These were but jungle voices, not in
the curriculum of their pantheistic belief, so the Guru and the Bagrees
sat in silence, and no one spoke.

Then, the night carried the faint trembling moan of a jackal, as the
Guru knew, a _female_ jackal, coming from a distance on the left.

"Oo-oo-oo-oo-oo! Aye-aye! yi-yi-yi-yi!" the jackal wailed, the note
rising to a fiendish crescendo; and then suddenly it hushed and there
was only a ghastly silence in the jungle depths.

The white-clothed, ghost-like priest sprang to his feet, and with his
lean left arm stretched high in suppliance, said: "Bhowanee, thou hast
vouchsafed to thy devotees the _pilsao_. We will strew thy shrine with
flowers and sweetmeats."

He turned to the jamadars who had risen, saying, "Bhowanee is pleased;
the suspicies are favourable; had the call of the jackal been from the
right it would have been the _tibao_ and we should have had to wait
until the sweet goddess gave us another sign. Now we may go back, and
perhaps she will confirm this omen as we go."

Hunsa, always possessed of a mean disposition, and still sulky over the
encounter with Ajeet, was in an evil mood as they trudged through the
jungle to their camp. When Ajeet spoke of the priest's success in his
appeal, he snarled: "The hangman always advises the one who is to have
his neck stretched that he is better off dead."

"What do you mean by that?" Ajeet queried.

"Just that you are not going on this mission, Ajeet;" then he laughed
disagreeably.

"If you are afraid to go Sookdee will be well without you," Ajeet
retorted.

Before more could be said in this way, and as they approached the camp,
the lowing of a cow was heard.

"Dost hear that, Guru?" Hunsa queried. "In a decoity is not the lowing
of a cow in a village held to be an evil omen?"

"Not so, Hunsa," the Priest declared. "It is an evil omen if the
decoity is to be made on the village in which the cow raises her voice,
but we are going to our own camp in peace, and it is a voice of
approval."

"As to that," Ajeet commented, "if Hunsa is right, it is written in our
code of omens that hearing a cow call thus simply means that one of the
party making the decoity will be killed; perhaps as he was the one to
notice it, the evil will fall upon him."

"You'd like that," Hunsa growled.

"Not being given to lies, it would not displease me, for, as the
hangman said, you would be better dead."

But they were now at their cam