLER, which dealt with the artistic and scientific value of the faithful portraiture of animals, and Mr. Gambier Bolton's exceptional achievements in that direction, it will now be possible to fulfil the intention, which I then had in mind, of utilising some of Mr. Bolton's unique photographs of several of the more imposing members of the animal world, and to obtain from him a few notes of incidents and items not generally known concerning them. It will therefore be understood that, in this and subsequent articles, the illustrations are by him, whilst the letterpress is the outcome of conversations between us, in regard to which I know that zoologists will admit that Mr. Bolton's opinions and information are not less accurate than interesting.

Of the larger cats, it may be questioned whether "My Lord Stripes," to adopt Kipling's descriptive designation of felis tigris, does not really deserve the first place. The tiger is certainly the most typical specimen of the cat family, and, although he lacks something of the dignity of the lion, he can claim superiority in regard to the not unimportant details of actual size, agility and sheer muscular strength.

The accompanying illustrations will serve to convey, or recall to one's mind, the tiger's colouring and markings, and his massive proportions, more especially in the exceptional strength of the forepaws as compared with the hinder ones. There is much in the photographs, too, which serve to remind one of some of their more characteristically cat-like actions and movements. The tiger, lying on its side, stretched out full length so as to get the full warmth of the sun, looks quite peaceful and domestic in repose, and one might be excused for thinking that the animal's length had been exaggerated if it had been an imaginative sketch and not the realistic work of the camera.

It is a popular delusion that all cats hate the water, and people were considerably astonished when Sir Samuel Baker reported that tigers would not only swim, but would lie in the water on a hot day. Nor does this indisputable fact apply only to fresh water, for it is not an uncommon thing to find the tiger-to speak frivolously- quite at sea. A large one was caught at the island of Singapore, having been entangled, when breasting the waves, in a fisherman's net, and drowned in its futile struggles to get free.

Colonel Lugard also relates how he lay on the branch of a tree, in India, watching the beaters beating for buck, and, to his surprise, saw a huge tiger spring from the island into the river, landing about ten yards away from where he was lying, the tiger immediately shaking himself in dogfashion. It was his last swim, however, for, turning his head to take a final look at the beaters behind him, he afforded Colonel Lugard his opportunity, and the tiger fell, shot to the heart.

Variable accounts are furnished one concerning the relative strength of the lion and tiger; but it will generally be found that accounts are coloured by the narrator's special experience, hunters and travellers in Africa extolling the lion; while in India, where the natives have particular reason to appreciate the strength and ferocity of the tiger, the traveller will claim superiority for the latter. Nevertheless, writing without prejudice, it must be confessed that, if one ever witnessed a death struggle between the two animals, it would be unwise, in sporting parlance, to put one's money on the "king of beasts," for, as Major Nott remarks in his interesting work on "Wild Animals":-" Although there are but few, if any, instances where the lion has voluntarily attacked or killed a tiger, there are several well-known cases of tigers having killed lions. A tiger that belonged to Mr. Jamrach, the dealer in wild beasts, was sold for £200 to Mr. Edmunds, who soon had cause to regret his bargain, for the animal, being accidentally enabled to get out of his own den into the adjoining one, attacked the occupant, which was a most valuable lion, and,