_munshi_. "I am an old man," said the _chowkidar_, "and because of their
great respect and reverence for the Sahib in whose Presence I am only a
bearer of orders and a servant awaiting them, men, many men, are
bringing now tent-flies which I with my own hands will wrap, here and
there, there and here, in and about the pillars of the place; and thus
you, O Sahib, who have brought the honour of your Presence to the Boondi
Raj over the road to Deoli, which is a _kutcha_ road, will be provided
with a very fine and large apartment over which I will watch while you
go to kill the tigers in these hills."

By this time two youths had twisted _canvas_ round some of the pillars
of the colonnade, making a sort of loose-box with a two-foot air-way all
round the top. There was no door, but there were unlimited windows. Into
this enclosure the _chowkidar_ heaped furniture on which many
generations of pigeons had evidently been carried off by cholera, until
he was entreated to desist. "What," said he, scornfully, "are tables and
chairs to this Raj? If six be not enough, let the Presence give an
order, and twelve shall be forthcoming. Everything shall be
forthcoming." Here he filled a native lamp with kerosene oil and set it
in a box upon a stick. Luckily, the oil which he poured so lavishly from
a quart bottle was bad, or he would have been altogether consumed.

Night had fallen long before this magnificence was ended. The
superfluous furniture--chairs for the most part--was shovelled out into
the darkness, and by the light of a flamboyant lamplet--a merry wind
forbade candles--the Englishman went to bed, and was lulled to sleep by
the rush of the water escaping from the overflow trap and the splash of
the water-turtle as he missed the evasive fish. It was a curious sight.
Cats and dogs rioted about the enclosure, and a wind from the lake
bellied the canvas. The brushwood of the hills around snapped and
cracked as beasts went through it, and creatures--not jackals--made
dolorous noises. On the lake it seemed that hundreds of water-birds were
keeping a hotel, and that there were arrivals and departures throughout
the night. The Raj insisted upon providing a guard of two sepoys, very
pleasant men, on four rupees a month. These said that tigers sometimes
wandered about on the hills above the lake, but were most generally to
be found five miles away. And the Englishman promptly dreamed that a
one-eyed tiger came into his tent without a _p