278 RIFLE AND ROMANCE 



to affect me as I looked down at the weird figure that 

 squatted, hunched up, there, like some hideous, glabrous 

 toad ; and at that moment I became aware that the smooth 

 brown skin shone with a sticky lustre. Picking up a twig, 

 I rubbed it against the tanned and plastic epidermis. 

 Jhapoo had been freshly greased ! 



I sank on my knee and peered into the chest. There 

 lay a short greasy length of well-worn hollow bamboo, 

 and turning it over, I saw that its mouth was smeared with 

 a greyish paste ! 



I had begun to examine it more closely when I suddenly 

 stopped this had not been in the box when last I locked 

 it away! And what had become of all those sacrificial 

 objects the grain, the cocoanut, and the other things 

 that I had flung into the box that night? They had 

 gone! 



I raised my head and meditatively gazed into the silent 

 jungle. After a while my eyes fell to once more examining 

 the figure of the dead Gond. The lock ? No ! All was 

 in perfect order and there was but one key and that 

 was attached to my own bunch which now hung at the 

 keyhole. 



Suddenly I started violently and glanced over my 

 shoulder. Something had Ah ! the goat ! He had re- 

 covered from the shock to his nervous system, and was 

 kicking at his picket, twiddling his tail, and staring across 

 the glade at me in quite a friendly way. His interruption 

 brought me back to the present moment. I extracted the 

 key, and screening the now open chest with a frond or two 

 of creeping stuff, climbed quietly back to the ntachdn. And 

 the more I sat and thought of it all, the less I liked it. 



Our side of the fort hill had long been in shadow, but 

 the sun had not yet quite set, for I could see his last level 

 beams slanting over the plains away between and beyond 

 the intervening trees. The goat had begun by bleating 

 vociferously, but he now drew such comfort from my com- 



