"We must live before we can learn," said the Mugger, "and there
is this to say: Little jackals are very common, child, but such
a mugger as I am is not common. For all that, I am not proud,
since pride is destruction; but take notice, it is Fate, and
against his Fate no one who swims or walks or runs should say
anything at all. I am well contented with Fate. With good luck,
a keen eye, and the custom of considering whether a creek or a
backwater has an outlet to it ere you ascend, much may be done."

"Once I heard that even the Protector of the Poor made a
mistake," said the Jackal viciously.

"True; but there my Fate helped me. It was before I had come to
my full growth--before the last famine but three (by the Right
and Left of Gunga, how full used the streams to be in those
days!). Yes, I was young and unthinking, and when the flood
came, who so pleased as I? A little made me very happy then.
The village was deep in flood, and I swam above the Ghaut and
went far inland, up to the rice-fields, and they were deep in
good mud. I remember also a pair of bracelets (glass they were,
and troubled me not a little) that I found that evening. Yes,
glass bracelets; and, if my memory serves me well, a shoe.
I should have shaken off both shoes, but I was hungry. I learned
better later. Yes. And so I fed and rested me; but when I was
ready to go to the river again the flood had fallen, and I
walked through the mud of the main street. Who but I? Came out
all my people, priests and women and children, and I looked upon
them with benevolence. The mud is not a good place to fight in.
Said a boatman, "Get axes and kill him, for he is the Mugger of