"I take the Prophet for a witness that thou laborest under a misapprehension! Though the white merchants of Padang have their agents everywhere in the land to undersell us, whose business it has been to supply this commodity from father to son, for innumerable generations, yet none of them is able to beat my prices. And let it not be rumored about that I agreed to the sum thou hast named, for everybody would come and solicit the same kindness and rob me of my goods! Indeed, it is robbery to exact such dealings! Nevertheless, most venerable mother, this being intended for thy granddaughter, who is to marry.

The philanthropist's eloquence is checked by the passing of a boy, who cries something which creates great consternation all over the market. The merchants leave their merchandise and gather in groups with their customers. In the confusion of voices Raïssa distinguishes. that the cock-fighters have been surprised and that Roostam, refusing to be taken prisoner, has killed Murei. She hurries to the house of Haji Yusoof. He, if any one, will know whether Roostam has made good his escape.

Haji Yusoof's house is closed. The curious, who rightly suppose with Raïssa that Roostam's mammak will have the first and best information as to his course and plans after the scrape at the cockpit, are refused admission. Haji Yusoof, so an attendant tells them, cannot be disturbed in his mid-day nap; he has been sleeping since noon; the report, current in the market-place, has not yet reached him; Haji Yusoof knows nothing.

The curious understand. Roostam's mammak, to be sure, will see his nephew out of this trouble without openly showing his hand. And they approve. Roostam, the Game-Cock, doing ten times better than winning the main in the cockpit, has rid them of Murei, the odious, punishing him for going so far in his boastful pretensions as to set a vile Padang rooster against the game-fowl of the Highlands. Roostam rises high in their esteem and no one entertains for a moment the idea of his being apprehended for the deed. They agree that Haji Yusoof lies under an obligation to keep him concealed in the rimbu gedang (the great jungle as distinguished from the rimbu ketèk, the little jungle), until the affair is forgotten or he can be spirited away.

Raïssa, being on terms of intimacy with the women of Haji Yusoof's household, has slipped in and found Roostam's mammak wide awake, considering ways and means. She asks him, with a failing heart, what he intends to do in this most serious affair, and he answers:

"Nothing but deliver Roostam to the commandoor1 as soon as he is caught."

1 The local appellation of the contrôleur, the official who in the Civil Service ranks next to the assistant-resident.

Raïssa, greatly agitated, stands aghast at this answer of Roostam's mammak.

"But so far he is not caught," adds the haji.

"And will he be caught?"

Haji Yusoof looks her straight in the eyes and then, affecting the speech he has heard at Mecca, as he is accustomed to do on grave occasions, waives further questions with pious commonplace:

"The secrets of the future are with the Most High, the Most Merciful and Compassionate."

Raïssa's short interview with Haji Yusoof has made it clear to her that Roostam will not be handed over to the retribution of the rigorous and withal strangely complicated law of the white men. On that score she is satisfied. His safety, however, requires also that he be shielded from the vengeance of Murei's clique and if he has to leave for a while, she wants to see him before he goes and say good-by. Therefore she resolves not to return to Matoor for the time being, but to stay at Haji Yusoof's house where doubtless ere long his hidingplace will be known.

Keenly watchful on the steps that lead to the door of Haji Yusoof's dwelling, which is built on piles, according to the custom of the land; on the alert to intercept the expected messenger from the fugitive to his mammak, Raïssa hears some one whispering her name. The voice comes from behind a rice-shed and there she perceives a boy, ten or eleven years old, who bids her follow the path from the village to the little market-place near the lake and wait at the pillar set by the triangulation service. There he will meet her again, by Roostam's command, and he urges her to set out at once, warning her not to ask or answer any questions concerning the Game-Cock's whereabouts. He himself has been charged to inform Haji Yusoof.

The boy is known to Raïssa as one of the first disciples of a faqir recently arrived in the neighborhood to open a school and teach religion. Obeying him, she observes punctiliously the directions given her in the name of Roostam and reaches the triangulation pillar to the left of the road where it slopes down to the beach in sharp descent. To avoid the risk of meeting curious acquaintances in the little marketplace on the right, she sits down among the high ferns that cover the hill-top overlooking the sheet of water deep down, the lovely lake of Maninju.

It is now late in the afternoon but somehow or other the clouds that roll on from the South with the heat of day to veil its loveliness after the sun has smiled upon it and taken possession in passionate embrace, somehow or other the clouds are tardy in gathering on the hills. Silent and tranquil the lake lies as it lay when the ardent

lover withdrew, its surface shining like a polished shield of bronze engraved in strange design, long strips and whirls of water-weeds framing the reflections of the blue sky and the steep, wooded banks. The islands of Moko Moko, near the mouth of the Batang Antokan, the eastern ridges that run out to Tanjong Padang, rest dreamily in the last splendor of glorious light and when at last the clouds do come, throwing a belt of white round waving green, invading the plain to the North, they leave a gleamy dimness trailing over the trees, over the houses of Baju and Anam Kota half hidden among the klapahplantations. And still they come, airy flakes before a curtain of mist. Where the lake has been, in the depth below, nothing but hazy waves of vapor, rising higher and higher, hiding even the fire-mountains far away, the giants that lift their heads to guard the broad valleys from

sea to sea.

The view of Lake Maninju from this spot, from the triangulation pillar, is perhaps still more striking than from the little pavilion, built expressly for a belvedere on the top of one of the steep hills that close it in, but Raïssa is not in a mood to enjoy the beauty of her surroundings. She waits and waits and does not notice how the people to the right of the road, between their buying and selling, point their fingers at her: the girl of Roostam, the girl of the Game-Cock who has killed Murei-they know the whole story.

