By Tamarind and Mhowa. lot 



At last a wary old hind slowly descended the steep bank, 

 lifting cautious feet with a comical high-stepping action ; 

 and halted half way down. 



Suddenly she whistled, and bolted up the bank ; and the 

 whole herd darted out of sight into the jungle. 



After some time they slowly collected again. This time 

 the hind got as far as the sandy bed of the little river, 

 when she sounded another alarm and off they all went a 

 second time. 



Returning once more, the whole scene was re-enacted, 

 with this exception, that as several deer had now got 

 close to the pool, there was a bigger and more complete 

 stampede when the warning whistle went. 



At length, either having tired of false alarms, or being 

 satisfied that these their efforts to force a lurking enemy 

 to disclose his position would have met with success had 

 he been there, the herd descended the bank in earnest, and 

 crowded to the water's edge ; but the timid creatures spent 

 nearly all their time in lowering their heads and sharply 

 raising them agc.in, while several false alarms and partial 

 stampedes occurred. The final scene came certainly before 

 all could possibly have quenched their thirst ; and this time 

 a frantic, helter-skelter retreat, accompanied by a chorus 

 of barks and whistles, scattered the herd for good. 



Their alarm was no ill-founded one, for a family of 

 three tigers prowled this river-bed, and one had passed 

 this very pool during the preceding night ; while tigers' 

 pugs were thickly imprinted in the moist sand, and the 

 whitening bones of many a chital lay in the grass around. 



The coverts in those small detached bandis, like that of 

 Pipalda, so few and so easly worked, and an animal 

 so easily located by an examination of the one or two rare 

 pools still left in the parched jungle, that tigers were 



