imed affection going. One
old lady takes her position beside us for the night, and its poor bony
sides are filled for once, and its brown eyes in the morning look
grateful and eager for more. R. says he thinks the most miserable are
those with fox-terrier blood; and they do not outlive their second
litters. It lay on the sand a little way off the greater part of the
night, the shyer dogs still farther off, scarcely seen in the darkness.
Perhaps these half-breds have inherited thoughts of former better days,
which brings me back to that freckled, sandy-haired Eurasian boy at the
Bundar, with his black eyelashes, and the blue-eyed, curly-haired girl
in the native throng.

[Illustration]

Now we are coming to the snipe, "little by little," our nurse used to
say, "as the lawyers get to Heaven," and I put in notes about them here
from a letter written to my friend W. B., but not yet posted.

"MY DEAR W. B.,--You ask me about sport, and if I've got near a
tiger? So far as I am aware I have not been in the immediate
proximity of a tiger, though I have been in what is, at times, a
tiger country--about Dharwar, and where I'd very probably have got
one if I'd taken many men and months and much money to secure it.
But to-day I've had funnier shooting than I've ever had--fancy
snipe, my dear man, amongst palm trees! tall cocoa-nut palms, betel
nuts, and toddy palms, and banana trees--big snipe, and decently
tame. Fancy them dodging like woodcock at home, from a blaze of sun
into the deep shadows of subtropical palm groves!

[Illustration]

"We trollied to our shooting ground, R. and I and four trolley
men--such a nice way of getting along--with palms on either side of
the track, some of them covered with creepers from their very tops
to the ground in cascades--Niagaras, I mean, of green leaves and
lilac blossoms; and through this jungle the sun streamed across the
yellow quartz track and glittered on the lines. Two men at a time
ran barefooted behind, one on each rail, and shoved the trolley and
jumped on going down hill. We went at just a nice rate, which gave
us time to note the birds and flowers along the side of the line.

[Illustration]

"About two miles down the line we struck off to the east on foot,
and crossed rice stubbles with clear rills of water running through
them, the first clear water we h