have risen by his side and snapped my jaws in his
face. When the bridge was finished he went away. All the English hunt in
that fashion, except when they are hunted."

"Who hunts the white-faces?" yapped the Jackal excitedly.

"No one now, but I have hunted them in my time."

"I remember a little of that Hunting. I was young then," said the
Adjutant, clattering his beak significantly.

"I was well established here. My village was being builded for the third
time, as I remember, when my cousin, the Gavial, brought me word of rich
waters above Benares. At first I would not go, for my cousin, who is a
fish-eater, does not always know the good from the bad; but I heard my
people talking in the evenings, and what they said made me certain."

"And what did they say?" the Jackal asked.

"They said enough to make me, the Mugger of Mugger-Ghaut, leave water
and take to my feet. I went by night, using the littlest streams as they
served me; but it was the beginning of the hot weather, and all streams
were low. I crossed dusty roads; I went through tall grass; I climbed
hills in the moonlight. Even rocks did I climb, children--consider this
well. I crossed the tail of Sirhind, the waterless, before I could
find the set of the little rivers that flow Gungaward. I was a month's
journey from my own people and the river that I knew. That was very
marvellous!"

"What food on the way?" said the Jackal, who kept his soul in his little
stomach, and was not a bit impressed by the Mugger's land travels.

"That which I could find--COUSIN," said the Mugger slowly, dragging each
word.

Now you do not call a man a cousin in India unless you think you can
establish some kind of blood-relationship, and as it is only in old
fairy-tales that the Mugger ever marries a jackal, the Jackal knew for
what reason he had been suddenly lifted into the Mugger's family circle.
If they had been alone he would not have cared, but the Adjutant's eyes
twinkled with mirth at the ugly jest.

"Assuredly, Father, I might have known," said the Jackal. A mugger
does not care to be called a father of jackals, and the Mugger of
Mugger-Ghaut said as much--and a great deal more which there is no use
in repeating here.

"The Protector of the Poor has claimed kinship. How can I remember the
precise degree? Moreover, we eat the same food. He has said it," was the
Jackal's reply.

That made matters rather worse, for what the Jackal hinted at was that
the Mugger