The sunbirds, hovering and twittering over the _neem_ trees, signalled to me the approach of the coming hot weather. The sky was a steel grey, and over the horizon of the wide plain before my bungalow, on which the short grass was already dry and crisp, hung a curtain of pale brown dust. Here and there on the expanse of faded green were small herds of lean kine, and, almost on the edge of the road bordering the plain, a line of water-buffaloes sluggishly headed for a shallow pool about a mile or so westward, where they would wallow till the sun went down, and then be driven home with unwilling steps to their byres. The herd bull came last of all, and on his back sat a little naked boy, a pellet bow in his hand, and a cotton bag full of mud pellets slung over his shoulder. He was singing in a high-pitched tuneless voice, and his song seemed to enrage the "brain-fever" bird in the mango tree, where he had hidden silent since the dawn. The bird objected in a shrill crescendo of ringing notes that brought the pellet bow into play, and then there was a whistle of grey-brown wings as he flew to a safer spot, and a silence broken only by the monotonous _tink_, _tink_, _tink_ of the little green barbet or coppersmith. There were times, when fever held me in its grip, that the maddening iteration of its cry was almost unbearable, and to this day I nurse a hatred to that little green-coated and red-throated plague--of a truth "the coppersmith hath done me much evil." I stood in my veranda watching the retreating figure of the Judge, as he drove away full of a project of spending a month in Burma--an enterprise he had been vainly tempting me to share; but I had other fish to fry: my way was westwards, not eastwards, and besides I had slaved for six long years in Burma, and knew it far too well. One glance at the Judge as he turned the elbow of the road, and was lost to view behind the siris trees, one look at the thirsty plain, and the shivering heat haze, through which glinted, now and again, the distant spear-heads of a squadron of Bengal Lancers trotting slowly back to their barracks, and I turned in to my study. I had determined to devote the day to the destruction of old papers, and set about my task in earnest. There was one drawer in particular that had not been touched for three years. I had forgotten what it contained, and opened it slowly, thinking it was possibly an Augean Stable; but nothing met my eyes except a small packet of papers. Yet with that one look came back to me the memory of a life's tragedy. The papers should have been destroyed long ago, and now--I hesitated no longer, but tore them up into the smallest fragments, glad to be rid, as I thought, of the miserable record of a man's folly, of his crime, and of his shame.