Further Foolishness.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 55, 7 March 1939, Page 17

Further Foolishness.

Everywhere Ram Dass went you would see Haggie at his heels. Wiheii he rested she would stretch herself on the ground, very quiet end very still, her intelligent, pleading eyes studying the man's features in mute question until he shifted uneasily or roee and went somewhere else.

At last the sais could stand the silo;:' persecution no longer and, going to his master, confessed that he had drowned the puppies and afterwards destroyed their bodies by fire, because he pleaded, it was not meet that such monstrosities should be allowed to disp•• en the establishment of his buna si i.iii.

"I am well able to care for -my izzat and thine," said Bill, speaking in the vernacular, and reached for his rattan riding cane.

After that I watched the snis even more carefully than in the past, for if ever I had seen murder in a man's eyes, it had been in the eyes of Ram Dass as he wilted under the final punishing stroke of Bill's riding stick.

Haggie, for her part, appeared to be completely satisfied. She was an uncannily intelligent animal and seemed to know just why Ram Dass had been punished. From that day onwards she ceased following the sais about, but was never far from Bill's heels, except when we were on parade. At such times, she would curl herself up on the foot of her master's bed. It would have been a bold man who tried to disturb her.

Ram Dass certainly never made any such attempt, and, so far as one could tell, seemed to have forgotten, or forgiven, the just punishment he had received from his master. But Hindus are like elephants in one respect —they do not forget.

Bill laughed at me when I suggested that the presence of a cobra in our bathroom and thc timely discovery of a krait—most deadly of all Indian snakes —in the foot of a field boot he had been about to pull on might not be due altogether to chance.

Bill might laugh if he chose, but unsuspicious regarding Ram Dass were to receive fuller confirmation in the neatfuture, for Bill, never too careful about his own welfare, contracted a chill which turned to pneumonia and was carted off to hospital.

Next morning I was awakened before sunrise by a piteous whining beside my bed. By the dim li<rht of the hurricane lantern, which was kept always burning as a safeguard against snakes, I saw Haggie stretched out on the floor.