weather. I sent for the 'dangur' mates, and asked them to have it dug
up next day. They hummed and hawed and hesitated, as I thought, in
rather a strange manner, but departed. In the evening back they came,
to tell me that the dangurs would _not_ dig up the field.

'Why?' I asked.

'Well you see, Sahib,' said old Teerbouan, who was the patriarch and
chief spokesman of the village, 'this field has been used for years as
a burning ghaut' (i.e. a place where the bodies of dead Hindoos were
buried).

'Well?' said I.

'Well, Sahib, my men say that if they disturb this land, the "Bhoots"
(ghosts) of all those who have been burned there, will haunt the
village at night, and they hope you will not persist in asking them to
dig up the land.'

'Very well, bring down the men with their digging-hoes, and I will
see.'

Accordingly, next morning, I went down on my pony, found the dangurs
all assembled, but no digging going on. I called them together, told
them that it was a very reasonable fear they had, but that I would cast
such a spell on the land as would settle the ghosts of the departed for
ever. I then got a branch of a _bael_[1] tree that grew close by,
dipped it in the stream, and walking backwards round the ground, waved
the dripping branch round my head, repeating at the same time the first
gibberish that came into my recollection. My incantation or spell was