Evening Star Newspaper, November 10, 1894, Page 18

THE EVENIN G STAR, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1894—TWENTY-FOUR PAGES. (Copyright, 1894, by Bacheller,Johnson & Badheller.) Once a rpple came to land In ae en sunset lurning— Lapped against a taaiden's hind, By the ford returning. Dainty foot and gentle breast— ‘Once across be glad and rest. ‘Maiden, wait,” the ripple salt “Walt awhtle, for 1am Death: “Where my lover calls 1 go— Shame it were to treat him coldly— "Twas a fish that circled Turning over bold. “When my lover calls I haste— Dame Disdain was never wedded!” Ripple—rippie cound her waist, Ciear tie eurzent eddied. Foolish heart and faithful hand, Littie feet that touched no laud. Ear away the ripple fed. ipple—ripple—iuuning re ™ ” —Translation. ect the aged!” Tt 3 a thick volee—a muddy voice that would have made you shudder—a voice like something soft breaking in two. Thererwas @ quaver in’ It, a creak and a whine. “Respect the aged! Of, companions of the river--respect the aged! Nothing could be seen on the broad beach of the river except a little fleet of square- sailed, ‘vooden-pinned barges, loaded with building stone, that had just gome under the railway bridge, and were driving down stream. They t their clumsy helms over to avoid the s: ibar made by the scour of the bridge pi and as they passed, three abreast, the horrible voice began again: of the river—respect the and infirm: A boatmsm turned where he sat on the gunwale, lifted up bis hand, sald something that was not a biessi and the boats She Fired Five Shots as glass, reflecting the sandy-red sky in midchannel, but splashed with patches of yellow and dusky purple near and under the low banks. Little creeks ran into the river In the wet season, but now their dry mouths hung clear above the water line. On the left shore, and almost under the railway bridge, stood a mud and brick and thatch and stick village, whose main street, full of cattle going back to their byres, isht to the river, ending In a sort brick pier head, where people who in step by of rede wanted to wash could wade step. That lage of Muse Night was falling fast cver ne flelds of lentils and ri nd cotton in the low-lying ground, yearly 1 by the river, over the reeds that fringed the elbow of the bend, and the tan, grazing grounds bea parrots and crows, who tering and shouting ov their evening dring, had flown inland to roost, cross.ng the outgoing, battauons of te ying loxXes; ant C.ous Up cloud of water birds came whistling and “honking” to the cover of the reedveds. ‘There were geese, barrel-headed and black- backed, teal, pigeon, ‘mallard and shel- drake, ‘with curlews, and, here aad there, a flaminge. A lumbering adjutant crane brought up the rear, flying as though each slow stroke would be his last. “Respect the aged! Brahmins of the river respect the aged!” The adjutant half turned his head, sheer- ed a little in the direction of the voice, and landed stiffly on the sancbar below the bridge. Then you saw what a ruffaniy brute he really was. His back view was immensely respectable, for he stood nearly six feet high, and looked rather like a very proper bald headed parson. In front it was dilfereft, for his Ally Sloper-like head and neck had not a feather to them, and there was a horrible raw skin pouch on bis neck under his chin—a hold all for the things his pickax beak could capture. His legs were long and thin and skinny, but he moved them delicately, and looked at them with pride as he preened down his ashy gray tail feathers, glanced over the smooth of his shoulder and stiffened into “Stand at attention.” ‘A mangy little jackal, who had been yap- ping hungrily on a low bluff, cocked up his ears and tall, and scuttered across the shallows to join the adjutant He was the ‘owest of his caste—not that the best of jackals are good for much, but this one was peculiarly low, being half a beggar, half a criminal--a cleaner up of village rubbish heaps, desperately timid or wildly bold, everlastingly’ hungry and full of cunning that never did him any good. “Us! he said, shaking himself dole- ly as he landed. “May the red mange destroy the dogs of this village! I have three bites for each flea upon me, and ail because I looked—only looked, mark you— at an old shoe in a cow byre. Can I eat mud?" He scratched himself under his left ear. “J heard,” said the zdjutant, in a voice like a blunt saw going through a thick board, “I heard there was,a new born to know fs an- other,” said the Jackal, who had a very fair knowledge of proverbs, learned by listen- ing to men round the fires of an evening. “Quite true. So, to make sure, I took care of that puppy while the dogs were busy elsewhere.” “They were very busy,” sald the jackal. “Well, I must not go to t village hunt ing for scraps yet awhile. And so there truly was a blind puppy in that shoe?" “It Is here,” said the adjutant, squinting over his beak at his full pouch. “A small thing, but acceptable now that charity is dead ‘in the worl.” ha! The world fs fron in these day fled the jackal. Then his restless eye s the least possible ripple on the water, and he went on quickly: “Life is hard for us all, and I doubt not that even our excellent master, the pride of the ghaut and the envy of the river—” “A Har, a flatterer and a jackal were all hatched out of the same egg," said the ad- Jutan* to nobody tn particular; for he was rather a fine sort of Nar,on his own ac- count when he took the trouble. oe the envy of the river,” the jackal repeated, raising his voice. “Even he, I doubt not, finds that since the bridge has been bullt good food {s more scarce. But on the other hand, though I would by no means say this to his noble face, he is so wise and so virtuous—as I, alas! am not—" “When the jackal owns he {is gray how black must the jackal be,” muttered