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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life’s Handicap, by Rudyard Kipling
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Life’s Handicap
+
+Author: Rudyard Kipling
+
+
+Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5777]
+This file was first posted on September 1, 2002
+Last Updated: October 7, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE’S HANDICAP ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LIFE’S HANDICAP
+
+BEING STORIES OF MINE OWN PEOPLE
+
+By Rudyard Kipling
+
+1915
+
+
+   TO
+   E.K.R.
+   FROM
+   R.K.
+   1887-89
+   C.M.G.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+In Northern India stood a monastery called The Chubara of Dhunni Bhagat.
+No one remembered who or what Dhunni Bhagat had been. He had lived his
+life, made a little money and spent it all, as every good Hindu should
+do, on a work of piety--the Chubara. That was full of brick cells, gaily
+painted with the figures of Gods and kings and elephants, where worn-out
+priests could sit and meditate on the latter end of things; the paths
+were brick paved, and the naked feet of thousands had worn them into
+gutters. Clumps of mangoes sprouted from between the bricks; great
+pipal trees overhung the well-windlass that whined all day; and hosts
+of parrots tore through the trees. Crows and squirrels were tame in that
+place, for they knew that never a priest would touch them.
+
+The wandering mendicants, charm-sellers, and holy vagabonds for a
+hundred miles round used to make the Chubara their place of call and
+rest. Mahomedan, Sikh, and Hindu mixed equally under the trees. They
+were old men, and when man has come to the turnstiles of Night all the
+creeds in the world seem to him wonderfully alike and colourless.
+
+Gobind the one-eyed told me this. He was a holy man who lived on an
+island in the middle of a river and fed the fishes with little bread
+pellets twice a day. In flood-time, when swollen corpses stranded
+themselves at the foot of the island, Gobind would cause them to be
+piously burned, for the sake of the honour of mankind, and having regard
+to his own account with God hereafter. But when two-thirds of the
+island was torn away in a spate, Gobind came across the river to Dhunni
+Bhagat’s Chubara, he and his brass drinking vessel with the well-cord
+round the neck, his short arm-rest crutch studded with brass nails, his
+roll of bedding, his big pipe, his umbrella, and his tall sugar-loaf hat
+with the nodding peacock feathers in it. He wrapped himself up in his
+patched quilt made of every colour and material in the world, sat down
+in a sunny corner of the very quiet Chubara, and, resting his arm on his
+short-handled crutch, waited for death. The people brought him food and
+little clumps of marigold flowers, and he gave his blessing in return.
+He was nearly blind, and his face was seamed and lined and wrinkled
+beyond belief, for he had lived in his time which was before the English
+came within five hundred miles of Dhunni Bhagat’s Chubara.
+
+When we grew to know each other well, Gobind would tell me tales in a
+voice most like the rumbling of heavy guns over a wooden bridge. His
+tales were true, but not one in twenty could be printed in an English
+book, because the English do not think as natives do. They brood over
+matters that a native would dismiss till a fitting occasion; and what
+they would not think twice about a native will brood over till a fitting
+occasion: then native and English stare at each other hopelessly across
+great gulfs of miscomprehension.
+
+‘And what,’ said Gobind one Sunday evening, ‘is your honoured craft, and
+by what manner of means earn you your daily bread?’
+
+‘I am,’ said I, ‘a kerani--one who writes with a pen upon paper, not
+being in the service of the Government.’
+
+‘Then what do you write?’ said Gobind. ‘Come nearer, for I cannot see
+your countenance, and the light fails.’
+
+‘I write of all matters that lie within my understanding, and of many
+that do not. But chiefly I write of Life and Death, and men and women,
+and Love and Fate according to the measure of my ability, telling the
+tale through the mouths of one, two, or more people. Then by the favour
+of God the tales are sold and money accrues to me that I may keep
+alive.’
+
+‘Even so,’ said Gobind. ‘That is the work of the bazar story-teller; but
+he speaks straight to men and women and does not write anything at all.
+Only when the tale has aroused expectation, and calamities are about
+to befall the virtuous, he stops suddenly and demands payment ere he
+continues the narration. Is it so in your craft, my son?’
+
+‘I have heard of such things when a tale is of great length, and is sold
+as a cucumber, in small pieces.’
+
+‘Ay, I was once a famed teller of stories when I was begging on the road
+between Koshin and Etra; before the last pilgrimage that ever I took to
+Orissa. I told many tales and heard many more at the rest-houses in the
+evening when we were merry at the end of the march. It is in my heart
+that grown men are but as little children in the matter of tales, and
+the oldest tale is the most beloved.’
+
+‘With your people that is truth,’ said I. ‘But in regard to our people
+they desire new tales, and when all is written they rise up and declare
+that the tale were better told in such and such a manner, and doubt
+either the truth or the invention thereof.’
+
+‘But what folly is theirs!’ said Gobind, throwing out his knotted hand.
+‘A tale that is told is a true tale as long as the telling lasts. And
+of their talk upon it--you know how Bilas Khan, that was the prince of
+tale-tellers, said to one who mocked him in the great rest-house on the
+Jhelum road: “Go on, my brother, and finish that I have begun,” and he
+who mocked took up the tale, but having neither voice nor manner for the
+task came to a standstill, and the pilgrims at supper made him eat abuse
+and stick half that night.’
+
+‘Nay, but with our people, money having passed, it is their right; as we
+should turn against a shoeseller in regard to shoes if those wore out.
+If ever I make a book you shall see and judge.’
+
+‘And the parrot said to the falling tree, Wait, brother, till I fetch a
+prop!’ said Gobind with a grim chuckle. ‘God has given me eighty years,
+and it may be some over. I cannot look for more than day granted by day
+and as a favour at this tide. Be swift.’
+
+‘In what manner is it best to set about the task.’ said I, ‘O chiefest
+of those who string pearls with their tongue?’
+
+‘How do I know? Yet’--he thought for a little--‘how should I not know?
+God has made very many heads, but there is only one heart in all the
+world among your people or my people. They are children in the matter of
+tales.’
+
+‘But none are so terrible as the little ones, if a man misplace a word,
+or in a second telling vary events by so much as one small devil.’
+
+‘Ay, I also have told tales to the little ones, but do thou this--’ His
+old eyes fell on the gaudy paintings of the wall, the blue and red dome,
+and the flames of the poinsettias beyond. ‘Tell them first of those
+things that thou hast seen and they have seen together. Thus their
+knowledge will piece out thy imperfections. Tell them of what thou alone
+hast seen, then what thou hast heard, and since they be children tell
+them of battles and kings, horses, devils, elephants, and angels, but
+omit not to tell them of love and suchlike. All the earth is full of
+tales to him who listens and does not drive away the poor from his door.
+The poor are the best of tale-tellers; for they must lay their ear to
+the ground every night.’
+
+After this conversation the idea grew in my head, and Gobind was
+pressing in his inquiries as to the health of the book.
+
+Later, when we had been parted for months, it happened that I was to go
+away and far off, and I came to bid Gobind good-bye.
+
+‘It is farewell between us now, for I go a very long journey,’ I said.
+
+‘And I also. A longer one than thou. But what of the book?’ said he.
+
+‘It will be born in due season if it is so ordained.’
+
+‘I would I could see it,’ said the old man, huddling beneath his quilt.
+‘But that will not be. I die three days hence, in the night, a little
+before the dawn. The term of my years is accomplished.’
+
+In nine cases out of ten a native makes no miscalculation as to the day
+of his death. He has the foreknowledge of the beasts in this respect.
+
+‘Then thou wilt depart in peace, and it is good talk, for thou hast said
+that life is no delight to thee.’
+
+‘But it is a pity that our book is not born. How shall I know that there
+is any record of my name?’
+
+‘Because I promise, in the forepart of the book, preceding everything
+else, that it shall be written, Gobind, sadhu, of the island in the
+river and awaiting God in Dhunni Bhagat’s Chubara, first spoke of the
+book,’ said I.
+
+‘And gave counsel--an old man’s counsel. Gobind, son of Gobind of the
+Chumi village in the Karaon tehsil, in the district of Mooltan. Will
+that be written also?’
+
+‘That will be written also.’
+
+‘And the book will go across the Black Water to the houses of your
+people, and all the Sahibs will know of me who am eighty years old?’
+
+‘All who read the book shall know. I cannot promise for the rest.’
+
+‘That is good talk. Call aloud to all who are in the monastery, and I
+will tell them this thing.’
+
+They trooped up, faquirs, sadhus, sunnyasis, byragis, nihangs, and
+mullahs, priests of all faiths and every degree of raggedness, and
+Gobind, leaning upon his crutch, spoke so that they were visibly filled
+with envy, and a white-haired senior bade Gobind think of his latter
+end instead of transitory repute in the mouths of strangers. Then Gobind
+gave me his blessing and I came away.
+
+These tales have been collected from all places, and all sorts of
+people, from priests in the Chubara, from Ala Yar the carver, Jiwun
+Singh the carpenter, nameless men on steamers and trains round the
+world, women spinning outside their cottages in the twilight, officers
+and gentlemen now dead and buried, and a few, but these are the very
+best, my father gave me. The greater part of them have been published in
+magazines and newspapers, to whose editors I am indebted; but some are
+new on this side of the water, and some have not seen the light before.
+
+The most remarkable stories are, of course, those which do not
+appear--for obvious reasons.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE LANG MEN O’ LARUT
+
+REINGELDER AND THE GERMAN FLAG
+
+THE WANDERING JEW
+
+THROUGH THE FIRE
+
+THE FINANCES OF THE GODS
+
+THE AMIR’S HOMILY
+
+JEWS IN SHUSHAN
+
+THE LIMITATIONS OF PAMBE SERANG
+
+LITTLE TOBRAH
+
+BUBBLING WELL ROAD
+
+‘THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT’
+
+GEORGIE PORGIE
+
+NABOTH
+
+THE DREAM OF DUNCAN PARRENNESS
+
+THE INCARNATION OF KRISHNA MULVANEY
+
+THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD
+
+ON GREENHOW HILL
+
+THE MAN WHO WAS
+
+THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT
+
+WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY
+
+AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE
+
+THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS
+
+THE MARK OF THE BEAST
+
+THE RETURN OF IMRAY
+
+NAMGAY DOOLA
+
+BERTRAN AND BIMI
+
+MOTI GUJ--MUTINEER
+
+
+
+
+THE LANG MEN O’ LARUT
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN & CO.]
+
+
+The Chief Engineer’s sleeping suit was of yellow striped with blue, and
+his speech was the speech of Aberdeen. They sluiced the deck under him,
+and he hopped on to the ornamental capstan, a black pipe between his
+teeth, though the hour was not seven of the morn.
+
+‘Did you ever hear o’ the Lang Men o’ Larut?’ he asked when the Man from
+Orizava had finished a story of an aboriginal giant discovered in the
+wilds of Brazil. There was never story yet passed the lips of teller,
+but the Man from Orizava could cap it.
+
+‘No, we never did,’ we responded with one voice. The Man from Orizava
+watched the Chief keenly, as a possible rival.
+
+‘I’m not telling the story for the sake of talking merely,’ said the
+Chief, ‘but as a warning against betting, unless you bet on a perrfect
+certainty. The Lang Men o’ Larut were just a certainty. I have had talk
+wi’ them. Now Larut, you will understand, is a dependency, or it may be
+an outlying possession, o’ the island o’ Penang, and there they will get
+you tin and manganese, an’ it mayhap mica, and all manner o’ meenerals.
+Larut is a great place.’
+
+‘But what about the population?’ said the Man from Orizava.
+
+‘The population,’ said the Chief slowly, ‘were few but enorrmous. You
+must understand that, exceptin’ the tin-mines, there is no special
+inducement to Europeans to reside in Larut. The climate is warm and
+remarkably like the climate o’ Calcutta; and in regard to Calcutta, it
+cannot have escaped your obsairvation that--’
+
+‘Calcutta isn’t Larut; and we’ve only just come from it,’ protested
+the Man from Orizava. ‘There’s a meteorological department in Calcutta,
+too.’
+
+‘Ay, but there’s no meteorological department in Larut. Each man is a
+law to himself. Some drink whisky, and some drink brandipanee, and
+some drink cocktails--vara bad for the coats o’ the stomach is a
+cocktail--and some drink sangaree, so I have been credibly informed;
+but one and all they sweat like the packing of piston-head on a
+fourrteen-days’ voyage with the screw racing half her time. But, as I
+was saying, the population o’ Larut was five all told of English--that
+is to say, Scotch--an’ I’m Scotch, ye know,’ said the Chief.
+
+The Man from Orizava lit another cigarette, and waited patiently. It was
+hopeless to hurry the Chief Engineer.
+
+‘I am not pretending to account for the population o’ Larut being
+laid down according to such fabulous dimensions. O’ the five white men
+engaged upon the extraction o’ tin ore and mercantile pursuits, there
+were three o’ the sons o’ Anak. Wait while I remember. Lammitter was the
+first by two inches--a giant in the land, an’ a terreefic man to
+cross in his ways. From heel to head he was six feet nine inches, and
+proportionately built across and through the thickness of his body.
+Six good feet nine inches--an overbearin’ man. Next to him, and I have
+forgotten his precise business, was Sandy Vowle. And he was six feet
+seven, but lean and lathy, and it was more in the elasteecity of his
+neck that the height lay than in any honesty o’ bone and sinew. Five
+feet and a few odd inches may have been his real height. The remainder
+came out when he held up his head, and six feet seven he was upon the
+door-sills. I took his measure in chalk standin’ on a chair. And next
+to him, but a proportionately made man, ruddy and of a fair countenance,
+was Jock Coan--that they called the Fir Cone. He was but six feet
+five, and a child beside Lammitter and Vowle. When the three walked
+out together, they made a scunner run through the colony o’ Larut. The
+Malays ran round them as though they had been the giant trees in
+the Yosemite Valley--these three Lang Men o’ Larut. It was perfectly
+ridiculous--a lusus naturae--that one little place should have contained
+maybe the three tallest ordinar’ men upon the face o’ the earth.
+
+‘Obsairve now the order o’ things. For it led to the finest big drink in
+Larut, and six sore heads the morn that endured for a week. I am against
+immoderate liquor, but the event to follow was a justification. You must
+understand that many coasting steamers call at Larut wi’ strangers o’
+the mercantile profession. In the spring time, when the young cocoanuts
+were ripening, and the trees o’ the forests were putting forth their
+leaves, there came an American man to Larut, and he was six foot three,
+or it may have been four, in his stockings. He came on business from
+Sacramento, but he stayed for pleasure wi’ the Lang Men o’ Larut. Less
+than, a half o’ the population were ordinar’ in their girth and stature,
+ye will understand--Howson and Nailor, merchants, five feet nine or
+thereabouts. He had business with those two, and he stood above them
+from the six feet threedom o’ his height till they went to drink. In
+the course o’ conversation he said, as tall men will, things about his
+height, and the trouble of it to him. That was his pride o’ the flesh.
+
+‘“As the longest man in the island--” he said, but there they took him
+up and asked if he were sure.
+
+‘“I say I am the longest man in the island,” he said, “and on that I’ll
+bet my substance.”
+
+‘They laid down the bed-plates of a big drink then and there, and put
+it aside while they called Jock Coan from his house, near by among the
+fireflies’ winking.
+
+‘“How’s a’ wi’ you?” said Jock, and came in by the side o’ the
+Sacramento profligate, two inches, or it may have been one, taller than
+he.
+
+‘“You’re long,” said the man, opening his eyes. “But I am longer.” An’
+they sent a whistle through the night an’ howkit out Sandy Vowle from
+his bit bungalow, and he came in an’ stood by the side o’ Jock, an’ the
+pair just fillit the room to the ceiling-cloth.
+
+‘The Sacramento man was a euchre-player and a most profane sweerer. “You
+hold both Bowers,” he said, “but the Joker is with me.”
+
+‘“Fair an’ softly,” says Nailor. “Jock, whaur’s Lang Lammitter?”
+
+‘“Here,” says that man, putting his leg through the window and coming
+in like an anaconda o’ the desert furlong by furlong, one foot in Penang
+and one in Batavia, and a hand in North Borneo it may be.
+
+‘“Are you suited?” said Nailor, when the hinder end o’ Lang Lammitter
+was slidden through the sill an’ the head of Lammitter was lost in the
+smoke away above.
+
+‘The American man took out his card and put it on the table. “Esdras B.
+Longer is my name, America is my nation, ‘Frisco is my resting-place,
+but this here beats Creation,” said he. “Boys, giants--side-show
+giants--I minded to slide out of my bet if I had been overtopped, on the
+strength of the riddle on this paste-board. I would have done it if
+you had topped me even by three inches, but when it comes to
+feet--yards--miles, I am not the man to shirk the biggest drink that
+ever made the travellers’-joy palm blush with virginal indignation, or
+the orang-outang and the perambulating dyak howl with envy. Set them up
+and continue till the final conclusion.”
+
+‘O mon, I tell you ‘twas an awful sight to see those four giants
+threshing about the house and the island, and tearin’ down the pillars
+thereof an’ throwing palm-trees broadcast, and currling their long legs
+round the hills o’ Larut. An awfu’ sight! I was there. I did not mean to
+tell you, but it’s out now. I was not overcome, for I e’en sat me down
+under the pieces o’ the table at four the morn an’ meditated upon the
+strangeness of things.
+
+‘Losh, yon’s the breakfast-bell!’
+
+
+
+
+REINGELDER AND THE GERMAN FLAG
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN
+& CO.]
+
+
+Hans Breitmann paddled across the deck in his pink pyjamas, a cup of tea
+in one hand and a cheroot in the other, when the steamer was sweltering
+down the coast on her way to Singapur. He drank beer all day and all
+night, and played a game called ‘Scairt’ with three compatriots.
+
+‘I haf washed,’ said he in a voice of thunder, ‘but dere is no
+use washing on these hell-seas. Look at me--I am still all wet and
+schweatin’. It is der tea dot makes me so. Boy, bring me Bilsener on
+ice.’
+
+‘You will die if you drink beer before breakfast,’ said one man. ‘Beer
+is the worst thing in the world for--’
+
+‘Ya, I know--der liver. I haf no liver, und I shall not die. At least I
+will not die obon dese benny sdeamers dot haf no beer fit to trink. If
+I should haf died, I will haf don so a hoondert dimes before now--in
+Shermany, in New York, in Japon, in Assam, und all over der inside bans
+of South Amerique. Also in Shamaica should I hat died or in Siam, but I
+am here; und der are my orchits dot I have drafelled all the vorld round
+to find.’
+
+He pointed towards the wheel, where, in two rough wooden boxes, lay a
+mass of shrivelled vegetation, supposed by all the ship to represent
+Assam orchids of fabulous value.
+
+Now, orchids do not grow in the main streets of towns, and Hans
+Breitmann had gone far to get his. There was nothing that he had not
+collected that year, from king-crabs to white kangaroos.
+
+‘Lisden now,’ said he, after he had been speaking for not much more than
+ten minutes without a pause; ‘Lisden und I will dell you a sdory to show
+how bad und worse it is to go gollectin’ und belief vot anoder fool haf
+said. Dis was in Uraguay which was in Amerique--North or Sout’ you would
+not know--und I was hoontin’ orchits und aferydings else dot I could
+back in my kanasters--dot is drafelling sbecimen-gaces. Dere vas den mit
+me anoder man--Reingelder, dot vas his name--und he vas hoontin’ also
+but only coral-snakes--joost Uraguay coral-snakes--aferykind you could
+imagine. I dell you a coral-snake is a peauty--all red und white like
+coral dot has been gestrung in bands upon der neck of a girl. Dere is
+one snake howefer dot we who gollect know ash der Sherman Flag, pecause
+id is red und plack und white, joost like a sausage mit druffles.
+Reingelder he was naturalist--goot man--goot trinker--better as me! “By
+Gott,” said Reingelder, “I will get a Sherman Flag snake or I will die.”
+ Und we toorned all Uraguay upside-behint all pecause of dot Sherman
+Flag.
+
+‘Von day when we was in none knows where--shwingin’ in our hummocks
+among der woods, oop comes a natif woman mit a Sherman Flag in a
+bickle-bottle--my bickle-bottle--und we both fell from our hummocks flat
+ubon our pot--what you call stomach--mit shoy at dis thing. Now I was
+gollectin’ orchits also, und I knowed dot der idee of life to Reingelder
+vas dis Sherman Flag. Derefore I bicked myselfs oop und I said,
+“Reingelder, dot is YOUR find.”--“Heart’s true friend, dou art a goot
+man,” said Reingelder, und mit dot he obens der bickle-bottle, und der
+natif woman she shqueals: “Herr Gott! It will bite.” I said--pecause in
+Uraguay a man must be careful of der insects--“Reingelder, shpifligate
+her in der alcohol und den she will be all right.”--“Nein,” said
+Reingelder, “I will der shnake alife examine. Dere is no fear. Der
+coral-shnakes are mitout shting-apparatus brofided.” Boot I looked at
+her het, und she vas der het of a boison-shnake--der true viper cranium,
+narrow und contract. “It is not goot,” said I, “she may bite und den--we
+are tree hoondert mile from aferywheres. Broduce der alcohol und bickle
+him alife.” Reingelder he had him in his hand--grawlin’ und grawlin’ as
+slow as a woorm und dwice as guiet. “Nonsense,” says Reingelder. “Yates
+haf said dot not von of der coral-shnakes haf der sack of boison.” Yates
+vas der crate authorite ubon der reptilia of Sout’ Amerique. He
+haf written a book. You do not know, of course, but he vas a crate
+authorite.
+
+‘I gum my eye upon der Sherman Flag, grawlin’ und grawlin’ in
+Reingelder’s fist, und der het vas not der het of innocence. “Mein
+Gott,” I said. “It is you dot will get der sack--der sack from dis life
+here pelow!”
+
+‘“Den you may haf der shnake,” says Reingelder, pattin’ it ubon her het.
+“See now, I will show you vat Yates haf written!”
+
+‘Uud mit dot he went indo his dent, unt brung out his big book of
+Yates; der Sherman Flag grawlin’ in his fist. “Yates haf said,” said
+Reingelder, und he throwed oben der book in der fork of his fist und
+read der passage, proofin’ conglusivement dot nefer coral-shnake bite
+vas boison. Den he shut der book mit a bang, und dot shqueeze der
+Sherman Flag, und she nip once und dwice.
