his home, came to severe
grief.

But the Nat has gone now, alas! The tree is still there, but the Nat has
fled away these many years.

'I suppose he didn't care to stay,' said the headman. 'You see that the
English Government officials came and camped here, and didn't fear the
Nats. They had fowls killed here for their dinner, and they sang and
shouted; and they shot the green pigeons who ate his figs, and the
little doves that nested in his branches.'

All these things were an abomination to the Nat, who hated loud, rough
talk and abuse, and to whom all life was sacred.

So the Nat went away. The headman did not know where he was gone, but
there are plenty of trees.

'He has gone somewhere to get peace,' the headman said. 'Somewhere in
the jungle, where no one ever comes save the herd-boy and the deer, he
will be living in a tree, though I do not think he will easily find a
tree so beautiful as this.'

The headman seemed very sorry about it, and so did several villagers who
were with him; and I suggested that if the Nat-houses were rebuilt, and
flowers and water offered, the Nat might know and return. I even offered
to contribute myself, that it might be taken as an _amende honorable_ on
behalf of the English Government. But they did not think this would be
any use. No Nat would come where there was so much going and coming, so
little care for life, such a disregard for pity and for peace. If we
were to take away our rest-house, well then, perhaps, after a time,
something could be done, but not under present circumstances.

And so, besides dethroning the Burmese king, and occupying his golden
palace, we are ousting from their pleasant homes the guardian spirits of
the trees. They flee before the cold materialism of our belief, before
the brutality of our manners. The headman did not say this; he did not
mean to say this, for he is a very courteous man and a great friend of
all of us; but that is what it came to, I think.

The trunk of this tree is more than ten feet through--not a round bole,
but like the pillar in a Gothic cathedral, as of many smaller boles
growing together; and the roots spread out into a pedestal before
entering the ground. The trunk does not go up very far. At perhaps
twenty-five feet above the ground it divides into a myriad of smaller
trunks, not branches, till it looks more like a forest than a single
tree; it is full of life still. Though the pigeons and the doves come
here no longer