No More Learning

Am I not the lord of the earth, above and below--entitled by
right and custom to one-eighth of the crop? Yet this devil, establishing
himself, refuses to pay a single tax. . . and he brings a poisonous
spawn of babes. "

"Cast him into jail," I said.

"Sahib," the king answered, shifting a little on the cushions, "once and
only once in these forty years sickness came upon me so that I was not
able to go abroad. In that hour I made a vow to my God that I would
never again cut man or woman from the light of the sun and the air of
God, for I perceived the nature of the punishment. How can I break my
vow? Were it only the lopping off of a hand or a foot, I should not
delay. But even that is impossible now that the English have rule. One
or another of my people"--he looked obliquely at the director-general
of public education--"would at once write a letter to the viceroy, and
perhaps I should be deprived of that ruffle of drums. "

He unscrewed the mouthpiece of his silver water-pipe, fitted a plain
amber one, and passed the pipe to me. "Not content with refusing
revenue," he continued, "this outlander refuses also to beegar" (this is
the corvee or forced labor on the roads), "and stirs my people up to the
like treason. Yet he is, if so he wills, an expert log-snatcher. There
is none better or bolder among my people to clear a block of the river
when the logs stick fast. "

"But he worships strange gods," said the prime minister, deferentially.

"For that I have no concern," said the king, who was as tolerant as
Akbar in matters of belief. "To each man his own god, and the fire or
Mother Earth for us all at the last. It is the rebellion that offends
me. "

"The king has an army," I suggested. "Has not the king burned the man's
house, and left him naked to the night dews? "

"Nay. A hut is a hut, and it holds the life of a man. But once I sent
my army against him when his excuses became wearisome. Of their heads
he brake three across the top with a stick. The other two men ran away.
Also the guns would not shoot. "

I had seen the equipment of the infantry. One-third of it was an old
muzzle-loading fowling-piece with ragged rust holes where the nipples
should have been; one-third a wirebound matchlock with a worm-eaten
stock, and one-third a four-bore flint duck-gun, without a flint.

"But it is to be remembered," said the king, reaching out for the
bottle, "that he is a very expert log-snatcher and a man of a merry
face. What shall I do to him, sahib? "

This was interesting. The timid hill-folk would as soon have refused
taxes to their king as offerings to their gods. The rebel must be a man
of character.

"If it be the king's permission," I said, "I will not strike my tents
till the third day, and I will see this man. The mercy of the king is
godlike, and rebellion is like unto the sin of witchcraft. Moreover,
both the bottles, and another, be empty. "

"You have my leave to go," said the king.

Next morning the crier went through the stare proclaiming that there was
a log-jam on the river and that it behooved all loyal subjects to clear
it. The people poured down from their villages to the moist, warm valley
of poppy fields, and the king and I went with them.

Hundreds of dressed deodar logs had caught on a snag of rock, and the
river was bringing down more logs every minute to complete the blockade.
The water snarled and wrenched and worried at the timber, while the
population of the state prodded at the nearest logs with poles, in
the hope of easing the pressure. Then there went up a shout of "Namgay
Doola! Namgay Doola! " and a large, red-haired villager hurried up,
stripping off his clothes as he ran.

"That he is. That is the rebel! " said the king. "Now will the dam be
cleared. "

"But why has he red hair? " I asked, since red hair among hill-folk is as
uncommon as blue or green.

"He is an outlander," said the king. "Well done! Oh, well done! "

Namgay Doola had scrambled on the jam and was clawing out the butt of
a log with a rude sort of a boat-hook. It slid forward slowly, as an
alligator moves, and three or four others followed it. The green water
spouted through the gaps. Then the villagers howled and shouted and
leaped among the logs, pulling and pushing the obstinate timber, and the
red head of Namgay Doola was chief among them all. The logs swayed and
chafed and groaned as fresh consignments from up-stream battered the now
weakening dam. It gave way at last in a smother of foam, racing butts,
bobbing black heads, and a confusion indescribable, as the river tossed
everything before it. I saw the red head go down with the last remnants
of the jam and disappear between the great grinding tree trunks. It rose
close to the hank, and blowing like a grampus, Namgay Doola wiped the
water out of his eyes and made obeisance to the king.