the adjutant, who could not see what was com- s. “Phat his food never falls, and In conse- quence—" ‘There was @ soft grating sound as thouch =e [HS UNDERTAKERS. THe Evsnino$rar. > cee IPLING, oe RITTEN FoR Ns |a boat had just touched in shoal water. | 'The Jackal spun round quickly and faced (it is always best to face) the creature he hod been talking about. It was a twenty- four foot crocodile, cased in what looked like treble-niveted boiler plate, studded and keeled and crested; the yeliow points of his upper teeth just cverhanging his beautifully fluted lower jaw. It was the blunt-nosed mugger of Mugger-Ghaut, older than any man in the village, who had given his name to the village; the demon of the ford, be- fore the railway bridge came—murderer, maneater and local fetish in one. He lay with his chin in the shallows, keeping his place by an almost invisible rippling of his tail, and well the jackal knew that one stroke cf that some tail in the water could carry the mugger up the bank with the h of a st2am engine. “Auspiciously met. Protector of the Poo he fawned, backing at every word. delectable voice was heard, and we came in the hopes of sweet conversation. My tailless presumption, while waiting here, led me, Indeed, to speak of thee. [t is my hope that nothing was overheard.” Now, the jackal had spoken just to be listened to, for he knew flattery was the best way of getting things to eat, and the mugger knew that the jackal had spoken for this end, and the jackal ‘knew that the mazger knew, and the mugger knew that jackal knew that the mugger knew, and so they were all very contented to- gether. The old brute pushed and panted and grunted up the bank, mumbling: “Respect the aged and Infirm!’ and all the time his little eyes burned like coals under the heavy horny eyelids on the top of his triangular head, as he shoved his bloated, barrel body along between his crutched legs. Then he settled down, and, accustomed as the Jackal was to his ways, he could not help starting, for the hundredth time, when he saw how exactly the mugyzer imitated a log adrift on the bar. He had even taken pains to lie at the exact angle a naturally stranded log would make with the water, having regard to the current of the season at the time and place. All this was purely me- chanical, of course, because the mugger had come ashore for pleasure; but a croco- dile is rever quite full, and if the jackal had been deceived by the likeness he would rot have lived te philosophize over it. “My child, I heard nothing,” said the mugger, shutting cne eye. “The water was in my cars, and also I wasgfaint with hun- ger. Since the railway bridge was built y people at my village have ceased to me; and that is breaking my heart.” Ah, shame!” said the jackal. a heart, too! But men are all alike to my mind. there are very great differences, z answered, gently. ‘seme are as lean as boat poles. Others, again, are as fut as young ja—dogs. Never would L causelessly revile men, ‘They are of all fashions, but the long years have shown me that, one with another, they are Men, women and children—I ult to find with them. And re- member, child, he who rebukes the world is ked by the world.” “Fiattery is worse than_an empty tin can in the belly. But that which we have just heard is wisdom,” said the adjutant, bring- is down one foot. “Consider, though, thelr ingratitude to this excellent one,” began the jackal, ten- derly, y! nay! not ingratitude!” the mugger said. “They do not think for others, that is all. But I have noticed, lying at my sta- tion below the ford, that the stairs of the w bridge are cruelly hard to climb, both for old people and young chiddren. The old, indeed, are not so worthy of consideration, but Iam grievei—I am truly grieved—on account of the children. Still, I think, in a little while, when the newness of the bridge has worn away, we shail sce my people's bare brown legs bravely splashing through the ford as before. ‘Then the old mugger will be honored again.” “But surely I saw marigold wreaths float- ing off the edge of the ghaut oniy this noon,” said the adjutant. Marigold wreaths a sign of reverence all India over.” An error—an error, It was the wife of the sweetmeat seller. She loses her eyestght year by year, and cannot tell a log from me—the mugger of the ghaut. I saw the mistake when she threw the garland, for 1 | was lying at the very foot of the ghaut, and had she taken another step I could have shown her some little difference. Yet she meant well, and we must consider the spirit of her offering.” “What good are marigold wreaths when one is on the rubbish heap?" said the jack- al, hunting for fleas, but keeping one wary eye on his protector of the poor. True, but they have not yet begun to ke the rubbish h that shall carry me. Five times have I seen the river draw back from the village and make new land at the foot of the street. Five times have I seen the village rebuilt on the banks, and I shall see it built yet five times more. I am no faithless, fish-hunting gavial, I, at Kasi to- y and Prayag tomorrow, as the saying but the true and constant watcher of the It 1s not for nothing, child, that the village bears my name, and ‘he who watch- es long,’ as the saying is, ‘shall at last have his reward.’ “I bave watched long—very long—nearly and my reward has been bites the jackal. roared the adjutant. n August was the jackal born, ‘The rains fell in September; : such a fearful flood as this,’ Says he, ‘ I can’t remember!’ There is some very unpleasant peculiarity about the adjutant. At uncertain times he ers from acute attacks of the fidgets or cramp in his legs, and though he fs more virtuous to behold than any of the cranes, who are all immensely respectable, he flies off into wild, cripple stilt war dances, half opening his wings and bobbing his bald head up and down; while for reasons best known to himself he is very careful to time his worst attacks with his nastiest remarks. At the last word of his song he came to at- tention again, ten times adjutanter than be- fore. The jackal winced, though he was full three Seasons old, but you cannot resent an insult from a person with a beak a yard long, and the power of driving it like a javelin. The adjutant was a most notorious coward, but the jackal was worse. “We must Ive before we can learn,” sald the mugger, “and there is this to say. Little jackals are very common, child, but such a mugger as I am is not common. For all that I am not proud, since pride is destruction; but take notice, it is Fate, and against his fate no one who swims or walks or runs should say anything at all. I am well contented with fate. With good luck, a keen eye and the custom of consid- ering whether a creek or a backwater has an outlet.to it ere yéu ascend, much may be done.” “Once I heard that even the Protector of the Poor made a mistake,” said the jackal. ‘True; but there my Fate helped me. It was before I had come to my full growth— before the last famine but three (by the Right and Left of Gunga, how full the streams used to be-in those days!) Yes, I was young and unthinking, and when the flood came, who so pleased as I? A little made me very happy then. The village was deep in flood, and I swam above the ghaut and went far inland, up to the rice fields, and they were deep in good mud. I remem- ber also a pair of bracelets (glass they were, and troubled me not a little) that I found that evening. Yes, glass bracelets; and, if my memory serves me well, a shoe. I should have shaken off both shoes, but I was hungry. I learned better later. Yes. And so I fed and rested me; and when I was ready to go to the river again the flood had fallen, and I walked through the mud of the main street. Who but I? Came out all my people, priests and women and chil- dren, and I looked vpon them with benevo- lence. The mud ts not a good place to fight in. id a boatman, ‘Get axes and kill him, for he is the mugger of the ford.’ ‘Not so,’ sald the Brahmin priest. ‘Look, he is driving the flood before him! He 1s the godling of the village." Then they threw many flowers at me, and by happy thought one led a goat across the road.” “How good—how very good is goat!" said the jackal. airy—too hairy, and when found in the water more than likely to hide a cross shaped hook. But that goat I accepted, and went down to the ghaut in great honor. Later, my Fate sent me the boatman who had desired to cut off my tail with an ax. His boat grounded upon an old shoal, which you would not remember.” “We are not all jackals here,” said the adjutant. “Was it the shoal made where the stone boats sank in the year of the ee drouth—a long shoal that stood three joods ?”” “There were two,” said the mugger, “an upper and a lower shoal.” “Aye, I forgot. A channel divided them ond later dried up again,” said the adju- tant, who prided himself on his memory. “On the lower shoal my well-wisher’s crait grounded. He was sleeping in the bows, and, half awake, leaped over his waist—no, it was no more than to his knees—to push off. His empty boat went on and touched again below the next reach, as the river ran then. I followed, because 1 knew men would run out to drag it ashore.” “And did they do so?” sald the jackal, a little awe stricken. ‘This was hunting on a scale that impressed him. “There and lower down they did. I went no further, but that gave me three in one day—well-fed manjis (boatmen) all, and, except in the case of the last, never a cry to warn those on the bank.” “Ah, noble sport! But what cleverness and great judgment it requires!” said the jackal. “Not cleverness, child, but thought. A little thought in life is Itke salt upon rice, as the boatmen say, and I have thought deeply always. The gavial, my cousin, the fish eater, has told me how hard it is for him to follow the fish, and how one fish differs from the other, and how he must know themgal!, both together and apart. I say that Is ®isdom; but, on the other hand, my cousin, the gavial, lives among his peo- ple. My people do not swim in compantes with their mouths out of the water, as the Rewa does; nor do they constantly rise to the surface of the water, and turn over on their siles, like Mohoo and little Chapta; nor do they gather in shoals after flood, like Batchua and Chilwa.” “Both are very good eating,” said the ad- jutant, clattering his beak. "So my cousin says, and makes a great to-do over hunting them, but they do not climb the banks to escape his sharp nose. My people are otherwise. Their life fs on the land, in the houses, among the cattle. I must know what they do and what they are about to do, and, adding the the tail to the trunk, as the saying Is, I make up the whole elephant. Is there a green branch and an iron ring hanging over a doorway? The old mugger knows that a boy has bev born in that house, and must some day come down to the ghaut to play. Is a maiden to be married? The old mugger knows, for he sees the men carry gifts back and forth; and she, too, comes down to the ghaut to bathe before her wedding, and—he is there. Has the river changed ts channel, and made new land where there was only sand before? The mugger knows.” ‘Now, of what se ts that knowledge?” sald the jackal. “The river has shifted even in my little life.” Indian rivers are nearly always moving about in their beds, and will shift sometimes as much as two or three miles in a season, drowning the flelds on one bank and spreading good silt on the other. “There is no knowledge so useful,” said the mugger, “for new land means new quarrels. The mugger knows. Oho! the mugger know . As soon as the water has drained off he creeps up the little creeks that men think would