rise at the edge of the undulating expanse which stretched away to
the eastern horizon in front of him. This was the hill he asked me to
decorate.

I was very troubled, on leaving Bolpur, that I could not carry away with
me my store of stones. It is still difficult for me to realise that I
have no absolute claim to keep up a close relationship with things,
merely because I have gathered them together. If my fate had granted me
the prayer, which I had pressed with such insistence, and undertaken
that I should carry this load of stones about with me for ever, then I
should scarcely have had the hardihood to laugh at it to-day.

In one of the ravines I came upon a hollow full of spring water which
overflowed as a little rivulet, where sported tiny fish battling their
way up the current.

"I've found such a lovely spring," I told my father. "Couldn't we get
our bathing and drinking water from there?"

"The very thing," he agreed, sharing my rapture, and gave orders for our
water supply to be drawn from that spring.

I was never tired of roaming about among those miniature hills and dales
in hopes of lighting on something never known before. I was the
Livingstone of this undiscovered land which looked as if seen through
the wrong end of a telescope. Everything there, the dwarf date palms,
the scrubby wild plums and the stunted jambolans, was in keeping with
the miniature mountain ranges, the little rivulet and the tiny fish I
had discovered.

[Illustration: Singing to My Father]

Probably in order to teach me to be careful my father placed a little
small change in my charge and required me to keep an account of it. He
also entrusted me with the duty of winding his valuable gold watch for
him. He overlooked the risk of damage in his desire to train me to a
sense of responsibility. When we went out together for our morning walk
he would ask me to give alms to any beggars we came across. But I never
could render him a proper account at the end of it. One day my balance
was larger than the account warranted.

"I really must make you my cashier," observed my father. "Money seems to
have a way of growing in your hands!"

That watch of his I wound up with such indefatigable zeal that it had
very soon to be sent to the watchmaker's in Calcutta.

I am reminded of the time when, later in life, I was appointed to manage
the estate and had to lay before my father, owing to his failing
eye-sight, a statement of accounts on th