I had time to observe the man closely. The virulent redness of his shock
head and beard was most startling, and in the thicket of hair twinkled
above high cheek-bones two very merry blue eyes. He was indeed an
outlander, but yet a Thibetan in language, habit and attire. He spoke
the Lepcha dialect with an indescribable softening of the gutturals. It
was not so much a lisp as an accent.

"Whence comest thou? " I asked, wondering.

"From Thibet. " He pointed across the hills and grinned. That grin went
straight to my heart. Mechanically I held out my hand and Namgay Doola
took it. No pure Thibetan would have understood the meaning of the
gesture. He went away to look for his clothes, and as he climbed back to
his village, I heard a joyous yell that seemed unaccountably familiar.
It was the whooping of Namgay Doola.

"You see now," said the king, "why I would not kill him. He is a bold
man among my logs, but," and he shook his head like a schoolmaster, "I
know that before long there will be complaints of him in the court. Let
us return to the palace and do justice. "

It was that king's custom to judge his subjects every day between eleven
and three o'clock. I heard him do justice equitably on weighty matters
of trespass, slander, and a little wife-stealing. Then his brow clouded
and he summoned me.

"Again it is Namgay Doola," he said, despairingly. "Not content with
refusing revenue on his own part, he has bound half his village by an
oath to the like treason. Never before has such a thing befallen me! Nor
are my taxes heavy. "

A rabbit-faced villager, with a blush-rose stuck behind his ear,
advanced trembling. He had been in Namgay Doola's conspiracy, but had
told everything and hoped for the king's favor.

"Oh, king! " said I, "if it be the king's will, let this matter stand
over till the morning. Only the gods can do right in a hurry, and it may
be that yonder villager has lied. "

"Nay, for I know the nature of Namgay Doola; but since a guest asks,
let the matter remain. Wilt thou, for my sake, speak harshly to this
red-headed outlander? He may listen to thee. "

I made an attempt that very evening, but for the life of me I could not
keep my countenance. Namgay Doola grinned so persuasively and began to
tell me about a big brown bear in a poppy field by the river. Would
I care to shoot that bear? I spoke austerely on the sin of detected
conspiracy and the certainty of punishment. Namgay Doola's face clouded
for a moment. Shortly afterward he withdrew from my tent, and I heard
him singing softly among the pines. The words were unintelligible to me,
but the tune, like his liquid, insinuating speech, seemed the ghost of
something strangely familiar.

"Dir hane mard-i-yemen dir To weeree ala gee," crooned Namgay Doola
again and again, and I racked my brain for that lost tune. It was not
till after dinner that I discovered some one had cut a square foot of
velvet from the centre of my best camera-cloth. This made me so angry
that I wandered down the valley in the hope of meeting the big brown
bear. I could hear him grunting like a discontented pig in the poppy
field as I waited shoulder deep in the dew-dripping Indian corn to catch
him after his meal. The moon was at full and drew out the scent of the
tasseled crop. Then I heard the anguished bellow of a Himalayan cow--one
of the little black crummies no bigger than Newfoundland dogs. Two
shadows that looked like a bear and her cub hurried past me. I was in
the act of firing when I saw that each bore a brilliant red head. The
lesser animal was trailing something rope-like that left a dark track
on the path. They were within six feet of me, and the shadow of the
moonlight lay velvet-black on their faces. Velvet-black was exactly the
word, for by all the powers of moonlight they were masked in the velvet
of my camera-cloth. I marveled, and went to bed.

Next morning the kingdom was in an uproar. Namgay Doola, men said, had
gone forth in the night and with a sharp knife had cut off the tail of a
cow belonging to the rabbit-faced villager who had betrayed him. It was
sacrilege unspeakable against the holy cow. The state desired his blood,
but he had retreated into his hut, barricaded the doors and windows with
big stones, and defied the world.

The king and I and the populace approached the hut cautiously. There was
no hope of capturing our man without loss of life, for from a hole in
the wall projected the muzzle of an extremely well-cared-for gun--the
only gun in the state that could shoot. Namgay Doola had narrowly missed
a villager just before we came up.

