, there are a thousand other birds flitting to and fro in
their aerial city and chirping to each other. Two tiny squirrels have
just run along a branch nearly over my head, in a desperate hurry
apparently, their tails cocked over their backs, and a sky blue
chameleon is standing on the trunk near where it parts. There is always
a breeze in this great tree; the leaves are always moving, and there is
a continuous rustle and murmur up there. A mango-tree and tamarind near
by are quite still. Not a breath shakes their leaves; they are as still
as stone, but the shadow of the fig-tree is chequered with ever-changing
lights. Is the Nat really gone? Perhaps not; perhaps he is still there,
still caring for his tree, only shy now and distrustful, and therefore
no more seen.

Whole woods are enchanted sometimes, and no one dare enter them. Such a
wood I know, far away north, near the hills, which is full of Nats.
There was a great deal of game in it, for animals sought shelter there,
and no one dared to disturb them; not the villagers to cut firewood, nor
the girls seeking orchids, nor the hunter after his prey, dared to
trespass upon that enchanted ground.

'What would happen,' I asked once, 'if anyone went into that wood? Would
he be killed, or what?'

And I was told that no one could tell what would happen, only that he
would never be seen again alive. 'The Nats would confiscate him,' they
said, 'for intruding on their privacy.' But what they would do to him
after the confiscation no one seemed to be quite sure. I asked the
official who was with me, a fine handsome Burman who had been with us in
many fights, whether he would go into the wood with me, but he declined
at once. Enemies are one thing, Nats are quite another, and a very much
more dreadful thing. You can escape from enemies, as witness my
companion, who had been shot at times without number and had only once
been hit, in the leg, but you cannot escape Nats. Once, he told me,
there were two very sacrilegious men, hunters by profession, only more
abandoned than even the majority of hunters, and they went into this
wood to hunt 'They didn't care for Nats,' they said. They didn't care
for anything at all apparently. 'They were absolutely without reverence,
worse than any beast,' said my companion.

So they went into the wood to shoot, and they never came out again. A
few days later their bare bones were found, flung out upon the road near
the enchanted wood. The Nat