ut the thief did not return.

About midnight a village policeman going his rounds heard their
cries. At first he paid no heed to them: jackals swarmed and disturbed
the night. Again the anguished voices quivered in the air. There was
something human in the sound. He stopped to listen. The cries rose
again. He walked forward in their direction. Clearer, as he advanced,
shrilled the distressed voices, and he recognised they were those
of a woman and a child. He quickened his steps and hastened to
the spot. The light from his lantern revealed bow-ma and her son,
clinging to each other and weeping piteously.

"Who are you? What ails you?" he asked. The distraught mother,
unconscious of the flight of time, thinking him the heartless dacoit
returned to kill her boy, fell at his feet in an agony of supplication:
"Spare my son. Take my life instead."

"I am a chowkidar (watchman). What is up?" But so dulled were her
ears with fear and grief that he was twice obliged to repeat his
words. When the joyful intelligence reached her brain she burst into
tears. "O! save my son." Then the consciousness that the danger
was past reminded her of her own plight, and she sobbed: "Give me
something to wear."

The policeman had noticed her semi-nude state. Dropping, his pugree
at her feet he turned away. She shook out its many folds and draped
it about her body. Then she related what had befallen her and pointed
towards the direction the thief had taken.

The policeman walked cautiously forward, his lantern raised in one
hand and his lathi tightly grasped in the other. A few yards ahead
he came to an old brick kiln. Here, prone among the broken bricks,
lay the robber in greater straits than his victims. A huge cobra was
tightly coiled round his right arm, while on the left hung the saree
and the jewels. The rays of the lantern disturbed the snake. With
an angry hiss it uncoiled itself and disappeared. The dacoit, more
dead than alive from simple fear of the snake's fatal sting, yielded
himself a prisoner, and it was subsequently discovered that the whole
gang, of whom he was a member, were licensed hackney drivers.

Saved by a Bear

The evening shadows and silence had settled on the river Hooghly as an
old Brahman wended his way to one of the many ghats (landing places).

The dinghis--little boats which ply backwards and forwards all day
carrying passengers to and from Calcutta--had all been made fast
for the night. Some of the