bear in a poppy-field by the river.
Would I care to shoot it? I spoke austerely on the sin of conspiracy,
and the certainty of punishment. Namgay Doola's face clouded for a
moment. Shortly afterwards he withdrew from my tent, and I heard him
singing to himself 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,

sang 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, and 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 rich scent of the tasselled 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 act to
fire when I saw that they had each a brilliant red head. The lesser
animal was trailing some rope behind it that left a dark track on the
path. They passed 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 marvelled and went to bed. Next morning
the Kingdom was in 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 the 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