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 for a great time, especially when there is none other for them to talk to.

“When you have returned with me to my father, Thandar,” the girl asked, “where shall you go then?”

“I shall return to the sea where I may watch for a ship to take me back to my own land,” he replied.

“I have seen but one ship in all my life,” said Nadara, “and that was years ago. It was when we lived close by the big water that it stopped a long way from shore and sent many smaller boats to land.

“There were many men in the boats, and when they landed, my father and mother took me far into the forest away from the sea, and there we stayed for many days until the strangers had sailed. They wandered up and down the coast and came back into the forests and the jungles for a few miles.

“My mother said that they were searching for me, and that if they found me they would take me away. I was very much frightened.”

At the mention of her mother Waldo recalled the little parcel that Nadara’s father had given into his custody for the girl. He unfastened it from the thong that circled his waist, where it had hung beneath his panther-skin garment.

“Here is something your father asked me to