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 

 Ramzan'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 lim-. 

 some of them many hum hi .1 yards in length. Here it shot 

 up lii.L'li in quivering tongues of flame as it ignited some dead 

 111 ivsinous pine-trunk and licked along its witlicivl Immrhrs. 

 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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