“Is nobody going to do or bring anything?” said the Englishman faintly, wondering whether the local jail would give him a bed if he killed the 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 _kanats_ which I with my own hands will wrap, here and there, there and here, in and about the pillars of this 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 _kanats_ 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 _chirag_ 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 _chirag_--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 _kanats_. 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 _purwana_. But it was only a wild cat after all; and it fled before the shoes of civilisation.