Explore "In Old Madras" by B.M. Croker on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A whole month had elapsed since his arrival at Bonagherry, and the invalid was now convalescent. He walked and rode about the estate with Tom, was unaffectedly interested in the crop, and its prospects, and wildly excited, when a panther took the "writer's" cow, -- almost from under his roof! Vainly did he beg, pray, and argue for a stalk. This was inflexibly denied him, but he was permitted to visit, and mark, the well-known and respected "track" that like a glorified "cat's run" passed right through the estate.
The idler saw to the feeding and exercise of the pack of nondescript dogs, -- such as are kept on most coffee plantations -- generally the abandoned pets of people who have left the Hills and departed to England. Among this mixed multitude was a brown retriever, a respectable Aberdeen, a self-conscious pug, a Scotch deer-hound, a beagle, several terriers, and various hounds of low degree. The pug and the Aberdeen were adopted by Jessie, but the remainder of the pack were frequently summoned to hunt wild pig or sambur, in the thickest of adjacent sholahs.