This last was in reference to a large and comfortable marquee which had been pitched a little to the right of the sandy road along which we were now riding. In this remote country it was strange to see a tent at all, and the Collector rode up to the Patwari to try and learn from him who could be camping there. He came back to inform me that the Patwari was still deaf, but that the Patwari's servant said that it was the camp of Kari Babu.

"Who's Kari Babu?" I inquired.

"He's a local zemindar," said the Collector. "Known as a very bad lot. He oppresses his tenants more than most of them. My idea is that he's probably in collusion with the Patwari to try and cheat us in some way. It seems that he's only just arrived, nominally to do some shooting. The fact probably is that he heard that we were coming, just as the Patwari did, and hurried along too in order to watch and see if I found out anything."

The plot was thickening, though in what direction I had not the faintest idea, nor would the Collector reveal his thoughts further. For some little time we rode on silently. The sun was blazing hot with that heat that spears you in the spine, and there was no protection from it, since the country we were passing through was open, except for grass jungles now and then that grew up higher than an elephant.

Altogether I was beginning to think that the delights of a Government estate were lessening and the monotony of the plains increasing, when we came upon one of those sights which, by their great beauty, make one forget heat and toil, and quite make one wonder how it was one could have thought the plains dull or unbeautiful. We came upon it through some of that very high grass that I have mentioned-by

a zigzag track trodden first of all perhaps by pigs or leopards, but used now by the scarcely more exacting Bengal peasant. It was a great pool with waters like polished ebony. They were so smooth and bright that not only were all the tall reeds mirrored in them, but one could see flickering there even so small a thing as the shadow of a pied kingfisher. The bird itself hung in the air quiver ng with that sharp, quick motion that a butterfly uses when it is caught in some invisible web. Only the kingfisher was not caught, but aiming to catch some fish that swam beside its shadow. The waters were so black that though it seemed as if one must be able to look to their very bottom, one could in fact see no deeper than into a mirror. On the marge of he pool there lay some tortoise-shells- big, empty shells. Some preda ry beast or man had ripped the ire out of them and left them lying there for time or the creatures that c: me down to drink to tread back into the muḍ out of which they came. Between the reeds the tiniest birds futtered up and down, but silently There was no noise at all by this pool, and perhaps that is why it had been given the name which one of the villagers with us told us it was called by-Dead Warriors' Tarn. There was one watcher by it as we came up-a great lemon-colored crocodile. Probably he had found his way there in flood-time from some far stream, and been left with the recession of the waters. He must have heard us approach, for in an instant he plopped from the edge of the reeds where he was sitting into the pool, leaving a black, sparkling wake. Then we saw the thing that, for me at any rate. marked out this pool from many other not dissimilar ones that I had seen before in rides through the jungle. was a mass of purple coot that floated

It

together on the top of that shining sombre water, on the far side of the pool, hard by some water-lilies.

I had noted in Bengal two effects of massed color which could not, I thought, be surpassed anywhere in the world. The first was that not uncommon one produced by a flock of green parrots suddenly, on some alarm, leaving the shelter of trees together. As they barst into the open it is as though some rock of emerald had exploded and blown into a thousand dazzling, screaming fragments. The second was a flight of silver plover wheeling into the sun, till even that Indian sun at midday seemed-in the shadow of their wings-to grow pale and delicate as the moon,-as that moon one may see off the Cornish coast shining on pilchards as they are hauled up to the surface in the big seine.

Both these sights I had seen, and thought well-nigh unsurpassable. But as I looked out across Dead Warriors' Tarn, it seemed to me that these purple coots floating on that black shining water, near the water-liies, were still more beautiful. I do not know how anyone could have misc. Med these lustrous birds purple. As well call our English kingfisher purple. Opal is nearer the color; and opals all crowded together in that dark cave in the mountain, when the magic lamp lit them up for Aladdin, were what they looked like. And then-as something made them aware of us-they became winged opals, and whirred above the reeds, and in a moment were lost in the jungle beyond. For that moment, as one's eyes followed the amazing iridescence, the name-Dead Warriors' Tarnseemed not quite suited to the pool. Jewels have been found that were buried with dead warriors, but never living jewels. I tried to find out through the Collector if there was any legend connected with the pool, but the villagers' store of information had

given out. It was called Dead Warriors' Tarn-that was all he knew; nor do I suppose that the average English agricultural laborer who could tell one, say, that a given field was called The Outpost or Poison Mead, would be able to go much further in clearing up origins. The name and the pool might alike be old or new. Mostly we think of things in India as very old, but the illusion of age is also very easily created there. A river that seems to have flowed in its channel for a thousand years is known to have arrived perhaps yesterday; and where a desert of sand is seen to-day, yesterday and it may be for a thousand years before a river ran through ploughed land.

We rode on from here along more plain land, only stopping at one or two little villages where the Collector thought he might have a chance of gathering information from the peasants. He questioned many of them, but though there was nothing to suggest that they were giving preconcerted answers, I judged from his face that he was not finding out what he wanted. Altogether, we were, I think, a little cast down by the time we halted for lunch outside another village which seemed to bound the estate on the west. Here, however, we were cheered a little by a communication which reached us from the Sub-deputyCollector. It was brought by a small towsel-headed boy,-nine pages of foolscap paper closely written in pencil, with marginal and foot notes added at random, and the Collector, after a glance at it, handed it to me.

"You heard me tell him that I wanted nothing but the names of tenants and the extent of their land," he said with a groan. "Look at that and realize the aid we receive from Bengali assistants!"

It certainly was a curious document, and I wish now that I had kept pos

the figures I asked for, and not bother about anything else."