not hide a dog, and there he waits. Presently comes a farmer, saying he will plant cucumbers here and melons there in the new land that the river has given him. He feels the good mud with his ten bare toes. Anon comes anothem saying he will put onions and carrots and sugar cane In such and such places. They meet as boats adrift meet, and each rolls his eye at the other under the big blue tur- ban. The old mugger sees and hears. Each calls the other ‘brother,’ and they go to mark out the boundaries of the new land. ‘The mugger hurries with them from point to point, shuffling very low through the mud. Now they begin to quarrel! Now they say’ hot words! Now they pull tur- bans! Now they lift up their lathis (clubs), and at last one falls backward in the mud, and the other runs. When he comes back the dispute is settled, as the iron-bound bamboo of the loser witnesses. Yet they are not gvateful to the mugger. No, they cry ‘murder,’ and their families fight with sticks, twenty a side. My people are good people—upland Jats—Malwais of the Bet. They do not give blows for sport, and when the fight is done the old mugger waits far down the river, out of sight of the village, behind the Kikar scrub yonder. Then come they down, my broad-shouldered Jats— eight or nine together under the stars, bearing the dead men upon a bed. They are old mcn, with gray beards and voices as deep as mine. They light a little fire— ih! how well I know that fire!—and they drink tobacco, and they nod their heads to- gether forward in a ring, or sideways to- ward tho dead man upon the bank, They say the Englisa law will come with a rope for this matter, and that such a man’s fam- lly will be ashamed, because such a man must be hangea in the great square of the jail. Ther say the friends of the dead: ‘Let him hang!’ and the talk is all to do over again—once, twice, twenty times in the long night Then says one at last: ‘The fight was a fair fight. Let us take the blood money, a little more than ts offered by the slayer, and we will say no more about it. Then do they haggle over the blood money, for the dead was a strong man, leaving many sons. Yet be- fore Amratvela (sunrise) they put the fire to him a little, as the custom ts, and the dead man comes to me, and he says no more about it. Aha! my children, the mug- ger knows—the mugger knows—and the Matwali Jats are a good people.’ lb “They are too close—too narrow in the hand for my crop,” croaked the adjutant. “They waste not the polish on the cow's horn, as the saying is; and, again, who can glean after a Malwai?” “Ah, I—glean—them,” simply. “Now, in Calcutta of the south in the old days,” the adjutant went on, “everything was thrown into the streets, and we picked and chose. Those were dainty seasons. Now they keep their streets as clean as the outside of an egg, and my people went away. To be clean is one thing; to dust, sweep and sprinkle seven times a day wearies the very gods themselves.” “There was a down country jackal had it from a brother, who told me that in Cal- cutta of the south all the jackals were as fat as otters in the rains,” said the jackal, his mouth watering at the bare thought of said the mugger, it. “Ah, but the white faces are there—the English, and they bring dogs from some- where down the river, in boats—big fat dogs—to keep those same jackals lean,” said the adjutant. 4 “They are, then, as hard hearted as these people? I might have known. Neither earth, sky nor water shows charity to a jackal. I saw the tents of a white face last season, after the rains, and I also took a new yellow bridle to eat. The white faces do not dress their leather in the proper way. It made me very sick.” “That was better than my case,” said the adjutant. ‘“‘When I was in my third sea- son, a young. and bold bird, I went down to the river where the big boats come in. The boats of the English are thrice as big as this village.” “He has been as far as Delhi, and says all the people there walk on their heads,” muttered the jackal. The mugger opened his left eye and looked keenly at the adjutant. “It is true,” the big bird insisted. “A Har lies only when he hopes to be believed. No one who had not seen those boats could be- lieve this truth.” “That is more reasonable,” said the mug- ger. “And then?” “From the insides of this boat they were taking out great pieces of white stuff, which turned to water in a little while. Much split off and fell about on the shore, and the rest they swiftly put into a house with thick walls. But a boatman, who laughed, took a piece no larger than a small dog and threw it to me. I—all we adjutants—swallow without reflection, and that piece I swallowed as is our custom. Immediately I was afflicted with an ex- cessive cold that, beginning in my crop, ran down to the extreme end of my toes, and deprived me even of speech, while the boat- men laughed at me. Never have I felt such cold. I danced in my grief and amazement 111 1 could recover my breath, and then I danced and cried out against the falseness ofthis world; and the boatmen derided me till they fell down. The chief wonder of the matter, setting aside that marvelous coldness, was that there was nothing at all in my crop when I had finished my lament- ‘he adjutant had done his very best to describe his feeling after swallcwing a sev- en-pound lump of ice off an American ice- ship, in the days before Calcutta made ice by machiney; but, as he @id pot know what ice was, and as the mu + una the Jackal knew rather less, the tale missed fire. “Anything,” said the mugger, shutting his left eye again, “anything 1s possible that comes out of a boat thrive the size of Mug- ger-Ghaut. My village 1s'not a small one.” There was a whistle’ overhead on the bridge, and the Delhi Mai? slid across, all the carriages gleaming with light, and the shadows faithfully followifig