The principal object on the shelf is the house, but it also supports the pencil-cedar, and the garden sits on it, and at the back the servants’ quarters and stables just don’t slip off; so that when Tiglath-Pileser walks about it with his hands in his pockets it looks a little crowded. The land between the upper road and the shelf, and the land between the shelf and the lower road is equally ours, but it is placed at such an abrupt and uncompromising angle that we do not know any way of taking possession of it. By surface measurement we are doubtless large proprietors, but as the crow flies we are distinctly over-taxed. This slanting hill-side is called the khud; there is no real property in a khud. One always thinks of town lots as flat and running from the front street to the back, with suitable exposure for the washing. It just depends. This one stands on end, you could easily send a stone rolling from the front street into the back, if you knew which was which; and there would be rather too much exposure for the washing. If you like you can lean up against the khud, but that is the only way of asserting your title-deed, and few people consider it worth doing. I may say that as soon as you tilt your property out of the horizontal you lose control over it. Things come up on it precisely as they like, in tufts, in suckers and in every vulgar manner, secure and defiant it rises above your head. Tiglath-Pileser and I have sought diligently, with ladders, for some way of bringing our khud into subjection, but in vain. As he says we might paper it, but as I say there are some things which persons who derive their income from current literature simply can _not_ afford. So we are content perforce to look at it and “call it ours,” as children are sometimes allowed by their elders to do. The khud is God’s property but we call it ours. Trees grow on it and it makes a more agreeable background, after all, than other people’s kitchens. Beyond the shelf the hill-side slopes clear from the upper road to the lower, a stretch of indefinite jungle which flourishes, no man aiding or forbidding. We have sometimes looked at it vaguely and thought of potatoes, but have always decided that it was useful enough and much less troublesome as part of the landscape. The other day the law threatened us if Tiglath-Pileser did not forthwith declare his boundaries in that direction, and he has since been going about with a measuring-chain and a great pretence of accuracy; but it is my private belief that neither he nor his neighbour will be equal to the demand. They had better agree quickly and hatch a friendly deposition together, and so escape whatever penalty the law awards for not knowing where your premises leave off. Meanwhile the wild cherry and the unkempt rhododendron grow in one accord indifferent to these foolish claims. Such is ownership in a khud.