me--the Bisara of Pooree. In
shape it is a tiny, square box of silver, studded outside with eight
small balas-rubies. Inside the box, which opens with a spring, is
a little eyeless fish, carved from some sort of dark, shiny nut and
wrapped in a shred of faded gold-cloth. That is the Bisara of Pooree,
and it were better for a man to take a king cobra in his hand than to
touch the Bisara of Pooree.

All kinds of magic are out of date and done away with except in India
where nothing changes in spite of the shiny, toy-scum stuff that people
call "civilization." Any man who knows about the Bisara of Pooree will
tell you what its powers are--always supposing that it has been honestly
stolen. It is the only regularly working, trustworthy love-charm in the
country, with one exception.

[The other charm is in the hands of a trooper of the Nizam's Horse, at a
place called Tuprani, due north of Hyderabad.] This can be depended upon
for a fact. Some one else may explain it.

If the Bisara be not stolen, but given or bought or found, it turns
against its owner in three years, and leads to ruin or death. This is
another fact which you may explain when you have time. Meanwhile, you
can laugh at it. At present, the Bisara is safe on an ekka-pony's
neck, inside the blue bead-necklace that keeps off the Evil-eye. If the
ekka-driver ever finds it, and wears it, or gives it to his wife, I am
sorry for him.

A very dirty hill-cooly woman, with goitre, owned it at Theog in 1884.
It came into Simla from the north before Churton's khitmatgar bought it,
and sold it, for three times its silver-value, to Churton, who collected
curiosities. The servant knew no more what he had bought than
the master; but a man looking over Churton's collection of
curiosities--Churton was an Assistant Commissioner by the way--saw and
held his tongue. He was an Englishman; but knew how to believe. Which
shows that he was different from most Englishmen. He knew that it was
dangerous to have any share in the little box when working or dormant;
for unsought Love is a terrible gift.

Pack--"Grubby" Pack, as we used to call him--was, in every way, a nasty
little man who must have crawled into the Army by mistake. He was three
inches taller than his sword, but not half so strong. And the sword was
a fifty-shilling, tailor-made one. Nobody liked him, and, I suppose, it
was his wizenedness and worthlessness that made him fall so hopelessly
in love with Miss Hollis, wh