along the river. It clanked away into the dark again, but the mugger and the jackal were so well used to it that they never turned their heads. ign’ “Is that anything less‘wonhderful than a “boat thrice the size of Mugger-Ghaut?” said the bird. . ‘I saw that built, child, Stone by stone I saw the bridge piers rise, and when the men fell off (they weré wondrous sure- footed for the most part—but when they fell) I was ready. After the first pier was made they never thought to look down the stream foi the body to burn. There, again, I saved much trouble. There was nothing strange in the building of the bridge.” “But that which goes across, pulling the roofed cars! That Is strange,’ the adjutant repeated. “It is, past any doubt, a new breed of bullock. Some day it will not be able to keep {tg foothold up yonder, and will fall as the men did. The old mugger will then be ready.” ‘The jackal looked at the adjutant, and the adjutant looked-at the jackal. If there was one thing they were more certain of than another It was that the engine was every- in the wide world except a bullock. The jackal had watched It time and again from the alve hedge by the side of the line, and the adjutant had seen engines since the first engine ran in India. Now, the mug- ger had only looked up at the engine from below, where the steam dome seemed rather lke a’ bullock’s hump. “M—yes, a new kind of bullock,” the mug- ger repeated ponderously, to make himself quite sure in his own mind; and “Certainly it 1s a bullock,” said the jackal “And, again, it might be—'" began the mugger pettishly. “Certainly—most ertainly,” said the jackal, without waiting for the other to finish. “What?” sald the mugger angrily; for he could feel that the two knew more than he did. “What might it be? I never finished my words. You said it was a bullock.” ‘Tt is anything the Protector of the Poor pleases. I am his servant—not the servant of the thing that crosses the river.” ‘Whatever it Is, it Is white-faced work,” said the adjutant. “And, for my own part, I woul not choose a place so near to It to le out upon as this bar ts.” ‘You «o not know the English as I do,” said the mugger. ‘There was a white-face here when the bridge was built, and he would take a boat in the evenings and shuffiz his feet on the bottom board, and whisper: ‘Is he here? Is he there? Get me my gun.’ I could hear him before I could see him—each sound that he made— creaking and puffing and rattling his gun up and down the river. As surely as 1 had picked up one of his workmen, and thus saved great expense in wood for the burn- ing, so surely would he come down to the ghaut and shout in a loud voice that he would hurt me, and rid the river of me—the mugger of Mugger-Ghaut! Me! Children, I have swam under the bottom of his boat for hour after hour, and heard him fire his gun at logs; and when I was well sure he was wearied, I have risen by his side and snapped my jaws in his face. When the bridge was finished he went away. All the English hunt in that fashion, except when they are hunted.” “Who hunts the white faces?’ sald the jackal. “No one now, but I have hunted them in my time.” “I remember a Uttle of that hunting. I was young then,” said the adjutant, clatter- ing his beak significantly. “I was well established here,” continued the mugger. “My village: was being bulld- ed for the third time, as I remember, when my cvusin the gavial brought me word of Let Him Have Both Barre! rich waters above Benares. At first I would not go, for my cousin, who ts a fish eater, does not always know the good from the bad; but I heard my people talking in the evenings, and what they said made me cer- tan n. “And what did they say?” the jackal ked. “They sald enough to make me, the mug- ger of Mugger-Ghaut, leave water and take to my feet. I went by night, using the lt- tlest streams as they served me, but it was the beginning of the hot weather avd all streams were low. I crossed dusty roads, I went through tall grass, 1 climbed hiils in the moonlight. Even rocks did 1 climb, children—consider this well. I crossed the tail of Sirhind the waterless, before I could find the set of the little rivers that flow Gundaward. I was a month's journey trem ‘my own people and the river that I knew. That was very marvelous. said the jack- “What food, by the way?” al, who kept his soul in his little stomach, and was not a bit impressed by the mu ger's land travels. “That which I could find—cousin,” sald the-mugger slowly, dragging each word. Now you do not call a man a cousin in India unless you think you can establish some kind of blood relationship, and it is only in old fairy tales that the mugger ever marries a jackal; the jackal knew for what reason he had been suddenly lifted into the mugger’s family circle. If they had been alone he would not have cared, but the ad- jutant’s eyes twinkled with mirth at the ugly jest. “Assuredly, father, I might have known,” said the jackal. A mugger does not care to be called a father of jackals, and the mug- ger of Mugger-Ghaut said as much—and a good deal more which there is mo use in repeating. “The protector of the poor has claimed kinship. How can I remember the precise degree? Moreover, we eat the same food. He has said it,” was the jackal's reply. That made matters rather worse, for what the jackal hinted at was that the mugger must have eaten his food on that land- march fresh, and fresh every day, instead of keeping it by him till it was in a fit and proper. condition, as every self-respect- ing mugger and most wild beasts do when they can. Indeed, one of the worst terms of contempt along the river beds is “eater of fresh meat.” It is about as bad as call- ing a friend a cannibal would be among human beings. Some kinds of savages think the same way, too. “That food was eaten thirty seasons ago,” sald the adjutant, quietly. “It we talk for thirty seasons more It will never come back. Tell us now what’ happened when the good waters were reached after that most wonderful land Journey. If we lsten- ed to the howling of every jackal the bus!