+
+‘“Der liddle fool he haf bit me,” says Reingelder.
+
+‘Dese things was before we know apout der permanganat-potash injection.
+I was discomfordable.
+
+‘“Die oop der arm, Reingelder,” said I, “und trink whisky ontil you can
+no more trink.”
+
+‘“Trink ten tousand tevils! I will go to dinner,” said Reingelder, und
+he put her afay und it vas very red mit emotion.
+
+‘We lifed upon soup, horse-flesh, und beans for dinner, but before we
+vas eaten der soup, Reingelder he haf hold of his arm und cry, “It is
+genumben to der clavicle. I am a dead man; und Yates he haf lied in
+brint!”
+
+‘I dell you it vas most sad, for der symbtoms dot came vas all dose of
+strychnine. He vas doubled into big knots, und den undoubled, und den
+redoubled mooch worse dan pefore, und he frothed. I vas mit him, saying,
+“Reingelder, dost dou know me?” but he himself, der inward gonsciousness
+part, was peyond knowledge, und so I know he vas not in bain. Den he
+wrop himself oop in von dremendous knot und den he died--all alone mit
+me in Uraguay. I was sorry, for I lofed Reingelder, und I puried
+him, und den I took der coral-shnake--dot Sherman Flag--so bad und
+dreacherous und I bickled him alife.
+
+‘So I got him: und so I lost Reingelder.’
+
+
+
+
+THE WANDERING JEW
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by Macmillan & Co.]
+
+
+‘If you go once round the world in an easterly direction, you gain one
+day,’ said the men of science to John Hay. In after years John Hay went
+east, west, north, and south, transacted business, made love, and begat
+a family, as have done many men, and the scientific information above
+recorded lay neglected in the deeps of his mind with a thousand other
+matters of equal importance.
+
+When a rich relative died, he found himself wealthy beyond any
+reasonable expectation that he had entertained in his previous career,
+which had been a chequered and evil one. Indeed, long before the legacy
+came to him, there existed in the brain of John Hay a little cloud-a
+momentary obscuration of thought that came and went almost before he
+could realize that there was any solution of continuity. So do the bats
+flit round the eaves of a house to show that the darkness is falling. He
+entered upon great possessions, in money, land, and houses; but behind
+his delight stood a ghost that cried out that his enjoyment of these
+things should not be of long duration. It was the ghost of the rich
+relative, who had been permitted to return to earth to torture his
+nephew into the grave. Wherefore, under the spur of this constant
+reminder, John Hay, always preserving the air of heavy business-like
+stolidity that hid the shadow on his mind, turned investments, houses,
+and lands into sovereigns---rich, round, red, English sovereigns, each
+one worth twenty shillings. Lands may become valueless, and houses fly
+heavenward on the wings of red flame, but till the Day of Judgment
+a sovereign will always be a sovereign--that is to say, a king of
+pleasures.
+
+Possessed of his sovereigns, John Hay would fain have spent them one by
+one on such coarse amusements as his soul loved; but he was haunted by
+the instant fear of Death; for the ghost of his relative stood in the
+hall of his house close to the hat-rack, shouting up the stairway that
+life was short, that there was no hope of increase of days, and that the
+undertakers were already roughing out his nephew’s coffin. John Hay was
+generally alone in the house, and even when he had company, his friends
+could not hear the clamorous uncle. The shadow inside his brain grew
+larger and blacker. His fear of death was driving John Hay mad.
+
+Then, from the deeps of his mind, where he had stowed away all his
+discarded information, rose to light the scientific fact of the Easterly
+journey. On the next occasion that his uncle shouted up the stairway
+urging him to make haste and live, a shriller voice cried, ‘Who goes
+round the world once easterly, gains one day.’
+
+His growing diffidence and distrust of mankind made John Hay unwilling
+to give this precious message of hope to his friends. They might take
+it up and analyse it. He was sure it was true, but it would pain him
+acutely were rough hands to examine it too closely. To him alone of all
+the toiling generations of mankind had the secret of immortality
+been vouchsafed. It would be impious--against all the designs of the
+Creator--to set mankind hurrying eastward. Besides, this would crowd the
+steamers inconveniently, and John Hay wished of all things to be alone.
+If he could get round the world in two months--some one of whom he had
+read, he could not remember the name, had covered the passage in eighty
+days--he would gain a clear day; and by steadily continuing to do it for
+thirty years, would gain one hundred and eighty days, or nearly the half
+of a year. It would not be much, but in course of time, as civilisation
+advanced, and the Euphrates Valley Railway was opened, he could improve
+the pace.
+
+Armed with many sovereigns, John Hay, in the thirty-fifth year of his
+age, set forth on his travels, two voices bearing him company from
+Dover as he sailed to Calais. Fortune favoured him. The Euphrates Valley
+Railway was newly opened, and he was the first man who took ticket
+direct from Calais to Calcutta--thirteen days in the train. Thirteen
+days in the train are not good for the nerves; but he covered the world
+and returned to Calais from America in twelve days over the two months,
+and started afresh with four and twenty hours of precious time to his
+credit. Three years passed, and John Hay religiously went round this
+earth seeking for more time wherein to enjoy the remainder of his
+sovereigns. He became known on many lines as the man who wanted to go
+on; when people asked him what he was and what he did, he answered--
+
+‘I’m the person who intends to live, and I am trying to do it now.’
+
+His days were divided between watching the white wake spinning behind
+the stern of the swiftest steamers, or the brown earth flashing past
+the windows of the fastest trains; and he noted in a pocket-book every
+minute that he had railed or screwed out of remorseless eternity.
+
+‘This is better than praying for long life,’ quoth John Hay as he turned
+his face eastward for his twentieth trip. The years had done more for
+him than he dared to hope.
+
+By the extension of the Brahmaputra Valley line to meet the
+newly-developed China Midland, the Calais railway ticket held good via
+Karachi and Calcutta to Hongkong. The round trip could be managed in a
+fraction over forty-seven days, and, filled with fatal exultation,
+John Hay told the secret of his longevity to his only friend, the
+house-keeper of his rooms in London. He spoke and passed; but the woman
+was one of resource, and immediately took counsel with the lawyers who
+had first informed John Hay of his golden legacy. Very many sovereigns
+still remained, and another Hay longed to spend them on things more
+sensible than railway tickets and steamer accommodation.
+
+The chase was long, for when a man is journeying literally for the dear
+life, he does not tarry upon the road. Round the world Hay swept anew,
+and overtook the wearied Doctor, who had been sent out to look for him,
+in Madras. It was there that he found the reward of his toil and the
+assurance of a blessed immortality. In half an hour the Doctor, watching
+always the parched lips, the shaking hands, and the eye that turned
+eternally to the east, won John Hay to rest in a little house close to
+the Madras surf. All that Hay need do was to hang by ropes from the roof
+of the room and let the round earth swing free beneath him. This was
+better than steamer or train, for he gained a day in a day, and was
+thus the equal of the undying sun. The other Hay would pay his expenses
+throughout eternity.
+
+ It is true that we cannot yet take tickets from Calais to Hongkong,
+though that will come about in fifteen years; but men say that if you
+wander along the southern coast of India you shall find in a neatly
+whitewashed little bungalow, sitting in a chair swung from the
+roof, over a sheet of thin steel which he knows so well destroys the
+attraction of the earth, an old and worn man who for ever faces the
+rising sun, a stop-watch in his hand, racing against eternity. He cannot
+drink, he does not smoke, and his living expenses amount to perhaps
+twenty-five rupees a month, but he is John Hay, the Immortal. Without,
+he hears the thunder of the wheeling world with which he is careful to
+explain he has no connection whatever; but if you say that it is only
+the noise of the surf, he will cry bitterly, for the shadow on his brain
+is passing away as the brain ceases to work, and he doubts sometimes
+whether the doctor spoke the truth.
+
+‘Why does not the sun always remain over my head?’ asks John Hay.
+
+
+
+
+THROUGH THE FIRE
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN & Co.]
+
+
+The Policeman rode through the Himalayan forest, under the moss-draped
+oaks, and his orderly trotted after him.
+
+‘It’s an ugly business, Bhere Singh,’ said the Policeman. ‘Where are
+they?’
+
+‘It is a very ugly business,’ said Bhere Singh; ‘and as for THEM,
+they are, doubtless, now frying in a hotter fire than was ever made of
+spruce-branches.’
+
+‘Let us hope not,’ said the Policeman, ‘for, allowing for the difference
+between race and race, it’s the story of Francesca da Rimini, Bhere
+Singh.’
+
+Bhere Singh knew nothing about Francesca da Rimini, so he held his peace
+until they came to the charcoal-burners’ clearing where the dying flames
+said ‘whit, whit, whit’ as they fluttered and whispered over the white
+ashes. It must have been a great fire when at full height. Men had seen
+it at Donga Pa across the valley winking and blazing through the night,
+and said that the charcoal-burners of Kodru were getting drunk. But
+it was only Suket Singh, Sepoy of the load Punjab Native Infantry, and
+Athira, a woman, burning--burning--burning.
+
+This was how things befell; and the Policeman’s Diary will bear me out.
+
+Athira was the wife of Madu, who was a charcoal-burner, one-eyed and
+of a malignant disposition. A week after their marriage, he beat Athira
+with a heavy stick. A month later, Suket Singh, Sepoy, came that way to
+the cool hills on leave from his regiment, and electrified the villagers
+of Kodru with tales of service and glory under the Government, and the
+honour in which he, Suket Singh, was held by the Colonel Sahib Bahadur.
+And Desdemona listened to Othello as Desdemonas have done all the world
+over, and, as she listened, she loved.
+
+‘I’ve a wife of my own,’ said Suket Singh, ‘though that is no matter
+when you come to think of it. I am also due to return to my regiment
+after a time, and I cannot be a deserter--I who intend to be Havildar.’
+There is no Himalayan version of ‘I could not love thee, dear, as much,
+Loved I not Honour more;’ but Suket Singh came near to making one.
+
+‘Never mind,’ said Athira, ‘stay with me, and, if Madu tries to beat me,
+you beat him.’
+
+‘Very good,’ said Suket Singh; and he beat Madu severely, to the delight
+of all the charcoal-burners of Kodru.
+
+‘That is enough,’ said Suket Singh, as he rolled Madu down the hillside.
+‘Now we shall have peace.’ But Madu crawled up the grass slope again,
+and hovered round his hut with angry eyes.
+
+‘He’ll kill me dead,’ said Athira to Suket Singh. ‘You must take me
+away.’
+
+‘There’ll be a trouble in the Lines. My wife will pull out my beard; but
+never mind,’ said Suket Singh, ‘I will take you.’
+
+There was loud trouble in the Lines, and Suket Singh’s beard was pulled,
+and Suket Singh’s wife went to live with her mother and took away the
+children. ‘That’s all right,’ said Athira; and Suket Singh said, ‘Yes,
+that’s all right.’
+
+So there was only Madu left in the hut that looks across the valley to
+Donga Pa; and, since the beginning of time, no one has had any sympathy
+for husbands so unfortunate as Madu.
+
+He went to Juseen Daze, the wizard-man who keeps the Talking Monkey’s
+Head.
+
+‘Get me back my wife,’ said Madu.
+
+‘I can’t,’ said Juseen Daze, ‘until you have made the Sutlej in the
+valley run up the Donga Pa.’
+
+‘No riddles,’ said Madu, and he shook his hatchet above Juseen Daze’s
+white head.
+
+‘Give all your money to the headmen of the village,’ said Juseen Daze;
+‘and they will hold a communal Council, and the Council will send a
+message that your wife must come back.’
+
+So Madu gave up all his worldly wealth, amounting to twenty-seven
+rupees, eight annas, three pice, and a silver chain, to the Council of
+Kodru. And it fell as Juseen Daze foretold.
+
+They sent Athira’s brother down into Suket Singh’s regiment to call
+Athira home. Suket Singh kicked him once round the Lines, and then
+handed him over to the Havildar, who beat him with a belt.
+
+‘Come back,’ yelled Athira’s brother.
+
+‘Where to?’ said Athira.
+
+‘To Madu,’ said he.
+
+‘Never,’ said she.
+
+‘Then Juseen Daze will send a curse, and you will wither away like a
+barked tree in the springtime,’ said Athira’s brother. Athira slept over
+these things.
+
+Next morning she had rheumatism. ‘I am beginning to wither away like a
+barked tree in the springtime,’ she said. ‘That is the curse of Juseen
+Daze.’
+
+And she really began to wither away because her heart was dried up with
+fear, and those who believe in curses die from curses. Suket Singh, too,
+was afraid because he loved Athira better than his very life. Two months
+passed, and Athira’s brother stood outside the regimental Lines again
+and yelped, ‘Aha! You are withering away. Come back.’
+
+‘I will come back,’ said Athira.
+
+‘Say rather that WE will come back,’ said Suket Singh.
+
+‘Ai; but when?’ said Athira’s brother.
+
+‘Upon a day very early in the morning,’ said Suket Singh; and he tramped
+off to apply to the Colonel Sahib Bahadur for one week’s leave.
+
+‘I am withering away like a barked tree in the spring,’ moaned Athira.
+
+‘You will be better soon,’ said Suket Singh; and he told her what was
+in his heart, and the two laughed together softly, for they loved each
+other. But Athira grew better from that hour.
+
+They went away together, travelling third-class by train as the
+regulations provided, and then in a cart to the low hills, and on foot
+to the high ones. Athira sniffed the scent of the pines of her own
+hills, the wet Himalayan hills. ‘It is good to be alive,’ said Athira.
+
+‘Hah!’ said Suket Singh. ‘Where is the Kodru road and where is the
+Forest Ranger’s house?’...
+
+‘It cost forty rupees twelve years ago,’ said the Forest Ranger, handing
+the gun.
+
+‘Here are twenty,’ said Suket Singh, ‘and you must give me the best
+bullets.’
+
+‘It is very good to be alive,’ said Athira wistfully, sniffing the scent
+of the pine-mould; and they waited till the night had fallen upon Kodru
+and the Donga Pa. Madu had stacked the dry wood for the next day’s
+charcoal-burning on the spur above his house. ‘It is courteous in Madu
+to save us this trouble,’ said Suket Singh as he stumbled on the pile,
+which was twelve foot square and four high. ‘We must wait till the moon
+rises.’
+
+When the moon rose, Athira knelt upon the pile. ‘If it were only a
+Government Snider,’ said Suket Singh ruefully, squinting down the
+wire-bound barrel of the Forest Ranger’s gun.
+
+‘Be quick,’ said Athira; and Suket Singh was quick; but Athira was quick
+no longer. Then he lit the pile at the four corners and climbed on to
+it, re-loading the gun.
+
+The little flames began to peer up between the big logs atop of the
+brushwood. ‘The Government should teach us to pull the triggers with
+our toes,’ said Suket Singh grimly to the moon. That was the last public
+observation of Sepoy Suket Singh.
+
+ Upon a day, early in the morning, Madu came to the pyre and shrieked
+very grievously, and ran away to catch the Policeman who was on tour in
+the district.
+
+‘The base-born has ruined four rupees’ worth of charcoal wood,’ Madu
+gasped. ‘He has also killed my wife, and he has left a letter which I
+cannot read, tied to a pine bough.’
+
+In the stiff, formal hand taught in the regimental school, Sepoy Suket
+Singh had written--
+
+‘Let us be burned together, if anything remain over, for we have made
+the necessary prayers. We have also cursed Madu, and Malak the brother
+of Athira--both evil men. Send my service to the Colonel Sahib Bahadur.’
+
+The Policeman looked long and curiously at the marriage bed of red and
+white ashes on which lay, dull black, the barrel of the Ranger’s gun.
+He drove his spurred heel absently into a half-charred log, and the
+chattering sparks flew upwards. ‘Most extraordinary people,’ said the
+Policeman.
+
+‘WHE-W, WHEW, OUIOU,’ said the little flames.
+
+The Policeman entered the dry bones of the case, for the Punjab
+Government does not approve of romancing, in his Diary.
+
+‘But who will pay me those four rupees?’ said Madu.
+
+
+
+
+THE FINANCES OF THE GODS
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN & Co.]
+
+
+The evening meal was ended in Dhunni Bhagat’s Chubara and the old
+priests were smoking or counting their beads. A little naked child
+pattered in, with its mouth wide open, a handful of marigold flowers
+in one hand, and a lump of conserved tobacco in the other. It tried
+to kneel and make obeisance to Gobind, but it was so fat that it fell
+forward on its shaven head, and rolled on its side, kicking and gasping,
+while the marigolds tumbled one way and the tobacco the other. Gobind
+laughed, set it up again, and blessed the marigold flowers as he
+received the tobacco.
+
+‘From my father,’ said the child. ‘He has the fever, and cannot come.
+Wilt thou pray for him, father?’
+
+‘Surely, littlest; but the smoke is on the ground, and the night-chill
+is in the airs, and it is not good to go abroad naked in the autumn.’
+
+‘I have no clothes,’ said the child, ‘and all to-day I have been
+carrying cow-dung cakes to the bazar. It was very hot, and I am very
+tired.’ It shivered a little, for the twilight was cool.
+
+Gobind lifted an arm under his vast tattered quilt of many colours, and
+made an inviting little nest by his side. The child crept in, and Gobind
+filled his brass-studded leather waterpipe with the new tobacco. When
+I came to the Chubara the shaven head with the tuft atop, and the beady
+black eyes looked out of the folds of the quilt as a squirrel looks out
+from his nest, and Gobind was smiling while the child played with his
+beard.
+
+I would have said something friendly, but remembered in time that if the
+child fell ill afterwards I should be credited with the Evil Eye, and
+that is a horrible possession.
+
+‘Sit thou still, Thumbling,’ I said as it made to get up and run away.
+‘Where is thy slate, and why has the teacher let such an evil character
+loose on the streets when there are no police to protect us weaklings?
+In which ward dost thou try to break thy neck with flying kites from the
+house-tops?’
+
+‘Nay, Sahib, nay,’ said the child, burrowing its face into Gobind’s
+beard, and twisting uneasily. ‘There was a holiday to-day among the
+schools, and I do not always fly kites. I play ker-li-kit like the
+rest.’
+
+Cricket is the national game among the schoolboys of the Punjab, from
+the naked hedge-school children, who use an old kerosene-tin for wicket,
+to the B.A.’s of the University, who compete for the Championship belt.
+
+‘Thou play kerlikit! Thou art half the height of the bat!’ I said.
+
+The child nodded resolutely. ‘Yea, I DO play. PERLAYBALL OW-AT! RAN,
+RAN, RAN! I know it all.’
+
+‘But thou must not forget with all this to pray to the Gods according
+to custom,’ said Gobind, who did not altogether approve of cricket and
+western innovations.
+
+‘I do not forget,’ said the child in a hushed voice.
+
+‘Also to give reverence to thy teacher, and’--Gobind’s voice softened--’
+to abstain from pulling holy men by the beard, little badling. Eh, eh,
+eh?’
+
+The child’s face was altogether hidden in the great white beard, and it
+began to whimper till Gobind soothed it as children are soothed all the
+world over, with the promise of a story.
+
+‘I did not think to frighten thee, senseless little one. Look up! Am I
+angry? Are, are, are! Shall I weep too, and of our tears make a great
+pond and drown us both, and then thy father will never get well, lacking
+thee to pull his beard? Peace, peace, and I will tell thee of the Gods.
+Thou hast heard many tales?’
+
+‘Very many, father.’
+
+‘Now, this is a new one which thou hast not heard. Long and long ago
+when the Gods walked with men as they do to-day, but that we have not
+faith to see, Shiv, the greatest of Gods, and Parbati his wife, were
+walking in the garden of a temple.’
+
+‘Which temple? That in the Nandgaon ward?’ said the child.
+
+‘Nay, very far away. Maybe at Trimbak or Hurdwar, whither thou must make
+pilgrimage when thou art a man. Now, there was sitting in the garden
+under the jujube trees, a mendicant that had worshipped Shiv for
+forty years, and he lived on the offerings of the pious, and meditated
+holiness night and day.’
+
+‘Oh father, was it thou?’ said the child, looking up with large eyes.
+
+‘Nay, I have said it was long ago, and, moreover, this mendicant was
+married.’
+
+‘Did they put him on a horse with flowers on his head, and forbid him
+to go to sleep all night long? Thus they did to me when they made my
+wedding,’ said the child, who had been married a few months before.
+
+‘And what didst thou do?’ said I.
+
+‘I wept, and they called me evil names, and then I smote HER, and we
+wept together.’
+
+‘Thus did not the mendicant,’ said Gobind; ‘for he was a holy man, and
+very poor. Parbati perceived him sitting naked by the temple steps where
+all went up and down, and she said to Shiv, “What shall men think of the
+Gods when the Gods thus scorn their worshippers? For forty years yonder
+man has prayed to us, and yet there be only a few grains of rice and
+some broken cowries before him after all. Men’s hearts will be hardened
+by this thing.” And Shiv said, “It shall be looked to,” and so he called
+to the temple which was the temple of his son, Ganesh of the elephant
+head, saying, “Son, there is a mendicant without who is very poor. What
+wilt thou do for him?” Then that great elephant-headed One awoke in the
+dark and answered, “In three days, if it be thy will, he shall have one
+lakh of rupees.” Then Shiv and Parbati went away.
+
+‘But there was a money-lender in the garden hidden among the
+marigolds’--the child looked at the ball of crumpled blossoms in its
+hands--‘ay, among the yellow marigolds, and he heard the Gods talking.
+He was a covetous man, and of a black heart, and he desired that lakh
+of rupees for himself. So he went to the mendicant and said, “O brother,
+how much do the pious give thee daily?” The mendicant said, “I cannot
+tell. Sometimes a little rice, sometimes a little pulse, and a few
+cowries and, it has been, pickled mangoes, and dried fish.”’
+
+‘That is good,’ said the child, smacking its lips.
+
+‘Then said the money-lender, “Because I have long watched thee, and
+learned to love thee and thy patience, I will give thee now five rupees
+for all thy earnings of the three days to come. There is only a bond
+to sign on the matter.” But the mendicant said, “Thou art mad. In two
+months I do not receive the worth of five rupees,” and he told the
+thing to his wife that evening. She, being a woman, said, “When did
+money-lender ever make a bad bargain? The wolf runs through the corn for
+the sake of the fat deer. Our fate is in the hands of the Gods. Pledge
+it not even for three days.”
