But Burke's enthusiastic admiration of her courage found an outlet at Mess that night when he recounted the adventure to Major Hunt and appealed to Wargrave for confirmation of the story of her plucky behaviour. Later in his room as he was going to bed Frank smiled at the recollection of the Irishman's exuberant expressions; but he confessed to himself that the girl's calm courage was worthy of every praise. "She is certainly brave," he thought. "I'm not surprised at old Burke's infatuation. She is decidedly pretty. What lovely eyes she's got--and what a provokingly attractive little nose! Well, the doctor's a lucky man if she marries him. She seems awfully nice. Violet will certainly have two very charming women friends in the station if she hits it off with them." But as his eyes rested on her pictured face his heart misgave him; for he remembered that she had little liking for her own sex. And then, he told himself, these two would probably refuse to know a woman who had run away from her husband to another man. When he had turned out the light and jumped into bed he lay awake a long time puzzling over the tangle into which the threads of her life and his seemed to have got. Time alone could unravel it. He tossed uneasily on his bed, unable to sleep, and presently a slight noise on the verandah outside caught his ear. He lay still and listened; and it seemed to him that soft footfalls of a large animal's pads sounded on the wooden flooring. Then suddenly he heard a beast sniffing at his closed door. "A stray dog," he thought. But suddenly he remembered Burke's account of the panther that haunted the Mess; and a thrill of excitement ran through him and drove all his unhappy thoughts away. He sprang out of bed and rushed across the room to get his rifle, but in the darkness overturned a chair which fell with a crash to the ground. This scared the animal; for there was a sudden scurry outside, and by the time Wargrave had found the rifle and groped for a couple of cartridges there was nothing to be seen on the verandah when he threw open the door. It was a brilliant star-lit night. Burke called to him from his room and when Wargrave went to him said that he too had heard the animal, which was undoubtedly the panther. Returning to bed Frank was dropping off to sleep half an hour later when he was startled by a shrill, agonised shriek coming from a distance. Rifle in hand he rushed out on to the verandah again and heard faint shouts coming from a small group of Bhuttia huts on a shoulder of the hills hundreds of feet above the Mess. He called out but got no answer; and after listening for some time and hearing nothing further he returned to bed and at last fell asleep. In the morning he learned that the panther had made a daring raid on a hut and carried off a Bhuttia wood-cutter's baby from its sleeping mother's side, and had devoured it in the jungle not two hundred yards away.