The truth is, although I had been for some days wavering upon the brink of these conclusions in a quiet way, I found the old keen ardor of the sportsman still burning too strongly, and I had started out with a breech-loader, intent upon doing much of the Gondwana route gun in hand.  It was not long before a thoughtless shot operated to bring my growing convictions sharply face to face with my decreasing practice, and thus to quite frown the latter out of existence.  It happened in this wise:  One day, not far from sunset, I was walking idly along behind the chapaya, in which Bhima Gandharva was dreamily reclining, when suddenly a pair of great saras cranes rose from the low banks of a small stream and sailed directly across the road.  Quick as thought—­indeed, quicker than thought; for if I had thought, I would not have done it—­I fired, and brought down one of the monstrous birds.  As I started to approach it, Bhima Gandharva said, in a tone just a trifle graver than usual, “Stop! wait a moment,” and at the same time halted the chapaya.  The mate of the bird I had shot, seeing him fall, alighted on the same spot, then flew up, then returned, flew up again, returned again, with an exhibition of sad and lingering affection of which I had not dreamed, and which penetrated me beyond expression; so I stood half stolid outwardly and wholly ashamed and grieved inwardly.  “The saras,” said my friend, “is the type of conjugal affection among the Hindus.  The birds nearly always go in pairs; and when one is killed, the other invariably makes those demonstrations of tenderness which you have just seen.”

As we journeyed along in the dusk came notes from another pair of feathered lovers, “chukwa, chukwi,” “chukwa, chukwi,” in a sort of mournful alternation.  They were the branning ducks, he on one side, she on the other side of the stream, as is their habit, whence they are fabled to be a pair of lovers who must yearn unavailingly through the long nights from opposite banks of the river.

That night, when Bhima Gandharva was asleep, I gently arose, took my double-barrel—­thou dear Manton! how often has not Jonesville admired thee returning from the field at late evening slanting at a jaunty angle high above my bagful of snipe or of quail as the case might be!—­yes, I took this love of a gun, together with the cartridges, accoutrements and all other rights, members and appurtenances thereunto belonging or in any wise appertaining, and slid the whole lot softly into a deep green pool of the very stream from which had flown my saras.