Most of the Hillmen ignored their presence, but one, a squat, powerful fellow, swaggered by the door where Terry sat. Twice he passed, and each time he leered derisively at the white man. "Who's your friend, Terry?" queried the Major. "Oh, that's Pud-Pud. He's the town bully--and never has liked me. He led the crowd that opposed my--staying. He has bothered Ahma a good deal, too: wants to marry her. She laughs at him, of course. What have you been doing all day, Major?" The Major told him of everything but the meeting with Ahma, spoke enthusiastically of the tribe. "They're straight Malay, Terry," he wound up. "A pure strain, something you seldom see in the lowlands where the Spanish and Chinese have addled the blood. They ought to develop rapidly under proper guidance--they are a single-minded, sincere, fearless people." Terry nodded agreement: "Nor are they the terrible people that the Bogobos think them. Their fear of them must have been based on dread of that sinister belt of forest. A good road will end all that." They waited till Pud-Pud made a third mocking trip past their hut, gay in a G-string contrived of a length of the cloth the Major had brought up: it flamed against the naked brownness of back and legs. "He's a lady-killer all right!" Terry said. "Ahma told me that he had coaxed the calico away from one of the girls." The Major stirred. "You saw Ahma to-day?" But he had hesitated so long over the question that Terry, sunk in deep thought, did not hear him, and somehow he did not feel like repeating. He turned in on the hard bed with new things on his mind. Measles is not the only affection that "takes harder" near maturity. Several days passed without incident. Each morning the clearing emptied after breakfast as all but the cooks left for the day's work. Usually Terry wandered out alone, returning at evening to sit in the doorway, lost in study. Daily the Major loitered about the village till late afternoon, then took up his stand in the woods near Ohto's domicile, waiting: and Ahma never failed him. Bashfully distressed at first in the close proximity to the wealth of charm revealed by her scant costume, he soon became unconscious of it, her garb was so entirely congruous to her free, unschooled nature. He practiced his sketchy dialect upon her, delighted in each successful transmission of thought, more delighted in the naive bewilderment that many of his linguistic efforts wrought in her frank features. The fifth day she failed to appear. He waited long, restless, till certain that she would not come and then set off through the woods, his big heart yearning for an unattainable something he could not define or classify.