From the sword-belt set free and released from the steel,

The Peace of the Lord is with Captain O'Neil.

Up the hill to Simoorie-most patient of drudgesThe bags on his shoulder, the mail-runner trudges.

"For Captain O'Neil, Sahib. One hundred and ten Rupees to collect on delivery."

Then

(Their breakfast was stopped while the screw-jack and hammer

Tore waxcloth, split teak-wood, and chipped out the dammer ;)

Open-eyed, open-mouthed, on the napery's snow, With a crash and a thud, rolled-the Head of the Boh!

And gummed to the scalp was a letter which ran:— "IN FIELDING FORCE SERVICE.

"Dear Sir, I have honour to send, as you said,

For final approval (see under) Boh's Head;

"Was took by myself in most bloody affair. By High Education brought pressure to bear.

"Now violate Liberty, time being bad,

To mail V.P.P. (rupees hundred) Please add

"Whatever Your Honour can pass. Price of Blood Much cheap at one hundred, and children want food;

"So trusting Your Honour will somewhat retain True love and affection for Govt. Bullock Train,

"And show awful kindness to satisfy me,

"I am,

"Graceful Master,

"Your

"H. MUKERJI."

As the rabbit is drawn to the rattlesnake's power,
As the smoker's eye fills at the opium hour,

As a horse reaches up to the manger above,
As the waiting ear yearns for the whisper of love,

From the arms of the Bride, iron-visaged and slow, The Captain bent down to the Head of the Boh.

And e'en as he looked on the Thing where It lay 'Twixt the winking new spoons and the napkins'

array,

The freed mind fled back to the long-ago days—
The hand-to-hand scuffle-the smoke and the blaze-

$36651

The forced march at night and the quick rush at

dawn

The banjo at twilight, the burial ere morn

The stench of the marshes-the raw, piercing smell When the overhand stabbing-cut silenced the yell

The oaths of his Irish that surged when they stood Where the black crosses hung o'er the Kuttamow flood.

As a derelict ship drifts away with the tide
The Captain went out on the Past from his Bride,

Back, back, through the springs to the chill of the year, When he hunted the Boh from Maloon to Tsaleer.

As the shape of a corpse dimmers up through deep water,

In his eye lit the passionless passion of slaughter,

And men who had fought with O'Neil for the life Had gazed on his face with less dread than his wife.

For she who had held him so long could not hold himThough a four-month Eternity should have controlled him

But watched the twin Terror-the head turned to head.

The scowling, scarred Black, and the flushed savage Red

The spirit that changed from her knowing and flew to Some grim hidden Past she had never a clue to.

But It knew as It grinned, for he touched it unfearing, And muttered aloud, "So you kept that jade earring!"

Then nodded, and kindly, as friend nods to friend, "Old man, you fought well, but you lost in the end."

The visions departed, and Shame followed Passion:"He took what I said in this horrible fashion,

"I'll write to Harendra!" With language unsainted The Captain came back to the Bride . . . who had fainted.

And this is a fiction? No. Go to Simoorie
And look at their baby, a twelve-month old Houri,

A pert little, Irish-eyed Kathleen Mavournin-
She's always about on the Mall of a mornin'—

And you'll see, if her right shoulder-strap is displaced, This: Gules upon argent, a Boh's Head, erased!

THE LAMENT OF THE BORDER

CATTLE THIEF

O WOE is me for the merry life
I led beyond the Bar,

And a treble woe for my winsome wife
That weeps at Shalimar.

They have taken away my long jezail,
My shield and sabre fine,

And heaved me into the Central Jail
For lifting of the kine.

The steer may low within the byre,
The Jat may tend his grain,
But there'll be neither loot nor fire
Till I come back again.

And God have mercy on the Jat
When once my fetters fall,

And Heaven defend the farmer's hut

When I am loosed from thrall.