thrilling tremulously as I stepped
outside. My predecessor had told me that Bolpur had one feature which
was to be found nowhere else in the world. This was the path leading
from the main buildings to the servants' quarters which, though not
covered over in any way, did not allow a ray of the sun or a drop of
rain to touch anybody passing along it. I started to hunt for this
wonderful path, but the reader will perhaps not wonder at my failure to
find it to this day.

Town bred as I was, I had never seen a rice-field, and I had a charming
portrait of the cowherd boy, of whom we had read, pictured on the canvas
of my imagination. I had heard from Satya that the Bolpur house was
surrounded by fields of ripening rice, and that playing in these with
cowherd boys was an everyday affair, of which the plucking, cooking and
eating of the rice was the crowning feature. I eagerly looked about me.
But where, oh, where was the rice-field on all that barren heath?
Cowherd boys there might have been somewhere about, yet how to
distinguish them from any other boys, that was the question!

However it did not take me long to get over what I could not see,--what
I did see was quite enough. There was no servant rule here, and the only
ring which encircled me was the blue of the horizon which the presiding
goddess of these solitudes had drawn round them. Within this I was free
to move about as I chose.

Though I was yet a mere child my father did not place any restriction on
my wanderings. In the hollows of the sandy soil the rainwater had
ploughed deep furrows, carving out miniature mountain ranges full of red
gravel and pebbles of various shapes through which ran tiny streams,
revealing the geography of Lilliput. From this region I would gather in
the lap of my tunic many curious pieces of stone and take the collection
to my father. He never made light of my labours. On the contrary he
waxed enthusiastic.

"How wonderful!" he exclaimed. "Wherever did you get all these?"

"There are many many more, thousands and thousands!" I burst out. "I
could bring as many every day."

"That _would_ be nice!" he replied. "Why not decorate my little hill
with them?"

An attempt had been made to dig a tank in the garden, but the subsoil
water proving too low, it had been abandoned, unfinished, with the
excavated earth left piled up into a hillock. On the top of this height
my father used to sit for his morning prayer, and as he sat the sun
would