done: the little door is fastened
behind me, the prickly acacia boughs are piled up against it on the
outside, and my people are anxious to be off.

The poor cow, too, listens with dismay to the retreating footsteps of
the party, and has already made some furious plunges to free herself,
and rejoin the rest of the kine, who have been driven off, nothing
loth, toward home. Watch her: how intently she stares along the path by
which the people have deserted her. Were it not for the occasional stamp
of her fore leg, or the impatient side-toss of the head, to keep off the
swarming flies, she might be carved out of marble. And now a fearful and
anxious gaze up the bed of the nullah, and into the thick fringe of
Mimoso, one ear pricked and the other back alternately, show that
_instinct_ has already whispered the warning of impending danger.
Another plunge to get loose, and a searching gaze up the path; see her
sides heave. Now comes what we want--that deep low! It echoes again
among the hills: another and another. Poor wretch! you are hastening
your doom; far or near, the tiger hears you--under the rock or thicket,
where he has lain since morning, sheltered from the scorching sun, his
ears flutter as if they were tickled every time he hears that music; his
huge, green eyes, heretofore half closed, are now wide open, and, alas!
poor cow, gaze truly enough in thy direction; but he has not stirred
yet, and nobody can say in what direction giant death will yet
stalk forth.

The moon is up--all nature still; the cow, again on her legs, is
restless, and evidently frightened. Oh! reader, even if you have the
soul of a Shikaree, I despair of being able to convey in words a tithe
of the sensations of that solitary vigil: a night like that is to be
enjoyed but seldom--a red-letter day in one's existence.

Where is the man who has never experienced the poetic influence of a
moonlight scene! Fancy, then, such a one as here described; a crescent
of low hills--craggy, steep, and thickly wooded--around you, on three
sides, and above them, again, at twenty miles' distance, the clear blue
outline of the Neilgherry hills; in your front, the silver sand bed of
the dry watercourse divides the thick and somber jungle with a stream of
light, till you lose it in the deep shadows at the foot of the
hills--all quiet, all still, all bathed in the light of the moon,
yourself the only man for miles to come, a solitary watcher--your only
companion the