THE BIRDS AT THE MANGO TOPE. 



'53 



birds have gone. Death is at work too, for many a blue- 

 grey harrier comes over the hedges and across the fields, 

 gliding on its long black-tipped wings as if that easy motion 

 were its normal state its inertia. It is the feeblest of the 

 hawk kind, but gifted with a miraculous power of stopping 

 in full flight, and dropping like a drop of rain on a young 

 lark or incautious lizard. The kestrel is plotting against 

 the same feeble folk, but it is up in the air, and motionless 

 as a cloud on a hot day, save for the rapid flapping of its 

 sharp pinions. If you are out with the sun, as everybody 

 should be in India, you will certainly meet the guilty jackal 

 on his way home, and he will sit down, with his usual im- 

 pudence, to look at you. The little foxes stay out gambol- 

 ling till a much later hour, and the jerboa rats, whose holes 

 have riddled the ground like a nutmeg-grater, come out and 

 sit up on their hind legs, pretending to survey the country. 

 It is all a sham. Rats cannot see any more than rabbits, 

 and would have been extinct long ago but for their sharp 

 ears. 



But my trusty steed, Sir Richard, pricks up his ears and 

 quickens his pace : we are drawing near the tope. When 

 a horse goes out, it likes, just as much as its rider, to have 

 a definite terminus ad quern, and there is none better than 



II 



