THE HOT NIGHT Rudolph paced his long chamber like a wolf,--a wolf in summer, with too thick a coat.

In sweat of body and heat of mind, he crossed from window to window, unable to halt.
A faintly sour smell of parched things, oppressing the night without breath or motion, was like an interminable presence, irritating, poisonous.

The punkah, too, flapped incessant, and only made the lamp gutter.

Broad leaves outside shone in mockery of snow; and like snow the stifled river lay in the moonlight, where the wet muzzles of buffaloes glistened, floating like knots on sunken logs, or the snouts of crocodiles.

Birds fluttered, sleepless and wretched.