Upward chuckled.
“Bless your life, old chap, Bracebrydge isn’t really ‘gone’ there.”
“Not, eh? Then he’s a bigger idiot than even I took him for, letting himself go like that.”
“It’s his way. He does just the same with every woman he comes across, if she’s at all decent-looking, and what’s more is under the impression she must be wildly ‘gone’ on him; and by the way, some of them have been. Wait till we get back to Shâlalai; you may see some fun in that line.”
“They must be greater fools even than himself. I’m not a woman-hater, but really the sex can roll out some stupendous examples of defective intelligence—but then, to be fair, so can our own—as for instance Bracebrydge himself. What sort of place is this, Upward?” he broke off, as they came upon a low tumble-down wall surrounding a tree; the enclosure thus formed was strewn with loose horns, as of sheep and goats, and yet not quite like them.
“Why, it’s a sort of rustic shrine, rigged up to some Mohammedan saint. Isn’t it, Bhallu Khan?” translating the remark.
The forester reached over the wall, and picking up a markhôr horn, worn and weather-beaten, held it towards them.
“He says it’s where the people come to make offerings,” translated Upward. “When they want to have a successful stalk they vow a pair of markhôr horns at a place like this.”
“And then deposit it here, and then the noble Briton, if in want of such a thing to hang in his hall, incontinently bones it, and goes home and lies about it ever after,” cut in Campian. “Isn’t that how the case stands?”
“I don’t think so. The horns wouldn’t be good enough to make it worth while.”