Rudyard Kipling is undoubtedly one of the great short-story writers in the English language. This collection opens with 'The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows', the first story Kipling published as a young journalist in India, and ends with an acknowledged masterpiece, 'The Gardener', written fifty years later in the aftermah of the Great War. In the stories in between we meet an immense array of characters and themes, ranging from political fables as in 'The Mother Hive', tragic love stories as in 'Lispeth' and 'Without Benefit of Clergy', and the extraordinary psychological study, 'Mary Postgate'. Together they are a superb demonstration of Kipling's uncanny ability 'to think in another man's skin'.