

Under the Jdmtins. Hi 



" Maharaj! " he grinned widely, " I see. Yes ! How 

 shall I tell lies to your presence ? Nightly do they come 

 since the moon was small. Nightly do they suck and 

 wrangle. There's my hut up there, beyond the clearing 

 and the kutki field, and I hear and know it all ! " 



" Then let there be a charpathere half an hour before 

 sundown," quoth I, " and bark-ropes too, against my 

 return ; and a suitable reward shall be thine ! " 



# . # # * # 



Towards evening I was riding back to the rendezvous. 



To my left ascended a mountain shoulder, out of which 

 was carved the tortuous little road I followed : to my right 

 there yawned a huge khbra of misty depth. At its bottom 

 lay tiny patches of green tall mango groves in the bad of 

 the stream, near the one water-hole that I knew of there. 

 The great Kamdar khora ! Nineteen hundred feet deep, 

 and a mile across. From its depths came the faint whoops 

 of langurs at play, and the distant calls of grey jungle- 

 cocks. The sun was declining to rest far beyond the 

 stretching lower ranges of the Me'lghat. The road made 

 some agonising twists, skipped across a narrow, sharp 

 backed col, with sheer, bare, yellow-grassed couloirs falling 

 precipitously to right and left, and toiled up a long spur to 1 

 the top of the plateau where grew my jdmun tree. 



My man had preceded me, with rug and food, and the 

 Korku, having fulfilled Ins promise of the morning, stood 

 there, with a friend to help him fix the machdn. 



There were two large plum trees, about twenty yards 

 apart, and between them grew an aola tree. In the latter 

 I caused the string cot to be tied. While this operation was 

 in progress, I and my orderly tore down large quantities 

 of plums, and disposed them temptingly on an open space at 

 a comfortable angle from my *:ree. and about five yards from 



