ad 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 attention again, ten times adjutaunter than
before.

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 live before we can learn," said 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 considering whether a
creek or a backwater has an outlet to it ere you ascend, much may be
done."

"Once I heard that even the Protector of the Poor made a mistake," said
the Jackal viciously.

"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 used the streams 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 remember 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; but 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
children, and I looked upon them with benevolence. The mud is not a good
place to fight in. Said a boatman, 'Get axes and kill him, for he is the
Mugger of the ford.' 'Not so,' said the Brahmin. 'Look, he is driving
the flood before him! He is 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.

"Hairy--too hairy, and when found in the water more than likely to hide