The standing army stood.

It could do no more, for when it advanced pieces of sharp shale flew
from the windows. To these were added from time to time showers of
scalding water. We saw red beads bobbing up and down within. The family
of Namgay Doola were aiding their sire. Blood-curdling yells of defiance
were the only answer to our prayers.

"Never," said the king, puffing, "has such a thing befallen my state.
Next year I will certainly buy a little cannon. " He looked at me
imploringly.

"Is there any priest in the kingdom to whom he will listen? " said I, for
a light was beginning to break upon me.

"He worships his own god," said the prime minister. "We can but starve
him out. "

"Let the white man approach," said Namgay Doola from within. "All others
I will kill. Send me the white man. "

The door was thrown open and I entered the smoky interior of a Thibetan
hut crammed with children. And every child had flaming red hair. A
freshgathered cow's tail lay on the floor, and by its side two pieces
of black velvet--my black velvet--rudely hacked into the semblance of
masks.

"And what is this shame, Namgay Doola? " I asked.

He grinned more charmingly than ever. "There is no shame," said he. "I
did but cut off the tail of that man's cow. He betrayed me. I was minded
to shoot him, sahib, but not to death. Indeed, not to death; only in the
legs. "

"And why at all, since it is the custom to pay revenue to the king? Why
at all? "

"By the god of my father, I cannot tell," said Namgay Doola.

"And who was thy father? "

"The same that had this gun. " He showed me his weapon, a Tower musket,
bearing date 1832 and the stamp of the Honorable East India Company.

"And thy father's name? " said I.

He obeyed, and I understood whence the puzzling accent in his speech
came. "Thimla Dhula! " said he, excitedly. "To this hour I worship his
god. "

"May I see that god? "

"In a little while--at twilight time. "

"Rememberest thou aught of thy father's speech? "

"It is long ago. But there was one word which he said often. Thus,
''Shun! ' Then I and my brethren stood upon our feet, our hands to our
sides, thus. "

"Even so. And what was thy mother? "

"A woman of the Hills. We be Lepchas of Darjiling, but me they call an
outlander because my hair is as thou seest. "

The Thibetan woman, his wife, touched him on the arm gently. The long
parley outside the fort had lasted far into the day. It was now close
upon twilight--the hour of the Angelus. Very solemnly the red-headed
brats rose from the floor and formed a semicircle. Namgay Doola laid his
gun aside, lighted a little oil-lamp, and set it before a recess in
the wall. Pulling back a wisp of dirty cloth, he revealed a worn brass
crucifix leaning against the helmet badge of a long-forgotten East India
Company's regiment. "Thus did my father," he said, crossing himself
clumsily. The wife and children followed suit. Then, all together, they
struck up the wailing cham that I heard on the hillside:

"Dir bane mard-i-yemen dir To weeree ala gee. "

I was puzzled no longer. Again and again they sung, as if their hearts
would break, their version of the chorus of "The Wearing of the Green":

"They're hanging men and women, too,
For the wearing of the green,"

A diabolical inspiration came to me. One of the brats, a boy about eight
years old--could he have been in the fields last night? --was watching
me as he sung. I pulled out a rupee, held the coin between finger and
thumb, and looked--only looked--at the gun leaning against the wall.
A grin of brilliant and perfect comprehension overspread his
porringer-like face. Never for an instant stopping the song, he held out
his hand for the money, and then slid the gun to my hand. I might
have shot Namgay Doola dead as he chanted, but I was satisfied. The
inevitable blood-instinct held true. Namgay Doola drew the curtain
across the recess. Angelus was over.

"Thus my father sung. There was much more, but I have forgotten, and I
do not know the purport of even these words, but it may be that the god
will understand. I am not of this people, and I will not pay revenue. "

"And why? "

Again that soul-compelling grin. "What occupation would be to me between
crop and crop? It is better than scaring bears. But these people do not
understand. "

He picked the masks off the floor and looked in my face as simply as a
child.
"By what road didst thou attain knowledge to make those deviltries? " I
said, pointing.

