ureless extent. The moon shines on its thatch, and the lamp lit
inside tells us our caravan has arrived before us. The country is flat
here, with fields and little jungle. We see the woods rising to the
hills which we will reach to-morrow, and wisps of pungent smoke from a
village near hang low across the fields. A few minutes walk brings us to
where a smith works under a tall solitary tree; the smith, as usual, is
brawny, and sparks fly up and bellows blow, and children blink at the
glow just as they do elsewhere. The apprentice works the bellows, and at
a nod from the smith pulls out the glowing metal, and the two thump away
at it cheerily, and shove it back and heap up the charcoal, the bellows
go again, and the smith has three whiffs at his pipe; it is a dah, or
sword, they are making, welding one bit of iron after another into one
piece.

[Illustration]

We dine by candle light, and the moonlight comes through the hanging
screen window and through the spaces between the planks of the floor,
and our music is the distant ringing of the anvil, and the intermittent
liquid notes of a Burmese reed instrument in the village.

After dinner, the mail, which we had not time to read yesterday, and our
home news from the cold North-West. Two letters are from "The Grey
City," both from authors, one with a word picture of that most dreary
sight, our empty High Street on a Sunday morning, the poor people in
their dens and the better class in St Giles; the other tells us that the
"Boyhood of R. L. S." does well, as of course we knew it would; so we
pass the evening pleasantly enough with thoughts of East and West, and
friends here and there--even though that jungle fowl did get clean
away.

CHAPTER XXXV

Kalychet, 10th February.--It seems quite a long time since we were last
night in the plains, in mist and haze and moonlight. It rained, and was
very damp indeed during the night. Our slumbers were disturbed by a
groaning, creaking, wooden-wheeled lowland train of carts, that seemed
to suffer agony for ages--it went so slowly past and out of hearing;
perhaps it was the squeaking of the wheels that set all the cocks
a-crowing. The more the wheels creak the better, for the Burman believes
this creaking and whistling keeps away the "Nats" or spirits of things.
The night seemed long and unrefreshing, and in the grey of the morning
we found our blankets were wet with fog. But that was down below, now we
are up on higher gr