The low hills, as they lay baking in the sunshine of noon, showed in scallops of glare against the light-bleached sky. A fine dust, reddish but for that same bleaching of light, hid every green thing far and near, making them match the straggling camel-thorns, the stunted wormwood, the tufts of chamomile, and many another nameless aromatic herb which in these low hills come into the world ready dressed in dust, as it were, against the long rainless months.

Yet it was not hot here in the uplands, and so the district officer's tent was opened at one side and propped up by bamboos more for the convenience of its occupant holding an open-air audience than from any quest after coolness. The upward tilt gave the tent a quaintly lopsided look, as if it were some gigantic bird flapping one wing in its attempt to rise and fly away from the little hollow in which it stood.

It was a motley crowd, indeed, which awaited the fiat of the Dispenser of Justice in these fastnesses of the central hills of India; those climbing, rolling upward sweeps of sandstone where the ripple mark of the tides that built them remains to tell of the vanished sea which had once covered this dry and thirsty land, where no water is for nine long months of the year.

It was a curious crowd also. It could not fail of being that, since it struck the two extremes of that vast Indian scale of so-called culture, so-called civilisation. For a land case involving several miles of country was in dispute, and the semi-Europeanised, wholly clothed lawyers engaged on it stood cheek by jowl with the semi-clothed wholly aboriginal witnesses in it; representatives for the most part of the wild tribes belonging to these waste lands and forests. Rude iron-smelters, almost touching the bronze age in absolute savagery; or wandering fowlers, barbaric even to the extent of eating their poor, old, undesirable relations!

In one group, however, consisting of an old man and a young one, a quick observer might have noticed a palpable discrepancy between the dress (or the lack of it) and the address of the wearers. A discrepancy which made the magistrate of the district look up with a smile.

"Hullo! NÂgdeo!" he said. "On the warpath after a tiger?" The old man salaamed down to the ground. His skin was very dark, so that his white moustache and thin white whiskers, brushed out to stand, each hair singly, in a forward curve, like the whiskers of a cat, seemed to glisten against it. For the rest, he was small, slight, but extremely muscular, and he carried himself with no little dignity and importance.

"Not so, Huzoor," he replied, and his speech rose higher in that scale of culture and civilisation than his dress, which was no more than a waistcloth, a string of tiger claws, and a tasselled spear--"I come to put another foot on it. This is my grandson, Huzoor."

The dignity, the importance grew fifty-fold as he turned to the lad by his side. A good head taller, fairer of skin, infinitely better looking, there was yet something about the figure which made the eye turn back to the smaller, older one, as it stood before authority with a certain authority of its own.

He was, as all knew, explained NÂgdeo, the keeper of one of the wildest passes in that wild country, as his father and his father's father had been. Who could deny it? Was not their very caste name, to distinguish them from others, GhÂtwÂl, or pass-keeping ones?

He had had to keep his a long time, because the Old God had decreed that his son should be defeated by a tigress and her cubs; which might happen to the best of pass-keeping ones, since those things feminine were untrustworthy. Consequently he (NÂgdeo) had had to go on beyond the years of greatest activity until his grandson reached them.

But here the boy was now. Of age, twenty; than most, taller; as any, learned in jungle law; with the spear, nimble; to keep the pass, ready; to be enrolled, present, the Old God before--

With his subject the old man's words had returned to the idiom of a wilder tongue, and he drew out of his waistcloth a little iron image of a tiger, not three inches long, to which he salaamed reverently.

For this was the Old God.

"What is your grandson's name?" asked the district officer.

It was BaghÉla (tiger cub), said NÂgdeo.

It had seemed a suitable name for one born six months after his father had been found lying dead on the top of a dead tigress, his dead lips close to the teats that would suckle her dead whelps no more.

That had been a misfortune, deplorable yet without shame, and due, possibly, to the dead youth's over-soon marriage to a thing feminine; such things being notoriously untrustworthy! Therefore he had refrained from entangling this one with such things feminine, the more so because there were already sufficient of them in the house, what with BaghÉla's mother and grandmother. Briefly, the worship of two female things was sufficient for any lad without adding to the adulation by a third!

So, in the evening, when the magistrate's legal work was over, the old man and the young one came up to the tilted tent again, and, after a curious little oath of fealty to the Old God--in the shape of the three-inch tiger--and a vow of war till death against live things that mimicked his shape had been taken from his grandfather's dictation by BaghÉla, the latter's name was duly enrolled as hereditary guardian of the JÂdusa Pass, and the two struck a bee-line towards home over the low jungle as if it belonged to them.

As indeed it did; since few travellers, save the keepers of the passes, ventured to brave the tigers dreaming in their lairs, or pacing the trackless wastes hungrily, after dark.

