In my military career (for I was for a long time attached to the army) I was stationed at Jaunpore, and having a house with many conveniences, I took pleasure in rearing poultry; but scarcely a single chicken could be magnified to a hen: the rapacious neulahs, fond of tender meat, waylaying all my young broods, sucking their blood, and feasting on their brains. But such devastations could not be allowed to pass with impunity; so we watched the enemy, and succeeded in shooting several of the offenders, prowling among the hennah or mehendy hedges, where the clucking-hens used to repose in the shade, surrounded by their progeny. After one of these _battues_, my little daughter happened to go to the fowl-house in the evening in search of eggs, and was greatly startled by a melancholy squeaking which seemed to proceed from an old rat-hole in one corner. Upon proper investigation this was suspected to be the nest of one of the neulahs which had suffered the last sentence of the law; but how to get at the young we did not know, unless by digging up the floor, and of this I did not approve. So the little young ones would have perished but for a childish freak of my young daughter. She seated herself before the nest, and imitated the cry of the famished little animals so well, that three wee, hairless, blind creatures crept out, like newly-born rabbits, but with long tails, in the hope of meeting with their lost mamma. Our hearts immediately warmed toward the little helpless ones, and no one wished to wreak the sins of the parents upon the orphans; and knowing that neulahs were reared as pets, I proposed to my daughter that she should select one for herself, and give the others to two of my servants. My daughter's protégée, however, was the only one that survived under its new _régime_; and Jumnie, as she called her nursling, throve well, and soon attained its full size, knowing its name, and endearing itself to every body by its gambols and tricks. She was like the most blithesome of little kittens, and played with our fingers, and frolicked on the sofas, sleeping occasionally behind one of the cushions, and at other times coiling herself up in her own little flannel bed.