SMALL GAME IN INDIA 161 



graph before starting on the return journey. It 

 was uneventful save for a dozen or so wild pig, 

 reserved, alas ! for others who crossed the road 

 within ten yards of the tonga. 



An evil old mugger with a wrinkled smile and 

 an insatiable appetite completed my bag in India. 

 He dwelt on the banks of the holy Jumna, within 

 sight of the smooth white dome beneath which 

 the second of the Mogul emperors lived, and where 

 his wretched descendant sought that sanctuary 

 which he did not find. Perhaps, when he was yet 

 so young that the buffalo calves could come down 

 to the river's brink in the evening without fear of 

 his cruel jaws, he saw white bodies come floating 

 down the sacred stream, clad in stained red tunics 

 which the dirty water did nothing to cleanse : but 

 now he was very old, with a wickedness increasing 

 in proportion to his years, so we resolved to slay 

 him. 



It was a long dusty drive out from Delhi ; past 

 the quiet grave in which John Nicholson sleeps his 

 long sleep, still facing the rose-red walls of the city 

 which he died to save, and so through the Kashmir 

 Gate, the most famous of all the gates of India. It is 

 easy, as one passes its low battered portals, to imagine 

 that hot awful day fifty years igo, and the little 

 group with puckered eyes who stood in its shadow, 

 looking, always looking for the cloud of dust no 

 bigger than a man's hand which never stirred to 

 gladden their sight upon the white riband of road 



