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A flight of emerald parakeets tore screaming through the trees, and
then far away uphill he heard the creaking of a cart.
He followed the hint of a footmark, and went back up the glen slowly
and thoughtfully.
Presently he came to a familiar place, a group of trees, a sheet of
water, and the ruins of an old embankment. It was the ancient tank
of his overnight encounter. The pool of his dream?
With doubt still in his mind, he walked round its margin to the
sandy level beyond, and cast about and sought intently, and at last
found, and then found clearly, imposed upon the tracks of several
sorts of deer and the footprints of many biggish birds, first the
great spoor of the tiger and then his own. Here the beast had
halted, and here it had leapt aside. Here his own footmarks
stopped. Here his heels had come together.
It had been no dream.
There was a white mist upon the water of the old tank like the bloom
upon a plum, and the trees about it seemed smaller and the sand-
space wider and rougher than they had seemed in the moonshine.


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