the Persian kitten begins to run round after its bushy tail, faster and faster, faster and faster, a ring of yellow light.  And Chinna Tumbe claps his hands, and cries, Wah, wah! and he dances for delight, and all his silver bells jingle gleefully.  So the pleasant peddler addresses other strange and funny words to the ring of yellow light, and instantly it stands still, and quivers its bushy tail, and pants.  Then the peddler speaks to the cunning mungooz, which immediately leaps to the ground, and sitting quite erect, with its broad tail curled over its back, like a marabout feather, holds its paws together in the quaint manner of a squirrel, and looks attentive.  More of the peddler’s funny conjuration, and up springs the mungooz into the air, like a Birman’s wicker football, and, alighting on the kitten’s back, clings close and fast.  Away fly kitten and mungooz,—­away from the gate,—­away from the Baboo’s walks, bright with ixoras and creeping nagatallis,—­away from the Baboo’s park, shady with banians, and fragrant with sandal-trees, and imposing with tall peepuls, and cool with sparkling fountains,—­away from the Baboo’s home, away from the Baboo’s heart, bereft thenceforth forever!  For Chinna Tumbe follows fast, crying, Wah, wah! and clapping his hands, and jingling gleefully all his silver bells,—­follows across the road, and through the bamboo hedge, and into the darkness and the danger of the jungle; and the pleasant peddler all the way from Cabool goes smiling after,—­but, as he goes, what is it that he draws from the breast of his dusty coortee?  Only a slender, smooth cord, with a slip-knot at the end of it.

Within the twelvemonth, in a stony nullah, hard by a clump of crooked saul-trees, a mile away from the Baboo’s gate, some jackals brought to light the bones of a little child; and the deep grave from which they dug them with their sharp, busy claws, bore marks of the mystic pick-axe of Thuggee.  But there were no tinkling bells, no chain of gold, no silver whistle; and the cockatoos and the goldfishes knew Chinna Tumbe no more.

When a name was bestowed on the Little Brother, the Brahmins wrote a score of pretty words in rice, and set over each a lamp freshly trimmed, and the name whose light burned brightest, with happy augury, was “Chinna Tumbe.”  And when they had likewise inscribed the day of his birth, and the name of his natal star, the proud and happy Baboo cried, with a loud voice, three times, “Chinna Tumbe,” and all the Brahmins stretched forth their hands and pronounced Asowadam,—­benediction.  Then they performed arati about the child’s head, to avert the Evil Eye, describing mystic circles with lamps of rice-paste set on copper salvers, with many pious incantations.  But, spite of all, the Evil Eye overtook Chinna Tumbe, when the pleasant peddler came all the way from Cabool, with his bushy-tailed kitten, and his mungooz cracking nuts.

They do say the ghost of Chinna Tumbe walks,—­that always at midnight, when the Indian nightingale fills the Baboo’s banian topes with her lugubrious song, and the weird ulus hoot from the peepul tops, a child, girt with silver bells, and followed by a Persian kitten and a mungooz, shakes the Baboo’s gate, blows upon a silver whistle, and cries, so piteously, “Ayah!  Ayah!”