- ness of the town would stop, as the saying is” The mugger must have'been grateful for the Interruption, because he-went on with @ rush: 4 “By the Right and Left of Gunga, when I came there never did I see-such waters.” “Were they better, then, ‘than the big flood of last season?” said the jackal. “Better! That flood was no more than comes every five years—a handful of drown- ed strangers, some chickens, and a dead bullock {n muddy water with cross cur- rents. But the season [ think of the river was low, smooth and even, and, as the gavial had warned me, the dead English came down touching each other. I got my girth in that season, my girth and my depth. From Agra, by Etawah and the bread waters by Allahabad.” “Oh, the eddy that set under the walls of the fort at Allahabad!” said the ad- jutant. “They came in there like widgeon to the reeds, and round and round they swung—thus!” He went off into his horrible dance again, while the jackal looked cn enviously. He naturally could not remember the year of the mutiny they were talking about. The mugger continued: “Yes, by Allahabad, one lay still in the slack water and let twenty go by to pick one; and, above all, the English were not cumbered with jewelry and nose ey res anklets as my women are nowadays. de- light in ornaments is to end with @ rope for necklace, as the saying is. All the muggers of all the rivers grew fat then, but {t was my fate to be fatter than them all. The news was that the English were being hunted into the rivers, and by the Right and Left of Gunga we believed it was true. So far as I went south I be- lieved it to be true, and I went down stream beyond Monghyr and the tombs that look over the river.” “I know that place,” said the adjutant. “Since those days Monghyr is a lost city. Very few live there now. “Thereafter I worked up stream very slowly and lazily, and a little above Mong- hyr there came down a boatful of white faces—alive! They were, as I reinember, women, lying under a cloth spread over sticks, and crying aloud. There was never a gun fired at us watchers of the fords in those Gays. All the guns were busy else- where. We could hear them day and night inland, coming and going as the wind shift- ed. I ros2 up full before the boat, because I had never geen white faces alive, though I knew them weil otherwise. A naked white child kneeled by the side of the boat, and, stooping over, he must need: to trail bis hands in the river. It is a’pretty thing to see how a child likes running wa- ter. I had fed that day, but there was a little unfilled space within me. Still, it was They Threw Many Flowers at Me. for sport and not for food that I rose at the child’s hands. They were so clear a mark that I did not even look when closed; and they were so small that though my jaw rang true—I am sure of that—the child drew them up swiftly unaurt. They must have passed between tooth and tooth —those small white hands. I should have caught him crosswixe at the elbows, but, as I said, it was only for sport and desire to see new things that I rose at all. They cried out one after another in the boat, and presently I rose again to watch them. The boat was too heavy to push over. They were only women, but he who trusts a wo- man will walk on duckweed in a pool, as the saying is; and by the Right and Left of Gunga that {s truth!” “Once a woman gave me some dried skin from a fish,” said the jackal. “I had hoped to get her baby, but horse food is better than the kick of a horse, as the saying Is. And what did that woman do?” “She fired at me with a short gun of a kind I have never seen before or since. Five times, one after another” (the mugger must have met with an old-fashioned revolver); “and I stayed open mouthed and gaping, my head in the smoke. Never did I see such a thing. Five times, as swiftly as I wave my tall-thus.” The jackal, who had been growing more and more interested in the story, had just time to leap back as the tail swung by like a scythe. “Not before the fifth shot,” sald the mug- ger, as though he had never dreamed of stunning one of his lsteners—“not before the fifth shot did I sink, and I rose in time to hear a thief of a boatman telling all those white women that I was most cer- tainly dead, One bullet had gone under a neckplate of mine. I know not if it is there still, for the reason I cannot turn my head. Look and see, child, It will show my tale true.” Sip" said the jackal. “Shall an eater of ‘ola shoes, a bone cracker, presume to’doubt the word of the Envy of the River? May my tail be bitten off by blind puppies if the shadow of such a thought have crossed my humble mind. The Protector of the Poor has condescended to inform me, his slave, that cnce in his life he has been wounded by a woman. That is sufficient, and I will tell the tale to all my children, asking for no proof.” “Overmugh civility is sometimes no bet- ter than overmuch discourtesy, for, as the saying is, one can choke a guest with curds, I do not’ desire that any children of thine should know that the mugger of Mugger- Ghaut took his only wound from a woman. They will have much-else to think of if they get their living as miserably as their father.”” “It Is forgotten long ago! It was never said! There never was a white woman! ‘There was no boat! Nothing whatever hap- pened at all!” The jackal waved his brush to show how completely everyt&ing was wiped out of his memory and sat down with an air. “Indeed, very many things happened,” said the mugger, beaten in his second at- tempt that right to get the better of his friend. (Neither bore malice, however. Eat and be