"I cannot tell. I am but a Lepcha of Darjiling, and yet the stuff"--

"Which thou hast stolen," said I.

"Nay, surely. Did I steal? I desired it so. The stuff--the stuff. What
else should I have done with the stuff? " He twisted the velvet between
his fingers.

"But the sin of maiming the cow--consider that. "

"Oh, sahib, the man betrayed me; the heifer's tail waved in the
moonlight, and I had my knife. What else should I have done? The tail
came off ere I was aware. Sahib, thou knowest more than I. "

"That is true," said I. "Stay within the door. I go to speak to the
king. " The population of the state were ranged on the hillside. I went
forth and spoke.

"O king," said I, "touching this man, there be two courses open to thy
wisdom. Thou canst either hang him from a tree--him and his brood--till
there remains no hair that is red within thy land. "

"Nay," said the king. "Why should I hurt the little children? "

They had poured out of the hut and were making plump obeisances to
everybody. Namgay Doola waited at the door with his gun across his arm.

"Or thou canst, discarding their impiety of the cow-maiming, raise him
to honor in thy army. He comes of a race that will not pay revenue. A
red flame is in his blood which comes out at the top of his head in that
glowing hair. Make him chief of thy army. Give him honor as may befall
and full allowance of work, but look to it, oh, king, that neither he
nor his hold a foot of earth from thee henceforward. Feed him with words
and favor, and also liquor from certain bottles that thou knowest of,
and he will be a bulwark of defense. But deny him even a tuftlet of
grass for his own. This is the nature that God has given him. Moreover,
he has brethren"--

The state groaned unanimously.

"But if his brethren come they will surely fight with each other till
they die; or else the one will always give information concerning the
other. Shall he be of thy army, oh, king? Choose! "

The king bowed his head, and I said:

"Come forth, Namgay Doola, and command the king's army. Thy name shall
no more be Namgay in the mouths of men, but Patsay Doola, for, as thou
hast truly said, I know. "

Then Namgay Doola, never christened Patsay Doola, son of Timlay
Doola--which is Tim Doolan--clasped the king's feet, cuffed the standing
army, and hurried in an agony of contrition from temple to temple making
offerings for the sin of the cattle--maiming.

And the king was so pleased with my perspicacity that he offered to
sell me a village for 20 pounds sterling. But I buy no village in
the Himalayas so long as one red head flares between the tail of the
heaven-climbing glacier and the dark birch forest.

I know that breed.




THE RECRUDESCENCE OF IMRAY

Imray had achieved the impossible. Without warning, for no conceivable
motive, in his youth and at the threshold of his career he had chosen
to disappear from the world--which is to say, the little Indian station
where he lived. Upon a day he was alive, well, happy, and in great
evidence at his club, among the billiard-tables. Upon a morning he was
not, and no manner of search could make sure where he might be. He
had stepped out of his place; he had not appeared at his office at the
proper time, and his dog-cart was not upon the public roads. For these
reasons and because he was hampering in a microscopical degree the
administration of the Indian Empire, the Indian Empire paused for one
microscopical moment to make inquiry into the fate of Imray. Ponds were
dragged, wells were plumbed, telegrams were dispatched down the lines
of railways and to the nearest seaport town--1,200 miles away--but Imray
was not at the end of the drag-ropes nor the telegrams. He was gone,
and his place knew him no more. Then the work of the great Indian Empire
swept forward, because it could not be delayed, and Imray, from being a
man, became a mystery--such a thing as men talk over at their tables
in the club for a month and then forget utterly. His guns, horses, and
carts were sold to the highest bidder. His superior officer wrote
an absurd letter to his mother, saying that Imray had unaccountably
disappeared and his bungalow stood empty on the road.