+
+‘So the mendicant returned to the money-lender, and would not sell. Then
+that wicked man sat all day before him offering more and more for those
+three days’ earnings. First, ten, fifty, and a hundred rupees; and then,
+for he did not know when the Gods would pour down their gifts, rupees by
+the thousand, till he had offered half a lakh of rupees. Upon this sum
+the mendicant’s wife shifted her counsel, and the mendicant signed the
+bond, and the money was paid in silver; great white bullocks bringing it
+by the cartload. But saving only all that money, the mendicant received
+nothing from the Gods at all, and the heart of the money-lender was
+uneasy on account of expectation. Therefore at noon of the third day the
+money-lender went into the temple to spy upon the councils of the Gods,
+and to learn in what manner that gift might arrive. Even as he was
+making his prayers, a crack between the stones of the floor gaped, and,
+closing, caught him by the heel. Then he heard the Gods walking in
+the temple in the darkness of the columns, and Shiv called to his son
+Ganesh, saying, “Son, what hast thou done in regard to the lakh of
+rupees for the mendicant?” And Ganesh woke, for the money-lender heard
+the dry rustle of his trunk uncoiling, and he answered, “Father, one
+half of the money has been paid, and the debtor for the other half I
+hold here fast by the heel.”’
+
+The child bubbled with laughter. ‘And the moneylender paid the
+mendicant?’ it said.
+
+‘Surely, for he whom the Gods hold by the heel must pay to the
+uttermost. The money was paid at evening, all silver, in great carts,
+and thus Ganesh did his work.’
+
+‘Nathu! Ohe Nathu!’
+
+A woman was calling in the dusk by the door of the courtyard.
+
+The child began to wriggle. ‘That is my mother,’ it said.
+
+‘Go then, littlest,’ answered Gobind; ‘but stay a moment.’
+
+He ripped a generous yard from his patchwork-quilt, put it over the
+child’s shoulders, and the child ran away.
+
+
+
+
+THE AMIR’S HOMILY
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MacMillan & Co.]
+
+
+His Royal Highness Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, G.C.S.I., and
+trusted ally of Her Imperial Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of
+India, is a gentleman for whom all right-thinking people should have a
+profound regard. Like most other rulers, he governs not as he would but
+as he can, and the mantle of his authority covers the most turbulent
+race under the stars. To the Afghan neither life, property, law, nor
+kingship are sacred when his own lusts prompt him to rebel. He is a
+thief by instinct, a murderer by heredity and training, and frankly and
+bestially immoral by all three. None the less he has his own crooked
+notions of honour, and his character is fascinating to study. On
+occasion he will fight without reason given till he is hacked in pieces;
+on other occasions he will refuse to show fight till he is driven into
+a corner. Herein he is as unaccountable as the gray wolf, who is his
+blood-brother.
+
+And these men His Highness rules by the only weapon that they
+understand--the fear of death, which among some Orientals is the
+beginning of wisdom. Some say that the Amir’s authority reaches no
+farther than a rifle bullet can range; but as none are quite certain
+when their king may be in their midst, and as he alone holds every one
+of the threads of Government, his respect is increased among men. Gholam
+Hyder, the Commander-in-chief of the Afghan army, is feared reasonably,
+for he can impale; all Kabul city fears the Governor of Kabul, who
+has power of life and death through all the wards; but the Amir of
+Afghanistan, though outlying tribes pretend otherwise when his back is
+turned, is dreaded beyond chief and governor together. His word is red
+law; by the gust of his passion falls the leaf of man’s life, and his
+favour is terrible. He has suffered many things, and been a hunted
+fugitive before he came to the throne, and he understands all the
+classes of his people. By the custom of the East any man or woman having
+a complaint to make, or an enemy against whom to be avenged, has
+the right of speaking face to face with the king at the daily public
+audience. This is personal government, as it was in the days of Harun al
+Raschid of blessed memory, whose times exist still and will exist long
+after the English have passed away.
+
+The privilege of open speech is of course exercised at certain personal
+risk. The king may be pleased, and raise the speaker to honour for
+that very bluntness of speech which three minutes later brings a too
+imitative petitioner to the edge of the ever ready blade. And the people
+love to have it so, for it is their right.
+
+It happened upon a day in Kabul that the Amir chose to do his day’s work
+in the Baber Gardens, which lie a short distance from the city of Kabul.
+A light table stood before him, and round the table in the open air were
+grouped generals and finance ministers according to their degree. The
+Court and the long tail of feudal chiefs--men of blood, fed and cowed
+by blood--stood in an irregular semicircle round the table, and the wind
+from the Kabul orchards blew among them. All day long sweating couriers
+dashed in with letters from the outlying districts with rumours of
+rebellion, intrigue, famine, failure of payments, or announcements of
+treasure on the road; and all day long the Amir would read the dockets,
+and pass such of these as were less private to the officials whom
+they directly concerned, or call up a waiting chief for a word of
+explanation. It is well to speak clearly to the ruler of Afghanistan.
+Then the grim head, under the black astrachan cap with the diamond star
+in front, would nod gravely, and that chief would return to his fellows.
+Once that afternoon a woman clamoured for divorce against her husband,
+who was bald, and the Amir, hearing both sides of the case, bade her
+pour curds over the bare scalp, and lick them off, that the hair might
+grown again, and she be contented. Here the Court laughed, and the woman
+withdrew, cursing her king under her breath.
+
+But when twilight was falling, and the order of the Court was a little
+relaxed, there came before the king, in custody, a trembling haggard
+wretch, sore with much buffeting, but of stout enough build, who had
+stolen three rupees--of such small matters does His Highness take
+cognisance.
+
+‘Why did you steal?’ said he; and when the king asks questions they do
+themselves service who answer directly.
+
+‘I was poor, and no one gave. Hungry, and there was no food.’
+
+‘Why did you not work?’
+
+‘I could find no work, Protector of the Poor, and I was starving.’
+
+‘You lie. You stole for drink, for lust, for idleness, for anything but
+hunger, since any man who will may find work and daily bread.’
+
+The prisoner dropped his eyes. He had attended the Court before, and he
+knew the ring of the death-tone.
+
+‘Any man may get work. Who knows this so well as I do? for I too have
+been hungered--not like you, bastard scum, but as any honest man may be,
+by the turn of Fate and the will of God.’
+
+Growing warm, the Amir turned to his nobles all arow and thrust the hilt
+of his sabre aside with his elbow.
+
+‘You have heard this Son of Lies? Hear me tell a true tale. I also was
+once starved, and tightened my belt on the sharp belly-pinch. Nor was
+I alone, for with me was another, who did not fail me in my evil days,
+when I was hunted, before ever I came to this throne. And wandering like
+a houseless dog by Kandahar, my money melted, melted, melted till--’ He
+flung out a bare palm before the audience. ‘And day upon day, faint and
+sick, I went back to that one who waited, and God knows how we lived,
+till on a day I took our best lihaf--silk it was, fine work of Iran,
+such as no needle now works, warm, and a coverlet for two, and all that
+we had. I brought it to a money-lender in a bylane, and I asked for
+three rupees upon it. He said to me, who am now the King, “You are a
+thief. This is worth three hundred.” “I am no thief,” I answered, “but a
+prince of good blood, and I am hungry.”--“Prince of wandering beggars,”
+ said that money-lender, “I have no money with me, but go to my house
+with my clerk and he will give you two rupees eight annas, for that is
+all I will lend.” So I went with the clerk to the house, and we talked
+on the way, and he gave me the money. We lived on it till it was spent,
+and we fared hard. And then that clerk said, being a young man of a good
+heart, “Surely the money-lender will lend yet more on that lihaf,” and
+he offered me two rupees. These I refused, saying, “Nay; but get me
+some work.” And he got me work, and I, even I, Abdur Rahman, Amir
+of Afghanistan, wrought day by day as a coolie, bearing burdens, and
+labouring of my hands, receiving four annas wage a day for my sweat and
+backache. But he, this bastard son of naught, must steal! For a year
+and four months I worked, and none dare say that I lie, for I have a
+witness, even that clerk who is now my friend.’
+
+Then there rose in his place among the Sirdars and the nobles one clad
+in silk, who folded his hands and said, ‘This is the truth of God, for
+I, who, by the favour of God and the Amir, am such as you know, was once
+clerk to that money-lender.’
+
+There was a pause, and the Amir cried hoarsely to the prisoner, throwing
+scorn upon him, till he ended with the dread ‘Dar arid,’ which clinches
+justice.
+
+So they led the thief away, and the whole of him was seen no more
+together; and the Court rustled out of its silence, whispering, ‘Before
+God and the Prophet, but this is a man!’
+
+
+
+
+JEWS IN SHUSHAN
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1981, by Macmillan & Co.]
+
+
+My newly purchased house furniture was, at the least, insecure; the legs
+parted from the chairs, and the tops from the tables, on the slightest
+provocation. But such as it was, it was to be paid for, and Ephraim,
+agent and collector for the local auctioneer, waited in the verandah
+with the receipt. He was announced by the Mahomedan servant as ‘Ephraim,
+Yahudi’--Ephraim the Jew. He who believes in the Brotherhood of Man
+should hear my Elahi Bukhsh grinding the second word through his white
+teeth with all the scorn he dare show before his master. Ephraim was,
+personally, meek in manner--so meek indeed that one could not understand
+how he had fallen into the profession of bill-collecting. He resembled
+an over-fed sheep, and his voice suited his figure. There was a fixed,
+unvarying mask of childish wonder upon his face. If you paid him, he
+was as one marvelling at your wealth; if you sent him away, he seemed
+puzzled at your hard-heartedness. Never was Jew more unlike his
+dread breed. Ephraim wore list slippers and coats of duster-cloth, so
+preposterously patterned that the most brazen of British subalterns
+would have shied from them in fear. Very slow and deliberate was his
+speech, and carefully guarded to give offence to no one. After many
+weeks, Ephraim was induced to speak to me of his friends.
+
+‘There be eight of us in Shushan, and we are waiting till there are ten.
+Then we shall apply for a synagogue, and get leave from Calcutta.
+To-day we have no synagogue; and I, only I, am Priest and Butcher to
+our people. I am of the tribe of Judah--I think, but I am not sure. My
+father was of the tribe of Judah, and we wish much to get our synagogue.
+I shall be a priest of that synagogue.’
+
+Shushan is a big city in the North of India, counting its dwellers by
+the ten thousand; and these eight of the Chosen People were shut up
+in its midst, waiting till time or chance sent them their full
+congregation.
+
+Miriam the wife of Ephraim, two little children, an orphan boy of their
+people, Epraim’s uncle Jackrael Israel, a white-haired old man, his wife
+Hester, a Jew from Cutch, one Hyem Benjamin, and Ephraim, Priest and
+Butcher, made up the list of the Jews in Shushan. They lived in one
+house, on the outskirts of the great city, amid heaps of saltpetre,
+rotten bricks, herds of kine, and a fixed pillar of dust caused by the
+incessant passing of the beasts to the river to drink. In the evening
+the children of the City came to the waste place to fly their kites, and
+Ephraim’s sons held aloof, watching the sport from the roof, but never
+descending to take part in them. At the back of the house stood a small
+brick enclosure, in which Ephraim prepared the daily meat for his people
+after the custom of the Jews. Once the rude door of the square was
+suddenly smashed open by a struggle from inside, and showed the meek
+bill-collector at his work, nostrils dilated, lips drawn back over
+his teeth, and his hands upon a half-maddened sheep. He was attired in
+strange raiment, having no relation whatever to duster coats or list
+slippers, and a knife was in his mouth. As he struggled with the animal
+between the walls, the breath came from him in thick sobs, and the
+nature of the man seemed changed. When the ordained slaughter was ended,
+he saw that the door was open and shut it hastily, his hand leaving
+a red mark on the timber, while his children from the neighbouring
+house-top looked down awe-stricken and open-eyed. A glimpse of Ephraim
+busied in one of his religious capacities was no thing to be desired
+twice.
+
+Summer came upon Shushan, turning the trodden waste-ground to iron, and
+bringing sickness to the city.
+
+‘It will not touch us,’ said Ephraim confidently. ‘Before the winter
+we shall have our synagogue. My brother and his wife and children
+are coming up from Calcutta, and THEN I shall be the priest of the
+synagogue.’
+
+Jackrael Israel, the old man, would crawl out in the stifling evenings
+to sit on the rubbish-heap and watch the corpses being borne down to the
+river.
+
+‘It will not come near us,’ said Jackrael Israel feebly, ‘for we are the
+People of God, and my nephew will be priest of our synagogue. Let them
+die.’ He crept back to his house again and barred the door to shut
+himself off from the world of the Gentile.
+
+But Miriam, the wife of Ephraim, looked out of the window at the dead
+as the biers passed and said that she was afraid. Ephraim comforted
+her with hopes of the synagogue to be, and collected bills as was his
+custom.
+
+In one night, the two children died and were buried early in the morning
+by Ephraim. The deaths never appeared in the City returns. ‘The sorrow
+is my sorrow,’ said Ephraim; and this to him seemed a sufficient reason
+for setting at naught the sanitary regulations of a large, flourishing,
+and remarkably well-governed Empire.
+
+The orphan boy, dependent on the charity of Ephraim and his wife, could
+have felt no gratitude, and must have been a ruffian. He begged for
+whatever money his protectors would give him, and with that fled
+down-country for his life. A week after the death of her children Miriam
+left her bed at night and wandered over the country to find them. She
+heard them crying behind every bush, or drowning in every pool of water
+in the fields, and she begged the cartmen on the Grand Trunk Road not
+to steal her little ones from her. In the morning the sun rose and beat
+upon her bare head, and she turned into the cool wet crops to lie down
+and never came back; though Hyem Benjamin and Ephraim sought her for two
+nights.
+
+The look of patient wonder on Ephraim’s face deepened, but he presently
+found an explanation. ‘There are so few of us here, and these people are
+so many,’ said he, ‘that, it may be, our God has forgotten us.’
+
+In the house on the outskirts of the city old Jackrael Israel and Hester
+grumbled that there was no one to wait on them, and that Miriam had been
+untrue to her race. Ephraim went out and collected bills, and in the
+evenings smoked with Hyem Benjamin till, one dawning, Hyem Benjamin
+died, having first paid all his debts to Ephraim. Jackrael Israel and
+Hester sat alone in the empty house all day, and, when Ephraim returned,
+wept the easy tears of age till they cried themselves asleep.
+
+A week later Ephraim, staggering under a huge bundle of clothes and
+cooking-pots, led the old man and woman to the railway station, where
+the bustle and confusion made them whimper.
+
+‘We are going back to Calcutta,’ said Ephraim, to whose sleeve Hester
+was clinging. ‘There are more of us there, and here my house is empty.’
+
+He helped Hester into the carriage and, turning back, said to me, ‘I
+should have been priest of the synagogue if there had been ten of us.
+Surely we must have been forgotten by our God.’
+
+The remnant of the broken colony passed out of the station on their
+journey south; while a subaltern, turning over the books on the
+bookstall, was whistling to himself ‘The Ten Little Nigger Boys.’
+
+But the tune sounded as solemn as the Dead March.
+
+It was the dirge of the Jews in Shushan.
+
+
+
+
+THE LIMITATIONS OF PAMBE SERANG
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN
+& Co.]
+
+
+If you consider the circumstances of the case, it was the only thing
+that he could do. But Pambe Serang has been hanged by the neck till he
+is dead, and Nurkeed is dead also.
+
+Three years ago, when the Elsass-Lothringen steamer Saarbruck was
+coaling at Aden and the weather was very hot indeed, Nurkeed, the big
+fat Zanzibar stoker who fed the second right furnace thirty feet down
+in the hold, got leave to go ashore. He departed a ‘Seedee boy,’ as they
+call the stokers; he returned the full-blooded Sultan of Zanzibar--His
+Highness Sayyid Burgash, with a bottle in each hand. Then he sat on the
+fore-hatch grating, eating salt fish and onions, and singing the songs
+of a far country. The food belonged to Pambe, the Serang or head man of
+the lascar sailors. He had just cooked it for himself, turned to borrow
+some salt, and when he came back Nurkeed’s dirty black fingers were
+spading into the rice.
+
+A serang is a person of importance, far above a stoker, though the
+stoker draws better pay. He sets the chorus of ‘Hya! Hulla! Hee-ah!
+Heh!’ when the captain’s gig is pulled up to the davits; he heaves
+the lead too; and sometimes, when all the ship is lazy, he puts on
+his whitest muslin and a big red sash, and plays with the passengers’
+children on the quarter-deck. Then the passengers give him money, and he
+saves it all up for an orgie at Bombay or Calcutta, or Pulu Penang. ‘Ho!
+you fat black barrel, you’re eating my food!’ said Pambe, in the Other
+Lingua Franca that begins where the Levant tongue stops, and runs from
+Port Said eastward till east is west, and the sealing-brigs of the
+Kurile Islands gossip with the strayed Hakodate junks.
+
+‘Son of Eblis, monkey-face, dried shark’s liver, pigman, I am the Sultan
+Sayyid Burgash, and the commander of all this ship. Take away your
+garbage;’ and Nurkeed thrust the empty pewter rice-plate into Pambe’s
+hand.
+
+Pambe beat it into a basin over Nurkeed’s woolly head. Nurkeed drew HIS
+sheath-knife and stabbed Pambe in the leg. Pambe drew his sheath-knife;
+but Nurkeed dropped down into the darkness of the hold and spat through
+the grating at Pambe, who was staining the clean fore-deck with his
+blood.
+
+Only the white moon saw these things; for the officers were looking
+after the coaling, and the passengers were tossing in their close
+cabins. ‘All right,’ said Pambe--and went forward to tie up his leg--‘we
+will settle the account later on.’
+
+He was a Malay born in India: married once in Burma, where his wife had
+a cigar-shop on the Shwe Dagon road; once in Singapore, to a Chinese
+girl; and once in Madras, to a Mahomedan woman who sold fowls. The
+English sailor cannot, owing to postal and telegraph facilities,
+marry as profusely as he used to do; but native sailors can, being
+uninfluenced by the barbarous inventions of the Western savage. Pambe
+was a good husband when he happened to remember the existence of a wife;
+but he was also a very good Malay; and it is not wise to offend a Malay,
+because he does not forget anything. Moreover, in Pambe’s case blood had
+been drawn and food spoiled.
+
+Next morning Nurkeed rose with a blank mind. He was no longer Sultan
+of Zanzibar, but a very hot stoker. So he went on deck and opened
+his jacket to the morning breeze, till a sheath-knife came like a
+flying-fish and stuck into the woodwork of the cook’s galley half an
+inch from his right armpit. He ran down below before his time, trying
+to remember what he could have said to the owner of the weapon. At noon,
+when all the ship’s lascars were feeding, Nurkeed advanced into their
+midst, and, being a placid man with a large regard for his own skin, he
+opened negotiations, saying, ‘Men of the ship, last night I was drunk,
+and this morning I know that I behaved unseemly to some one or another
+of you. Who was that man, that I may meet him face to face and say that
+I was drunk?’
+
+Pambe measured the distance to Nurkeed’s naked breast. If he sprang at
+him he might be tripped up, and a blind blow at the chest sometimes only
+means a gash on the breast-bone. Ribs are difficult to thrust between
+unless the subject be asleep. So he said nothing; nor did the other
+lascars. Their faces immediately dropped all expression, as is the
+custom of the Oriental when there is killing on the carpet or any chance
+of trouble. Nurkeed looked long at the white eyeballs. He was only
+an African, and could not read characters. A big sigh--almost a
+groan--broke from him, and he went back to the furnaces. The lascars
+took up the conversation where he had interrupted it. They talked of the
+best methods of cooking rice.
+
+Nurkeed suffered considerably from lack of fresh air during the run to
+Bombay. He only came on deck to breathe when all the world was about;
+and even then a heavy block once dropped from a derrick within a foot
+of his head, and an apparently firm-lashed grating on which he set his
+foot, began to turn over with the intention of dropping him on the cased
+cargo fifteen feet below; and one insupportable night the sheath-knife
+dropped from the fo’c’s’le, and this time it drew blood. So Nurkeed
+made complaint; and, when the Saarbruck reached Bombay, fled and buried
+himself among eight hundred thousand people, and did not sign articles
+till the ship had been a month gone from the port. Pambe waited too;
+but his Bombay wife grew clamorous, and he was forced to sign in the
+Spicheren to Hongkong, because he realised that all play and no work
+gives Jack a ragged shirt. In the foggy China seas he thought a great
+deal of Nurkeed, and, when Elsass-Lothringen steamers lay in port with
+the Spicheren, inquired after him and found he had gone to England via
+the Cape, on the Gravelotte. Pambe came to England on the Worth. The
+Spicheren met her by the Nore Light. Nurkeed was going out with the
+Spicheren to the Calicut coast.
+
+‘Want to find a friend, my trap-mouthed coal-scuttle?’ said a gentleman
+in the mercantile service. ‘Nothing easier. Wait at the Nyanza Docks
+till he comes. Every one comes to the Nyanza Docks. Wait, you poor
+heathen.’ The gentleman spoke truth. There are three great doors in the
+world where, if you stand long enough, you shall meet any one you wish.
+The head of the Suez Canal is one, but there Death comes also; Charing
+Cross Station is the second--for inland work; and the Nyanza Docks is
+the third. At each of these places are men and women looking eternally
+for those who will surely come. So Pambe waited at the docks. Time was
+no object to him; and the wives could wait, as he did from day to day,
+week to week, and month to month, by the Blue Diamond funnels, the Red
+Dot smoke-stacks, the Yellow Streaks, and the nameless dingy gypsies of
+the sea that loaded and unloaded, jostled, whistled, and roared in
+the everlasting fog. When money failed, a kind gentleman told Pambe to
+become a Christian; and Pambe became one with great speed, getting his
+religious teachings between ship and ship’s arrival, and six or seven
+shillings a week for distributing tracts to mariners. What the faith
+was Pambe did not in the least care; but he knew if he said ‘Native
+Ki-lis-ti-an, Sar’ to men with long black coats he might get a few
+coppers; and the tracts were vendible at a little public-house that
+sold shag by the ‘dottel,’ which is even smaller weight than the
+‘half-screw,’ which is less than the half-ounce, and a most profitable
+retail trade.