But old NÂgdeo was jubilant over the mere chance of coming across one; not that it was likely, since what tiger ever was whelped which would dare to face him and his grandson? "Men"--here he gave a sidelong glance of pure adoration at BaghÉla's height--"who had no backs; who, if they failed, as even pass-keepers must sometimes, were found face up to the sky, face up to the claws, face up to the teeth!"

Of course, sometimes, the accursed brutes who assumed the shape of the Blessed Budhal Pen--the Old God of Gods--would, out of sheer spite, roll a dead man over and claw at his back; but that also was without shame, since dead men had no choice.

So the old man babbled on garrulously, and the young one listened, till they reached the little village at the foot of the pass. The moon had risen by this time, and showed the upright slabs of sandstone clustering under the wide-spreading tamarind trees on its outskirts. Slabs marking the graves of dead and gone inhabitants.

"I am ready now for the young girls to break their pitchers and cover my emptiness with the shards," said the old man, pausing for a second beside a cluster of these stones. Then he raised his hand and spoke to the unseen: "Fear not, Slumberers! He who comes to join you hath no scratch upon his back."

That was his Nunc Dimittis. After which he made his way to a low shingled stone hut, covered with gourds, which stood on some rising ground outside the hamlet towards the pass; drank to excess--from pure joy--of a nauseous spirit made by the untrustworthy feminine out of wild berries, and then slept as sound as if he were indeed with the Slumberers.

For this question of the due keeping of the pass had been on the old man's nerves for months. The rains would be due ere long, bringing, no doubt, those twinges of lumbago to a grandfather's back which had of late made it difficult, indeed, to keep the pass open for travellers; since to do that a man must give the beasts no rest. He must harry their lairs when they were absent, scare them from the road with strange noises and ringing of bells, and, if they were obdurate, face claws and teeth.

But now there was some one to do all this. Some one of the true race, yet by the fiat of the Old God bigger than most. Ay! and with more personal enmity than most towards the evil ones who stole the Old God's likeness. For must not those six unborn mouths of wrong, of loss, of grief and anger, count for something?

Yes! BaghÉla would be a Keeper of the Pass, indeed! That was the old man's thought as he fell asleep, his dream as he lay sound as the Slumberers themselves. And BaghÉla slept, too, the badge of his new office, a necklace of tiger claws, round his neck, a tasselled spear, hung with jingling bells, beside him. But the untrustworthy feminine, the mother, the grandmother, still sate by the embers of the fire whispering fearfully; for they knew that those six unborn mouths, translated in their way, might mean something very different.

BaghÉla himself, however, had no suspicion of the possibility. He set about his new duties with an immense amount of swagger. The least hint of a marauding intruder about the winding path which led to the fertile valleys towards the south, would send him through the village with boastful jinglings of his bells. And, as luck would have it, that jingling seemed all powerful for a time towards the keeping of the pass.

NÂgdeo, who, now that the necessity for presenting a youthful appearance was over, permitted himself a seat amongst the village elders, a certain stiffness of carriage generally, used to boast of this peace dogmatically. Such a thing as no news, even, of intruders, so far on in the season, was unheard of. He himself, in his palmiest days, had never been so fear-compelling. It was those six unborn mouths of hereditary hatred which did it, no doubt.

And BaghÉla thought so too, as long as the rain was slight, as long as the flocks and herds kept to the uplands, and only the shepherds and herdsmen had tales to tell of loss. Then, one day, the clouds broke in slanting shafts of almost solid rain, and the water ran over the rippled sandhills as if it had been a tide once more. Then the sun shone for another day, and at dusk everything but a yard or two of shadow round BaghÉla as he patrolled the path was a blank nothingness, blotting out even the darkness with wet, impenetrable vapour, dulling even the sound of the bells, deadening all scent.

So, neither he nor the tiger had an instant's warning.

They were face to face in a moment.

Then BaghÉla knew what those unborn mouths had wrought in him. Terror, absolute, uncontrollable, seized on all his young strength; he knew nothing save the desire to escape. The next instant he felt a hot vapour on his back, heard the husky angry cough that sent it there, and all that young strength of his spent itself in a cry like that of the untrustworthy thing feminine, when they had told it of a young husband's death.

Into the mist he fled, feeling the cold vapour in his face, the hot behind; until, suddenly desperate, every atom of him leaped forward from what lay behind, and he fell.

None too soon; for even as he shot downward a shadow shot over him in the mist, and something ripped his bare back lightly, as, with greater impetus than his, that shadow plunged into the void.

A second afterwards a long-drawn howl of rage and spite rose upward through the mist to meet BaghÉla's whimpers as he lay, caught above the sheer precipice, by a bush.

