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It was a very neat little affair, neatly carried out, and the men concerned were unofficially thanked for their services.

Yet it seems to me that much credit is also due to another regiment whose name did not appear in brigade orders, and whose very existence is in danger of being forgotten.

IN THE RUKH.

The Only Son lay down again and dreamed that he dreamed a dream,

The last ash dropped from the dying fire with the click of a falling

spark,

:

And the Only Son woke up again and called across the dark:-
'Now, was I born of womankind and laid in a mother's breast?
For I have dreamed of a shaggy hide whereon I went to rest.
And was I born of womankind and laid on a father's arm?
For I have dreamed of long white teeth that guarded me from harm.
Oh, was I born of womankind and did I play alone?

For I have dreamed of playmates twain that bit me to the bone.
And did I break the barley bread and steep it in the tyre?
For I have dreamed of a youngling kid new-riven from the byre.
An hour it lacks and an hour it lacks to the rising of the moon-
But I can see the black roof-beams as plain as it were noon.
'Tis a league and a league to the Lena Falls where the trooping
sambhur go,

But I can hear the little fawn that bleats behind the doe.

"Tis a league and a league to the Lena Falls where the crop and the upland meet,

But I can smell the warm wet wind that whispers through the wheat!' The Only Son.

Or the wheels of public service that turn under the Indian Government, there is none more important than the Department of Woods and Forests. The reboisement of all India is in its hands: or will be when Government has the money to spend. Its

Copyright, 1893, by D Appleton & Co.

servants wrestle with wandering sand-torrents and shifting dunes: wattling them at the sides, damming them in front, and pegging them down atop with coarse grass and unhappy pine after the rules of Nancy. They are responsible for all the timber in the State forests of the Himalayas, as well as for the denuded hillsides that the monsoons wash into dry gullies and aching ravines, each cut a mouth crying aloud what carelessness can do. They experiment with battalions of foreign trees, and coax the blue gum to take root and, perhaps, dry up the canal fever. In the plains the chief part of their duty is to see that the belt fire lines in the forest reserves are kept clean, so that when drouth comes and the cattle starve, they may throw the reserve open to the villager's herds and allow the man himself to gather sticks. They poll and lop for the stacked railway-fuel along the lines that burn no coal; they calculate the profit of their plantations to five points of decimals, they are the doctors and midwives of the huge teak forests of Upper Burma; the rubber of the Eastern Jungles, and the gall-nuts of the South: and they are always hampered by lack of funds. But since a Forest Officer's business takes him far from the beaten roads and the regular stations, he learns to grow wise in more than woodlore alone; to know the people and the polity of the jungle; meeting tiger, bear, leopard, wild-dog, and all the deer, not once or twice after days of beating,

but again and again in the execution of his duty. He spends much time in saddle or under canvasthe friend of newly planted trees, the associate of uncouth rangers and hairy trackers-till the woods that show his care in turn set their mark upon him and he ceases to sing the naughty French songs he learned at Nancy, and grows silent with the silent things of the undergrowth.

Gisborne of the Woods and Forests had spent four years in the service. At first he loved it without comprehension, because it led him into the open on horseback and gave him authority. Then he hated it furiously, and would have given a year's pay for one month of such society as India affords. That crisis over, the forests took him back again, and he was content to serve them, to deepen and widen his fire-lines, to watch the green mist of his new plantations against the older foliage, to dredge out the choked stream, and to follow and strengthen the last struggle of the forest where it broke down. and died among the long pig-grass. On some still day that grass would be burned off, and a hundred beasts that had their homes there would rush out before the pale flames at high noon. Later, the forest would creep forward over the blackened ground in orderly lines of saplings, and Gisborne, watching, would be well pleased. His bungalow, a thatched white-walled cottage of two rooms, was set at one end of the great rukh and overlooking it. He made

no pretence at keeping a garden, for the rukh swept up to his door, curled over in a thicket of bamboo, and he rode from his veranda into its heart without the need of any carriage drive.

Abdul Gafur, his fat Mohammedan butler, fed him when he was at home, and spent the rest of the time gossiping with the little band of native servants whose huts lay behind the bungalow. There were two grooms, a cook, a water-carrier, and a sweeper, and that was all. Gisborne cleaned his own guns and kept no dog. Dogs scared the game, and it pleased the man to be able to say where the subjects of his kingdom would drink at moonrise, eat before dawn, and lie up in the day's heat. The rangers and forest-guards lived in little huts far away in the rukh; only appearing when one of them had been injured by a falling tree or a wild beast. There Gisborne was alone.

In spring the rukh put out few new leaves, but lay dry and still, untouched by the finger of the year, waiting for rain. Only there was then more calling and roaring in the dark on a quiet night, the tumult of a battle-royal among the tigers, the bellowing of an arrogant buck, or the steady woodchopping of an old boar sharpening his tushes against a bole. Then Gisborne laid aside his littleused gun altogether, for it was to him a sin to kill. In summer, through the furious May heats, the rukh reeled in the haze, and Gisborne watched for the

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