walked behind Cheeta Dutt with a small bundle on her head and lifted her sari as she took the ford with her bared limbs.

"Brothers, she was but sixteen years in age, and in the budding of her beauty; and it seemed as though the morning shed all its joys about her feet. What wonder, then, that even a young Faringi (Englishman) should look upon her with admiration?

"When she was half-way across the ford her foot slipped, and the bundle she bore fell into the stream. Wullahy, but these Faringis be fools! Eyes may look, and thoughts may fall about the face of a fair woman, though she be another man's wife, but only a Faringi would do what Bonner Sahib did. Kali Mai afflict the race! Women were made but to carry burdens and bear children. Nowhere can it be shown—not even in the Shastras, wherein I, Gunga Ram, have read—that a man should demean himself to serve a woman; but Bonner Sahib leapt into the stream and recovered the young woman's bundle. Worse than that, as she stood beside her husband's horse, wringing the water out of the hem of her garment, he put her bundle in her hand, and Cheeta Dutt scowled at him.

"'Protector of the Poor,' said I to the sahib, as I dried his feet and changed his shoes, 'thou hast not done well.'

"'Wherefore?' he replied, sending the smoke of his cheroot skywards.

"'Because Cheeta Dutt (well is he named Hunting Leopard) may repay thee hereafter in his own way for thy service to his wife this day. Belike, he may render her nakti (noseless), and so send her back to her father's house. But the sahib is a great lord, and a nakti Padhani woman more or less concerneth him not, for they be bought and sold like cattle, and the sahib hath the price of many such on his little finger.—But I speak like a fool, sahib, for I am a poor man and know nothing, save how to serve thee.'

"But he only laughed and stroked the yellow beard on his upper lip.

"A moon thereafter our camp was pitched near Nyagong. As ye know, the Terai thereby is full of shikar, and I showed Bonner Sahib where to find black partridge. One day, as we set our faces campwards,—I following the sahib with his spare gun and the morning's kill,—the voice of a young woman singing a Padhani song suddenly rose from a thicket near by, and the jungle became silent to listen to her. Bonner Sahib parted the tall grass with his hands, and I, looking over his shoulder, beheld Naringi, the wife of Cheeta Dutt, seated on a fallen tree trunk in an open glade, tending a flock of goats. As she sang she strung together flaming cotton-wood flowers, whereof she had placed one behind each ear.

"When she had finished her song the sahib took it up, stepping at the same time into the clearing; and Naringi fled like a roe hunted by wolves.

"'The shikar is shy, Gunga Ram,' said the sahib.

"'Tis dangerous hunting, Protector of the Poor,' I replied. But the sahib only laughed and lit a cheroot.

"And thereafter he sought the black partridge unattended by me, for he set me morning tasks to fulfil within the camp. But, brothers, he brought not so much as a jungle-fowl home for more than a week, and I was fain to know what the sahib hunted.

"So I followed him unperceived one morning, and he went straightway to the clearing wherein we had seen Naringi with the goats. When I looked through the grass, behold! I saw Bonner Sahib seated on the fallen tree trunk, wearing a necklace of red flowers, and Naringi sat on his knee with an arm round his neck! Toba, toba! what fools these Faringis be, who know not that the birds of the air carry messages when a sahib stoops to a woman of our people."

"The jungle hath many eyes," said the Thanadar, sententiously.

After Gunga Ram had refreshed himself with the circling hookah, he went on: "As I looked and listened there was a rustling in the grass on the other side of the clearing, and the sahib's dog dashed into the jungle in pursuit of something. The next moment it yelped as a dog that is sorely stricken, but the sahib, who was toying with Naringi, heard nothing.

"Then Naringi, stroking the sahib's golden beard, said, 'My Lord, Cheeta Dutt beat me last night because I spake thy name in my sleep. Look,' and she lifted the hair from her forehead, whereon was a bruise; and as she turned her face to the sahib I saw that she had been weeping, for her eyelids were swelled.

"'He is swine-born,' said the sahib; and as he spake his face flushed like the morning sky. Then he folded her in his arms and saluted her mouth after the manner of Faringis; and when she was comforted he said, 'Naringi, my Blossom, thy husband is a dog. To-night will I take thee hence and make thee envied of the mem-sahibs of Naini Tal. Wilt thou trust thyself with me?'

"For answer she threw herself before him and clasped his feet, but the sahib raised her up, saying, 'Beloved, I will come for thee to-night on the stroke of the tenth hour by the village bell. Gunga Ram—my shikari—and I will wait for thee with a covered byli (cart) at the foot of that tall sesame tree thou seest yonder on the open plain. And for pledge that I shall be here, see, I set on thy finger this ring, which all the villages in the Kumaon Terai could not buy; and if I fail to come my punishment is in thy hands. It is a thousand years till I see thee again, little one.' Then he folded her in his arms once more and set his face homewards, shouting to her from the end of the glade, 'Fail me not, my Wild Rose!' For answer, she swept the ground with her salaams.

"Hastening campwards by a path that skirted the other side of the glade, I came across the sahib's dog. It was shorn in twain by the stroke of a khookri, and I knew that Cheeta Dutt, The Leopard, was a-hunting.

"'What shikar?' asked I of Bonner Sahib when he returned to his tent.

"'Thou art a liar, Gunga Ram. The jungle hereabout is barren of game, and it is in my mind to send thee with a note to the Thanadar of Kaladoongie commending the soles of thy feet to the bamboo staff of one of his men;' and, laughing, he threw himself into a long chair.

"'I am sorry for thee, sahib,' I said in reply, 'for not only art thou empty handed this day, but thou hast lost the great stone that shone on thy finger when thou wentest forth this morning. Toba, toba!'

"'Tis in my pocket, O Chattering Jay.'

"'Perchance the sahib shot his dog this morning, seeing that the game was scarce?' I said.

"'Hath he not returned, Gunga Ram?'

"'Ere I answer thee, sahib, 'twere well to drink some brandy-pani;' and I mixed the liquor as he had taught me.

"'It is well, Provider of the Poor,' I went on, 'it is well to be young and well favored, and the special care of thy gods who have bestowed on thee wealth and a moonstone that all the villages in the Kumaon Terai could not purchase,'—hereat the sahib looked at me out of the corner of his eye,—'but it is not well to look for partridges where great beasts hunt. Thy dog was slain in the jungle this morning by a leopard. He lieth outside the tent, and 'twere well the sahib should see what a leopard can do.'

"Following him out of the tent, I uncovered the dead dog. The sahib clutched at his throat and would have fallen, so I put my arm round him and laid him on his bed.

"'This is the work of Cheeta Dutt, sahib. Said I not that perchance he would hunt some one hereafter for thy service to his wife at the ford last month?'

"Rising from the bed, the sahib drank another draught of the strong waters. 'Cheeta Dutt's back shall smart for this,' he said.

"'And then, sahib, he will slay his wife because of thy ring in the pocket of her bodice.'

"'Budmash, thou hast been playing the spy!' and turning upon me like a wild boar, his face aflame, he caught me by the beard.

"'Sahib,' I said, 'I am but a poor man, and thou of consequence in the Terai, but, man to man, thou durst not lay thy hand on my beard in the jungle and away from thy camp. I fear not to tell thee, sahib, that I did, indeed, watch thee this morning; but the