After three or four months of the scorching hot weather had gone by,
my friend Strickland, of the police force, saw fit to rent the bungalow
from the native landlord. This was before he was engaged to Miss
Youghal--an affair which has been described in another place--and while
he was pursuing his investigations into native life. His own life was
sufficiently peculiar, and men complained of his manners and customs.
There was always food in his house, but there were no regular times for
meals. He ate, standing up and walking about, whatever he might find on
the sideboard, and this is not good for the insides of human beings.
His domestic equipment was limited to six rifles, three shotguns, five
saddles, and a collection of stiff-jointed masheer rods, bigger and
stronger than the largest salmon rods. These things occupied one half of
his bungalow, and the other half was given up to Strickland and his dog
Tietjens--an enormous Rampur slut, who sung when she was ordered, and
devoured daily the rations of two men. She spoke to Strickland in a
language of her own, and whenever, in her walks abroad she saw things
calculated to destroy the peace of Her Majesty the Queen Empress, she
returned to her master and gave him information. Strickland would
take steps at once, and the end of his labors was trouble and fine and
imprisonment for other people. The natives believed that Tietjens was a
familiar spirit, and treated her with the great reverence that is born
of hate and fear One room in the bungalow was set apart for her special
use. She owned a bedstead, a blanket, and a drinking-trough, and if any
one came into Strickland's room at night, her custom was to knock down
the invader and give tongue till some one came with a light. Strickland
owes his life to her. When he was on the frontier in search of the local
murderer who came in the grey dawn to send Strickland much further
than the Andaman Islands, Tietjens caught him as he was crawling into
Strickland's tent with a dagger between his teeth, and after his record
of iniquity was established in the eyes of the law, he was hanged. From
that date Tietjens wore a collar of rough silver and employed a monogram
on her night blanket, and the blanket was double-woven Kashmir cloth,
for she was a delicate dog.

Under no circumstances would she be separated from Strickland, and when
he was ill with fever she made great trouble for the doctors because she
did not know how to help her master and would not allow another creature
to attempt aid. Macarnaght, of the Indian Medical Service, beat her over
the head with a gun, before she could understand that she must give room
for those who could give quinine.

A short time after Strickland had taken Imray's bungalow, my business
took me through that station, and naturally, the club quarters being
full, I quartered myself upon Strickland. It was a desirable bungalow,
eight-roomed, and heavily thatched against any chance of leakage from
rain. Under the pitch of the roof ran a ceiling cloth, which looked just
as nice as a whitewashed ceiling. The landlord had repainted it when
Strickland took the bungalow, and unless you knew how Indian bungalows
were built you would never have suspected that above the cloth lay the
dark, three-cornered cavern of the roof, where the beams and the under
side of the thatch harbored all manner of rats, hats, ants, and other
things.

Tietjens met me in the veranda with a bay like the boom of the bells of
St. Paul's, and put her paws on my shoulders and said she was glad to
see me. Strickland had contrived to put together that sort of meal which
he called lunch, and immediately after it was finished went out about
his business. I was left alone with Tietjens and my own affairs. The
heat of the summer had broken up and given place to the warm damp of
the rains. There was no motion in the heated air, but the rain fell like
bayonet rods on the earth, and flung up a blue mist where it splashed
back again. The bamboos and the custard apples, the poinsettias and
the mango-trees in the garden stood still while the warm water lashed
through them, and the frogs began to sing among the aloe hedges. A
little before the light failed, and when the rain was at its worst, I
sat in the back veranda and heard the water roar from the eaves, and
scratched myself because I was covered with the thing they called
prickly heat. Tietjens came out with me and put her head in my lap, and
was very sorrowful, so I gave her biscuits when tea was ready, and I
took tea in the back veranda on account of the little coolness I
found there. The rooms of the house were dark behind me. I could smell
Strickland's saddlery and the oil on his guns, and I did not the least
desire to sit among these things. My own servant came to me in the
twilight, the muslin of his clothes clinging tightly to his drenched
body, and told me that a gentleman had called and wished to see some
one. Very much against my will, and because of the darkness of the
rooms, I went into the naked drawing-room, telling my man to bring the
lights. There might or might not have been a caller in the room--it
seems to me that I saw a figure by one of the windows, but when the
lights came there was nothing save the spikes of the rain without and
the smell of the drinking earth in my nostrils. I explained to my man
that he was no wiser than he ought to be, and went back to the veranda
to talk to Tietjens. She had gone out into the wet and I could hardly
coax her back to me--even with biscuits with sugar on top. Strickland
rode back, dripping wet, just before dinner, and the first thing he said
was:

"Has any one called? "

I explained, with apologies, that my servant had called me into the
drawing-room on a false alarm; or that some loafer had tried to call
on Strickland, and, thinking better of it, fled after giving his name.
Strickland ordered dinner without comment, and since it was a real
dinner, with white tablecloth attached, we sat down.

