of execution, an old saul-tree with low limbs.
Then, having taken the rope with which the hurkaru's mail-bag was lashed
to his buffalo, they slipped a noose over the Nawab's head, made the
other end fast to the lower limb of the saul-tree, and led away the
buffalo.

Little Mungloo, who was cunning as a Thug, acted with surprising talent;
in fact, some of the Sahibs thought he rather overdid his part, for he
dropped his hubble-bubble almost awkwardly, and even kicked,--which the
real Nawab had too much self-respect to do,--so that he sent one of
his slippers flying one way, and the other another. But he choked, and
gasped, and showed the whites of his eyes, and turned black in the face,
and shivered through all his frame, so very naturally, that his admiring
companions clapped their hands vehemently, and cried, _Wah, wah!_ with
all their little lungs. _Wah, wah!_ they screamed,--_Wah khoob tamasha
kurta hi! Phir kello, Mungloo! Bahoot ucchi-turri nuhkul, kurte ho
toom!_ "Bravo! Bravo! Such fun! Do it again, Mungloo,--do it again! it
takes you!" Certainly Mungloo did it to the life,--for he was dead.

* * * * *

To conclude now with a specimen of the tales with which the native
story-tellers entertain little heathens on street-corners.

There was once a bastard boy, the son of a Brahmin's widow; and he was
excluded from a merry wedding-feast on account of his disgraceful birth.
With a heart full of bitterness, he prayed to Siva for comfort or
revenge; and Siva, taking pity on him, taught him the mystic _mantra_,
or incantation, called Bijaksharam,--_Shrum, hrim, craoom, hroom, hroo_.
So the boy went to the door of the apartment where the wedding guests
were regaling themselves and making merry; and he pronounced the mantra
backwards,--_Hroo, hroom, craoom, hrim, shrum_. Immediately the fish,
and the cucumbers, and the mangoes, and the pumplenoses took the shape
of toads, and jumped into the faces of the guests, and into their bosoms
and laps, and on the floor. Then the boy laughed so loud, that the
astonished guests knew it was he who had conjured them; so they went to
the door and let him in, and set him at the head of the table. Then the
boy was satisfied, and uttering the mantra aright, he conjured the toads
back into the dishes again; and they all lay down in their places, and
became fish, and cucumbers, and mangoes, and pumplenoses, just as if
nothing had happened.

Glory to Siva!