We began going out shooting again. Glahn felt he had wronged me, and begged my pardon.

“And I’m dead sick of the whole thing,” he said. “I only wish you’d make a slip one day and put a bullet in my throat.” It was that letter from the Countess again, perhaps, that was smouldering in his mind. I answered:

“As a man soweth, so shall he also reap.”

Day by day he grew more silent and gloomy. He had given up drinking now, and didn’t say a word, either; his cheeks grew hollow.

One day I heard talking and laughter outside my window; Glahn had turned cheerful again, and he stood there talking out loud to Maggie. He was getting in all his fascinating tricks. Maggie must have come straight from her hut, and Glahn had been watching and waiting for her. They even had the nerve to stand there making up together right outside my glass window.

I felt a trembling in all my limbs. I cocked my gun; then I let the hammer down again. I went outside and took Maggie by the arm; we walked out of the village in silence; Glahn went back into the hut again at once.

“What were you talking with him again for?” I asked Maggie.

She made no answer.

I was thoroughly desperate. My heart beat so I could hardly breathe. I had never seen Maggie look so lovely as she did then — never seen a real white girl so beautiful. And I forgot she was a Tamil — forgot everything for her sake.

“Answer me,” I said. “What were you talking to him for?”

“I like him best,” she said.

“You like him better than me?”

“Yes.”

Oh, indeed! She liked him better than me, though I was at least as good a man! Hadn’t I always been kind to her, and given her money and presents? And what had he done?

“He makes fun of you; he says you’re always chewing things,” I said.

She did not understand that, and I explained it better; how she had a habit of putting everything in her mouth and chewing it, and how Glahn laughed at her for it. That made more impression on her than all the rest I said.

“Look here, Maggie,” I went on, “you shall be mine for always. Wouldn’t you like that? I’ve been thinking it over. You shall go with me when I leave here; I will marry you, do you hear? and we’ll go to our own country and live there. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

And that impressed her too. Maggie grew lively and talked a lot as we walked. She only mentioned Glahn once; she asked:

“And will Glahn go with us when we go away?”

“No,” I said. “He won’t. Are you sorry about that?”

“No, no,” she said quickly. “I am glad.”

She said no more about him, and I felt easier. And Maggie went home with me, too, when I asked her.

When she went, a couple of hours later, I climbed up the ladder to Glahn’s room and knocked at the thin reed door. He was in. I said:

“I came to tell you that perhaps we’d better not go out shooting to-morrow.”

“Why not?” said Glahn.

“Because I’m not so sure but I might make a little mistake and put a bullet in your throat.”

Glahn did not answer, and I went down again. After that warning he would hardly dare to go out to-morrow — but what did he want to get Maggie out under my window for, and fool with her there at the top of his voice? Why didn’t he go back home again, if the letter really asked him, ins............