‘Here are twenty,’ said Suket Singh, ’and you must give me the best bullets.’

‘It is very good to be alive,’ said Athira wistfully, sniffing the scent of the pine-mould; and they waited till the night had fallen upon Kodru and the Donga Pa.  Madu had stacked the dry wood for the next day’s charcoal-burning on the spur above his house.  ’It is courteous in Madu to save us this trouble,’ said Suket Singh as he stumbled on the pile, which was twelve foot square and four high.  ’We must wait till the moon rises.’

When the moon rose, Athira knelt upon the pile.  ’If it were only a Government Snider,’ said Suket Singh ruefully, squinting down the wire-bound barrel of the Forest Ranger’s gun.

‘Be quick,’ said Athira; and Suket Singh was quick; but Athira was quick no longer.  Then he lit the pile at the four corners and climbed on to it, re-loading the gun.

The little flames began to peer up between the big logs atop of the brushwood.  ’The Government should teach us to pull the triggers with our toes,’ said Suket Singh grimly to the moon.  That was the last public observation of Sepoy Suket Singh.

Upon a day, early in the morning, Madu came to the pyre and shrieked very grievously, and ran away to catch the Policeman who was on tour in the district.

‘The base-born has ruined four rupees’ worth of charcoal wood,’ Madu gasped.  ’He has also killed my wife, and he has left a letter which I cannot read, tied to a pine bough.’

In the stiff, formal hand taught in the regimental school, Sepoy Suket Singh had written—­

’Let us be burned together, if anything remain over, for we have made the necessary prayers.  We have also cursed Madu, and Malak the brother of Athira—­both evil men.  Send my service to the Colonel Sahib Bahadur.’

The Policeman looked long and curiously at the marriage bed of red and white ashes on which lay, dull black, the barrel of the Ranger’s gun.  He drove his spurred heel absently into a half-charred log, and the chattering sparks flew upwards.  ‘Most extraordinary people,’ said the Policeman.

‘WHE-W, whew, OUIOU,’ said the little flames.

The Policeman entered the dry bones of the case, for the Punjab Government does not approve of romancing, in his Diary.

‘But who will pay me those four rupees?’ said Madu.

THE FINANCES OF THE GODS [Footnote:  Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN & Co.]

The evening meal was ended in Dhunni Bhagat’s Chubara and the old priests were smoking or counting their beads.  A little naked child pattered in, with its mouth wide open, a handful of marigold flowers in one hand, and a lump of conserved tobacco in the other.  It tried to kneel and make obeisance to Gobind, but it was so fat that it fell forward on its shaven head, and rolled on its side, kicking and gasping, while the marigolds tumbled one way and the tobacco the other.  Gobind laughed, set it up again, and blessed the marigold flowers as he received the tobacco.