A kindly old woman, who is selling salt, takes pity on her and invites her to the bamboo shed she occupies, saying that for somebody's sake she ought not to expose herself too much:

"The greater the danger, the greater must be the caution and where they find the loving bird, there they will look for its mate."

Then the old woman begins to complain of the stress of the times, a general complaint. Is she not compelled, at her age, to gain her living by fetching salt from Bukit Tinggi and carry it all the way to the lake of Maninju? And still she has occasion to call herself lucky because she is able to keep body and soul together by saving others the trouble of journeying many miles to the Government salt-store for a week's provision or sometimes less.

Raïssa turns but an inattentive ear to the mournful tale of the mumbling crone who, when darkness falls, gathers her baskets together and leaves for home. The little market-place lies deserted now. Beneath, the enshrouded lake; overhead, the glimmering of the stars. Fear and weariness oppress the lonely girl as the night creeps on. At last she hears a stealthy step approaching. It is the boy, Roostam's messenger to Haji Yusoof, who instructed her to bide further developments at the triangulation pillar.

Raïssa arises and follows him in the gloom along a trail that leads them through wood and underbrush to a teratak, a clearing with an

enclosure for coralling the cattle of the village near by. Two or three other boys are lying around a large fire, lighted to keep the tigers off; seemingly fast asleep, they take no notice of the new-comers. Her guide precedes her to a rudely constructed hut, the door and windows of which are wide open, and there, having entered, she finds four persons together, three men and a woman. In the glare of the fire outside, she recognizes one of the men as Roostam. Nobody greets her and she, too, says not a word as she squats down beside the woman, Roostam's mother, who sits muttering incantations. Roostam's mother, the sister of Haji Yusoof, prides herself no less than he does upon their descent from a fighting family, true to the hadat, a family very conspicuous in the Padri War, the last effort of the Malays of the Padang Highlands to regain their independence; and Roostam's mother possesses many a secret descended through centuries from eldest daughter to eldest daughter, many a charm of the highest value on trying occasions. She is a fierce sort of a woman. Fierceness runs in the blood of her clan and Roostam's spirit shows plainly the truth of the saying that, in breeding, it is the hen as much as the cock which determines the temper of the chick.

At arm's length before her on the ground stands a cage with a pigeon in it. Raïssa knows it by the embroidered covering; it is Haji Yusoof's and she infers that the old man must be near, the mammak watching over his charge.

The incantations give way to prayer, several ayats of the Qurân being recited in succession by an unfamiliar voice, while the others respond in a drone: "Amin! Amin!"

Raïssa surmises the leader to be the fagir, the new religious teacher, which explains how one of the youths of the school just opened came to act as her guide. And when the second stranger, after prayer has ceased, speaks to Roostam of the joys of the holy war against the infidels, she recognizes him as the deserter from the Dutch army who, though donning Acheh-trousers, affects the Batavia-lock over the ear and a pronounced Batavia-accent, ae-ing his a's.

It becomes evident to Raïssa that they are inciting Roostam, the Game-Cock, to battle. The deserter, who arrived from Korinchy, she remembers, is on his way to Acheh, propagating the good cause, and Roostam, being in trouble, seems perfectly willing to extricate himself by a course altogether in his line: war to the knife against the white men that send fellows like Murei to harass and annoy the real lords of the soil-plague on the cur and his employers!

And the faqir promises success: the Moslemin are destined to rule in this life the nations of the earth as in the life to come they are destined for everlasting bliss.

And Roostam's mother dwells upon the traditions of the family,

upon the exploits of its members at Bonjol, where the mammak of his mammak was killed on the side of the Padri under Tuanku Imam, valorous warriors who sacrificed their lives for their country and whose death has not been avenged.

Shall her son, with such blood in his veins, be afraid because the white men have guns, big guns, and repeating-rifles and dynamite bombs, fighting from afar? Why not lure them to the mountains and tackle them hand to hand, the unbelievers? .

"The killers of the weak and unprotected," continues the deserter, eye-witness of the horrors at Kampong Pulau Tengah in Korinchy. "Shall strong and able youths sit still and hush their voices and play girls' games when such things are going on?"

Roostam's eyes sparkle while they goad him: "I am not afraid of blood," he says slowly.

"And blood is thirsting for blood," says his mother.

And the blood of the infidel opens the gates of Paradise to the faithful," says the fagir.

Raïssa lifts her head, trembling, wishing to speak in her turn, but Roostam's mother sees the movement and shrieks in her face:

"What art thou doing here, thou with the mark that brought bad luck to my son? Art thou not content with his bird, our bird, refusing to fight a Padang bird? Is it to deliver him now to Murei's evileyed gang that thou hast come hither, thou daughter of ill-repute? Out with thee!"

She threatens to strike the girl, but Roostam jumps to his feet. "None of this!" he cries.

"If thou stayest or goest where I can go with thee, I will give thee something that undoes the spell of all marks and signs," begs Raïssa, pulling a ring from her finger.

Roostam looks at her and the deserter says tauntingly:

"Another game-cock that shows the white feather!"

Roostam feels the sting and sits down again.

"Don't gibe him," entreats Raïssa in despair. "It is my grandmother's ring, a ring of virtue."

"Can it confound the bloodhounds of the white men now on his track? Can it make him invisible?" asks the deserter, whose mysterious. strength lies in the last-named accomplishment. "If not, what is the good of his staying here?"

"It undoes all spells," Raïssa rejoins doggedly.

'Keep thy ring!" yells the old woman. "Has he not enough sorrow by virtue of thy mark? Go! Go!"

Roostam does not move and by this token Raïssa knows that all is over. She arises and goes, but returns and addresses him once more: "Thou wilt leave us and do dangerous things. I, the girl with