ed his place.

[Illustration: THE CATHACKS (OR DANCING MEN) OF BHOPAL.]

Another round of consanguinities: the animal still remained immovable,
till presently he lunged out with a wicked kick which had nearly
obliterated at one blow the whole line of his ancestry and collateral
relatives as represented in the driver. At this the latter became
as furious as he had before been patient: he belabored the horse,
assistants ran from the stables, the whole party yelled and
gesticulated at the little beast simultaneously, and he finally broke
down the road at a pace which the driver did not suffer him to relax
until we arrived at the bungalow where we intended to stop for supper.

A venerable old Mohammedan in a white beard that gave him the majesty
of Moses advanced for the purpose of ascertaining our wants.

"Had he any mutton-chops?" asked Bhima Gandharva in Hindustani, the
_lingua franca_ of the country.

"Cherisher of the humble! no."

"Any beefsteak?"

"Nourisher of the poor! no."

"Well, then, I _hear_ a chicken," said my friend, conclusively.

"O great king," said the Mohammedan, turning to me, "there _is_ a
chicken."

In a twinkling the cook caught the chicken: its head was turned toward
Mecca. Bismillah! O God the Compassionate, the Merciful! the poor
fowl's head flew off, and by the time we had made our ablutions supper
was ready.

Turning across the ridges to the north-eastward from Sipri, we were
soon making our way among the tanks and groves which lie about the
walls of Jhansi. Here, as at Poona, there was ever present to me a
sense of evil destinies, of blood, of treacheries, which seemed to
linger about the trees and the tanks like exhalations from the old
crimes which have stained the soil of the country. For Jhansi is in
the Bundelcund, and the Bundelcund was born in great iniquity. The
very name--which properly is _Bundelakhand,_ or "the country of the
Bundelas"--has a history thickly set about with the terrors of caste,
of murder and of usurpation. Some five hundred years ago a certain
Rajput prince, Hurdeo Sing, committed the unpardonable sin of marrying
a slave (_bundi_), and was in consequence expelled from the Kshatriya
caste to which he belonged. He fled with his disgrace into this
region, and after some years found opportunity at least to salve his
wounds with blood and power. The son of the king into whose land he
had escaped conceived a passion for the daughter of the slave wife.
It mu