warm a kettle full of water, the careful blending of herbs and powders, and the endless chanting of incantations as the mixture was sprinkled around each tender plant.

When it was all over, and the white-ant people had been banished forever from the marigold plot, the magic man gathered up his tools and went his way. Old Pagal shuffled off to set his men to work, and Chandra was left alone once more in the garden.

He had begun to think for the hundredth time what he should say in answer to the Maharajah's questions, when he heard voices speaking rapidly, and two boys, Prince Ranga Singh and his new friend, Robert Bradford, came around a turn in the path.

"Caste is something I never shall understand," the English boy was saying, and Chandra, who had learned to speak and read English in the little village school at home, turned his head quickly to listen.

"It is very simple," the prince replied. "There are the four great castes, and every Hindu in India belongs to a division of one or another of them, unless he has become an outcast, which is a terrible misfortune. A child born in one caste must live his whole life in that same caste, obeying all its laws without a question. No one, not even the Maharajah himself, can escape the laws of caste."

"But who made

Robert Bradford shook his head. the laws," he asked, "and why do you obey them?" Ranga Singh beckoned to Chandra, and the boy came quickly forward, bowing profoundly, and then standing at one side so that no part of his shadow would fall across the prince or his shadow.

"You speak English, do you not?" Prince Ranga Singh inquired.

"Yes, Sahib."

"Then tell this boy who made the laws of caste."

"Yes, Sahib"; and Chandra bowed to the ground. "It was Brahma, the creator of all men," he began at once. "From his mouth came the highest caste, the Brahmins; from his arms sprang the second caste, -the warriors; from his loins, the third, workers; and from his feet the lowest caste, peasants, to serve the others."

the

the

"You are a Brahmin, then?" Robert asked the prince. "Yes."

"And you, what are you?" he asked of Chandra.

"I am of the gardener caste of workers," the boy answered. "It is my father's caste, and my grandfather's, and my father-grandfather's; and so it will be my son's and my son's son's."

"Do you mean that you can never be anything but a gardener?"

"Yes, Sahib."

"Don't you want to be anything else?"

"No, Sahib."

"Then you will just be a gardener all your life?" "Yes, Sahib; but when I was born the stars foretold that I would have a high place among men of my caste, and if the Maharajah gives me work in these wonderful gardens, I shall be content."

'Suppose he asks you to be a punkah boy?”

"That I could not do," Chandra answered.

"He might make you a groom for one of his horses." Chandra shook his head.

"Or he might make you a messenger," Robert Bradford persisted. "You would like that, would you not,

to wear a little bronze medal around your neck and run on errands for the prince and his father?"

Again Chandra shook his head. "Not even the Maharajah can take me out of my caste," he replied.

"It is as the boy says," Ranga Singh interrupted. "Each one of the four great castes is divided into smaller castes, and no man can progress from one to another, or marry from one to another.

"A man of one caste must eat only with his own caste, and touch food prepared by those of his own caste or a higher caste. He cannot even drink water drawn from a well by one of a lower caste. A highcaste man is defiled if a lower caste touches him, or brushes against him; or if the shadow of a low-caste falls upon him or his shadow."

Chandra, who had already moved twice as the sun brought his shadow nearer the prince, now moved again, at the same time glancing uneasily toward the palace, as if he knew he should be taking his place in the long line standing every morning at the Maharajah's door to ask his favor or forgiveness.

Prince Ranga Singh caught the look. "You are right," he said. "My father will soon be ready to see you. I have told him that you know the ways of the insectpeople, and he has a place for you, you may be sure."

And so it proved to be, for when Chandra had told his name and caste, and had answered the Maharajah's few brief questions, he was sent at once to old Pagal, the happiest boy in all the coral city of Jaipur that day. - Etta Blaisdell McDonald,

BRUTE NEIGHBORS

Sometimes I had a companion in my fishing, who came through the village to my house from the other side of the town, and the catching of the dinner was as much a social exercise as the eating of it.

Hermit. I wonder what the world is doing now. I have not heard so much as a locust over the sweet fern these three hours. The pigeons are all asleep upon their roosts, -no flutter from them. Was that a farmer's noon horn which sounded from beyond the woods just now? The hands are coming in to boiled salt beef and cider and Indian bread. Why will men worry themselves so? He that does not eat need not work. I wonder how much they have reaped. Who would live there where a body can never think for the barking of Bose? And Oh, the housekeeping! Better not keep a house. Say, some hollow tree; and then for morning calls and dinner-parties! Only a woodpecker tapping. O, they swarm; the sun is too warm there; they are born too far into life for me. I have water from the spring, and a loaf of brown bread on the shelf. - Hark! I hear a rustling of the leaves. Is it some ill-fed village hound yielding to the instinct of the chase? or the lost pig which is said to be in these woods, whose tracks I saw after the rain? It comes on apace; my sumachs and sweet-briers tremble, Eh, Mr. Poet, is it you? How do you like the world to-day?

Poet. See those clouds; how they hang! That's the greatest thing I have seen to-day. There's nothing like it in old paintings, nothing like it in foreign