taken away. But in the palm of the little prisoner there was the mark right enough. The Assistant Commissioner was distressed. Why, with the Central Indian Jungle teeming with edible roots and berries barely two miles away, and around him the black and yellow antelope roaming in herds through the fields of ripening grain, had this man stooped to steal an old village goat? He put the question point-blank.

The

The answer was satisfactory. police of the District, hot on the track of a dacoity, had raided the Ratias' camp a month ago, arrested the party and seized all nets and snares found on the spot together with two stalkingbullocks. The human portion of the spoil had been released, but the traps and nets and, above all, the priceless trained bullocks, were still in custody. He, the accused, was no kisan (cultivator) nor such a one as should work for hire; he hungered for meat, and so he stole the goat.

"Twenty stripes," said the Assistant Commissioner and shut the register of Summary Trials with a bang. "Having been whipped," he added, "you will be given your bullocks and gear this evening."

In a little while the beast-like howls of the first accused bore witness to the assembled villagers to the justice of the Sirkar. The Ratia took his twenty stripes in silence, wriggling prodigiously. On being released, he snorted, slipped a morsel of opium into his mouth and, from force of habit, bent himself to slide into the squatting posture natural to the Oriental. Half-way through the action he appeared to remember something and straightened himself with a jerk. Some one in the crowd (it was the owner of the goat) laughed; the Assistant Commissioner laughed also, and, true flattery, the laugh became general. "When your Highness goes to Durbar," asked a

waggish constable of the victim, "will he be pleased to accept a chair?"

The little crowd melted away and the camp resumed its normal aspect of repose. It was the middle of the afternoon. Kingfishers, emerald (the smaller kind) and pied black and white (the larger), hovered in pairs above the blue tank and dropped like plummets amid a shower of diamond spray. The crumbling fort of some bygone aboriginal Rajah took up half the village side of the sheet of water, and the battlements were lined with gray monkeys basking and blinking in the warmth. Below the monkeys, out of broken casements and ruined cell-like chambers, burst a wealth of tropic grass and bush and flower. A rustle, and the crest and shining eyes of a peacock were thrust tentatively through a rift in the masonry; the whole bird followed and with him his four mates. They took up statuesque poses full in the eye of the declining sun and backed by a sculptured slab set above a doorway. Below them, again, the lotuscovered surface of the tank crept up to the yellow wall. Small chuckling grebelike creatures bustled and dived among the vermilion flowers. A bluish-black bird, with preposterously long toes and a cocked-up tail, was racing over the unsteady rafts of leaf in pursuit of an invisible prey, and two bald-headed ibises with scarlet-rimmed eyes stood dreaming in the shallows. Over all hung the fluttering kestrals, patientest of all hunters of the air. Not the faintest zephyr was abroad. The jungle encircled tank and village and cultivated lands with a dense wall of vegetation, and from time to time the broad teak leaves fell, dry and clattering into eternal silence.

The Assistant Commissioner yawned and called for his shot-gun. There were a few acres of snipe-ground below the tank among the rice-fields, and to shoot his dinner had formed for the

last month or two part of the daily routine of his life. His silent bearer brought him his weapon and in the other hand his master's heavy .500 Express. There was a significant gleam in his eye, as he awaited permission to speak.

The Assistant Commissioner looked, noted, and said one word, "Why?"

The words tumbled out of the man's mouth in his haste. "It is that rogue of a thief, the twenty-stripe fellow, he says he has sure news of a panther not a mile from here, and if the Sahib will sit up for it, in one hour from now he will obtain a shot. The man is a thief, but he is a jungle-dweller, and perhaps, -but let the Presence himself question him." Now the Sahib was perfectly aware that had not the tale seemed to his servant a genuine one the rifle would never have been taken from its case. "Produce the man," he said.

At

So he spoke of the panther. dawn that day he had come upon the beast licking his bloody chops over the body of a dead heifer in a field hard by the jungle-line. He had scared it off its prey and at evening, when the fields were deserted, it would certainly return to the kill. No time was to be lost. Let the Sahib start, and let a kid also be taken along, for, if the kill had been dragged into the jungle, as was probably the case, the kid could be tethered in the field near a convenient tree and by its bleating lure the panther into the open where a clear shot was possible.

The plan was approved and at once the expedition started. Snipe rose in whisps at their feet as the party picked their way along the narrow rice embankments out towards the drier fields and the fire-line that divides the Government Reserved Forest from the tilled village lands.

II.