At nine o'clock Strickland wanted to go to bed, and I was tired too.
Tietjens, who had been lying underneath the table, rose up and went into
the least exposed veranda as soon as her master moved to his own room,
which was next to the stately chamber set apart for Tietjens. If a mere
wife had wished to sleep out-of-doors in that pelting rain, it would not
have mattered, but Tietjens was a dog, and therefore the better animal.
I looked at Strickland, expecting to see him flog her with a whip. He
smiled queerly, as a man would smile after telling some hideous domestic
tragedy. "She has done this ever since I moved in here. "

The dog was Strickland's dog, so I said nothing, but I felt all that
Strickland felt in being made light of. Tietjens encamped outside my
bedroom window, and storm after storm came up, thundered on the thatch,
and died away. The lightning spattered the sky as a thrown egg spattered
a barn door, but the light was pale blue, not yellow; and looking
through my slit bamboo blinds, I could see the great dog standing, not
sleeping, in the veranda, the hackles alift on her back, and her feet
planted as tensely as the drawn wire rope of a suspension bridge. In the
very short pauses of the thunder I tried to sleep, but it seemed that
some one wanted me very badly. He, whoever he was, was trying to call
me by name, but his voice was no more than a husky whisper. Then the
thunder ceased and Tietjens went into the garden and howled at the low
moon. Somebody tried to open my door, and walked about and through the
house, and stood breathing heavily in the verandas, and just when I was
falling asleep I fancied that I heard a wild hammering and clamoring
above my head or on the door.

I ran into Strickland's room and asked him whether he was ill and had
been calling for me. He was lying on the bed half-dressed, with a pipe
in his mouth. "I thought you'd come," he said. "Have I been walking
around the house at all? "

I explained that he had been in the dining-room and the smoking-room and
two or three other places; and he laughed and told me to go back to bed.
I went back to bed and slept till the morning, but in all my dreams
I was sure I was doing some one an injustice in not attending to
his wants. What those wants were I could not tell, but a fluttering,
whispering, bolt-fumbling, luring, loitering some one was reproaching
me for my slackness, and through all the dreams I heard the howling of
Tietjens in the garden and the thrashing of the rain.

I was in that house for two days, and Strickland went to his office
daily, leaving me alone for eight or ten hours a day, with Tietjens for
my only companion. As long as the full light lasted I was comfortable,
and so was Tietjens; but in the twilight she and I moved into the back
veranda and cuddled each other for company. We were alone in the house,
but for all that it was fully occupied by a tenant with whom I had
no desire to interfere. I never saw him, but I could see the curtains
between the rooms quivering where he had just passed through; I could
hear the chairs creaking as the bamboos sprung under a weight that had
just quitted them; and I could feel when I went to get a book from
the dining-room that somebody was waiting in the shadows of the front
veranda till I should have gone away. Tietjens made the twilight more
interesting by glaring into the darkened rooms, with every hair erect,
and following the motions of something that I could not see. She never
entered the rooms, but her eyes moved, and that was quite sufficient.
Only when my servant came to trim the lamps and make all light and
habitable, she would come in with me and spend her time sitting on her
haunches watching an invisible extra man as he moved about behind my
shoulder. Dogs are cheerful companions.

I explained to Strickland, gently as might be, that I would go over to
the club and find for myself quarters there. I admired his hospitality,
was pleased with his guns and rods, but I did not much care for his
house and its atmosphere. He heard me out to the end, and then smiled
very wearily, but without contempt, for he is a man who understands
things. "Stay on," he said, "and see what this thing means. All you have
talked about I have known since I took the bungalow. Stay on and wait.
Tietjens has left me. Are you going too? "

I had seen him through one little affair connected with an idol that had
brought me to the doors of a lunatic asylum, and I had no desire to help
him through further experiences. He was a man to whom unpleasantnesses
arrived as do dinners to ordinary people.