+
+But after eight months Pambe fell sick with pneumonia, contracted from
+long standing still in slush; and much against his will he was forced to
+lie down in his two-and-sixpenny room raging against Fate.
+
+The kind gentleman sat by his bedside, and grieved to find that Pambe
+talked in strange tongues, instead of listening to good books, and
+almost seemed to become a benighted heathen again--till one day he was
+roused from semi-stupor by a voice in the street by the dock-head. ‘My
+friend--he,’ whispered Pambe. ‘Call now--call Nurkeed. Quick! God has
+sent him!’
+
+‘He wanted one of his own race,’ said the kind gentleman; and, going
+out, he called ‘Nurkeed!’ at the top of his voice. An excessively
+coloured man in a rasping white shirt and brand-new slops, a shining
+hat, and a breastpin, turned round. Many voyages had taught Nurkeed how
+to spend his money and made him a citizen of the world.
+
+‘Hi! Yes!’ said he, when the situation was explained. ‘Command
+him--black nigger--when I was in the Saarbruck. Ole Pambe, good ole
+Pambe. Dam lascar. Show him up, Sar;’ and he followed into the room. One
+glance told the stoker what the kind gentleman had overlooked. Pambe was
+desperately poor. Nurkeed drove his hands deep into his pockets, then
+advanced with clenched fists on the sick, shouting, ‘Hya, Pambe. Hya!
+Hee-ah! Hulla! Heh! Takilo! Takilo! Make fast aft, Pambe. You know,
+Pambe. You know me. Dekho, jee! Look! Dam big fat lazy lascar!’
+
+Pambe beckoned with his left hand. His right was under his pillow.
+Nurkeed removed his gorgeous hat and stooped over Pambe till he could
+catch a faint whisper. ‘How beautiful!’ said the kind gentleman. ‘How
+these Orientals love like children!’
+
+‘Spit him out,’ said Nurkeed, leaning over Pambe yet more closely.
+
+‘Touching the matter of that fish and onions--’ said Pambe--and sent the
+knife home under the edge of the rib-bone upwards and forwards.
+
+There was a thick sick cough, and the body of the African slid slowly
+from the bed, his clutching hands letting fall a shower of silver pieces
+that ran across the room.
+
+‘Now I can die!’ said Pambe.
+
+But he did not die. He was nursed back to life with all the skill
+that money could buy, for the Law wanted him; and in the end he grew
+sufficiently healthy to be hanged in due and proper form.
+
+Pambe did not care particularly; but it was a sad blow to the kind
+gentleman.
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE TOBRAH
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN & Co.]
+
+
+‘Prisoner’s head did not reach to the top of the dock,’ as the English
+newspapers say. This case, however, was not reported because nobody
+cared by so much as a hempen rope for the life or death of Little
+Tobrah. The assessors in the red court-house sat upon him all through
+the long hot afternoon, and whenever they asked him a question
+he salaamed and whined. Their verdict was that the evidence was
+inconclusive, and the Judge concurred. It was true that the dead body
+of Little Tobrah’s sister had been found at the bottom of the well, and
+Little Tobrah was the only human being within a half mile radius at the
+time; but the child might have fallen in by accident. Therefore Little
+Tobrah was acquitted, and told to go where he pleased. This permission
+was not so generous as it sounds, for he had nowhere to go to, nothing
+in particular to eat, and nothing whatever to wear.
+
+He trotted into the court-compound, and sat upon the well-kerb,
+wondering whether an unsuccessful dive into the black water below would
+end in a forced voyage across the other Black Water. A groom put down
+an emptied nose-bag on the bricks, and Little Tobrah, being hungry, set
+himself to scrape out what wet grain the horse had overlooked.
+
+‘O Thief--and but newly set free from the terror of the Law! Come
+along!’ said the groom, and Little Tobrah was led by the ear to a large
+and fat Englishman, who heard the tale of the theft.
+
+‘Hah!’ said the Englishman three times (only he said a stronger word).
+‘Put him into the net and take him home.’ So Little Tobrah was thrown
+into the net of the cart, and, nothing doubting that he should be
+stuck like a pig, was driven to the Englishman’s house. ‘Hah!’ said the
+Englishman as before. ‘Wet grain, by Jove! Feed the little beggar, some
+of you, and we’ll make a riding-boy of him! See? Wet grain, good Lord!’
+
+‘Give an account of yourself,’ said the Head of the Grooms, to Little
+Tobrah after the meal had been eaten, and the servants lay at ease in
+their quarters behind the house. ‘You are not of the groom caste, unless
+it be for the stomach’s sake. How came you into the court, and why?
+Answer, little devil’s spawn!’
+
+‘There was not enough to eat,’ said Little Tobrah calmly. ‘This is a
+good place.’
+
+‘Talk straight talk,’ said the Head Groom, ‘or I will make you clean out
+the stable of that large red stallion who bites like a camel.’
+
+‘We be Telis, oil-pressers,’ said Little Tobrah, scratching his toes in
+the dust. ‘We were Telis--my father, my mother, my brother, the elder by
+four years, myself, and the sister.’
+
+‘She who was found dead in the well?’ said one who had heard something
+of the trial.
+
+‘Even so,’ said Little Tobrah gravely. ‘She who was found dead in the
+well. It befel upon a time, which is not in my memory, that the sickness
+came to the village where our oil-press stood, and first my sister was
+smitten as to her eyes, and went without sight, for it was mata--the
+smallpox. Thereafter, my father and my mother died of that same
+sickness, so we were alone--my brother who had twelve years, I who had
+eight, and the sister who could not see. Yet were there the bullock and
+the oil-press remaining, and we made shift to press the oil as before.
+But Surjun Dass, the grain-seller, cheated us in his dealings; and it
+was always a stubborn bullock to drive. We put marigold flowers for the
+Gods upon the neck of the bullock, and upon the great grinding-beam that
+rose through the roof; but we gained nothing thereby, and Surjun Dass
+was a hard man.’
+
+‘Bapri-bap,’ muttered the grooms’ wives, ‘to cheat a child so! But WE
+know what the bunnia-folk are, sisters.’
+
+‘The press was an old press, and we were not strong men--my brother and
+I; nor could we fix the neck of the beam firmly in the shackle.’
+
+‘Nay, indeed,’ said the gorgeously-clad wife of the Head Groom, joining
+the circle. ‘That is a strong man’s work. When I was a maid in my
+father’s house----’
+
+‘Peace, woman,’ said the Head Groom. ‘Go on, boy.’
+
+‘It is nothing,’ said Little Tobrah. ‘The big beam tore down the roof
+upon a day which is not in my memory, and with the roof fell much of the
+hinder wall, and both together upon our bullock, whose back was broken.
+Thus we had neither home, nor press, nor bullock--my brother, myself,
+and the sister who was blind. We went crying away from that place,
+hand-in-hand, across the fields; and our money was seven annas and six
+pie. There was a famine in the land. I do not know the name of the land.
+So, on a night when we were sleeping, my brother took the five annas
+that remained to us and ran away. I do not know whither he went. The
+curse of my father be upon him. But I and the sister begged food in
+the villages, and there was none to give. Only all men said--“Go to the
+Englishmen and they will give.” I did not know what the Englishmen were;
+but they said that they were white, living in tents. I went forward; but
+I cannot say whither I went, and there was no more food for myself or
+the sister. And upon a hot night, she weeping and calling for food, we
+came to a well, and I bade her sit upon the kerb, and thrust her in,
+for, in truth, she could not see; and it is better to die than to
+starve.’
+
+‘Ai! Ahi!’ wailed the grooms’ wives in chorus; ‘he thrust her in, for it
+is better to die than to starve!’
+
+‘I would have thrown myself in also, but that she was not dead and
+called to me from the bottom of the well, and I was afraid and ran. And
+one came out of the crops saying that I had killed her and defiled the
+well, and they took me before an Englishman, white and terrible, living
+in a tent, and me he sent here. But there were no witnesses, and it is
+better to die than to starve. She, furthermore, could not see with her
+eyes, and was but a little child.’
+
+‘Was but a little child,’ echoed the Head Groom’s wife. ‘But who art
+thou, weak as a fowl and small as a day-old colt, what art THOU?’
+
+‘I who was empty am now full,’ said Little Tobrah, stretching himself
+upon the dust. ‘And I would sleep.’
+
+The groom’s wife spread a cloth over him while Little Tobrah slept the
+sleep of the just.
+
+
+
+
+BUBBLING WELL ROAD
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN & Co.]
+
+
+Look out on a large scale map the place where the Chenab river falls
+into the Indus fifteen miles or so above the hamlet of Chachuran. Five
+miles west of Chachuran lies Bubbling Well Road, and the house of the
+gosain or priest of Arti-goth. It was the priest who showed me the road,
+but it is no thanks to him that I am able to tell this story.
+
+Five miles west of Chachuran is a patch of the plumed jungle-grass, that
+turns over in silver when the wind blows, from ten to twenty feet high
+and from three to four miles square. In the heart of the patch hides the
+gosain of Bubbling Well Road. The villagers stone him when he peers
+into the daylight, although he is a priest, and he runs back again as
+a strayed wolf turns into tall crops. He is a one-eyed man and carries,
+burnt between his brows, the impress of two copper coins. Some say that
+he was tortured by a native prince in the old days; for he is so old
+that he must have been capable of mischief in the days of Runjit Singh.
+His most pressing need at present is a halter, and the care of the
+British Government.
+
+These things happened when the jungle-grass was tall; and the villagers
+of Chachuran told me that a sounder of pig had gone into the Arti-goth
+patch. To enter jungle-grass is always an unwise proceeding, but I went,
+partly because I knew nothing of pig-hunting, and partly because the
+villagers said that the big boar of the sounder owned foot long tushes.
+Therefore I wished to shoot him, in order to produce the tushes in after
+years, and say that I had ridden him down in fair chase. I took a gun
+and went into the hot, close patch, believing that it would be an easy
+thing to unearth one pig in ten square miles of jungle. Mr. Wardle,
+the terrier, went with me because he believed that I was incapable of
+existing for an hour without his advice and countenance. He managed to
+slip in and out between the grass clumps, but I had to force my way,
+and in twenty minutes was as completely lost as though I had been in the
+heart of Central Africa. I did not notice this at first till I had grown
+wearied of stumbling and pushing through the grass, and Mr. Wardle was
+beginning to sit down very often and hang out his tongue very far. There
+was nothing but grass everywhere, and it was impossible to see two yards
+in any direction. The grass-stems held the heat exactly as boiler-tubes
+do.
+
+In half-an-hour, when I was devoutly wishing that I had left the big
+boar alone, I came to a narrow path which seemed to be a compromise
+between a native foot-path and a pig-run. It was barely six inches wide,
+but I could sidle along it in comfort. The grass was extremely thick
+here, and where the path was ill defined it was necessary to crush into
+the tussocks either with both hands before the face, or to back into
+it, leaving both hands free to manage the rifle. None the less it was a
+path, and valuable because it might lead to a place.
+
+At the end of nearly fifty yards of fair way, just when I was preparing
+to back into an unusually stiff tussock, I missed Mr. Wardle, who for
+his girth is an unusually frivolous dog and never keeps to heel. I
+called him three times and said aloud, ‘Where has the little beast gone
+to?’ Then I stepped backwards several paces, for almost under my feet a
+deep voice repeated, ‘Where has the little beast gone?’ To appreciate an
+unseen voice thoroughly you should hear it when you are lost in stifling
+jungle-grass. I called Mr. Wardle again and the underground echo
+assisted me. At that I ceased calling and listened very attentively,
+because I thought I heard a man laughing in a peculiarly offensive
+manner. The heat made me sweat, but the laughter made me shake. There is
+no earthly need for laughter in high grass. It is indecent, as well as
+impolite. The chuckling stopped, and I took courage and continued to
+call till I thought that I had located the echo somewhere behind and
+below the tussock into which I was preparing to back just before I lost
+Mr. Wardle. I drove my rifle up to the triggers, between the grass-stems
+in a downward and forward direction. Then I waggled it to and fro, but
+it did not seem to touch ground on the far side of the tussock as it
+should have done. Every time that I grunted with the exertion of driving
+a heavy rifle through thick grass, the grunt was faithfully repeated
+from below, and when I stopped to wipe my face the sound of low laughter
+was distinct beyond doubting.
+
+I went into the tussock, face first, an inch at a time, my mouth
+open and my eyes fine, full, and prominent. When I had overcome the
+resistance of the grass I found that I was looking straight across a
+black gap in the ground--that I was actually lying on my chest leaning
+over the mouth of a well so deep I could scarcely see the water in it.
+
+There were things in the water,--black things,--and the water was as
+black as pitch with blue scum atop. The laughing sound came from the
+noise of a little spring, spouting half-way down one side of the well.
+Sometimes as the black things circled round, the trickle from the spring
+fell upon their tightly-stretched skins, and then the laughter changed
+into a sputter of mirth. One thing turned over on its back, as I
+watched, and drifted round and round the circle of the mossy brickwork
+with a hand and half an arm held clear of the water in a stiff and
+horrible flourish, as though it were a very wearied guide paid to
+exhibit the beauties of the place.
+
+I did not spend more than half-an-hour in creeping round that well
+and finding the path on the other side. The remainder of the journey
+I accomplished by feeling every foot of ground in front of me, and
+crawling like a snail through every tussock. I carried Mr. Wardle in my
+arms and he licked my nose. He was not frightened in the least, nor was
+I, but we wished to reach open ground in order to enjoy the view. My
+knees were loose, and the apple in my throat refused to slide up and
+down. The path on the far side of the well was a very good one, though
+boxed in on all sides by grass, and it led me in time to a priest’s hut
+in the centre of a little clearing. When that priest saw my very white
+face coming through the grass he howled with terror and embraced my
+boots; but when I reached the bedstead set outside his door I sat down
+quickly and Mr. Wardle mounted guard over me. I was not in a condition
+to take care of myself.
+
+When I awoke I told the priest to lead me into the open, out of the
+Arti-goth patch, and to walk slowly in front of me. Mr. Wardle hates
+natives, and the priest was more afraid of Mr. Wardle than of me, though
+we were both angry. He walked very slowly down a narrow little path from
+his hut. That path crossed three paths, such as the one I had come by
+in the first instance, and every one of the three headed towards the
+Bubbling Well. Once when we stopped to draw breath, I heard the Well
+laughing to itself alone in the thick grass, and only my need for his
+services prevented my firing both barrels into the priest’s back.
+
+When we came to the open the priest crashed back into cover, and I went
+to the village of Arti-goth for a drink. It was pleasant to be able to
+see the horizon all round, as well as the ground underfoot.
+
+The villagers told me that the patch of grass was full of devils and
+ghosts, all in the service of the priest, and that men and women and
+children had entered it and had never returned. They said the priest
+used their livers for purposes of witchcraft. When I asked why they had
+not told me of this at the outset, they said that they were afraid they
+would lose their reward for bringing news of the pig.
+
+Before I left I did my best to set the patch alight, but the grass was
+too green. Some fine summer day, however, if the wind is favourable, a
+file of old newspapers and a box of matches will make clear the mystery
+of Bubbling Well Road.
+
+
+
+
+‘THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT’
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &
+Co.]
+
+
+The dense wet heat that hung over the face of land, like a blanket,
+prevented all hope of sleep in the first instance. The cicalas helped
+the heat; and the yelling jackals the cicalas. It was impossible to sit
+still in the dark, empty, echoing house and watch the punkah beat the
+dead air. So, at ten o’clock of the night, I set my walking-stick on
+end in the middle of the garden, and waited to see how it would fall.
+It pointed directly down the moonlit road that leads to the City of
+Dreadful Night. The sound of its fall disturbed a hare. She limped from
+her form and ran across to a disused Mahomedan burial-ground, where the
+jawless skulls and rough-butted shank-bones, heartlessly exposed by the
+July rains, glimmered like mother o’ pearl on the rain-channelled soil.
+The heated air and the heavy earth had driven the very dead upward for
+coolness’ sake. The hare limped on; snuffed curiously at a fragment of
+a smoke-stained lamp-shard, and died out, in the shadow of a clump of
+tamarisk trees.
+
+The mat-weaver’s hut under the lee of the Hindu temple was full of
+sleeping men who lay like sheeted corpses. Overhead blazed the unwinking
+eye of the Moon. Darkness gives at least a false impression of coolness.
+It was hard not to believe that the flood of light from above was warm.
+Not so hot as the Sun, but still sickly warm, and heating the heavy air
+beyond what was our due. Straight as a bar of polished steel ran the
+road to the City of Dreadful Night; and on either side of the road lay
+corpses disposed on beds in fantastic attitudes--one hundred and seventy
+bodies of men. Some shrouded all in white with bound-up mouths; some
+naked and black as ebony in the strong light; and one--that lay face
+upwards with dropped jaw, far away from the others--silvery white and
+ashen gray.
+
+‘A leper asleep; and the remainder wearied coolies, servants, small
+shopkeepers, and drivers from the hackstand hard by. The scene--a main
+approach to Lahore city, and the night a warm one in August.’ This was
+all that there was to be seen; but by no means all that one could see.
+The witchery of the moonlight was everywhere; and the world was horribly
+changed. The long line of the naked dead, flanked by the rigid silver
+statue, was not pleasant to look upon. It was made up of men alone.
+Were the womenkind, then, forced to sleep in the shelter of the stifling
+mud-huts as best they might? The fretful wail of a child from a low
+mud-roof answered the question. Where the children are the mothers must
+be also to look after them. They need care on these sweltering nights. A
+black little bullet-head peeped over the coping, and a thin--a painfully
+thin--brown leg was slid over on to the gutter pipe. There was a sharp
+clink of glass bracelets; a woman’s arm showed for an instant above the
+parapet, twined itself round the lean little neck, and the child was
+dragged back, protesting, to the shelter of the bedstead. His thin,
+high-pitched shriek died out in the thick air almost as soon as it was
+raised; for even the children of the soil found it too hot to weep.
+
+More corpses; more stretches of moonlit, white road, a string of
+sleeping camels at rest by the wayside; a vision of scudding jackals;
+ekka-ponies asleep--the harness still on their backs, and the
+brass-studded country carts, winking in the moonlight--and again more
+corpses. Wherever a grain cart atilt, a tree trunk, a sawn log, a couple
+of bamboos and a few handfuls of thatch cast a shadow, the ground is
+covered with them. They lie--some face downwards, arms folded, in the
+dust; some with clasped hands flung up above their heads; some curled
+up dog-wise; some thrown like limp gunny-bags over the side of the grain
+carts; and some bowed with their brows on their knees in the full glare
+of the Moon. It would be a comfort if they were only given to snoring;
+but they are not, and the likeness to corpses is unbroken in all
+respects save one. The lean dogs snuff at them and turn away. Here and
+there a tiny child lies on his father’s bedstead, and a protecting
+arm is thrown round it in every instance. But, for the most part, the
+children sleep with their mothers on the house-tops. Yellow-skinned
+white-toothed pariahs are not to be trusted within reach of brown
+bodies.
+
+A stifling hot blast from the mouth of the Delhi Gate nearly ends my
+resolution of entering the City of Dreadful Night at this hour. It is a
+compound of all evil savours, animal and vegetable, that a walled city
+can brew in a day and a night. The temperature within the motionless
+groves of plantain and orange-trees outside the city walls seems chilly
+by comparison. Heaven help all sick persons and young children within
+the city to-night! The high house-walls are still radiating heat
+savagely, and from obscure side gullies fetid breezes eddy that ought
+to poison a buffalo. But the buffaloes do not heed. A drove of them
+are parading the vacant main street; stopping now and then to lay their
+ponderous muzzles against the closed shutters of a grain-dealer’s shops
+and to blow thereon like grampuses.
+
+Then silence follows--the silence that is full of the night noises of a
+great city. A stringed instrument of some kind is just, and only just,
+audible. High overhead some one throws open a window, and the rattle
+of the wood-work echoes down the empty street. On one of the roofs,
+a hookah is in full blast; and the men are talking softly as the
+pipe gutters. A little farther on, the noise of conversation is more
+distinct. A slit of light shows itself between the sliding shutters of
+a shop. Inside, a stubble-bearded, weary-eyed trader is balancing his
+account-books among the bales of cotton prints that surround him. Three
+sheeted figures bear him company, and throw in a remark from time to
+time. First he makes an entry, then a remark; then passes the back of
+his hand across his streaming forehead. The heat in the built-in street
+is fearful. Inside the shops it must be almost unendurable. But the
+work goes on steadily; entry, guttural growl, and uplifted hand-stroke
+succeeding each other with the precision of clock-work.
+
+A policeman--turbanless and fast asleep--lies across the road on the
+way to the Mosque of Wazir Khan. A bar of moonlight falls across the
+forehead and eyes of the sleeper, but he never stirs. It is close upon
+midnight, and the heat seems to be increasing. The open square in front
+of the Mosque is crowded with corpses; and a man must pick his way
+carefully for fear of treading on them. The moonlight stripes the
+Mosque’s high front of coloured enamel work in broad diagonal bands; and
+each separate dreaming pigeon in the niches and corners of the masonry
+throws a squab little shadow. Sheeted ghosts rise up wearily from their
+pallets, and flit into the dark depths of the building. Is it possible
+to climb to the top of the great Minars, and thence to look down on the
+city? At all events the attempt is worth making, and the chances are
+that the door of the staircase will be unlocked. Unlocked it is; but a
+deeply sleeping janitor lies across the threshold, face turned to
+the Moon. A rat dashes out of his turban at the sound of approaching
+footsteps. The man grunts, opens his eyes for a minute, turns round, and
+goes to sleep again. All the heat of a decade of fierce Indian summers
+is stored in the pitch-black, polished walls of the corkscrew staircase.
+Half-way up, there is something alive, warm, and feathery; and it
+snores. Driven from step to step as it catches the sound of my advance,
+it flutters to the top and reveals itself as a yellow-eyed, angry kite.
+Dozens of kites are asleep on this and the other Minars, and on the
+domes below. There is the shadow of a cool, or at least a less sultry
+breeze at this height; and, refreshed thereby, turn to look on the City
+of Dreadful Night.
+
+Dore might have drawn it! Zola could describe it--this spectacle of
+sleeping thousands in the moonlight and in the shadow of the Moon. The
+roof-tops are crammed with men, women, and children; and the air is full
+of undistinguishable noises. They are restless in the City of Dreadful
+Night; and small wonder. The marvel is that they can even breathe. If
+you gaze intently at the multitude, you can see that they are almost as
+uneasy as a daylight crowd; but the tumult is subdued. Everywhere,
+in the strong light, you can watch the sleepers turning to and
+fro; shifting their beds and again resettling them. In the pit-like
+court-yards of the houses there is the same movement.
