The Adventures of Kathlyn | Page 7

put the cat? Every car is closed and locked, and there is
not an empty."
"You can easily get the lion in the caboose. I'll see that he doesn't
bother any one."
"Lions in the caboose is a new one on me. Well, you know your dad's
business better than I do. Look alive, boys, and get that angora aboard.
This is Miss Hare herself, and she'll take charge."
"Kit, Kit!"
"Winnie!"
"Oh, I'll be brave. I've just got to be. But I've never been left alone
before."
The two girls embraced, and Winnie went sobbing back to the maid
who waited on the platform.
What happened in that particular caboose has long since been
newspaper history. The crew will go on telling it till it becomes as
fabulous as one of Sindbad's yarns. How the lion escaped, how the
fearless young woman captured it alone, unaided, may be found in the

files of all metropolitan newspapers. Of the brown man who was found
hiding in the coat closet of the caboose nothing was said. But the sight
of him dismayed Kathlyn as no lion could have done. Any-dark
skinned person was now a subtle menace. And when, later, she saw
peering into the port-hole of her stateroom, dismay became terror.
Who was this man?
CHAPTER II
THE UNWELCOME THRONE
Kathlyn sensed great loneliness when, about a month later, she arrived
at the basin in Calcutta. A thousand or more natives were bathing
ceremoniously in the ghat--men, women and children. It was early
morn, and they were making solemn genuflections toward the bright
sun. The water-front swarmed with brown bodies, and great wheeled
carts drawn by sad-eyed bullocks threaded slowly through the maze.
The many white turbans, stirring hither and thither, reminded her of a
field of white poppies in a breeze. India! There it lay, ready for her
eager feet. Always had she dreamed about it, and romanced over it, and
sought it on the wings of her spirit. Yonder it lay, ancient as China,
enchanting as storied Persia.
If only she were on pleasure bent! If only she knew some one in this
great teeming city! She knew no one; she carried no letters of
introduction, no letters of credit, nothing but the gold and notes the
paymaster at the farm had hastily turned over to her. Only by constant
application to maps and guide books had she managed to arrange the
short cut to the far kingdom. She had been warned that it was a wild
and turbulent place, out of the beaten path, beyond the reach of iron
rails. Three long sea voyages: across the Pacific (which wasn't), down
the bitter Yellow Sea, up the blue Bay of Bengal, with many a sea
change and many a strange picture. What though her heart ached, it was
impossible that her young eyes should not absorb all she saw and
marvel over it. India!
The strange elusive Hindu had disappeared after Hongkong. That was a

weight off her soul. She was now assured that her imagination had
beguiled her. How should he know anything about her? What was more
natural than that he should wish to hurry back to his native state? She
was not the only one in a hurry. And there were Hindus of all castes on
all three ships. By now she had almost forgot him.
There was one bright recollection to break the unending loneliness.
Coming down from Hongkong to Singapore she had met at the
captain's table a young man by the name of Bruce. He was a quiet,
rather untalkative man, lean and sinewy, sun and wind bitten. Kathlyn
had as yet had no sentimental affairs. Absorbed in her work, her father
and the care of Winnie, such young men as she had met had scarcely
interested her. She had only tolerated contempt for idlers, and these
young men had belonged to that category. Bruce caught her interest in
the very fact that he had but little to say and said that crisply and well.
There was something authoritative in the shape of his mouth and the
steadiness of his eye, though before her he never exercised this power.
A dozen times she had been on the point of taking him into her
confidence, but the irony of fate had always firmly closed her lips.
And now, waiting for the ship to warp into its pier, she realized what a
fatal mistake her reticence had been. A friend of her father!
Bruce had left the Lloyder before dinner (at Singapore), and as
Kathlyn's British-India coaster did not leave till morning she had
elected to remain over night on the German boat.
As Bruce disappeared among the disembarking passengers and climbed
into a rickshaw she turned to the captain, who stood beside her.
"Do you