appy. _Wah. Wah._"

Experience of forced labour in Himalayan villages had made the
Englishman very tender in raising supplies that were given gratis; but
the fowl-man could not be found, and the value of his wares was, later,
paid to Ganesh--Ganesh of Situr, for that is the name of the village
full of priests, through which the Englishman had passed in ignorance
two days before. A double handful of sweet smelling flowers made the
receipt.

Boondi was wide-awake before half-past seven in the morning. Her
hunters, on foot and on horse, were filing towards the Deoli Gate. They
would hunt tiger and deer they said, even with matchlocks and muzzle
loaders as uncouth as those the Sahib saw. They were a merry company and
chaffed the Quarter-Guard at the gate unmercifully when a bullock-cart,
laden with the cases of the "Batoum Naphtha and Oil Company" blocked the
road. One of them had been a soldier of the Queen, and, excited by the
appearance of a Sahib, did so rebuke and badger the Quarter-Guard for
their slovenliness that they threatened to come out of the barracks and
destroy him.

So, after one last look at the Palace high up the hillside, the
Englishman was borne away along the Deoli Road. The peculiarity of
Boondi is the peculiarity of the covered pitfall. One does not see it
till one falls into it. A quarter of a mile from the gate, town and
Palace were invisible. But the Englishman was grieved at heart. He had
fallen in love with Boondi the beautiful, and believed that he would
never again see anything half so fair. The utter untouchedness of the
town was one-half the charm and its association the other. Read Tod, who
is far too good to be chipped or sampled; read Tod luxuriously on the
bund of the Burra Talao, and the spirit of the place will enter into you
and you will be happy.

To enjoy life thoroughly, haste and bustle must be abandoned. Ram Baksh
has said that Englishmen are always bothering to go forward, and for
this reason, though beyond doubt they pay well and readily, are not wise
men. He gave utterance to this philosophy after he had mistaken his road
and pulled up in what must have been a disused quarry hard by a
cane-field. There were patches and pockets of cultivation along the
rocky road, where men grew cotton, chillies, tobacco, and sugar-cane. "I
will get you sugar-cane," said Ram Baksh. "Then we will go forward, and
perhaps some of these jungly-fools will tell us where the road is." A
"jungly fo