Therefore I explained more clearly than ever that I liked him immensely,
and would be happy to see him in the daytime, but that I didn't care to
sleep under his roof. This was after dinner, when Tietjens had gone out
to lie in the veranda.

"'Pon my soul, I don't wonder," said Strickland, with his eyes on the
ceiling-cloth. "Look at that. "

The tails of two snakes were hanging between the cloth and the cornice
of the wall. They threw long shadows in the lamp-light. "If you are
afraid of snakes, of course"--said Strickland. "I hate and fear snakes,
because if you look into the eyes of any snake you will see that it
knows all and more of man's fall, and that it feels all the contempt
that the devil felt when Adam was evicted from Eden. Besides which its
bite is generally fatal, and it bursts up trouser legs. "

"You ought to get your thatch over-hauled," I said. "Give me a masheer
rod, and we'll poke 'em down. "

"They'll hide among the roof beams," said Strickland. "I can't stand
snakes overhead. I'm going up. If I shake 'em down, stand by with a
cleaning-rod and break their backs. "

I was not anxious to assist Strickland in his work, but I took the
loading-rod and waited in the dining-room, while Strickland brought a
gardener's ladder from the veranda and set it against the side of the
room. The snake tails drew themselves up and disappeared. We could hear
the dry rushing scuttle of long bodies running over the baggy cloth.
Strickland took a lamp with him, while I tried to make clear the danger
of hunting roof snakes between a ceiling cloth and a thatch, apart from
the deterioration of property caused by ripping out ceiling-cloths.

"N o n s en s e," said Strickland. "They're sure to hide near the walls
by the cloth. The bricks are too cold for 'em, and the heat of the room
is just what they like. " He put his hands to the corner of the cloth
and ripped the rotten stuff from the cornice. It gave great sound of
tearing, and Strickland put his head through the opening into the
dark of the angle of the roof beams. I set my teeth and lifted the
loading-rod, for I had not the least knowledge of what might descend.

"H'm," said Strickland; and his voice rolled and rumbled in the roof.
"There's room for another set of rooms up here, and, by Jove! some one
is occupying em. "

"Snakes? " I said down below.

"No. It's a buffalo. Hand me up the two first joints of a masheer rod,
and I'll prod it. It's lying on the main beam. "

I handed up the rod.

"What a nest for owls and serpents! No wonder the snakes live here,"
said Strickland, climbing further into the roof. I could see his elbow
thrusting with the rod. "Come out of that, whoever you are! Look out!
Heads below there! It's tottering. "

I saw the ceiling-cloth nearly in the centre of the room bag with a
shape that was pressing it downward and downward toward the lighted
lamps on the table. I snatched a lamp out of danger and stood back. Then
the cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split, swayed, and shot down
upon the table something that I dared not look at till Strickland had
slid down the ladder and was standing by my side.

He did not say much, being a man of few words, but he picked up the
loose end of the table-cloth and threw it over the thing on the table.

"It strikes me," said he, pulling down the lamp, "our friend Imray has
come back. Oh! you would, would you? "

There was a movement under the cloth, and a little snake wriggled out,
to be back-broken by the butt of the masheer rod. I was sufficiently
sick to make no remarks worth recording.

Strickland meditated and helped himself to drinks liberally. The thing
under the cloth made no more signs of life.

"Is it Imray? " I said.

Strickland turned back the cloth for a moment and looked. "It is Imray,"
he said, "and his throat is cut from ear to ear. "

Then we spoke both together and to ourselves:

"That's why he whispered about the house. "

Tietjens, in the garden, began to bay furiously. A little later her
great nose heaved upon the dining-room door.

She sniffed and was still. The broken and tattered ceiling-cloth hung
down almost to the level of the table, and there was hardly room to move
away from the discovery.

Then Tietjens came in and sat down, her teeth bared and her forepaws
planted. She looked at Strickland.

"It's bad business, old lady," said he. "Men don't go up into the roofs
of their bungalows to die, and they don't fasten up the ceiling-cloth
behind 'em. Let's think it out. "

"Let's think it out somewhere else," I said.

"Excellent idea!