+
+The pitiless Moon shows it all. Shows, too, the plains outside the city,
+and here and there a hand’s-breadth of the Ravee without the walls.
+Shows lastly, a splash of glittering silver on a house-top almost
+directly below the mosque Minar. Some poor soul has risen to throw a jar
+of water over his fevered body; the tinkle of the falling water strikes
+faintly on the ear. Two or three other men, in far-off corners of the
+City of Dreadful Night, follow his example, and the water flashes like
+heliographic signals. A small cloud passes over the face of the Moon,
+and the city and its inhabitants--clear drawn in black and white
+before--fade into masses of black and deeper black. Still the unrestful
+noise continues, the sigh of a great city overwhelmed with the heat, and
+of a people seeking in vain for rest. It is only the lower-class women
+who sleep on the house-tops. What must the torment be in the latticed
+zenanas, where a few lamps are still twinkling? There are footfalls in
+the court below. It is the Muezzin--faithful minister; but he ought to
+have been here an hour ago to tell the Faithful that prayer is better
+than sleep--the sleep that will not come to the city.
+
+The Muezzin fumbles for a moment with the door of one of the
+Minars, disappears awhile, and a bull-like roar--a magnificent bass
+thunder--tells that he has reached the top of the Minar. They must
+hear the cry to the banks of the shrunken Ravee itself! Even across the
+courtyard it is almost overpowering. The cloud drifts by and shows him
+outlined in black against the sky, hands laid upon his ears, and broad
+chest heaving with the play of his lungs--‘Allah ho Akbar’; then a pause
+while another Muezzin somewhere in the direction of the Golden Temple
+takes up the call--‘Allah ho Akbar.’ Again and again; four times in
+all; and from the bedsteads a dozen men have risen up already.--‘I bear
+witness that there is no God but God.’ What a splendid cry it is, the
+proclamation of the creed that brings men out of their beds by scores at
+midnight! Once again he thunders through the same phrase, shaking with
+the vehemence of his own voice; and then, far and near, the night air
+rings with ‘Mahomed is the Prophet of God.’ It is as though he were
+flinging his defiance to the far-off horizon, where the summer lightning
+plays and leaps like a bared sword. Every Muezzin in the city is in full
+cry, and some men on the roof-tops are beginning to kneel. A long pause
+precedes the last cry, ‘La ilaha Illallah,’ and the silence closes up on
+it, as the ram on the head of a cotton-bale.
+
+The Muezzin stumbles down the dark stairway grumbling in his beard.
+He passes the arch of the entrance and disappears. Then the stifling
+silence settles down over the City of Dreadful Night. The kites on the
+Minar sleep again, snoring more loudly, the hot breeze comes up in puffs
+and lazy eddies, and the Moon slides down towards the horizon. Seated
+with both elbows on the parapet of the tower, one can watch and wonder
+over that heat-tortured hive till the dawn. ‘How do they live down
+there? What do they think of? When will they awake?’ More tinkling of
+sluiced water-pots; faint jarring of wooden bedsteads moved into or
+out of the shadows; uncouth music of stringed instruments softened by
+distance into a plaintive wail, and one low grumble of far-off thunder.
+In the courtyard of the mosque the janitor, who lay across the threshold
+of the Minar when I came up, starts wildly in his sleep, throws his
+hands above his head, mutters something, and falls back again. Lulled by
+the snoring of the kites--they snore like over-gorged humans--I drop off
+into an uneasy doze, conscious that three o’clock has struck, and that
+there is a slight--a very slight--coolness in the atmosphere. The city
+is absolutely quiet now, but for some vagrant dog’s love-song. Nothing
+save dead heavy sleep.
+
+Several weeks of darkness pass after this. For the Moon has gone out.
+The very dogs are still, and I watch for the first light of the dawn
+before making my way homeward. Again the noise of shuffling feet. The
+morning call is about to begin, and my night watch is over. ‘Allah ho
+Akbar! Allah ho Akbar!’ The east grows gray, and presently saffron; the
+dawn wind comes up as though the Muezzin had summoned it; and, as one
+man, the City of Dreadful Night rises from its bed and turns its face
+towards the dawning day. With return of life comes return of sound.
+First a low whisper, then a deep bass hum; for it must be remembered
+that the entire city is on the house-tops. My eyelids weighed down with
+the arrears of long deferred sleep, I escape from the Minar through the
+courtyard and out into the square beyond, where the sleepers have risen,
+stowed away the bedsteads, and are discussing the morning hookah. The
+minute’s freshness of the air has gone, and it is as hot as at first.
+
+‘Will the Sahib, out of his kindness, make room?’ What is it? Something
+borne on men’s shoulders comes by in the half-light, and I stand back.
+A woman’s corpse going down to the burning-ghat, and a bystander says,
+‘She died at midnight from the heat.’ So the city was of Death as well
+as Night after all.
+
+
+
+
+GEORGIE PORGIE
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN & Co.]
+
+
+     Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie,
+     Kissed the girls and made them cry.
+     When the girls came out to play
+     Georgie Porgie ran away.
+
+If you will admit that a man has no right to enter his drawing-room
+early in the morning, when the housemaid is setting things right and
+clearing away the dust, you will concede that civilised people who eat
+out of china and own card-cases have no right to apply their standard
+of right and wrong to an unsettled land. When the place is made fit for
+their reception, by those men who are told off to the work, they can
+come up, bringing in their trunks their own society and the Decalogue,
+and all the other apparatus. Where the Queen’s Law does not carry, it
+is irrational to expect an observance of other and weaker rules. The men
+who run ahead of the cars of Decency and Propriety, and make the jungle
+ways straight, cannot be judged in the same manner as the stay-at-home
+folk of the ranks of the regular Tchin.
+
+Not many months ago the Queen’s Law stopped a few miles north of
+Thayetmyo on the Irrawaddy. There was no very strong Public Opinion up
+to that limit, but it existed to keep men in order. When the Government
+said that the Queen’s Law must carry up to Bhamo and the Chinese border
+the order was given, and some men whose desire was to be ever a little
+in advance of the rush of Respectability flocked forward with the
+troops. These were the men who could never pass examinations, and
+would have been too pronounced in their ideas for the administration of
+bureau-worked Provinces. The Supreme Government stepped in as soon as
+might be, with codes and regulations, and all but reduced New Burma to
+the dead Indian level; but there was a short time during which strong
+men were necessary and ploughed a field for themselves.
+
+Among the fore-runners of Civilisation was Georgie Porgie, reckoned by
+all who knew him a strong man. He held an appointment in Lower Burma
+when the order came to break the Frontier, and his friends called him
+Georgie Porgie because of the singularly Burmese-like manner in which
+he sang a song whose first line is something like the words ‘Georgie
+Porgie.’ Most men who have been in Burma will know the song. It means:
+‘Puff, puff, puff, puff, great steamboat!’ Georgie sang it to his banjo,
+and his friends shouted with delight, so that you could hear them far
+away in the teak-forest.
+
+When he went to Upper Burma he had no special regard for God or Man,
+but he knew how to make himself respected, and to carry out the mixed
+Military-Civil duties that fell to most men’s share in those months. He
+did his office work and entertained, now and again, the detachments of
+fever-shaken soldiers who blundered through his part of the world in
+search of a flying party of dacoits. Sometimes he turned out and dressed
+down dacoits on his own account; for the country was still smouldering
+and would blaze when least expected. He enjoyed these charivaris, but
+the dacoits were not so amused. All the officials who came in contact
+with him departed with the idea that Georgie Porgie was a valuable
+person, well able to take care of himself, and, on that belief, he was
+left to his own devices.
+
+At the end of a few months he wearied of his solitude, and cast about
+for company and refinement. The Queen’s Law had hardly begun to be felt
+in the country, and Public Opinion, which is more powerful than the
+Queen’s Law, had yet to come. Also, there was a custom in the country
+which allowed a white man to take to himself a wife of the Daughters of
+Heth upon due payment. The marriage was not quite so binding as is the
+nikkah ceremony among Mahomedans, but the wife was very pleasant.
+
+When all our troops are back from Burma there will be a proverb in their
+mouths, ‘As thrifty as a Burmese wife,’ and pretty English ladies will
+wonder what in the world it means.
+
+The headman of the village next to Georgie Porgie’s post had a fair
+daughter who had seen Georgie Porgie and loved him from afar. When news
+went abroad that the Englishman with the heavy hand who lived in
+the stockade was looking for a housekeeper, the headman came in and
+explained that, for five hundred rupees down, he would entrust his
+daughter to Georgie Porgie’s keeping, to be maintained in all honour,
+respect, and comfort, with pretty dresses, according to the custom of
+the country. This thing was done, and Georgie Porgie never repented it.
+
+He found his rough-and-tumble house put straight and made comfortable,
+his hitherto unchecked expenses cut down by one half, and himself petted
+and made much of by his new acquisition, who sat at the head of his
+table and sang songs to him and ordered his Madrassee servants about,
+and was in every way as sweet and merry and honest and winning a little
+woman as the most exacting of bachelors could have desired. No race, men
+say who know, produces such good wives and heads of households as
+the Burmese. When the next detachment tramped by on the war-path the
+Subaltern in Command found at Georgie Porgie’s table a hostess to be
+deferential to, a woman to be treated in every way as one occupying
+an assured position. When he gathered his men together next dawn and
+replunged into the jungle he thought regretfully of the nice little
+dinner and the pretty face, and envied Georgie Porgie from the bottom
+of his heart. Yet HE was engaged to a girl at Home, and that is how some
+men are constructed.
+
+The Burmese girl’s name was not a pretty one; but as she was promptly
+christened Georgina by Georgie Porgie, the blemish did not matter.
+Georgie Porgie thought well of the petting and the general comfort, and
+vowed that he had never spent five hundred rupees to a better end.
+
+After three months of domestic life, a great idea struck him.
+Matrimony--English matrimony--could not be such a bad thing after all.
+If he were so thoroughly comfortable at the Back of Beyond with this
+Burmese girl who smoked cheroots, how much more comfortable would he be
+with a sweet English maiden who would not smoke cheroots, and would play
+upon a piano instead of a banjo? Also he had a desire to return to
+his kind, to hear a Band once more, and to feel how it felt to wear a
+dress-suit again. Decidedly, Matrimony would be a very good thing. He
+thought the matter out at length of evenings, while Georgina sang
+to him, or asked him why he was so silent, and whether she had done
+anything to offend him. As he thought, he smoked, and as he smoked he
+looked at Georgina, and in his fancy turned her into a fair, thrifty,
+amusing, merry, little English girl, with hair coming low down on her
+forehead, and perhaps a cigarette between her lips. Certainly, not a
+big, thick, Burma cheroot, of the brand that Georgina smoked. He would
+wed a girl with Georgina’s eyes and most of her ways. But not all. She
+could be improved upon. Then he blew thick smoke-wreaths through his
+nostrils and stretched himself. He would taste marriage. Georgina had
+helped him to save money, and there were six months’ leave due to him.
+
+‘See here, little woman,’ he said, ‘we must put by more money for these
+next three months. I want it.’ That was a direct slur on Georgina’s
+housekeeping; for she prided herself on her thrift; but since her God
+wanted money she would do her best.
+
+‘You want money?’ she said with a little laugh. ‘I HAVE money. Look!’
+She ran to her own room and fetched out a small bag of rupees. ‘Of all
+that you give me, I keep back some. See! One hundred and seven rupees.
+Can you want more money than that? Take it. It is my pleasure if you use
+it.’ She spread out the money on the table and pushed it towards him,
+with her quick, little, pale yellow fingers.
+
+Georgie Porgie never referred to economy in the household again.
+
+Three months later, after the dispatch and receipt of several mysterious
+letters which Georgina could not understand, and hated for that reason,
+Georgie Porgie said that he was going away and she must return to her
+father’s house and stay there.
+
+Georgina wept. She would go with her God from the world’s end to the
+world’s end. Why should she leave him? She loved him.
+
+‘I am only going to Rangoon,’ said Georgie Porgie. ‘I shall be back in
+a month, but it is safer to stay with your father. I will leave you two
+hundred rupees.’
+
+‘If you go for a month, what need of two hundred? Fifty are more than
+enough. There is some evil here. Do not go, or at least let me go with
+you.’
+
+Georgie Porgie does not like to remember that scene even at this date.
+In the end he got rid of Georgina by a compromise of seventy-five
+rupees. She would not take more. Then he went by steamer and rail to
+Rangoon.
+
+The mysterious letters had granted him six months’ leave. The actual
+flight and an idea that he might have been treacherous hurt severely
+at the time, but as soon as the big steamer was well out into the blue,
+things were easier, and Georgina’s face, and the queer little stockaded
+house, and the memory of the rushes of shouting dacoits by night, the
+cry and struggle of the first man that he had ever killed with his own
+hand, and a hundred other more intimate things, faded and faded out of
+Georgie Porgie’s heart, and the vision of approaching England took its
+place. The steamer was full of men on leave, all rampantly jovial souls
+who had shaken off the dust and sweat of Upper Burma and were as merry
+as schoolboys. They helped Georgie Porgie to forget.
+
+Then came England with its luxuries and decencies and comforts, and
+Georgie Porgie walked in a pleasant dream upon pavements of which he had
+nearly forgotten the ring, wondering why men in their senses ever left
+Town. He accepted his keen delight in his furlough as the reward of
+his services. Providence further arranged for him another and greater
+delight--all the pleasures of a quiet English wooing, quite different
+from the brazen businesses of the East, when half the community
+stand back and bet on the result, and the other half wonder what Mrs.
+So-and-So will say to it.
+
+It was a pleasant girl and a perfect summer, and a big country-house
+near Petworth where there are acres and acres of purple heather and
+high-grassed water-meadows to wander through. Georgie Porgie felt that
+he had at last found something worth the living for, and naturally
+assumed that the next thing to do was to ask the girl to share his life
+in India. She, in her ignorance, was willing to go. On this occasion
+there was no bartering with a village headman. There was a fine
+middle-class wedding in the country, with a stout Papa and a weeping
+Mamma, and a best-man in purple and fine linen, and six snub-nosed girls
+from the Sunday School to throw roses on the path between the tombstones
+up to the Church door. The local paper described the affair at great
+length, even down to giving the hymns in full. But that was because the
+Direction were starving for want of material.
+
+Then came a honeymoon at Arundel, and the Mamma wept copiously before
+she allowed her one daughter to sail away to India under the care of
+Georgie Porgie the Bridegroom. Beyond any question, Georgie Porgie was
+immensely fond of his wife, and she was devoted to him as the best and
+greatest man in the world. When he reported himself at Bombay he felt
+justified in demanding a good station for his wife’s sake; and, because
+he had made a little mark in Burma and was beginning to be appreciated,
+they allowed him nearly all that he asked for, and posted him to a
+station which we will call Sutrain. It stood upon several hills, and was
+styled officially a ‘Sanitarium,’ for the good reason that the drainage
+was utterly neglected. Here Georgie Porgie settled down, and found
+married life come very naturally to him. He did not rave, as do many
+bridegrooms, over the strangeness and delight of seeing his own true
+love sitting down to breakfast with him every morning ‘as though it were
+the most natural thing in the world.’
+
+‘He had been there before,’ as the Americans say, and, checking the
+merits of his own present Grace by those of Georgina, he was more and
+more inclined to think that he had done well.
+
+But there was no peace or comfort across the Bay of Bengal, under the
+teak-trees where Georgina lived with her father, waiting for Georgie
+Porgie to return. The headman was old, and remembered the war of ‘51.
+He had been to Rangoon, and knew something of the ways of the Kullahs.
+Sitting in front of his door in the evenings, he taught Georgina a dry
+philosophy which did not console her in the least.
+
+The trouble was that she loved Georgie Porgie just as much as the French
+girl in the English History books loved the priest whose head was broken
+by the king’s bullies. One day she disappeared from the village with
+all the rupees that Georgie Porgie had given her, and a very small
+smattering of English--also gained from Georgie Porgie.
+
+The headman was angry at first, but lit a fresh cheroot and said
+something uncomplimentary about the sex in general. Georgina had started
+on a search for Georgie Porgie, who might be in Rangoon, or across the
+Black Water, or dead, for aught that she knew. Chance favoured her. An
+old Sikh policeman told her that Georgie Porgie had crossed the Black
+Water. She took a steerage-passage from Rangoon and went to Calcutta;
+keeping the secret of her search to herself.
+
+In India every trace of her was lost for six weeks, and no one knows
+what trouble of heart she must have undergone.
+
+She reappeared, four hundred miles north of Calcutta, steadily heading
+northwards, very worn and haggard, but very fixed in her determination
+to find Georgie Porgie. She could not understand the language of the
+people; but India is infinitely charitable, and the women-folk along
+the Grand Trunk gave her food. Something made her believe that Georgie
+Porgie was to be found at the end of that pitiless road. She may have
+seen a sepoy who knew him in Burma, but of this no one can be certain.
+At last, she found a regiment on the line of march, and met there one
+of the many subalterns whom Georgie Porgie had invited to dinner in the
+far-off, old days of the dacoit-hunting. There was a certain amount of
+amusement among the tents when Georgina threw herself at the man’s feet
+and began to cry. There was no amusement when her story was told; but
+a collection was made, and that was more to the point. One of the
+subalterns knew of Georgie Porgie’s whereabouts, but not of his
+marriage. So he told Georgina and she went her way joyfully to the
+north, in a railway carriage where there was rest for tired feet and
+shade for a dusty little head. The marches from the train through the
+hills into Sutrain were trying, but Georgina had money, and families
+journeying in bullock-carts gave her help. It was an almost miraculous
+journey, and Georgina felt sure that the good spirits of Burma were
+looking after her. The hill-road to Sutrain is a chilly stretch, and
+Georgina caught a bad cold. Still there was Georgie Porgie at the end of
+all the trouble to take her up in his arms and pet her, as he used to
+do in the old days when the stockade was shut for the night and he
+had approved of the evening meal. Georgina went forward as fast as she
+could; and her good spirits did her one last favour.
+
+An Englishman stopped her, in the twilight, just at the turn of the road
+into Sutrain, saying, ‘Good Heavens! What are you doing here?’
+
+He was Gillis, the man who had been Georgie Porgie’s assistant in Upper
+Burma, and who occupied the next post to Georgie Porgie’s in the jungle.
+Georgie Porgie had applied to have him to work with at Sutrain because
+he liked him.
+
+‘I have come,’ said Georgina simply. ‘It was such a long way, and I have
+been months in coming. Where is his house?’
+
+Gillis gasped. He had seen enough of Georgina in the old times to know
+that explanations would be useless. You cannot explain things to the
+Oriental. You must show.
+
+‘I’ll take you there,’ said Gillis, and he led Georgina off the road, up
+the cliff, by a little pathway, to the back of a house set on a platform
+cut into the hillside.
+
+The lamps were just lit, but the curtains were not drawn. ‘Now look,’
+said Gillis, stopping in front of the drawing-room window. Georgina
+looked and saw Georgie Porgie and the Bride.
+
+She put her hand up to her hair, which had come out of its top-knot
+and was straggling about her face. She tried to set her ragged dress in
+order, but the dress was past pulling straight, and she coughed a queer
+little cough, for she really had taken a very bad cold. Gillis looked,
+too, but while Georgina only looked at the Bride once, turning her eyes
+always on Georgie Porgie, Gillis looked at the Bride all the time.
+
+‘What are you going to do?’ said Gillis, who held Georgina by the wrist,
+in case of any unexpected rush into the lamplight. ‘Will you go in and
+tell that English woman that you lived with her husband?’
+
+‘No,’ said Georgina faintly. ‘Let me go. I am going away. I swear that I
+am going away.’ She twisted herself free and ran off into the dark.
+
+‘Poor little beast!’ said Gillis, dropping on to the main road. ‘I’d
+ha’ given her something to get back to Burma with. What a narrow shave
+though! And that angel would never have forgiven it.’
+
+This seems to prove that the devotion of Gillis was not entirely due to
+his affection for Georgie Porgie.
+
+The Bride and the Bridegroom came out into the verandah after dinner, in
+order that the smoke of Georgie Porgie’s cheroots might not hang in the
+new drawing-room curtains.
+
+‘What is that noise down there?’ said the Bride. Both listened.
+
+‘Oh,’ said Georgie Porgie, ‘I suppose some brute of a hillman has been
+beating his wife.’
+
+‘Beating--his--wife! How ghastly!’ said the Bride. ‘Fancy YOUR beating
+ME!’ She slipped an arm round her husband’s waist, and, leaning her head
+against his shoulder, looked out across the cloud-filled valley in deep
+content and security.
+
+But it was Georgina crying, all by herself, down the hillside, among the
+stones of the water-course where the washermen wash the clothes.
+
+
+
+
+NABOTH
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN & Co.]
+
+
+This was how it happened; and the truth is also an allegory of Empire.
+
+I met him at the corner of my garden, an empty basket on his head, and
+an unclean cloth round his loins. That was all the property to which
+Naboth had the shadow of a claim when I first saw him. He opened our
+acquaintance by begging. He was very thin and showed nearly as many ribs
+as his basket; and he told me a long story about fever and a lawsuit,
+and an iron cauldron that had been seized by the court in execution of
+a decree. I put my hand into my pocket to help Naboth, as kings of the
+East have helped alien adventurers to the loss of their kingdoms. A
+rupee had hidden in my waistcoat lining. I never knew it was there, and
+gave the trove to Naboth as a direct gift from Heaven. He replied that I
+was the only legitimate Protector of the Poor he had ever known.
+
+Next morning he reappeared, a little fatter in the round, and curled
+himself into knots in the front verandah. He said I was his father and
+his mother, and the direct descendant of all the gods in his Pantheon,
+besides controlling the destinies of the universe. He himself was but a
+sweetmeat-seller, and much less important than the dirt under my feet.
+I had heard this sort of thing before, so I asked him what he wanted. My
+rupee, quoth Naboth, had raised him to the ever-lasting heavens, and
+he wished to prefer a request. He wished to establish a sweetmeat-pitch
+near the house of his benefactor, to gaze on my revered countenance as
+I went to and fro illumining the world. I was graciously pleased to give
+permission, and he went away with his head between his knees.