After a while he rose and crept carefully up to the verge; then sate and shivered at himself; at this inheritance of fear. And more than once his hand sought that faint scratch upon his back. It was not much; not more than a kitten might have made in play, but he felt it like a brand.

By degrees, however, he began to think. The tiger must be lying dead, or at least helpless, below the rocks. He must get down to it, leave the marks of his spear in it; the mark of its claws ...

A surge of shame swept through him. No! he must go back unscathed; no one must have the chance, in dressing wounds, of seeing that faint mark behind.

So the next morning, old NÂgdeo could scarcely contain himself for pride, as he sate among the village elders. The boy had killed his first tiger without a scratch. Had brought home its skin, the biggest seen for years. True, the lad himself had found the fight too hard, and was even now shivering and shaking with ague; but that only proved how hard the fight had been. And the untrustworthy feminine were dosing him, so he would be afoot again in a day or two. Then the village would see that, ere a month was over, a naked child might go through the pass alone in safety. But it was not so!

BaghÉla, it is true, was well enough by day, but as the dusk came on, his strong young limbs always fell a shivering and a shaking. "There is more room for quaking, see you, in him than in me," old NÂgdeo would explain elaborately to his cronies, as he held out an arm, which with the inaction, the sudden cessation of imperious efforts, began to show its age clearly; "but one must pay for size and strength, and courage; and there is no harm done as yet. The mimicking devils had their lesson when he killed their champion without a scratch."

But the harm came in time. A party of salt-carriers, taking advantage of a break in the rains, arrived at the village carrying an extra load; the body of a man killed by a tiger, half eaten by jackals.

"Ague or no ague, sonling," said old NÂgdeo almost coaxingly to the lad half-an-hour after the appearance of this grim visitor, "thy bells must be heard in the pass to-night. They will be all-sufficient, considering the lesson thou hast taught the beasts. And thou art strong enough for the ringing of bells. Thou canst return afterwards to shiver and shake, sonling, since thou art not of those to do that in the pass. No! no!"

The old man's chuckle at his little joke was tenderly triumphant; but, when he had gone, and the untrustworthy feminine alone remained, BaghÉla turned with a sob to his mother, who crouched beside him, and hid his face in her clothes, as if he had been a hurt child.

"Mother!" he cried, "I got it from thee!"

"Yes! heart of my heart," she answered passionately, "and from thy murdered father too. Have I not told thee so, often? As for this old man! See you! Since this has come upon us, and the shivering is no longer refuge--go! There is no need to ring the bells--no need to go farther than the little caves. And the old man fails fast. He will not live long. Then, when he is dead, the old tale will be told, and we can tell a new one, like other folk. Why, even now, see you, there is no need for travellers to cross the pass. Let them take the 'rail' which the Huzoors have made! All this old-world talk is foolishness--yesterday's bread has been eaten, its water drunk; 'tis time for a new dinner!"

It was more than a month after this that some one, sitting on the village daÏs underneath the tamarind trees in sight of the Slumberers, in trying to use a betel-cutter, said carelessly, "It hath grown rusty, like BaghÉla's bells!"

NÂgdeo turned on the speaker like lightning. That month had left him curiously aged, with a wistful, anxious expectancy on his old face. Though when, more than once, folk had commented on his changed looks, and asked what ailed him, he had only replied, almost apologetically, "Death lingers; 'tis time I was with the Slumberers, since BaghÉla keeps the pass as his fathers did."

But now his old voice rose haughtily, "Like thy wits rather! Canst not see that the youth hath been overbrave? The mimicking devils will not face the bells. And who can kill a foe that keeps his distance? And if the bells ring not, is it not in hopes to lure the cowards close--to take them unawares?"

The arguments came swiftly, as if they had been rehearsed before; rehearsed without audience; and yet when old NÂgdeo moved off as if in displeasure, his hands crept out towards the stones which marked the Slumberers, his eyes sought them almost pitifully.

And that night, after BaghÉla had gone on his rounds, after the untrustworthy feminine had slothfully sought its bed, the old Keeper of the Pass crept out in the rear of the young one, spear in hand; yet without the jingles, since what need was there for two sets?

Two! But where was the one?

The old man's face grew more feline in its watchful anxiety, as he prowled among the bushes in the half moonlit darkness, listening for the challenge. And none came, though more than once in the denser shadow of thick jungle, he saw two spots of green light telling that some one was waiting to be challenged. But where was the challenger?

The night was far spent ere he was found, fast asleep on a bed of dry leaves in the little cave.

