ccinator had been dragged into the hills by indignant Bhils,
runner after runner had skulked up to the lines, entreating, with
forehead in the dust, that Jan Chinn should come and explain this
unknown horror that hung over his people.

The portent of the Clouded Tiger was now too clear. Let Jan Chinn
comfort his own, for vain was the help of mortal man. Bukta toned down
these beseechings to a simple request for Chinn's presence. Nothing
would have pleased the old man better than a rough-and-tumble campaign
against the Satpuras, whom he, as an "unmixed" Bhil, despised; but he
had a duty to all his nation as Jan Chinn's interpreter; and he devoutly
believed that forty plagues would fall on his village if he tampered
with that obligation. Besides, Jan Chinn knew all things, and he rode
the Clouded Tiger.

They covered thirty miles a day on foot and pony, raising the blue
wall-like line of the Satpuras as swiftly as might be. Bukta was very
silent.

They began the steep climb a little after noon, but it was near sunset
ere they reached the stone platform clinging to the side of a rifted,
jungle-covered hill, where Jan Chinn the First was laid, as he had
desired, that he might overlook his people. All India is full of
neglected graves that date from the beginning of the eighteenth
century--tombs of forgotten colonels of corps long since disbanded;
mates of East India men who went on shooting expeditions and never came
back; factors, agents, writers, and ensigns of the Honourable the East
India Company by hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands. English
folk forget quickly, but natives have long memories, and if a man has
done good in his life it is remembered after his death. The weathered
marble four-square tomb of Jan Chinn was hung about with wild flowers
and nuts, packets of wax and honey, bottles of native spirits, and
infamous cigars, with buffalo horns and plumes of dried grass. At one
end was a rude clay image of a white man, in the old-fashioned top-hat,
riding on a bloated tiger.

Bukta salamed reverently as they approached. Chinn bared his head and
began to pick out the blurred inscription. So far as he could read it
ran thus--word for word, and letter for letter:

To the Memory of JOHN CHINN, Esq.
Late Collector of............
....ithout Bloodshed or...error of Authority
Employ.only..cans of Conciliat...and Confiden.
accomplished the...tire Su