At first he found nothing to confirm his conjecture. The character of his surroundings had changed. Instead of the tall kutcha-grass there were about him low, thorny bushes, with here and there a ghostly-looking tree; and nullahs, in which hideous forms of vegetable life were growing, stretched along the sides of the beast-trodden path. A strange way it was, and devious, going straight for a few yards, and then shooting from right to left, as, like the fire-flash from lightning-charged clouds, it followed the track of least resistance. A dangerous region, and Bâl Narîn, being too old a hunter to be caught napping, trod warily. Once, however, he almost lost his caution. It was when the light of his lamp fell on a shred of coloured stuff that clung to one of the spiked leaves of a sickly, stunted aloe. That moment, he has told me, was one of the strangest, the most triumphant of his whole fife. He knew now that the sagacity upon which he prided himself had not failed him in his need. Whether the fugitives were found or not, he had positive proof that they had passed this way. Meanwhile the darkness that had made Tom curse his helplessness began to assail Bâl Narîn's more subtly tempered senses. He did not mind it. All his greatest enterprises had been carried out in the night time, for it was then that the foes with whom he waged war were at large, and the blackness of the heavens rather quickened than deadened his energies. He drew aside quietly from the beasts' highway, let his lamp, which was burning steadily, shine in front of him, and having twisted some of the gigantic stems of the kutcha-grass into a torch as he came along, he set light to it, and held it flaming over his shoulder. Thus equipped he was far too terrible an object for even the man-eating tiger to tackle. So he went on towards the marsh-surrounded lake.