The social nature of the domestic goat of India has gained for that animal an unenviable reputation as the best possible bait for the larger carnivora of the jungle. To employ the offspring of the sacred cow is in a Hindu country impracticable. Your young buffalo stands in moody silence under the tree to which he is bound, or, with an indifference exasperating to the watcher, in the machan lies down quietly to sleep; but the kid of the goats, separated from his fellows and deserted by those who have tethered him down, calls heaven and earth to witness the lonesomeness of his position, till for far and wide the round ear of many a beast of prey cocks as at the sound of a dinner-bell. Should the eye of the victim, however, fall upon the watcher in the tree above, the insistent bleatings cease; there is company, and he is not afraid. Hence the black and white kid was elaborately blindfolded before the Assistant Commissioner climbed up into the acacia tree, when, the bandage removed, the natives departed, talking loudly, according to custom, in order to impress on any neighboring panther the fact that they had really and truly quitted the scene. The goat tugged and strained at the cord in his effort to follow them; then he lifted up his voice in a shrill incessant stream of bleatings.

The watcher sat like a graven image and abandoned himself to a mental attitude of pure receptiveness. To right and left before him stretched the line

of Government jungle, a wall of forest cut off sharply from the fields by the regulation forty foot burnt fire-line. Somewhere behind that screen was moving the beast he had come to kill. Mysterious noises, rustlings, and scamperings over the carpet of dried leaves, told of the presence of the smaller folk of the jungle whose play-hour it was. As the sun sank lower so the voices of the jungle acquired new character in the unearthly stillness of the evening. Pea-fowl called like great cats from one forest giant to another, as they ascended with leaps and flappings to their immemorial roosts in the higher branches. A sambhur stag, a full mile away, sent a challenge to his rival across the river; the call, half bellow, half roar, was taken up vigorously, and the echoes of the river-bed played fantastic tricks with the sound. Near at hand a family of mongooses, hot on the trail, hunted along the fire-line, doubling in and out of the forest-screen like monster weasels. And the goat, in an agony of loneliness, tugged at the cord and shook the air with long quavering bleatings.

The sun was now so low that its rays seemed to strike the wall of jungle in horizontal shafts, lighting up dark alleys where the screen of verdure was thinnest, and flooding the cultivated lands with a warm amber-colored glow. It was the hour of perfect peace, when, for a brief space, time becomes a word without meaning and seconds are interchangeable with years. Then there came a change.

A band of spotted deer (three hinds headed by a stag) broke at full gallop from the forest, and dashed recklessly across the fire-line and over the bare fields, heading for the further belt of jungle. They passed within gun-shot of the Assistant Commissioner, the stag's antlers thrown back almost to his haunches, his liquid eye distended with terror. The noise of flying hoofs

died away and was succeeded by a silence unbroken but for the reedy shrilling of a tree-cricket above the watcher's head. The pea-fowl had ceased calling. Then a solitary monkey coughed and barked behind the screen of trees, jerking out his observations not, as it seemed, at random, but with an objective. The little goat no longer bleated. It stood staring at the fire-line, and now and again stamped with a nervous forefoot. Slowly, very slowly, the Assistant Commissioner raised his head and his eyes followed the direction of the glassy gaze of the goat. The beast had come.

With head sunk below his massive shoulders he stood on the blackened fire-line, an old and heavy panther. The dying sun shone full on his broad chest and bowed fore-legs which at fifty paces distant seemed a pinkish white. So still was he that, save for the eyes, the sleek dappled body might have been of moulded bronze; but the eyes, malignant, intense, inscrutable, were fixed in an unblinking stare upon the goat. The goat, with the pluck of its kind, faced the beast in silence, stamping and challenging with pathetically useless little horns.

A fine perspiration burst from the palms of the watcher in the tree, until it seemed impossible to him to hold the rifle firmly. On a sudden, too, the weight of the barrel resting upon his thigh became intolerable. Cramp threatened his bent limbs, yet to move or shoot at this stage was out of the question. The very motion of breathing made the creaking of his leggings horribly audible to his quickened sense of hearing. Minutes passed like hours and still the beast stood, staring.

The sun dropped into the ocean of forest in the West. Then, stepping delicately with noiseless pads, the beast walked across the fire-line. The ground was thick with last year's teakleaves, but the heavy fore-paws were

lifted and planted in perfect silence. Not for an instant did the yellow eyes relax their intense gaze. On reaching the edge of the field, the body sank upon its quarters, the fore-limbs were slowly extended, and its chin upon its knuckles, the beast lay down deliberately and watched the goat.

A vague anxiety pervaded the mind of the watcher. The light was fading fast; the panther's back harmonized most astonishingly with the brown and gray of the wheat stubble in the field. Should he shoot now, at thirty yards, or wait for the final rush? Plainly the beast was in no hurry for his food, and might gloat on for another hour, when, however close the range, accurate aiming would be impossible; the chance must be taken now. The forefinger felt for the trigger, the grip on stock and barrels tightened, the rifle had journeyed an infinitesimal fraction of the space between hip and shoulder, when the beast rose upon his feet. His progress towards the goat was now even more stealthy than before. head was sunk lower from the shoulders, and the expression in the straining eyes, which faced the sunset, unspeakably sinister. Yard after yard was covered until a bare score of paces separated the destroyer and his prey. Then rising to his full height he ran very swiftly in upon the goat; but the rifle was up like a flash, and the sights covering the working shoulder-blade.

