began the Jackal tenderly.

"Nay, nay, not ingratitude!" the Mugger said. They do not think
for others; that is all. But I have noticed, lying at my station
below the ford, that the stairs of the new bridge are cruelly
hard to climb, both for old people and young children. The old,
indeed, are not so worthy of consideration, but I am grieved--
I am truly grieved--on account of the fat children. Still,
I think, in a little while, when the newness of the bridge has
worn away, we shall see my people"s bare brown legs bravely
splashing through the ford as before. Then the old Mugger will
be honoured again."

"But surely I saw Marigold wreaths floating off the edge of the
Ghaut only this noon," said the Adjutant.

Marigold wreaths are a sign of reverence all India over.

"An error--an error. It was the wife of the sweetmeat-seller.
She loses her eyesight year by year, and cannot tell a log from
me--the Mugger of the Ghaut. I saw the mistake when she threw
the garland, for I was lying at the very foot of the Ghaut, and
had she taken another step I might have shown her some little
difference. Yet she meant well, and we must consider the spirit
of the offering."

"What good are marigold wreaths when one is on the rubbish-
heap?" said the Jackal, hunting for fleas, but keeping one wary
eye on his Protector of the Poor.

"True, but they have not yet begun to make the rubbish-heap that
shall carry ME. Five times have I seen the river draw back from
the village and make new land at the foot of the street. Five
times have I seen the village rebuilt on the banks, and I shall
see it built yet five times more. I am no faithless, fish-
hunting Gavial, I, at Kasi to-day and Prayag to-morrow, as the
saying is, but the true and constant watcher of the ford. It is
not for nothing, child, that the village bears my name, and "he
who watches long," as the saying is, "shall at last have his
reward.""

"_I_ have watched long--very long--nearly all my life, and my
reward has been bites and blows," said the Jackal.

"Ho! ho! ho!" roared the Adjutant.

"In August was the Jackal born;
The Rains fell in September;
"Now such a fearful flood as this,"
Says he, "I can"t remember!""

There is one very unpleasant peculiarity about the Adjutant.
At uncertain times he suffers from acute attacks of the fidgets
or cramp in his legs, and though he is more virtuous to behold
than any of the cranes, who are all immensely respectable,
he flies off into wild, cripple-stilt war-dances, half opening
his wings and bobbing his bald head up and down; while for
reasons best known to himself he is very careful to time his
worst attacks with his nastiest remarks. At the last word of
his song he came to attention again, ten times adjutaunter
than before.

The Jackal winced, though he was full three seasons old, but you
cannot resent an insult from a person with a beak a yard long,
and the power of driving it like a javelin. The Adjutant was a
most notorious coward, but the Jackal was worse.

"We must live before we can learn," said the Mugger, "and there
is this to say: Little jackals are very common, child, but such
a mugger as I am is not common. For all that, I am not proud,
since pride is destruction; but take notice, it is Fate, and
against his Fate no one who swims or walks or runs should say
anything at all. I am well contented with Fate. With good luck,
a keen eye, and the custom of considering whether a creek or a
backwater has an outlet to it ere you ascend, much may be done."

"Once I heard that even the Protector of the Poor made a
mistake," said the Jackal viciously.

"True; but there my Fate helped me. It was before I had come to
my full growth--before the last famine but three (by the Right
and Left of Gunga, how full used the streams to be in those
days!). Yes, I was young and unthinking, and when the flood
came, who so pleased as I? A little made me very happy then.
The village was deep in flood, and I swam above the Ghaut and
went far inland, up to the rice-fields, and they were deep in
good mud. I remember also a pair of bracelets (glass they were,
and troubled me not a little) that I found that evening. Yes,
glass bracelets; and, if my memory serves me well, a shoe.
I should have shaken off both shoes, but I was hungry. I learned
better later. Yes. And so I fed and rested me; but when I was
ready to go to the river again the flood had fallen, and I
walked through the mud of the main street. Who but I? Came out
all my people, priests and women and children, and I looked upon
them with benevolence. The mud is not a good place to fight in.
Said a boatman, "Get axes and kill him, for he is the Mugger of
the ford." "Not so," said the Brahmin. "Look, he is driving the
flood before him! He is the godling of the village." Then they
threw many flowers at me, and by happy thought one led a goat
across the road."


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