eaten was fair law along the river, id the jackal came in for his share of plunder when the mugger had finished a meal.) “I left that boat and went up- stream, and, when I had reached Arrah and the back waters behind it, there were no more dead English. The river was empty for a while. Then came one or two dead, in red coats, but of one kind all—Hindoos and Purbeeahs—then five or six abreast, and at last, from Arrah to the north be- yond Agra, {t was as though whole villages had walked into the water. They came cut of little creeks one after another, as the logs come down in the rains. When the river rose they rose also in companies from the shoals they had rested upon; and the falling flood dragged them with it across the fields and through the jungle by the long hair. All night, too, going north, I heard the guns, and by day the shod feet of men crossing fords, and that noise which a heavy cart wheel makes on sand under water, and every ripple brought more dead. At last even I was afraid, for I said, ‘If “this happen to men how shall the mugger of Mugger-Ghaut escape? There were boats, too, that came up behind me without sails, burning continually as. the cotton boats sometimes burn, but never sinking.” “Ah!” said the adjutant. “Boats like those come to Calcutta of the south. They are tall and black, they beat up the water behind them with a tall, and they—” “Are thrice as big as my village. My boats were low and white; they beat up the water on either side of them, and were no larger than the boats of one who speaks truth should be. They made me very efraid, and I left water and went back to chis, my river, hiding by day and walking by night, when I could not find little streams to help me. I came to my village again, but I did not hope to see any of my people there. Yet they were plowing and sowing and reaping, and going to and fro in their flelds as quietly as their own cattle.” “Was there still good food in the river?” said the jackal. “More than I had any desire for. Even I—and I do not eat mud—even I was tired, and, as I remember, a little frightened at this constant coming down of silent ones, I heard my people say in my Village that al) the English were dead, but those that came face down with the current were not Eng- lish, as my people saw. Then my people said it was best to say nothing at all, but to pay the tax and plow the land. After a long time the river cleared, and those that came down it had been clearly drowned by the floods, as I could well see; and, though it was so easy then to get food, I was heartily glad of it. A little killing here and there is no bad thing—but even the mugger is sometimes satisfied, as the saying is.” “Marvelous! Most truly marvelous,” said the jackal. “I have become fat rough merely hearing about so much gqod rere a And afterward what, if it be permitted ask, did the Protector of the Poor do?” “I said to myself—and by the Right and Left of Gunga I locked my jaws on that vow —I said I would never go roving any more. So I lived by the ghaut, very close to my own people, and I watched over them year after year; and they loved me so much that they threw marigold wreaths at my head whenever they saw it lift. Yes, and my Fate has been very kind to me, and the river is good enough to respect my poor and in- firm presence, only—" “No one is all ha) from his beak to his tail,” said the adjutant, sympathetically. “What does the mugger of Mugger-Ghaut need more?” “That little white child which I did not get,” said the mugger, ie @ deep sigh. “He was very small, but I have not for- gotten. I am old now, but before I die it is my desire to try one new thing. It is true they are a heavy-footed, er and foolish people, and the sport would be small, but I remember the old dayg above and if the child lives he will remember It may be he goes up and down the of some rive hands between the teeth of the mugger of Mugger-Ghaut, and lived to make a story of it. My Fate has been very kind, but that plagues me sometimes in my dreams—the thought of the little white child in the bows of that boat.” He yawned and closed his jaws. “And now I will rest and think. Keep silent, my children, and respect the aged.” He turned stiffly, and shuffled to the top of the sand bar, while the Jackal drew back with the adjutant to the shelter of a tree stranded on the end nearest the railway bridge. “That was a pleasant and profitable life,” he grinned, looking up inquiringly at the bird, who towered above him. “And not once, mark you, did he think fit to tell me Where a morsel might have been left along the banks. Yet Ihave told him a hundred times of good things wallowing down stream. How true is the saying, ‘All the werld forgets the jackai and the barber when the news has been told!’ Now he is going to sleep. Arri.”” “How can a jackal hunt with a mugger?” said the adjutant, coolly. “Big thief and lit- tle thief. It is easy to say who gets the Pickin, The jackal turned, whining impatiently, and was going to curl himself up under the tree trunk when he suddenly: cowéred id looked up through the draggled branches at the bridge almost above his head. “What now?” said: the adjutant, opening his wings uneasily. ‘Wait till we see. The wind blows from us to them, but they aye not looking for us— those two men. “Men, is it? My office protects me. All Indta knows I am sacred.” The adju being a first-class seavenger, is allowed to go where he. pleases, and so this one never fiinehed. <- “{ am not worth a blew from anything greater than an old shoe,” said the jackal, and listened again. ‘Hark to that footfall!” he went on. ‘That was no country leather, but the shod foot of a white face. Listen again! Iron hits iron up there. It-is a gun. Friend, those heavy-footed, foolish English are coming to speak with the mugger.’ “Warn him, then. He was called Protector of the Poor by some one not unlike a stary- ing jackal but a little time ago.” . “Let my cousin protect his own hide. He has told me again and again that there is nothing to fear from the white faces. They must be white faces. Not a villager of the ghaut would dare to come after him. See, I sald it was a gun. Now, with good luck, we shall feed before daylight. He cannot hear well out of water, and—this time it Is not a woman.” A shiny barrel glittered for a moment in the moonlight on the girders. The mugger was lying on the sand bar as still as his own shadow, his forefect spread out a lt- tle, his head dropped between them, snort- ing like a—mugger. A voice on the bridge whispered: “It’s an odd shot—straight down, almost—but as safe as houses. Better try behind the neck. Golly, what a brute! The villagers will be wild if he's shot, though. He's the deota (godling) of these paris.” “Don't care a rap,” another yolce an- swered. “He took about fifteen of my best coolies while the bridge was building, and it’s about time he was put a stop to. I’ve been after him in a boat for weeks. Stand by with the Martini as soon as I've given him both barrels of this.” “Mind the kick, then. A double four bore’s no joke.” “That's for him to decide. Here goes!” There was a roar like the sound of a small cannon (the biggest sort of elephant rifle is not very different from artillery), and a double streak of flame, followed by the stinging crack of a Martini, whose long bul- let makes nothing of a crocodile’s plates. But the explosive bullets did the work. One of them struck just behind the mugger’s neck, a hand’s breadth to the left of the backbone, while the other burst a little lower dow. at the beginning of the tail. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred a mor- tally wounded crocodile can scramble off for deep water and get away; but the mug- ger of Mugger-Ghaut was Iterally broken Into three pieces. He hardly moved his head before the life went out of him, and he lay as flat as the jackal. “Thunder and \ghtning! Lightning and thunder!” said that miserable little beast. “Has the thing that pulls the covered carts over the bridge tumbled at last?” “It is no more than a gun,” said the ad- jutant, though nis very tall feathers quiv- ered. “Nothing more than a gun. He Is ly dead. Here come the white The two Englishmen had hurried down from the bridge and across to the sand bar, where they stood admiring the length of the mugger. Then a native with an ax cut off the big head, and four men dragged it across the spit. “The last time that T had my hand in a mugger’s mouth,” sald one of the English- men, stooping down (he was the man who had ‘built the bridge), “it was when I was about five years old—coming down the river by boat to Monghyr. I was a mutiny baby, y'know. Poor mother was in the boat, too, and she often told me how she fired dad’s old pistol at the beast’s head.” “Well, you've certainly had your revenge on the ‘chief of the clan—even if my gun has made your nose bleed. Hi, you boat- men! Haul that head up the bank and we'll boll it for the skull, The skin's too knocked about to keep. Come along to bed now. This was worth sitting up all night for, wasn't it?” Curtously enough, the Jackal and the ad- jutant made the very ‘same remark not three minutes after the men had left. eee OF COURSE HE WASN'T AFRAID. Merely Needed a Light While Search- ing for the Supposed Burglar. At 2 o'clock Tuesday morning, when all the people living on College avenue were fast asleep, there was commotion in one of the beautiful residences along that thor- oughfare, says the Indianapolis Sentinel. It was the home of a merchant, and the com- motion broke loose in the sleeping apart- ment of himseif and wife. She started it. She awakened suddgnly and thought she heard some one trying to break in down- stairs, She shook her husband, and, after some time elapsed, succeeded in making him realize the situation. They both listen- ed. There was some noise, sure enough, and & cold shiver that would have been welcome at any other time crept down his spinal column and even to his toes. He de- termined not to get scared, though his teeth were chattering, so he announced that Laat ado beat and investigate. fou al l = at ea his ite tg lear?"’ nervously ask. le took out revolver, struc! Ughted a lainp and then looked at hoe th disgust. “Afraid! Well, hardly. I never saw the man yet I was afraid of. Now don't make any noise, but come.” The little woman started in astonishment. “Do you want me to go, too?” “Do I want you to go? Why, of course I do, You must go ahead and carry the light so I can see to shoot. Do you think I could hit a burglar in the dark? Hurry up or he'll Pena the det nd that man made the little woman ahead with the light, while he held the - volver over her shoulder at full cock. They traversed the house from garret to cellar, finally found a stray dog scratching at the back door and came back to bed. He gat up for an hour, telling her what he would have done had there been a burglar there, ——— +0 True to the Life. From an Exchange. One morning a banker stepped into his office and most effusively greeted his book- keeper, who had entered his service just twenty-five years before, at the same time handing him a closed envelope with the re- mark: “This is to serve you as a memento of the present occasion.” The grateful re- cipient did not venture at first toopen the enyelope, until encouraged to do so by a nod and a smile from his employer. And what do you think it contained? The banker's photograph—that, and nothing more. The bookkeeper was dumb. “Well, what do you think of it?” his prin- cipal inquired, “It's just like you,” was the reply. ———+e+_____ Mystery of the Blue Bean. From the London Daily News. 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