+
+Now at the far end of my garden, the ground slopes toward the public
+road, and the slope is crowned with a thick shrubbery. There is a short
+carriage-road from the house to the Mall, which passes close to the
+shrubbery. Next afternoon I saw that Naboth had seated himself at the
+bottom of the slope, down in the dust of the public road, and in the
+full glare of the sun, with a starved basket of greasy sweets in
+front of him. He had gone into trade once more on the strength of my
+munificent donation, and the ground was as Paradise by my honoured
+favour. Remember, there was only Naboth, his basket, the sunshine, and
+the gray dust when the sap of my Empire first began.
+
+Next day he had moved himself up the slope nearer to my shrubbery, and
+waved a palm-leaf fan to keep the flies off the sweets. So I judged that
+he must have done a fair trade.
+
+Four days later I noticed that he had backed himself and his basket
+under the shadow of the shrubbery, and had tied an Isabella-coloured rag
+between two branches in order to make more shade. There were plenty of
+sweets in his basket. I thought that trade must certainly be looking up.
+
+Seven weeks later the Government took up a plot of ground for a Chief
+Court close to the end of my compound, and employed nearly four hundred
+coolies on the foundations. Naboth bought a blue and white striped
+blanket, a brass lamp-stand, and a small boy, to cope with the rush of
+trade, which was tremendous.
+
+Five days later he bought a huge, fat, red-backed account-book, and a
+glass inkstand. Thus I saw that the coolies had been getting into his
+debt, and that commerce was increasing on legitimate lines of credit.
+Also I saw that the one basket had grown into three, and that Naboth
+had backed and hacked into the shrubbery, and made himself a nice little
+clearing for the proper display of the basket, the blanket, the books,
+and the boy.
+
+One week and five days later he had built a mud fire-place in the
+clearing, and the fat account-book was overflowing. He said that God
+created few Englishmen of my kind, and that I was the incarnation of
+all human virtues. He offered me some of his sweets as tribute, and by
+accepting these I acknowledged him as my feudatory under the skirt of my
+protection.
+
+Three weeks later I noticed that the boy was in the habit of cooking
+Naboth’s mid-day meal for him, and Naboth was beginning to grow a
+stomach. He had hacked away more of my shrubbery and owned another and a
+fatter account-book.
+
+Eleven weeks later Naboth had eaten his way nearly through that
+shrubbery, and there was a reed hut with a bedstead outside it, standing
+in the little glade that he had eroded. Two dogs and a baby slept on the
+bedstead. So I fancied Naboth had taken a wife. He said that he had,
+by my favour, done this thing, and that I was several times finer than
+Krishna. Six weeks and two days later a mud wall had grown up at the
+back of the hut. There were fowls in front and it smelt a little. The
+Municipal Secretary said that a cess-pool was forming in the public road
+from the drainage of my compound, and that I must take steps to clear
+it away. I spoke to Naboth. He said I was Lord Paramount of his earthly
+concerns, and the garden was all my own property, and sent me some more
+sweets in a second-hand duster.
+
+Two months later a coolie bricklayer was killed in a scuffle that took
+place opposite Naboth’s Vineyard. The Inspector of Police said it was
+a serious case; went into my servants’ quarters; insulted my butler’s
+wife, and wanted to arrest my butler. The curious thing about the murder
+was that most of the coolies were drunk at the time. Naboth pointed out
+that my name was a strong shield between him and his enemies, and he
+expected that another baby would be born to him shortly.
+
+Four months later the hut was ALL mud walls, very solidly built, and
+Naboth had used most of my shrubbery for his five goats. A silver watch
+and an aluminium chain shone upon his very round stomach. My servants
+were alarmingly drunk several times, and used to waste the day with
+Naboth when they got the chance. I spoke to Naboth. He said, by my
+favour and the glory of my countenance, he would make all his women-folk
+ladies, and that if any one hinted that he was running an illicit
+still under the shadow of the tamarisks, why, I, his Suzerain, was to
+prosecute.
+
+A week later he hired a man to make several dozen square yards of
+trellis-work to put around the back of his hut, that his women-folk
+might be screened from the public gaze. The man went away in the
+evening, and left his day’s work to pave the short cut from the public
+road to my house. I was driving home in the dusk, and turned the corner
+by Naboth’s Vineyard quickly. The next thing I knew was that the horses
+of the phaeton were stamping and plunging in the strongest sort of
+bamboo net-work. Both beasts came down. One rose with nothing more than
+chipped knees. The other was so badly kicked that I was forced to shoot
+him.
+
+Naboth is gone now, and his hut is ploughed into its native mud with
+sweetmeats instead of salt for a sign that the place is accursed. I have
+built a summer-house to overlook the end of the garden, and it is as a
+fort on my frontier whence I guard my Empire.
+
+I know exactly how Ahab felt. He has been shamefully misrepresented in
+the Scriptures.
+
+
+
+
+THE DREAM OF DUNCAN PARRENNESS
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN
+& Co.]
+
+
+Like Mr. Bunyan of old, I, Duncan Parrenness, Writer to the Most
+Honourable the East India Company, in this God-forgotten city of
+Calcutta, have dreamed a dream, and never since that Kitty my mare fell
+lame have I been so troubled. Therefore, lest I should forget my dream,
+I have made shift to set it down here. Though Heaven knows how unhandy
+the pen is to me who was always readier with sword than ink-horn when I
+left London two long years since.
+
+When the Governor-General’s great dance (that he gives yearly at the
+latter end of November) was finisht, I had gone to mine own room which
+looks over that sullen, un-English stream, the Hoogly, scarce so sober
+as I might have been. Now, roaring drunk in the West is but fuddled in
+the East, and I was drunk Nor’-Nor’ Easterly as Mr. Shakespeare might
+have said. Yet, in spite of my liquor, the cool night winds (though I
+have heard that they breed chills and fluxes innumerable) sobered me
+somewhat; and I remembered that I had been but a little wrung and wasted
+by all the sicknesses of the past four months, whereas those young
+bloods that came eastward with me in the same ship had been all, a month
+back, planted to Eternity in the foul soil north of Writers’ Buildings.
+So then, I thanked God mistily (though, to my shame, I never kneeled
+down to do so) for license to live, at least till March should be upon
+us again.
+
+Indeed, we that were alive (and our number was less by far than those
+who had gone to their last account in the hot weather late past) had
+made very merry that evening, by the ramparts of the Fort, over this
+kindness of Providence; though our jests were neither witty nor such as
+I should have liked my Mother to hear.
+
+When I had lain down (or rather thrown me on my bed) and the fumes of my
+drink had a little cleared away, I found that I could get no sleep for
+thinking of a thousand things that were better left alone. First, and
+it was a long time since I had thought of her, the sweet face of Kitty
+Somerset, drifted, as it might have been drawn in a picture, across the
+foot of my bed, so plainly, that I almost thought she had been present
+in the body. Then I remembered how she drove me to this accursed country
+to get rich, that I might the more quickly marry her, our parents on
+both sides giving their consent; and then how she thought better (or
+worse may be) of her troth, and wed Tom Sanderson but a short
+three months after I had sailed. From Kitty I fell a-musing on Mrs.
+Vansuythen, a tall pale woman with violet eyes that had come to Calcutta
+from the Dutch Factory at Chinsura, and had set all our young men, and
+not a few of the factors, by the ears. Some of our ladies, it is true,
+said that she had never a husband or marriage-lines at all; but women,
+and specially those who have led only indifferent good lives themselves,
+are cruel hard one on another. Besides, Mrs. Vansuythen was far
+prettier than them all. She had been most gracious to me at the
+Governor-General’s rout, and indeed I was looked upon by all as her
+preux chevalier--which is French for a much worse word. Now, whether
+I cared so much as the scratch of a pin for this same Mrs. Vansuythen
+(albeit I had vowed eternal love three days after we met) I knew not
+then nor did till later on; but mine own pride, and a skill in the small
+sword that no man in Calcutta could equal, kept me in her affections. So
+that I believed I worshipt her.
+
+When I had dismist her violet eyes from my thoughts, my reason reproacht
+me for ever having followed her at all; and I saw how the one year that
+I had lived in this land had so burnt and seared my mind with the flames
+of a thousand bad passions and desires, that I had aged ten months for
+each one in the Devil’s school. Whereat I thought of my Mother for a
+while, and was very penitent: making in my sinful tipsy mood a thousand
+vows of reformation--all since broken, I fear me, again and again.
+To-morrow, says I to myself, I will live cleanly for ever. And I smiled
+dizzily (the liquor being still strong in me) to think of the dangers
+I had escaped; and built all manner of fine Castles in Spain, whereof
+a shadowy Kitty Somerset that had the violet eyes and the sweet slow
+speech of Mrs. Vansuythen, was always Queen.
+
+Lastly, a very fine and magnificent courage (that doubtless had its
+birth in Mr. Hastings’ Madeira) grew upon me, till it seemed that I
+could become Governor-General, Nawab, Prince, ay, even the Great Mogul
+himself, by the mere wishing of it. Wherefore, taking my first steps,
+random and unstable enough, towards my new kingdom, I kickt my servants
+sleeping without till they howled and ran from me, and called Heaven and
+Earth to witness that I, Duncan Parrenness, was a Writer in the service
+of the Company and afraid of no man. Then, seeing that neither the Moon
+nor the Great Bear were minded to accept my challenge, I lay down again
+and must have fallen asleep.
+
+I was waked presently by my last words repeated two or three times, and
+I saw that there had come into the room a drunken man, as I thought,
+from Mr. Hastings’ rout. He sate down at the foot of my bed in all the
+world as it belonged to him, and I took note, as well as I could, that
+his face was somewhat like mine own grown older, save when it changed
+to the face of the Governor-General or my father, dead these six months.
+But this seemed to me only natural, and the due result of too much wine;
+and I was so angered at his entry all unannounced, that I told him, not
+over civilly, to go. To all my words he made no answer whatever, only
+saying slowly, as though it were some sweet morsel: ‘Writer in the
+Company’s service and afraid of no man.’ Then he stops short, and
+turning round sharp upon me, says that one of my kidney need fear
+neither man nor devil; that I was a brave young man, and like enough,
+should I live so long, to be Governor-General. But for all these things
+(and I suppose that he meant thereby the changes and chances of our
+shifty life in these parts) I must pay my price. By this time I had
+sobered somewhat, and being well waked out of my first sleep, was
+disposed to look upon the matter as a tipsy man’s jest. So, says I
+merrily: ‘And what price shall I pay for this palace of mine, which is
+but twelve feet square, and my five poor pagodas a month? The Devil take
+you and your jesting: I have paid my price twice over in sickness.’ At
+that moment my man turns full towards me: so that by the moonlight I
+could see every line and wrinkle of his face. Then my drunken mirth died
+out of me, as I have seen the waters of our great rivers die away in
+one night; and I, Duncan Parrenness, who was afraid of no man, was taken
+with a more deadly terror than I hold it has ever been the lot of mortal
+man to know. For I saw that his face was my very own, but marked and
+lined and scarred with the furrows of disease and much evil living--as
+I once, when I was (Lord help me) very drunk indeed, have seen mine own
+face, all white and drawn and grown old, in a mirror. I take it that any
+man would have been even more greatly feared than I. For I am in no way
+wanting in courage.
+
+After I had lain still for a little, sweating in my agony and waiting
+until I should awake from this terrible dream (for dream I knew it to
+be) he says again, that I must pay my price, and a little after, as
+though it were to be given in pagodas and sicca rupees: ‘What price will
+you pay?’ Says I, very softly: ‘For God’s sake let me be, whoever you
+are, and I will mend my ways from to-night.’ Says he, laughing a little
+at my words, but otherwise making no motion of having heard them: ‘Nay,
+I would only rid so brave a young ruffler as yourself of much that will
+be a great hindrance to you on your way through life in the Indies;
+for believe me,’ and here he looks full on me once more, ‘there is no
+return.’ At all this rigmarole, which I could not then understand, I was
+a good deal put aback and waited for what should come next. Says he very
+calmly, ‘Give me your trust in man.’ At that I saw how heavy would be
+my price, for I never doubted but that he could take from me all that
+he asked, and my head was, through terror and wakefulness, altogether
+cleared of the wine I had drunk. So I takes him up very short, crying
+that I was not so wholly bad as he would make believe, and that I
+trusted my fellows to the full as much as they were worthy of it. ‘It
+was none of my fault,’ says I, ‘if one half of them were liars and the
+other half deserved to be burnt in the hand, and I would once more ask
+him to have done with his questions.’ Then I stopped, a little afraid,
+it is true, to have let my tongue so run away with me, but he took no
+notice of this, and only laid his hand lightly on my left breast and I
+felt very cold there for a while. Then he says, laughing more: ‘Give me
+your faith in women.’ At that I started in my bed as though I had been
+stung, for I thought of my sweet mother in England, and for a while
+fancied that my faith in God’s best creatures could neither be shaken
+nor stolen from me. But later, Myself’s hard eyes being upon me, I fell
+to thinking, for the second time that night, of Kitty (she that jilted
+me and married Tom Sanderson) and of Mistress Vansuythen, whom only my
+devilish pride made me follow, and how she was even worse than Kitty,
+and I worst of them all--seeing that with my life’s work to be done,
+I must needs go dancing down the Devil’s swept and garnished causeway,
+because, forsooth, there was a light woman’s smile at the end of it. And
+I thought that all women in the world were either like Kitty or Mistress
+Vansuythen (as indeed they have ever since been to me) and this put me
+to such an extremity of rage and sorrow, that I was beyond word glad
+when Myself’s hand fell again on my left breast, and I was no more
+troubled by these follies.
+
+After this he was silent for a little, and I made sure that he must go
+or I awake ere long: but presently he speaks again (and very softly)
+that I was a fool to care for such follies as those he had taken from
+me, and that ere he went he would only ask me for a few other trifles
+such as no man, or for matter of that boy either, would keep about him
+in this country. And so it happened that he took from out of my very
+heart as it were, looking all the time into my face with my own eyes, as
+much as remained to me of my boy’s soul and conscience. This was to me
+a far more terrible loss than the two that I had suffered before. For
+though, Lord help me, I had travelled far enough from all paths of
+decent or godly living, yet there was in me, though I myself write it, a
+certain goodness of heart which, when I was sober (or sick) made me very
+sorry of all that I had done before the fit came on me. And this I lost
+wholly: having in place thereof another deadly coldness at the heart. I
+am not, as I have before said, ready with my pen, so I fear that what
+I have just written may not be readily understood. Yet there be certain
+times in a young man’s life, when, through great sorrow or sin, all the
+boy in him is burnt and seared away so that he passes at one step to the
+more sorrowful state of manhood: as our staring Indian day changes
+into night with never so much as the gray of twilight to temper the
+two extremes. This shall perhaps make my state more clear, if it be
+remembered that my torment was ten times as great as comes in the
+natural course of nature to any man. At that time I dared not think of
+the change that had come over me, and all in one night: though I have
+often thought of it since. ‘I have paid the price,’ says I, my teeth
+chattering, for I was deadly cold, ‘and what is my return?’ At this time
+it was nearly dawn, and Myself had begun to grow pale and thin against
+the white light in the east, as my mother used to tell me is the custom
+of ghosts and devils and the like. He made as if he would go, but my
+words stopt him and he laughed--as I remember that I laughed when I ran
+Angus Macalister through the sword-arm last August, because he said that
+Mrs. Vansuythen was no better than she should be. ‘What return?’--says
+he, catching up my last words--‘Why, strength to live as long as God or
+the Devil pleases, and so long as you live my young master, my gift.’
+With that he puts something into my hand, though it was still too dark
+to see what it was, and when next I lookt up he was gone.
+
+When the light came I made shift to behold his gift, and saw that it was
+a little piece of dry bread.
+
+
+
+
+THE INCARNATION OF KRISHNA MULVANEY
+
+
+ Wohl auf, my bully cavaliers,
+   We ride to church to-day,
+ The man that hasn’t got a horse
+   Must steal one straight away.
+
+ Be reverent, men, remember
+   This is a Gottes haus.
+ Du, Conrad, cut along der aisle
+   And schenck der whiskey aus.
+                  HANS BREITMANN’S RIDE TO CHURCH.
+
+Once upon a time, very far from England, there lived three men who loved
+each other so greatly that neither man nor woman could come between
+them. They were in no sense refined, nor to be admitted to the
+outer-door mats of decent folk, because they happened to be private
+soldiers in Her Majesty’s Army; and private soldiers of our service have
+small time for self-culture. Their duty is to keep themselves and their
+accoutrements specklessly clean, to refrain from getting drunk more
+often than is necessary, to obey their superiors, and to pray for a war.
+All these things my friends accomplished; and of their own motion threw
+in some fighting-work for which the Army Regulations did not call. Their
+fate sent them to serve in India, which is not a golden country, though
+poets have sung otherwise. There men die with great swiftness, and those
+who live suffer many and curious things. I do not think that my friends
+concerned themselves much with the social or political aspects of the
+East. They attended a not unimportant war on the northern frontier,
+another one on our western boundary, and a third in Upper Burma. Then
+their regiment sat still to recruit, and the boundless monotony of
+cantonment life was their portion. They were drilled morning and evening
+on the same dusty parade-ground. They wandered up and down the same
+stretch of dusty white road, attended the same church and the same
+grog-shop, and slept in the same lime-washed barn of a barrack for two
+long years. There was Mulvaney, the father in the craft, who had served
+with various regiments from Bermuda to Halifax, old in war, scarred,
+reckless, resourceful, and in his pious hours an unequalled soldier.
+To him turned for help and comfort six and a half feet of slow-moving,
+heavy-footed Yorkshireman, born on the wolds, bred in the dales,
+and educated chiefly among the carriers’ carts at the back of York
+railway-station. His name was Learoyd, and his chief virtue an
+unmitigated patience which helped him to win fights. How Ortheris, a
+fox-terrier of a Cockney, ever came to be one of the trio, is a mystery
+which even to-day I cannot explain. ‘There was always three av us,’
+Mulvaney used to say. ‘An’ by the grace av God, so long as our service
+lasts, three av us they’ll always be. ‘Tis betther so.’
+
+They desired no companionship beyond their own, and it was evil for any
+man of the regiment who attempted dispute with them. Physical argument
+was out of the question as regarded Mulvaney and the Yorkshireman; and
+assault on Ortheris meant a combined attack from these twain--a business
+which no five men were anxious to have on their hands. Therefore they
+flourished, sharing their drinks, their tobacco, and their money; good
+luck and evil; battle and the chances of death; life and the chances of
+happiness from Calicut in southern, to Peshawur in northern India.
+
+Through no merit of my own it was my good fortune to be in a measure
+admitted to their friendship--frankly by Mulvaney from the beginning,
+sullenly and with reluctance by Learoyd, and suspiciously by Ortheris,
+who held to it that no man not in the Army could fraternise with a
+red-coat. ‘Like to like,’ said he. ‘I’m a bloomin’ sodger--he’s a
+bloomin’ civilian. ‘Tain’t natural--that’s all.’
+
+But that was not all. They thawed progressively, and in the thawing told
+me more of their lives and adventures than I am ever likely to write.
+
+Omitting all else, this tale begins with the Lamentable Thirst that was
+at the beginning of First Causes. Never was such a thirst--Mulvaney told
+me so. They kicked against their compulsory virtue, but the attempt was
+only successful in the case of Ortheris. He, whose talents were
+many, went forth into the highways and stole a dog from a
+‘civilian’--videlicet, some one, he knew not who, not in the Army. Now
+that civilian was but newly connected by marriage with the colonel of
+the regiment, and outcry was made from quarters least anticipated by
+Ortheris, and, in the end, he was forced, lest a worse thing should
+happen, to dispose at ridiculously unremunerative rates of as promising
+a small terrier as ever graced one end of a leading string. The
+purchase-money was barely sufficient for one small outbreak which led
+him to the guard-room. He escaped, however, with nothing worse than a
+severe reprimand, and a few hours of punishment drill. Not for nothing
+had he acquired the reputation of being ‘the best soldier of his inches’
+in the regiment. Mulvaney had taught personal cleanliness and efficiency
+as the first articles of his companions’ creed. ‘A dhirty man,’ he was
+used to say, in the speech of his kind, ‘goes to Clink for a weakness
+in the knees, an’ is coort-martialled for a pair av socks missin’; but
+a clane man, such as is an ornament to his service--a man whose buttons
+are gold, whose coat is wax upon him, an’ whose ‘coutrements are widout
+a speck--THAT man may, spakin’ in reason, do fwhat he likes an’ dhrink
+from day to divil. That’s the pride av bein’ dacint.’
+
+We sat together, upon a day, in the shade of a ravine far from the
+barracks, where a watercourse used to run in rainy weather. Behind us
+was the scrub jungle, in which jackals, peacocks, the gray wolves of the
+North-Western Provinces, and occasionally a tiger estrayed from Central
+India, were supposed to dwell. In front lay the cantonment, glaring
+white under a glaring sun; and on either side ran the broad road that
+led to Delhi.
+
+It was the scrub that suggested to my mind the wisdom of Mulvaney taking
+a day’s leave and going upon a shooting-tour. The peacock is a holy bird
+throughout India, and he who slays one is in danger of being mobbed by
+the nearest villagers; but on the last occasion that Mulvaney had gone
+forth, he had contrived, without in the least offending local religious
+susceptibilities, to return with six beautiful peacock skins which he
+sold to profit. It seemed just possible then--
+
+‘But fwhat manner av use is ut to me goin’ out widout a dhrink? The
+ground’s powdher-dhry underfoot, an’ ut gets unto the throat fit to
+kill,’ wailed Mulvaney, looking at me reproachfully. ‘An’ a peacock is
+not a bird you can catch the tail av onless ye run. Can a man run on
+wather--an’ jungle-wather too?’
+
+Ortheris had considered the question in all its bearings. He spoke,
+chewing his pipe-stem meditatively the while:
+
+‘Go forth, return in glory, To Clusium’s royal ‘ome:
+ An’ round these bloomin’ temples ‘ang
+ The bloomin’ shields o’ Rome.
