Palace, before the bombardment of Kars, “set piece ten thousand feet square,” had been illuminated, and about five hundred ’Arries were tickling a thousand ’Arriets. Their giggling and nothing else was the noise of the Bhil. So curiously does Sydenham and Western Rajputana meet. Then came another pig, who was smitten to the death and rolled down among the bushes, drawing his last breath in a human and horrible manner. But full on the crest of the hill, blown along--there is no other word to describe it--like a ball of thistle-down, passed a brown shadow, and men cried:--“_Bagheera!_” or “Panther!” according to their nationalities, and blazed. The shadow leaped the wall that had turned the pig downhill, and vanished among the cactus. “Never mind,” said the Prime Minister’s son consolingly, “we’ll beat the other side of the hill afterwards and get him yet.” “Oh! he’s a mile off by this time,” said the guns; but the Rawat of Amet, a magnificently handsome young man, smiled a sweet smile and said nothing. More pig passed and were slain, and many more broke back through the beaters who presently came through the cover in scores. They were in russet green and red uniform, each man bearing a long spear, and the hillside was turned on the instant to a camp of Robin Hood’s foresters. Then they brought up the dead from behind bushes and under rocks--among others a twenty-seven-inch brute who bore on his flank (all pigs shot in a beat are _ex-officio_ boars) a hideous, half-healed scar, big as a man’s hand, of a bullet wound. Express bullets are ghastly things in their effects, for, as the _shikari_ is never tired of demonstrating, they knock the inside of animals into pulp. The second beat, of the reverse side of the hill, had barely begun when the panther returned--uneasily, as if something were keeping her back--much lower down the hill. Then the face of the Rawat of Amet changed, as he brought his gun up to his shoulder. Looking at him as he fired, one forgot all about the Mayo College at which he had been educated, and remembered only some trivial and out-of-date affairs, in which his forefathers had been concerned, when a bridegroom, with his bride at his side, charged down the slope of the Chitor road and died among Akbar’s men. There are stories connected with the house of Amet, which are told in Mewar to-day. The young man’s face, for as short a time as it takes to pull trigger and see where the bullet falls, was a light upon all these tales.