"Not even the Sub-deputy-Collector's reproaches?"

"Not he," said the Collector.

A few minutes later we were in the saddle again. We had, before resting for lunch, traversed a good half of the Government estate without coming upon what appeared-according to the estate books-to be the best land, from an agricultural point of view, upon the property; and it was on finding this land that the Collector was now bent. The Patwari, re-summoned to his presence, appeared to be deprived not only of the use of his hearing but also of the use of his understanding. The Collector would point on an old map of the estate he had with him to the land he desired to inspect, and then by gesticulations desire the Patwari to lead us to it. The Patwari would either smile amiably and shake his head, or he would wave his hand in some clearly impossible direction. In the end the Collector decided that he would have to find the place he wanted for himself, the Patwari accompanying but not guiding. I secretly applauded this resolution, because the land the Collector wanted to find seemed to lie pretty close to the peacock jungle, and I thought there might be a chance of entering it after all. I really think, upon looking back, that the Patwari, seeing the Collector's decision, might have had the decency to know that he was done for, and therefore it was not worth while to delay us further. (He must have felt that he was a lost soul.) But not he. For the rest of that afternoon he delayed things as much as he could. First of all, it appeared that during lunch-time his pony had been sent off home for reasons not explained. We were left to infer-from the mere fact that it would not be decent to expect the Patwari on foot to accompany us further. The Collector failed

He

to make that decent inference, and invited the Patwari not only to step out on foot but to step out smartly. With the sigh of a marytr the Patwari started, but at what a pace! Certainly it was hot, but mutes at funerals go quicker than the Patwari went. went so slowly and tailed off so much, that twice, at least, the cavalcade had to stop altogether and wait for him lest he should turn off into some piece of jungle and disappear. After the third stop the Collector gave him the post of honor in the van, where such was his tottering gait, such his need to stop at every uninviting pool to lave his head and drink-he moved me to compassion. I am afraid my compassion was not what he wanted. It was the Collector's that he was playing for in vain. For the truth is, that when in the end we came to that good land we were in search of, we found that-contrary to the statements in the Patwari's books as filled in by himself-it supported quite a large number of tenants. And they, alas for the Patwari! were traitors, and explained matters fully to the Collector. It seemed that this land, which Government supposed itself to be letting at something like half a rupee per biga, was actually being let to them at three rupees; and this rent they were paying, not to Government at all, but to Kari Babu. That desperate old villain, the Patwari, was in the meanwhile drawing a double salary,-one for looking after the estate for Government, the other for allowing the zemindar to let to these peasants-as though it were his own property, and at six times the proper price-the best land on the Government estate. I believe that later the Patwari brought up the plea that this ingenious arrangement was of recent date, and had not brought in much to him; but on the other hand the Collector found out that, before the zemindar had come in as patron, the

Patwari had rented this rich land to his own brother for grazing purposes at a nominal cost, on condition that the brother kept the Patwari's buffaloes upon it.

quence.

The main facts were cleared up in a very few minutes, after which the Collector summoned the tenants about him in a circle, and, with the Patwari at his right hand, explained shortly and hotly the rights of the case, and the incredible wrongs wrought by the Patwari and the Babu. Even during this painful harangue, while his Izzet-or reputation-in that region was being made of no account, the Patwari, with a fortitude worthy of a better man, retained his semblance of deafness, and bent forward with a humbly approving smile, as though the Collector were speaking his own thoughts, only with a greater eloBut something-probably the thought that if the Collector became too violent he would really impress these peasants with the belief that they need no longer, after his Honor's departure, go on paying himself or the Babu the Government rent, as they had done before did at one point shake him. Just for a moment he lost his deafness and burst into respectful protest against the Collector's last sentence. I fancy the epithets used by the Collector to describe his conduct were considered needlessly unkind. It was the Collector's chance, and he took it. The words spoken by the Patwari did not reach his ears, and in the peroration with which he wound up his account of the Patwari's stewardship no word that could be construed into appreciation, or even tender-heartedness, was heard. I think the Patwari would gladly have sold what remained of his Izzet for an anna. I think, too, he would willingly have had his pony there to bear him home from a scene which had undeniably shaken him.

Justice was done, and there was still half an hour before dusk would fall. And the peacock jungle was very close. I pointed this out to the Collector, and since there was no chance of catching the Babu that day and explaining to him also that ingenuity does not excuse crime, we decided to have a try for the peafowl. A very few minutes later we were swaying along, guns in hand, on the pad of our elephant. I remember that we crossed into the jungle by a slimy river, which reminded me of nothing so much as the Regent's Park Canal where it runs oozily, hard by the Zooa river, moreover, which very nearly avenged the Patwari by swallowing us up. The mahout could not find a ford, and urged the elephant down into a gray odorous water that instantly began to close over him. We could hear the mud gulp under his feet, and had to draw our legs up out of the filthy stuff that lapped about his shoulders. For a second or two he could not make up his mind whether to sink or stir; then the great muscles in his forelegs swelled out at the water, and somehow or other he heaved us through the slime. A short plunge up the opposite bank and we had entered the jungle. It was very still, but unlike the mangogrove in this, that in spite of the great heat of the day it was already cool in the sunset, perhaps because it was so heavily wooded. Ordinarily, I believe, peafowl ought to be looked for in a grass jungle, which also gives the best chances of shooting them. They are intensely wary birds-poor starters if you are anywhere near them when they begin to start, but sufficiently aware of this failing of theirs to start as a rule in very good time. It looked as if the wooded jungle we were in were far from being an ideal place for pursuing these birds, but, sport or not, it was worth seeing for its own sake. There was a wonderful ca