+
+You better go. You ain’t like to shoot yourself--not while there’s a
+chanst of liquor. Me an’ Learoyd’ll stay at ‘ome an’ keep shop--‘case
+o’ anythin’ turnin’ up. But you go out with a gas-pipe gun an’ ketch
+the little peacockses or somethin’. You kin get one day’s leave easy as
+winkin’. Go along an’ get it, an’ get peacockses or somethin’.’
+
+‘Jock,’ said Mulvaney, turning to Learoyd, who was half asleep under the
+shadow of the bank. He roused slowly.
+
+‘Sitha, Mulvaaney, go,’ said he.
+
+And Mulvaney went; cursing his allies with Irish fluency and
+barrack-room point.
+
+‘Take note,’ said he, when he had won his holiday, and appeared dressed
+in his roughest clothes with the only other regimental fowling-piece in
+his hand. ‘Take note, Jock, an’ you Orth’ris, I am goin’ in the face
+av my own will--all for to please you. I misdoubt anythin’ will come av
+permiscuous huntin’ afther peacockses in a desolit lan’; an’ I know that
+I will lie down an’ die wid thirrrst. Me catch peacockses for you, ye
+lazy scutts--an’ be sacrificed by the peasanthry--Ugh!’
+
+He waved a huge paw and went away.
+
+At twilight, long before the appointed hour, he returned empty-handed,
+much begrimed with dirt.
+
+‘Peacockses?’ queried Ortheris from the safe rest of a barrack-room
+table whereon he was smoking cross-legged, Learoyd fast asleep on a
+bench.
+
+‘Jock,’ said Mulvaney without answering, as he stirred up the sleeper.
+‘Jock, can ye fight? Will ye fight?’
+
+Very slowly the meaning of the words communicated itself to the
+half-roused man. He understood--and again--what might these things mean?
+Mulvaney was shaking him savagely. Meantime the men in the room howled
+with delight. There was war in the confederacy at last--war and the
+breaking of bonds.
+
+Barrack-room etiquette is stringent. On the direct challenge must
+follow the direct reply. This is more binding than the ties of tried
+friendship. Once again Mulvaney repeated the question. Learoyd answered
+by the only means in his power, and so swiftly that the Irishman had
+barely time to avoid the blow. The laughter around increased. Learoyd
+looked bewilderedly at his friend--himself as greatly bewildered.
+Ortheris dropped from the table because his world was falling.
+
+‘Come outside,’ said Mulvaney, and as the occupants of the barrack-room
+prepared joyously to follow, he turned and said furiously, ‘There will
+be no fight this night--onless any wan av you is wishful to assist. The
+man that does, follows on.’
+
+No man moved. The three passed out into the moonlight, Learoyd fumbling
+with the buttons of his coat. The parade-ground was deserted except for
+the scurrying jackals. Mulvaney’s impetuous rush carried his companions
+far into the open ere Learoyd attempted to turn round and continue the
+discussion.
+
+‘Be still now. ‘Twas my fault for beginnin’ things in the middle av an
+end, Jock. I should ha’ comminst wid an explanation; but Jock, dear,
+on your sowl are ye fit, think you, for the finest fight that iver
+was--betther than fightin’ me? Considher before ye answer.’
+
+More than ever puzzled, Learoyd turned round two or three times, felt an
+arm, kicked tentatively, and answered, ‘Ah’m fit.’ He was accustomed to
+fight blindly at the bidding of the superior mind.
+
+They sat them down, the men looking on from afar, and Mulvaney untangled
+himself in mighty words.
+
+‘Followin’ your fools’ scheme I wint out into the thrackless desert
+beyond the barricks. An’ there I met a pious Hindu dhriving a
+bullock-kyart. I tuk ut for granted he wud be delighted for to convoy me
+a piece, an’ I jumped in--’
+
+‘You long, lazy, black-haired swine,’ drawled Ortheris, who would have
+done the same thing under similar circumstances.
+
+‘’Twas the height av policy. That naygur-man dhruv miles an’ miles--as
+far as the new railway line they’re buildin’ now back av the Tavi river.
+“‘Tis a kyart for dhirt only,” says he now an’ again timoreously, to
+get me out av ut. “Dhirt I am,” sez I, “an’ the dhryest that you iver
+kyarted. Dhrive on, me son, an glory be wid you.” At that I wint to
+slape, an’ took no heed till he pulled up on the embankmint av the line
+where the coolies were pilin’ mud. There was a matther av two thousand
+coolies on that line--you remimber that. Prisintly a bell rang, an’ they
+throops off to a big pay-shed. “Where’s the white man in charge?” sez I
+to my kyart-dhriver. “In the shed,” sez he, “engaged on a riffle.”--“A
+fwhat?” sez I. “Riffle,” sez he. “You take ticket. He take money. You
+get nothin’.”--
+
+“Oho!” sez I, “that’s fwhat the shuperior an’ cultivated man calls
+a raffle, me misbeguided child av darkness an’ sin. Lead on to that
+raffle, though fwhat the mischief ‘tis doin’ so far away from uts
+home--which is the charity-bazaar at Christmas, an’ the colonel’s wife
+grinnin’ behind the tea-table--is more than I know.” Wid that I wint to
+the shed an’ found ‘twas pay-day among the coolies. Their wages was on a
+table forninst a big, fine, red buck av a man--sivun fut high, four fut
+wide, an’ three fut thick, wid a fist on him like a corn-sack. He was
+payin’ the coolies fair an’ easy, but he wud ask each man if he wud
+raffle that month, an’ each man sez? “Yes,” av course. Thin he wud
+deduct from their wages accordin’. Whin all was paid, he filled an ould
+cigar-box full av gun-wads an’ scatthered ut among the coolies. They did
+not take much joy av that performince, an’ small wondher. A man close to
+me picks up a black gun-wad an’ sings out, “I have ut.”--“Good may ut
+do you,” sez I. The coolie wint forward to this big, fine, red man, who
+threw a cloth off av the most sumpshus, jooled, enamelled an’ variously
+bedivilled sedan-chair I iver saw.’
+
+‘Sedan-chair! Put your ‘ead in a bag. That was a palanquin. Don’t yer
+know a palanquin when you see it?’ said Ortheris with great scorn.
+
+‘I chuse to call ut sedan-chair, an’ chair ut shall be, little man,’
+continued the Irishman. ‘’Twas a most amazin’ chair--all lined wid pink
+silk an’ fitted wid red silk curtains. “Here ut is,” sez the red man.
+“Here ut is,” sez the coolie, an’ he grinned weakly-ways. “Is ut any
+use to you?” sez the red man. “No,” sez the coolie; “I’d like to make a
+presint av ut to you.”--“I am graciously pleased to accept that same,”
+ sez the red man; an’ at that all the coolies cried aloud in fwhat was
+mint for cheerful notes, an’ wint back to their diggin’, lavin’ me alone
+in the shed. The red man saw me, an’ his face grew blue on his big, fat
+neck. “Fwhat d’you want here?” sez he. “Standin’-room an’ no more,” sez
+I, “onless it may be fwhat ye niver had, an’ that’s manners, ye rafflin’
+ruffian,” for I was not goin’ to have the Service throd upon. “Out of
+this,” sez he. “I’m in charge av this section av construction.”--“I’m
+in charge av mesilf,” sez I, “an’ it’s like I will stay a while. D’ye
+raffle much in these parts?”--“Fwhat’s that to you?” sez he. “Nothin’,”
+ sez I, “but a great dale to you, for begad I’m thinkin’ you get the full
+half av your revenue from that sedan-chair. Is ut always raffled so?” I
+sez, an’ wid that I wint to a coolie to ask questions. Bhoys, that man’s
+name is Dearsley, an’ he’s been rafflin’ that ould sedan-chair monthly
+this matther av nine months. Ivry coolie on the section takes a
+ticket--or he gives ‘em the go--wanst a month on pay-day. Ivry coolie
+that wins ut gives ut back to him, for ‘tis too big to carry away, an’
+he’d sack the man that thried to sell ut. That Dearsley has been makin’
+the rowlin’ wealth av Roshus by nefarious rafflin’. Think av the burnin’
+shame to the sufferin’ coolie-man that the army in Injia are bound to
+protect an’ nourish in their bosoms! Two thousand coolies defrauded
+wanst a month!’
+
+‘Dom t’ coolies. Has’t gotten t’ cheer, man?’ said Learoyd.
+
+‘Hould on. Havin’ onearthed this amazin’ an’ stupenjus fraud committed
+by the man Dearsley, I hild a council av war; he thryin’ all the time to
+sejuce me into a fight with opprobrious language. That sedan-chair niver
+belonged by right to any foreman av coolies. ‘Tis a king’s chair or a
+quane’s. There’s gold on ut an’ silk an’ all manner av trapesemints.
+Bhoys, ‘tis not for me to countenance any sort av wrong-doin’--me bein’
+the ould man--but--anyway he has had ut nine months, an’ he dare not
+make throuble av ut was taken from him. Five miles away, or ut may be
+six--’
+
+There was a long pause, and the jackals howled merrily. Learoyd bared
+one arm, and contemplated it in the moonlight. Then he nodded partly
+to himself and partly to his friends. Ortheris wriggled with suppressed
+emotion.
+
+‘I thought ye wud see the reasonableness av ut,’ said Mulvaney. ‘I
+made bould to say as much to the man before. He was for a direct front
+attack--fut, horse, an’ guns--an’ all for nothin’, seein’ that I had no
+thransport to convey the machine away. “I will not argue wid you,” sez
+I, “this day, but subsequently, Mister Dearsley, me rafflin’ jool, we
+talk ut out lengthways. ‘Tis no good policy to swindle the naygur av his
+hard-earned emolumints, an’ by presint informashin’”--‘twas the kyart
+man that tould me--“ye’ve been perpethrating that same for nine months.
+But I’m a just man,” sez I, “an’ overlookin’ the presumpshin that
+yondher settee wid the gilt top was not come by honust”--at that he
+turned sky-green, so I knew things was more thrue than tellable--“not
+come by honust, I’m willin’ to compound the felony for this month’s
+winnin’s.”’
+
+‘Ah! Ho!’ from Learoyd and Ortheris.
+
+‘That man Dearsley’s rushin’ on his fate,’ continued Mulvaney, solemnly
+wagging his head. ‘All Hell had no name bad enough for me that tide.
+Faith, he called me a robber! Me! that was savin’ him from continuin’
+in his evil ways widout a remonstrince--an’ to a man av conscience
+a remonstrince may change the chune av his life. “‘Tis not for me to
+argue,” sez I, “fwhatever ye are, Mister Dearsley, but, by my hand, I’ll
+take away the temptation for you that lies in that sedan-chair.”--“You
+will have to fight me for ut,” sez he, “for well I know you will never
+dare make report to any one.”--“Fight I will,” sez I, “but not this day,
+for I’m rejuced for want av nourishment.”--“Ye’re an ould bould hand,”
+ sez he, sizin’ me up an’ down; “an’ a jool av a fight we will have.
+Eat now an’ dhrink, an’ go your way.” Wid that he gave me some hump an’
+whisky--good whisky--an’ we talked av this an’ that the while. “It goes
+hard on me now,” sez I, wipin’ my mouth, “to confiscate that piece av
+furniture, but justice is justice.”--“Ye’ve not got ut yet,” sez he;
+“there’s the fight between.”--“There is,” sez I, “an’ a good fight. Ye
+shall have the pick av the best quality in my rigimint for the dinner
+you have given this day.” Thin I came hot-foot to you two. Hould your
+tongue, the both. ‘Tis this way. To-morrow we three will go there an’ he
+shall have his pick betune me an’ Jock. Jock’s a deceivin’ fighter, for
+he is all fat to the eye, an’ he moves slow. Now, I’m all beef to the
+look, an’ I move quick. By my reckonin’ the Dearsley man won’t take me;
+so me an’ Orth’ris ‘ll see fair play. Jock, I tell you, ‘twill be big
+fightin’--whipped, wid the cream above the jam. Afther the business
+‘twill take a good three av us--Jock ‘ll be very hurt--to haul away that
+sedan-chair.’
+
+‘Palanquin.’ This from Ortheris.
+
+‘Fwhatever ut is, we must have ut. ‘Tis the only sellin’ piece av
+property widin reach that we can get so cheap. An’ fwhat’s a fight
+afther all? He has robbed the naygur-man, dishonust. We rob him honust
+for the sake av the whisky he gave me.’
+
+‘But wot’ll we do with the bloomin’ article when we’ve got it? Them
+palanquins are as big as ‘ouses, an’ uncommon ‘ard to sell, as McCleary
+said when ye stole the sentry-box from the Curragh.’
+
+‘Who’s goin’ to do t’ fightin’?’ said Learoyd, and Ortheris subsided.
+The three returned to barracks without a word. Mulvaney’s last argument
+clinched the matter. This palanquin was property, vendible, and to
+be attained in the simplest and least embarrassing fashion. It would
+eventually become beer. Great was Mulvaney.
+
+Next afternoon a procession of three formed itself and disappeared into
+the scrub in the direction of the new railway line. Learoyd alone was
+without care, for Mulvaney dived darkly into the future, and little
+Ortheris feared the unknown. What befell at that interview in the lonely
+pay-shed by the side of the half-built embankment, only a few hundred
+coolies know, and their tale is confusing one, running thus--
+
+‘We were at work. Three men in red coats came. They saw the
+Sahib--Dearsley Sahib. They made oration; and noticeably the small man
+among the red-coats. Dearsley Sahib also made oration, and used many
+very strong words. Upon this talk they departed together to an open
+space, and there the fat man in the red coat fought with Dearsley Sahib
+after the custom of white men--with his hands, making no noise, and
+never at all pulling Dearsley Sahib’s hair. Such of us as were not
+afraid beheld these things for just so long a time as a man needs to
+cook the mid-day meal. The small man in the red coat had possessed
+himself of Dearsley Sahib’s watch. No, he did not steal that watch. He
+held it in his hand, and at certain seasons made outcry, and the twain
+ceased their combat, which was like the combat of young bulls in spring.
+Both men were soon all red, but Dearsley Sahib was much more red than
+the other. Seeing this, and fearing for his life--because we greatly
+loved him--some fifty of us made shift to rush upon the red-coats. But
+a certain man--very black as to the hair, and in no way to be confused
+with the small man, or the fat man who fought--that man, we affirm, ran
+upon us, and of us he embraced some ten or fifty in both arms, and beat
+our heads together, so that our livers turned to water, and we ran away.
+It is not good to interfere in the fightings of white men. After that
+Dearsley Sahib fell and did not rise, these men jumped upon his stomach
+and despoiled him of all his money, and attempted to fire the pay-shed,
+and departed. Is it true that Dearsley Sahib makes no complaint of these
+latter things having been done? We were senseless with fear, and do not
+at all remember. There was no palanquin near the pay-shed. What do we
+know about palanquins? Is it true that Dearsley Sahib does not return to
+this place, on account of his sickness, for ten days? This is the fault
+of those bad men in the red coats, who should be severely punished; for
+Dearsley Sahib is both our father and mother, and we love him much. Yet,
+if Dearsley Sahib does not return to this place at all, we will speak
+the truth. There was a palanquin, for the up-keep of which we were
+forced to pay nine-tenths of our monthly wage. On such mulctings
+Dearsley Sahib allowed us to make obeisance to him before the palanquin.
+What could we do? We were poor men. He took a full half of our wages.
+Will the Government repay us those moneys? Those three men in red coats
+bore the palanquin upon their shoulders and departed. All the money that
+Dearsley Sahib had taken from us was in the cushions of that palanquin.
+Therefore they stole it. Thousands of rupees were there--all our money.
+It was our bank-box, to fill which we cheerfully contributed to Dearsley
+Sahib three-sevenths of our monthly wage. Why does the white man look
+upon us with the eye of disfavour? Before God, there was a palanquin,
+and now there is no palanquin; and if they send the police here to make
+inquisition, we can only say that there never has been any palanquin.
+Why should a palanquin be near these works? We are poor men, and we know
+nothing.’
+
+Such is the simplest version of the simplest story connected with the
+descent upon Dearsley. From the lips of the coolies I received it.
+Dearsley himself was in no condition to say anything, and Mulvaney
+preserved a massive silence, broken only by the occasional licking of
+the lips. He had seen a fight so gorgeous that even his power of speech
+was taken from him. I respected that reserve until, three days after the
+affair, I discovered in a disused stable in my quarters a palanquin of
+unchastened splendour--evidently in past days the litter of a queen. The
+pole whereby it swung between the shoulders of the bearers was rich with
+the painted papier-mache of Cashmere. The shoulder-pads were of yellow
+silk. The panels of the litter itself were ablaze with the loves of
+all the gods and goddesses of the Hindu Pantheon--lacquer on cedar. The
+cedar sliding doors were fitted with hasps of translucent Jaipur enamel
+and ran in grooves shod with silver. The cushions were of brocaded Delhi
+silk, and the curtains which once hid any glimpse of the beauty of the
+king’s palace were stiff with gold. Closer investigation showed that the
+entire fabric was everywhere rubbed and discoloured by time and wear;
+but even thus it was sufficiently gorgeous to deserve housing on the
+threshold of a royal zenana. I found no fault with it, except that
+it was in my stable. Then, trying to lift it by the silver-shod
+shoulder-pole, I laughed. The road from Dearsley’s pay-shed to the
+cantonment was a narrow and uneven one, and, traversed by three very
+inexperienced palanquin-bearers, one of whom was sorely battered about
+the head, must have been a path of torment. Still I did not quite
+recognise the right of the three musketeers to turn me into a ‘fence’
+for stolen property.
+
+‘I’m askin’ you to warehouse ut,’ said Mulvaney when he was brought to
+consider the question. ‘There’s no steal in ut. Dearsley tould us we cud
+have ut if we fought. Jock fought--an’, oh, sorr, when the throuble
+was at uts finest an’ Jock was bleedin’ like a stuck pig, an’ little
+Orth’ris was shquealin’ on one leg chewin’ big bites out av Dearsley’s
+watch, I wud ha’ given my place at the fight to have had you see wan
+round. He tuk Jock, as I suspicioned he would, an’ Jock was deceptive.
+Nine roun’s they were even matched, an’ at the tenth--About that
+palanquin now. There’s not the least throuble in the world, or we wud
+not ha’ brought ut here. You will ondherstand that the Queen--God
+bless her!--does not reckon for a privit soldier to kape elephints an’
+palanquins an’ sich in barricks. Afther we had dhragged ut down from
+Dearsley’s through that cruel scrub that near broke Orth’ris’s heart,
+we set ut in the ravine for a night; an’ a thief av a porcupine an’ a
+civet-cat av a jackal roosted in ut, as well we knew in the mornin’. I
+put ut to you, sorr, is an elegint palanquin, fit for the princess, the
+natural abidin’ place av all the vermin in cantonmints? We brought ut
+to you, afther dhark, and put ut in your shtable. Do not let
+your conscience prick. Think av the rejoicin’ men in the pay-shed
+yonder--lookin’ at Dearsley wid his head tied up in a towel--an’ well
+knowin’ that they can dhraw their pay ivry month widout stoppages for
+riffles. Indirectly, sorr, you have rescued from an onprincipled son av
+a night-hawk the peasanthry av a numerous village. An’ besides, will I
+let that sedan-chair rot on our hands? Not I. ‘Tis not every day a piece
+av pure joolry comes into the market. There’s not a king widin these
+forty miles’--he waved his hand round the dusty horizon--‘not a king wud
+not be glad to buy ut. Some day meself, whin I have leisure, I’ll take
+ut up along the road an’ dishpose av ut.’
+
+‘How?’ said I, for I knew the man was capable of anything.
+
+‘Get into ut, av coorse, and keep wan eye open through the curtains.
+Whin I see a likely man av the native persuasion, I will descind
+blushin’ from my canopy and say, “Buy a palanquin, ye black scutt?”
+ I will have to hire four men to carry me first, though; and that’s
+impossible till next pay-day.’
+
+Curiously enough, Learoyd, who had fought for the prize, and in
+the winning secured the highest pleasure life had to offer him, was
+altogether disposed to undervalue it, while Ortheris openly said it
+would be better to break the thing up. Dearsley, he argued, might be a
+many-sided man, capable, despite his magnificent fighting qualities, of
+setting in motion the machinery of the civil law--a thing much abhorred
+by the soldier. Under any circumstances their fun had come and passed;
+the next pay-day was close at hand, when there would be beer for all.
+Wherefore longer conserve the painted palanquin?
+
+‘A first-class rifle-shot an’ a good little man av your inches you are,’
+said Mulvaney. ‘But you niver had a head worth a soft-boiled egg. ‘Tis
+me has to lie awake av nights schamin’ an’ plottin’ for the three av
+us. Orth’ris, me son, ‘tis no matther av a few gallons av beer--no, nor
+twenty gallons--but tubs an’ vats an’ firkins in that sedan-chair. Who
+ut was, an’ what ut was, an’ how ut got there, we do not know; but I
+know in my bones that you an’ me an’ Jock wid his sprained thumb will
+get a fortune thereby. Lave me alone, an’ let me think.’
+
+Meantime the palanquin stayed in my stall, the key of which was in
+Mulvaney’s hands.
+
+Pay-day came, and with it beer. It was not in experience to hope that
+Mulvaney, dried by four weeks’ drought, would avoid excess. Next morning
+he and the palanquin had disappeared. He had taken the precaution of
+getting three days’ leave ‘to see a friend on the railway,’ and the
+colonel, well knowing that the seasonal outburst was near, and hoping it
+would spend its force beyond the limits of his jurisdiction, cheerfully
+gave him all he demanded. At this point Mulvaney’s history, as recorded
+in the mess-room, stopped.
+
+Ortheris carried it not much further. ‘No, ‘e wasn’t drunk,’ said the
+little man loyally, ‘the liquor was no more than feelin’ its way round
+inside of ‘im; but ‘e went an’ filled that ‘ole bloomin’ palanquin with
+bottles ‘fore ‘e went off. ‘E’s gone an’ ‘ired six men to carry ‘im,
+an’ I ‘ad to ‘elp ‘im into ‘is nupshal couch, ‘cause ‘e wouldn’t
+‘ear reason. ‘E’s gone off in ‘is shirt an’ trousies, swearin’
+tremenjus--gone down the road in the palanquin, wavin’ ‘is legs out o’
+windy.’
+
+‘Yes,’ said I, ‘but where?’
