XXII
EVENING
Phebus loosens all his golden hair
Right down the sky
ERIC MACKAY
THE tale of these little lives is told. If I have failed to bring you close to the Malay, so that you could see into his heart, understand something of his life, and perhaps even sympathise with the motives that will lead him to acts of high courage and self-sacrifice, then the fault is mine.
The glory of the Eastern morning, the freshness and the fragrance of the forest, the sultry heat of these plains and slopes of eternal green on which the moisture-charged clouds unceasingly pour fatness—these are the home of the Malay, the background against which he stands.
Come, we have done with it all; let us leave the plain, seething in the heat of early afternoon, and ride up this mountain path, through all the wealth
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