The

In mid-charge the beast glanced up at the watcher; the eyes flashed defiance, the lip curled in hatred as, aware of danger, the beast swerved in his rush. Too late! The right barrel spoke. Roaring angrily, the panther rolled over and over, struck a hand's breadth too far back, through the lungs. Recovering himself, he made for the jungle. A bullet from the left barrel finding him ere he reached the fire-line, failed to stop him. Limping, shrunk to half his size, the tail pressed against

Personally, I, to whom the Assistant Commissioner confided his experiences in the matter of his first panther, am of opinion that the vigil in the acacia tree at sunset brought on a touch of fever enough to throw his usually steady nerves off their normal balance. He, on the contrary, asserts that on rising next morning he felt as physically fit as he had ever felt in all his life; but he admits passing a bad night, to have twice been awakened by a feeling of intolerable pressure upon his chest, and to have been persistently haunted by dreams of a wounded beast gasping out his life in the dark jungle. He saw it with a curious vividness of detail common to few dreams. On a yellow carpet of withered fronds, under a clump of tall canes in the depths of one of those bamboo groves that vary with their plume-like foliage the monotony of a teak-forest, the dying panther half crouched, half sat. At every labored breath blood welled from a gaping wound in the flank. The spotted fore-legs were planted wide apart

and the curved claws, ivory white, were plunged convulsively into the matted floor of the jungle. Overhead, the arching stems met to form a leafy canopy that tempered without shutting out the sunlight. The thick clumps of giant bamboos were SO compact in themselves and in such close contiguity as to produce the impression of a manycolored vault with groined roof. The deadly stillness furthered this impression. Of his own presence in the grove the dreamer was not aware until the beast, raising his eyes, looked him full in the face. Then suddenly awake and damp with perspiration, he leaped from his bed and called for the early morning coffee and fruit.

Outside the tent his orderly was guarding his master's gun and cartridge-bag in the shade of a huge mango tree. The man of the jungles stood at a respectful distance, leaning on a long be-tasselled spear borrowed for the occasion from the village watchman, and near him squatted four aboriginals, armed one and all with the deadly little axe from which the Gond of the forest is never parted from earliest childhood until death. Unrivalled in woodcraft, their part was to construct a rude litter in the jungle whereon to carry home the carcase of the quarry. The Assistant Commissioner stepped out into the sunlight, throwing a handful of plantain-skins to the little goat who now, in honored retirement from a dangerous calling, roamed at will about the camp, harassing with an omnivorous curiosity the soul of the somnolent Madrassi cook. His first act was to look down the barrels of the rifle and load it, his second, to select and place in his left-hand pocket half a dozen spare cartridges. Then, without further delay, the expedition started in single file, for while the good manners of the orderly forbade him from walking anywhere but immediately at his master's heels, an immemorial in

stinct akin to that of skein-flying wild

fowl drives the jungle-born to walk each behind the other. Progress is more silent, a single axe clears the way for all, and light conversation is not encouraged on the jungle-paths.

On a cold-weather morning in the forests of Central India it is an exquisite pleasure to be alive. To inhale deep breaths of an air fragrant with a hundred subtle odors of earth and tree, and tempered to a delicious keenness, is like quaffing draughts of a still pure wine. Every bush, every tuft of grass is athrob with life. The ringing call of the gray partridge, happiest of Indian bird-notes, is heard from all sides. From thicket to thicket across perilously open patches of turf the timid quail run in a fearful joy, peering sidelong as they go for a glimpse of their archenemy the kite. The cooing of countless doves rises in a bewildering volume of sound, and with only a moderate amount of good luck one may come upon a peacock parading his splendors to his mates in some sunlit glade; such a sight is not soon forgotten. As for the morning in question, a heavy fall of dew sparkled on blade and twig. Once something stirred in a low thorn bush near the path and three axes whizzing simultaneously from three sinewy arms crashed into the underwood. A dead hare was extracted in triumph and tongues were loosened over this windfall, even the taciturn Gonds breaking into speech. But the Assistant Commissioner was in no mood for talking. An indescribable feeling of depression, mingled with impatience, distracted his powers of observation. The vision of the night rose and troubled him. By what conceivable right had he presumed to murder (for the coward shot had been fired from a position of perfect safety) one of the most beautiful of the Creator's predatory tribes? True, the beast was a proved cattle-lifter, but this was