The sight seemed to take the finder back, not to his more immediate ancestors, the purely savage hunters of those low hills, but to something older still, to the barbarians who had swept down on them to found principalities and powers; for all the calm dignity of the Indo-Scythic sculptures was in NÂgdeo's pose as he pricked the sleeper with his spear.

"Rise up, Keeper of the Pass; they wait for thee without."

BaghÉla was on his feet in a second. He knew the time had come, and something of the old racial courage in him held that new fear in check.

Until, not a hundred yards without the cave, in the faint grey light of the now coming dawn, a paler shadow showed in the darker shadows, long, low, sinuous; and something moved across their path with no sound of footfall; only a crackle of dry twigs, a sudden, soft, short wheeze, and then silence.

"Ring the bells, Keeper of the Pass," came the old man's voice. "There is no fear. Has not the tale of thy prowess spread among the tiger people?"

His prowess! The sting of that slight scratch was as fire on the lad's back; he paused. But a spear from behind reached to his, struck it sideways, and the next instant the challenge echoed through the pass.

And was accepted.

The shadow grew short, showed paler; till two green lights flashed out, and with a roar that rolled among the rocks, the tiger faced them, crouched and sprang.

Old NÂgdeo, his vanished youth returning for a space, sprang too, watching that other spring; so, spear in hand, found himself close to the striped skin of the base usurper of the Old God's shape, into which, with all the force he possessed, he drove his weapon's point. But BaghÉla, with no thought but flight, felt the full force of those mighty claws on his back, and fell. Perhaps his neck was broken; anyhow, he lay still, heedless of the piteous cry that followed:--

"Face him, Keeper of the Pass! Face the teeth, face the claws, ere thou seekest the Slumberers!"

Yet the entreaty was not utterly disregarded; since--BaghÉla dead--that Keepership passed again to one whose face faced the old enemy bravely.

That face, however, had no triumph of victory in it, when NÂgdeo stooped over his grandson's body, and turned its scored back to be hidden by Mother Earth. There was no mark anywhere else--not a scratch. That, at any rate, must not be. That must be remedied before the villagers saw it; before even the sun saw it. For was not Budhal Pen, the Old God, the Sun-god also?

So he drew the lad's body deliberately within reach of the mighty claws, and used them, slack as they were in newly-come death, for his purpose.

Then he sat down beside the two dead bodies, and looked at his own for scratch or hurt. There was not one; not even a bruise, not a spot of blood. So none need know. The girls might weep as they broke their pitchers over BaghÉla bewailing his dead courage.

The courage which had died before he did, though none should know of it. Yet it had died. And who was to blame?

NÂgdeo sat gazing stupidly at his grandson's long length, at his fairer beauty; then suddenly he stood up.

That was it, of course!

And if that were so, then it were best to settle it before dawn, when folk might come prying. He bent curiously over the dead lad, then laid his hand on the dead heart.

"Go! Keeper of the Pass, to the Slumberers without fear. I, NÂgdeo, will punish the intruder."

Half-an-hour after, he stood silently in his hut beside his still sleeping wife. The old woman, blind, deaf, near her end as it was, scarcely stirred as he drove his spear through her heart.

"I doubt thee not, NaolÉ," he said inwardly, "unless a devil wronged thee; but thy son's son must be avenged. He must take no stranger's blood to the Slumberers."

But HerdÂsi, the lad's mother, was awake, and screamed.

"Hold thy peace, fool!" said the old man, fiercely, "if thou wouldst not proclaim thyself harlot. Thy son is dead--face downwards. It came not from me, nor from my son; so that of us which goes to join the Slumberers must be avenged on the vile spirit that took form within thee. Come out from under the bed, woman! if thou wouldst prove he got it not with thy knowledge. Oh! untrustworthy feminine!"

And after a pause the untrustworthy feminine did come out with a curious dignity.

"He got it not from me but from my love. Yet what matter if he be dead!" said HerdÂsi, and so died with her face to the foe to save her son's name. Since, if it was a devil's doing, none could blame the lad.

They found the old man sitting beside the two dead women when they came to tell him that the Keeper of the Pass had given his life for its safety.

"Yea, I know," replied NÂgdeo, quietly. "I went and found him before dawn when he returned not. So I came home and slew these useless ones. Since he was dead, and I am nigh death, and there was none to keep the untrustworthy feminine from wandering."

He adhered to this story steadfastly in the district magistrate's court, and when he was condemned to death made but one request--that he might be allowed to face it with the insignia of his office about him. So on the eve of his execution they gave the old man back his necklace of tiger claws, and told him he would be allowed to jingle his bells on his way to the scaffold. But when they came to rouse him in the morning he was lying dead, face upward; his arms, his chest, his throat all rent and ripped by those same tiger claws.

But there was not even a scratch upon the back of the last Keeper of the Pass.