FOUL PLAY. 289 



right beast. But whether we had or had not, I felt supremely 

 happy at having secured so majestic a trophy, and I hope I 

 made the goojur feel equally so. A drop of gall, however, 

 fell into my cup of delight, when next morning I was informed 

 that my splendid prize had been mutilated during the night 

 by a cat. On inspecting the head, I found that one of the 

 ears had been taken off, not by a cat's teeth, but by a clean 

 cut of a knife. I at once suspected foul play, and that it was 

 just a spiteful trick perpetrated by one of my followers from 

 a mean spirit of revenge. I had on several occasions found 

 fault with the suspected culprit who, I regret to say, was 

 Eamzan's son for the avarice he always displayed at the dis- 

 tribution of the venison. This time he had made away with 

 it bodily, intending, as I was told, to barter it with the 

 villagers for grain. On learning this I directed that both the 

 culprit and the meat should be at once produced, when I 

 rated the former well, and distributed the latter fairly among 

 all hands. Next morning the ear was off the stag's head. I 

 felt so convinced that the mischief had been done by this 

 man who was well aware how particular I was regarding the 

 careful preservation of the heads in revenge for the meat 

 row, that I discharged him forthwith, the justice of which 

 sentence, I was glad to find, his father fully acknowledged. 



From this place we returned to Nouboog. On reaching it 

 we found that the dried-up grass on the heights about it had 

 just been set fire to, which ruined all chance of further sport 

 there. I had my suspicions as to who had raised this con- 

 flagration. At night the effect produced by the burning was 

 truly grand, as the fire crept slowly on in long irregular lines, 

 some of them many hundred yards in length. Here it shot 

 up high in quivering tongues of flame as it ignited some dead 

 old resinous pine-trunk and licked along its withered branches, 

 casting a lurid glow on the murky clouds of smoke that 

 hovered above. There, like streams of molten lava, it crept 

 down the mountain -side, or flickered and smouldered in 



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