Page:Famous stories from foreign countries.djvu/80

 He did not pause to visit any of the cities along his route. It seemed to him that he could hear the voice of Adinda calling him. This music made him deaf to everything else.

At length, in the distance, he saw a great black spot. That must be the Djati Forest, which was near the tree where Adinda was going to wait for him. He groped in the darkness and felt the trunks of many trees. Soon he stumbled upon a piece of level ground that seemed familiar—the south side of a tree. He put his fingers in a gash in the side of the tree which he remembered had been cut to drive away an evil spirit that had hidden there and given some people of the village toothache.

This was the ketapan tree which he was seeking. He sat down in front of the tree and looked up at the stars. And when he saw a falling star he understood it as a greeting to him on his return to Badur. Then he wondered if Adinda were sleeping now, and if she had counted the moons correctly on the old rice-block. Would it not be a pity if she had cut one too many, or one too few? Thirty six moons there should be! He wondered if she had woven beautiful sarongs. And he wondered too who was living in the old home of his father. Then he recalled his youth, and his mother, and the buffalo that had saved him from being torn to pieces by the tiger.

Very carefully he watched the setting of the stars in the west, as they disappeared along the horizon line, and estimated the time before light would begin to come from the East, and how much time would elapse