[Illustration:  THE CATHACKS (OR DANCING MEN) OF BHOPAL.]

Another round of consanguinities:  the animal still remained immovable, till presently he lunged out with a wicked kick which had nearly obliterated at one blow the whole line of his ancestry and collateral relatives as represented in the driver.  At this the latter became as furious as he had before been patient:  he belabored the horse, assistants ran from the stables, the whole party yelled and gesticulated at the little beast simultaneously, and he finally broke down the road at a pace which the driver did not suffer him to relax until we arrived at the bungalow where we intended to stop for supper.

A venerable old Mohammedan in a white beard that gave him the majesty of Moses advanced for the purpose of ascertaining our wants.

“Had he any mutton-chops?” asked Bhima Gandharva in Hindustani, the lingua franca of the country.

“Cherisher of the humble! no.”

“Any beefsteak?”

“Nourisher of the poor! no.”

“Well, then, I hear a chicken,” said my friend, conclusively.

“O great king,” said the Mohammedan, turning to me, “there is a chicken.”

In a twinkling the cook caught the chicken:  its head was turned toward Mecca.  Bismillah!  O God the Compassionate, the Merciful! the poor fowl’s head flew off, and by the time we had made our ablutions supper was ready.

Turning across the ridges to the north-eastward from Sipri, we were soon making our way among the tanks and groves which lie about the walls of Jhansi.  Here, as at Poona, there was ever present to me a sense of evil destinies, of blood, of treacheries, which seemed to linger about the trees and the tanks like exhalations from the old crimes which have stained the soil of the country.  For Jhansi is in the Bundelcund, and the Bundelcund was born in great iniquity.  The very name—­which properly is Bundelakhand, or “the country of the Bundelas”—­has a history thickly set about with the terrors of caste, of murder and of usurpation.  Some five hundred years ago a certain Rajput prince, Hurdeo Sing, committed the unpardonable sin of marrying a slave (bundi), and was in consequence expelled from the Kshatriya caste to which he belonged.  He fled with his disgrace into this region, and after some years found opportunity at least to salve his wounds with blood and power.  The son of the king into whose land he had escaped conceived a passion for the daughter of the slave wife.  It must needs have been a mighty sentiment, for the conditions which Hurdeo Sing exacted were of a nature to try the strongest love.  These were, that the nuptial banquet should be prepared by the unmentionable hands of the slave wife herself, and that the king and his court should partake of it—­a proceeding which would involve the loss of their caste also.  But the prince loved, and his love must have lent him extraordinary eloquence, for he prevailed on his