+
+‘Now you arx me a question. ‘E said ‘e was goin’ to sell that palanquin,
+but from observations what happened when I was stuffin’ ‘im through the
+door, I fancy ‘e’s gone to the new embankment to mock at Dearsley. ‘Soon
+as Jock’s off duty I’m goin’ there to see if ‘e’s safe--not Mulvaney,
+but t’other man. My saints, but I pity ‘im as ‘elps Terence out o’ the
+palanquin when ‘e’s once fair drunk!’
+
+‘He’ll come back without harm,’ I said.
+
+‘’Corse ‘e will. On’y question is, what ‘ll ‘e be doin’ on the road?
+Killing Dearsley, like as not. ‘E shouldn’t ‘a gone without Jock or me.’
+
+Reinforced by Learoyd, Ortheris sought the foreman of the coolie-gang.
+Dearsley’s head was still embellished with towels. Mulvaney, drunk
+or sober, would have struck no man in that condition, and Dearsley
+indignantly denied that he would have taken advantage of the intoxicated
+brave.
+
+‘I had my pick o’ you two,’ he explained to Learoyd, ‘and you got my
+palanquin--not before I’d made my profit on it. Why’d I do harm when
+everything’s settled? Your man DID come here--drunk as Davy’s sow on a
+frosty night--came a-purpose to mock me--stuck his head out of the
+door an’ called me a crucified hodman. I made him drunker, an’ sent him
+along. But I never touched him.’
+
+To these things, Learoyd, slow to perceive the evidences of sincerity,
+answered only, ‘If owt comes to Mulvaaney ‘long o’ you, I’ll gripple
+you, clouts or no clouts on your ugly head, an’ I’ll draw t’ throat
+twistyways, man. See there now.’
+
+The embassy removed itself, and Dearsley, the battered, laughed alone
+over his supper that evening.
+
+Three days passed--a fourth and a fifth. The week drew to a close
+and Mulvaney did not return. He, his royal palanquin, and his six
+attendants, had vanished into air. A very large and very tipsy soldier,
+his feet sticking out of the litter of a reigning princess, is not a
+thing to travel along the ways without comment. Yet no man of all the
+country round had seen any such wonder. He was, and he was not; and
+Learoyd suggested the immediate smashment of Dearsley as a sacrifice to
+his ghost. Ortheris insisted that all was well, and in the light of past
+experience his hopes seemed reasonable.
+
+‘When Mulvaney goes up the road,’ said he, ‘’e’s like to go a very long
+ways up, specially when ‘e’s so blue drunk as ‘e is now. But what gits
+me is ‘is not bein’ ‘eard of pullin’ wool off the niggers somewheres
+about. That don’t look good. The drink must ha’ died out in ‘im by this,
+unless ‘e’s broke a bank, an’ then--Why don’t ‘e come back? ‘E didn’t
+ought to ha’ gone off without us.’
+
+Even Ortheris’s heart sank at the end of the seventh day, for half the
+regiment were out scouring the country-side, and Learoyd had been forced
+to fight two men who hinted openly that Mulvaney had deserted. To do him
+justice, the colonel laughed at the notion, even when it was put forward
+by his much-trusted adjutant.
+
+‘Mulvaney would as soon think of deserting as you would,’ said he. ‘No;
+he’s either fallen into a mischief among the villagers--and yet that
+isn’t likely, for he’d blarney himself out of the Pit; or else he is
+engaged on urgent private affairs--some stupendous devilment that we
+shall hear of at mess after it has been the round of the barrack-rooms.
+The worst of it is that I shall have to give him twenty-eight days’
+confinement at least for being absent without leave, just when I most
+want him to lick the new batch of recruits into shape. I never knew a
+man who could put a polish on young soldiers as quickly as Mulvaney can.
+How does he do it?’
+
+‘With blarney and the buckle-end of a belt, sir,’ said the adjutant. ‘He
+is worth a couple of non-commissioned officers when we are dealing with
+an Irish draft, and the London lads seem to adore him. The worst of it
+is that if he goes to the cells the other two are neither to hold nor
+to bind till he comes out again. I believe Ortheris preaches mutiny on
+those occasions, and I know that the mere presence of Learoyd mourning
+for Mulvaney kills all the cheerfulness of his room. The sergeants tell
+me that he allows no man to laugh when he feels unhappy. They are a
+queer gang.’
+
+‘For all that, I wish we had a few more of them. I like a well-conducted
+regiment, but these pasty-faced, shifty-eyed, mealy-mouthed young
+slouchers from the depot worry me sometimes with their offensive virtue.
+They don’t seem to have backbone enough to do anything but play cards
+and prowl round the married quarters. I believe I’d forgive that old
+villain on the spot if he turned up with any sort of explanation that I
+could in decency accept.’
+
+‘Not likely to be much difficulty about that, sir,’ said the adjutant.
+‘Mulvaney’s explanations are only one degree less wonderful than his
+performances. They say that when he was in the Black Tyrone, before he
+came to us, he was discovered on the banks of the Liffey trying to sell
+his colonel’s charger to a Donegal dealer as a perfect lady’s hack.
+Shackbolt commanded the Tyrone then.’
+
+‘Shackbolt must have had apoplexy at the thought of his ramping
+war-horses answering to that description. He used to buy unbacked
+devils, and tame them on some pet theory of starvation. What did
+Mulvaney say?’
+
+‘That he was a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
+Animals, anxious to “sell the poor baste where he would get something
+to fill out his dimples.” Shackbolt laughed, but I fancy that was why
+Mulvaney exchanged to ours.’
+
+‘I wish he were back,’ said the colonel; ‘for I like him and believe he
+likes me.’
+
+That evening, to cheer our souls, Learoyd, Ortheris, and I went into the
+waste to smoke out a porcupine. All the dogs attended, but even their
+clamour--and they began to discuss the shortcomings of porcupines before
+they left cantonments--could not take us out of ourselves. A large,
+low moon turned the tops of the plume-grass to silver, and the stunted
+camelthorn bushes and sour tamarisks into the likenesses of trooping
+devils. The smell of the sun had not left the earth, and little aimless
+winds blowing across the rose-gardens to the southward brought the scent
+of dried roses and water. Our fire once started, and the dogs craftily
+disposed to wait the dash of the porcupine, we climbed to the top of a
+rain-scarred hillock of earth, and looked across the scrub seamed with
+cattle paths, white with the long grass, and dotted with spots of level
+pond-bottom, where the snipe would gather in winter.
+
+‘This,’ said Ortheris, with a sigh, as he took in the unkempt desolation
+of it all, ‘this is sanguinary. This is unusually sanguinary. Sort o’
+mad country. Like a grate when the fire’s put out by the sun.’ He shaded
+his eyes against the moonlight. ‘An’ there’s a loony dancin’ in the
+middle of it all. Quite right. I’d dance too if I wasn’t so downheart.’
+
+There pranced a Portent in the face of the moon--a huge and ragged
+spirit of the waste, that flapped its wings from afar. It had risen out
+of the earth; it was coming towards us, and its outline was never twice
+the same. The toga, table-cloth, or dressing-gown, whatever the creature
+wore, took a hundred shapes. Once it stopped on a neighbouring mound and
+flung all its legs and arms to the winds.
+
+‘My, but that scarecrow ‘as got ‘em bad!’ said Ortheris. ‘Seems like if
+‘e comes any furder we’ll ‘ave to argify with ‘im.’
+
+Learoyd raised himself from the dirt as a bull clears his flanks of the
+wallow. And as a bull bellows, so he, after a short minute at gaze, gave
+tongue to the stars.
+
+‘MULVAANEY! MULVAANEY! A-hoo!’
+
+Oh then it was that we yelled, and the figure dipped into the hollow,
+till, with a crash of rending grass, the lost one strode up to the light
+of the fire and disappeared to the waist in a wave of joyous dogs! Then
+Learoyd and Ortheris gave greeting, bass and falsetto together, both
+swallowing a lump in the throat.
+
+‘You damned fool!’ said they, and severally pounded him with their
+fists.
+
+‘Go easy!’ he answered; wrapping a huge arm round each. ‘I would have
+you to know that I am a god, to be treated as such--tho’, by my faith, I
+fancy I’ve got to go to the guard-room just like a privit soldier.’
+
+The latter part of the sentence destroyed the suspicions raised by the
+former. Any one would have been justified in regarding Mulvaney as mad.
+He was hatless and shoeless, and his shirt and trousers were dropping
+off him. But he wore one wondrous garment--a gigantic cloak that
+fell from collar-bone to heel--of pale pink silk, wrought all over in
+cunningest needlework of hands long since dead, with the loves of the
+Hindu gods. The monstrous figures leaped in and out of the light of the
+fire as he settled the folds round him.
+
+Ortheris handled the stuff respectfully for a moment while I was trying
+to remember where I had seen it before. Then he screamed, ‘What ‘AVE you
+done with the palanquin? You’re wearin’ the linin’.’
+
+‘I am,’ said the Irishman, ‘an’ by the same token the ‘broidery is
+scrapin’ my hide off. I’ve lived in this sumpshus counterpane for four
+days. Me son, I begin to ondherstand why the naygur is no use. Widout me
+boots, an’ me trousies like an openwork stocking on a gyurl’s leg at
+a dance, I begin to feel like a naygur-man--all fearful an’ timoreous.
+Give me a pipe an’ I’ll tell on.’
+
+He lit a pipe, resumed his grip of his two friends, and rocked to and
+fro in a gale of laughter.
+
+‘Mulvaney,’ said Ortheris sternly, ‘’tain’t no time for laughin’. You’ve
+given Jock an’ me more trouble than you’re worth. You ‘ave been absent
+without leave an’ you’ll go into cells for that; an’ you ‘ave come back
+disgustin’ly dressed an’ most improper in the linin’ o’ that bloomin’
+palanquin. Instid of which you laugh. An’ WE thought you was dead all
+the time.’
+
+‘Bhoys,’ said the culprit, still shaking gently, ‘whin I’ve done my tale
+you may cry if you like, an’ little Orth’ris here can thrample my inside
+out. Ha’ done an’ listen. My performances have been stupenjus: my luck
+has been the blessed luck av the British Army--an’ there’s no betther
+than that. I went out dhrunk an’ dhrinkin’ in the palanquin, and I have
+come back a pink god. Did any of you go to Dearsley afther my time was
+up? He was at the bottom of ut all.’
+
+‘Ah said so,’ murmured Learoyd. ‘To-morrow ah’ll smash t’ face in upon
+his heead.’
+
+‘Ye will not. Dearsley’s a jool av a man. Afther Ortheris had put me
+into the palanquin an’ the six bearer-men were gruntin’ down the road, I
+tuk thought to mock Dearsley for that fight. So I tould thim, “Go to the
+embankmint,” and there, bein’ most amazin’ full, I shtuck my head out
+av the concern an’ passed compliments wid Dearsley. I must ha’ miscalled
+him outrageous, for whin I am that way the power av the tongue comes on
+me. I can bare remimber tellin’ him that his mouth opened endways like
+the mouth av a skate, which was thrue afther Learoyd had handled ut; an’
+I clear remimber his takin’ no manner nor matter av offence, but givin’
+me a big dhrink of beer. ‘Twas the beer did the thrick, for I crawled
+back into the palanquin, steppin’ on me right ear wid me left foot, an’
+thin I slept like the dead. Wanst I half-roused, an’ begad the noise
+in my head was tremenjus--roarin’ and rattlin’ an’ poundin’ such as was
+quite new to me. “Mother av Mercy,” thinks I, “phwat a concertina I will
+have on my shoulders whin I wake!” An’ wid that I curls mysilf up
+to sleep before ut should get hould on me. Bhoys, that noise was not
+dhrink, ‘twas the rattle av a thrain!’
+
+There followed an impressive pause.
+
+‘Yes, he had put me on a thrain--put me, palanquin an’ all, an’ six
+black assassins av his own coolies that was in his nefarious confidence,
+on the flat av a ballast-thruck, and we were rowlin’ an’ bowlin’ along
+to Benares. Glory be that I did not wake up thin an’ introjuce mysilf to
+the coolies. As I was sayin’, I slept for the betther part av a day an’
+a night. But remimber you, that that man Dearsley had packed me off on
+wan av his material-thrains to Benares, all for to make me overstay my
+leave an’ get me into the cells.’
+
+The explanation was an eminently rational one. Benares lay at least ten
+hours by rail from the cantonments, and nothing in the world could have
+saved Mulvaney from arrest as a deserter had he appeared there in the
+apparel of his orgies. Dearsley had not forgotten to take revenge.
+Learoyd, drawing back a little, began to place soft blows over selected
+portions of Mulvaney’s body. His thoughts were away on the embankment,
+and they meditated evil for Dearsley. Mulvaney continued--
+
+‘Whin I was full awake the palanquin was set down in a street, I
+suspicioned, for I cud hear people passin’ an’ talkin’. But I knew well
+I was far from home. There is a queer smell upon our cantonments--a
+smell av dried earth and brick-kilns wid whiffs av cavalry
+stable-litter. This place smelt marigold flowers an’ bad water, an’
+wanst somethin’ alive came an’ blew heavy with his muzzle at the chink
+av the shutter. “It’s in a village I am,” thinks I to mysilf, “an’ the
+parochial buffalo is investigatin’ the palanquin.” But anyways I had
+no desire to move. Only lie still whin you’re in foreign parts an’ the
+standin’ luck av the British Army will carry ye through. That is an
+epigram. I made ut.
+
+‘Thin a lot av whishperin’ divils surrounded the palanquin. “Take ut
+up,” sez wan man. “But who’ll pay us?” sez another. “The Maharanee’s
+minister, av coorse,” sez the man. “Oho!” sez I to mysilf, “I’m a quane
+in me own right, wid a minister to pay me expenses. I’ll be an emperor
+if I lie still long enough; but this is no village I’ve found.” I lay
+quiet, but I gummed me right eye to a crack av the shutters, an’ I
+saw that the whole street was crammed wid palanquins an’ horses, an’ a
+sprinklin’ av naked priests all yellow powder an’ tigers’ tails. But
+I may tell you, Orth’ris, an’ you, Learoyd, that av all the palanquins
+ours was the most imperial an’ magnificent. Now a palanquin means a
+native lady all the world over, except whin a soldier av the Quane
+happens to be takin’ a ride. “Women an’ priests!” sez I. “Your father’s
+son is in the right pew this time, Terence. There will be proceedin’s.”
+ Six black divils in pink muslin tuk up the palanquin, an’ oh! but the
+rowlin’ an’ the rockin’ made me sick. Thin we got fair jammed among the
+palanquins--not more than fifty av them--an’ we grated an’ bumped
+like Queenstown potato-smacks in a runnin’ tide. I cud hear the women
+gigglin’ and squirkin’ in their palanquins, but mine was the royal
+equipage. They made way for ut, an’, begad, the pink muslin men o’ mine
+were howlin’, “Room for the Maharanee av Gokral-Seetarun.” Do you know
+aught av the lady, sorr?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said I. ‘She is a very estimable old queen of the Central Indian
+States, and they say she is fat. How on earth could she go to Benares
+without all the city knowing her palanquin?’
+
+‘’Twas the eternal foolishness av the naygur-man. They saw the palanquin
+lying loneful an’ forlornsome, an’ the beauty av ut, after Dearsley’s
+men had dhropped ut and gone away, an’ they gave ut the best name that
+occurred to thim. Quite right too. For aught we know the ould lady was
+thravellin’ incog--like me. I’m glad to hear she’s fat. I was no light
+weight mysilf, an’ my men were mortial anxious to dhrop me under a great
+big archway promiscuously ornamented wid the most improper carvin’s
+an’ cuttin’s I iver saw. Begad! they made me blush--like a--like a
+Maharanee.’
+
+‘The temple of Prithi-Devi,’ I murmured, remembering the monstrous
+horrors of that sculptured archway at Benares.
+
+‘Pretty Devilskins, savin’ your presence, sorr! There was nothin’ pretty
+about ut, except me. ‘Twas all half dhark, an’ whin the coolies left
+they shut a big black gate behind av us, an’ half a company av fat
+yellow priests began pully-haulin’ the palanquins into a dharker place
+yet--a big stone hall full av pillars, an’ gods, an’ incense, an’ all
+manner av similar thruck. The gate disconcerted me, for I perceived I
+wud have to go forward to get out, my retreat bein’ cut off. By the same
+token a good priest makes a bad palanquin-coolie. Begad! they nearly
+turned me inside out draggin’ the palanquin to the temple. Now the
+disposishin av the forces inside was this way. The Maharanee av
+Gokral-Seetarun--that was me--lay by the favour av Providence on the far
+left flank behind the dhark av a pillar carved with elephints’ heads.
+The remainder av the palanquins was in a big half circle facing in to
+the biggest, fattest, an’ most amazin’ she-god that iver I dreamed av.
+Her head ran up into the black above us, an’ her feet stuck out in the
+light av a little fire av melted butter that a priest was feedin’ out
+av a butter-dish. Thin a man began to sing an’ play on somethin’ back in
+the dhark, an ‘twas a queer song. Ut made my hair lift on the back av
+my neck. Thin the doors av all the palanquins slid back, an’ the women
+bundled out. I saw what I’ll niver see again. ‘Twas more glorious than
+thransformations at a pantomime, for they was in pink an’ blue an’
+silver an’ red an’ grass green, wid di’monds an’ im’ralds an’ great red
+rubies all over thim. But that was the least part av the glory. O bhoys,
+they were more lovely than the like av any loveliness in hiven; ay,
+their little bare feet were betther than the white hands av a lord’s
+lady, an’ their mouths were like puckered roses, an’ their eyes were
+bigger an’ dharker than the eyes av any livin’ women I’ve seen. Ye may
+laugh, but I’m speakin’ truth. I niver saw the like, an’ niver I will
+again.’
+
+‘Seeing that in all probability you were watching the wives and
+daughters of most of the Kings of India, the chances are that you
+won’t,’ I said, for it was dawning on me that Mulvaney had stumbled upon
+a big Queens’ Praying at Benares.
+
+‘I niver will,’ he said mournfully. ‘That sight doesn’t come twist to
+any man. It made me ashamed to watch. A fat priest knocked at my door.
+I didn’t think he’d have the insolince to disturb the Maharanee av
+Gokral-Seetarun, so I lay still. “The old cow’s asleep,” sez he to
+another. “Let her be,” sez that. “‘Twill be long before she has a
+calf!” I might ha’ known before he spoke that all a woman prays for in
+Injia--an’ for matter o’ that in England too--is childher. That made me
+more sorry I’d come, me bein’, as you well know, a childless man.’
+
+He was silent for a moment, thinking of his little son, dead many years
+ago.
+
+‘They prayed, an’ the butter-fires blazed up an’ the incense turned
+everything blue, an’ between that an’ the fires the women looked as
+tho’ they were all ablaze an’ twinklin’. They took hold av the she-god’s
+knees, they cried out an’ they threw themselves about, an’ that
+world-without-end-amen music was dhrivin’ thim mad. Mother av Hiven! how
+they cried, an’ the ould she-god grinnin’ above thim all so scornful!
+The dhrink was dyin’ out in me fast, an’ I was thinkin’ harder than the
+thoughts wud go through my head--thinkin’ how to get out, an’ all manner
+of nonsense as well. The women were rockin’ in rows, their di’mond belts
+clickin’, an’ the tears runnin’ out betune their hands, an’ the lights
+were goin’ lower an’ dharker. Thin there was a blaze like lightnin’ from
+the roof, an’ that showed me the inside av the palanquin, an’ at the end
+where my foot was, stood the livin’ spit an’ image o’ mysilf worked on
+the linin’. This man here, ut was.’
+
+He hunted in the folds of his pink cloak, ran a hand under one, and
+thrust into the firelight a foot-long embroidered presentment of the
+great god Krishna, playing on a flute. The heavy jowl, the staring eye,
+and the blue-black moustache of the god made up a far-off resemblance to
+Mulvaney.
+
+‘The blaze was gone in a wink, but the whole schame came to me thin. I
+believe I was mad too. I slid the off-shutter open an’ rowled out into
+the dhark behind the elephint-head pillar, tucked up my trousies to
+my knees, slipped off my boots an’ tuk a general hould av all the pink
+linin’ av the palanquin. Glory be, ut ripped out like a woman’s dhriss
+whin you tread on ut at a sergeants’ ball, an’ a bottle came with ut. I
+tuk the bottle an’ the next minut I was out av the dhark av the pillar,
+the pink linin’ wrapped round me most graceful, the music thunderin’
+like kettledrums, an’ a could draft blowin’ round my bare legs. By this
+hand that did ut, I was Khrishna tootlin’ on the flute--the god that the
+rig’mental chaplain talks about. A sweet sight I must ha’ looked. I knew
+my eyes were big, and my face was wax-white, an’ at the worst I must
+ha’ looked like a ghost. But they took me for the livin’ god. The music
+stopped, and the women were dead dumb an’ I crooked my legs like a
+shepherd on a china basin, an’ I did the ghost-waggle with my feet as I
+had done ut at the rig’mental theatre many times, an’ I slid acrost
+the width av that temple in front av the she-god tootlin’ on the beer
+bottle.’
+
+‘Wot did you toot?’ demanded Ortheris the practical.
+
+‘Me? Oh!’ Mulvaney sprang up, suiting the action to the word, and
+sliding gravely in front of us, a dilapidated but imposing deity in the
+half light. ‘I sang--
+
+    ‘Only say
+     You’ll be Mrs. Brallaghan.
+     Don’t say nay,
+     Charmin’ Judy Callaghan.
+
+I didn’t know me own voice when I sang. An’ oh! ‘twas pitiful to see the
+women. The darlin’s were down on their faces. Whin I passed the last
+wan I cud see her poor little fingers workin’ one in another as if she
+wanted to touch my feet. So I dhrew the tail av this pink overcoat over
+her head for the greater honour, an’ I slid into the dhark on the other
+side av the temple, and fetched up in the arms av a big fat priest. All
+I wanted was to get away clear. So I tuk him by his greasy throat
+an’ shut the speech out av him. “Out!” sez I. “Which way, ye fat
+heathen?”--“Oh!” sez he. “Man,” sez I. “White man, soldier man, common
+soldier man. Where in the name av confusion is the back door?” The women
+in the temple were still on their faces, an’ a young priest was holdin’
+out his arms above their heads.
+
+‘“This way,” sez my fat friend, duckin’ behind a big bull-god an’ divin’
+into a passage. Thin I remimbered that I must ha’ made the miraculous
+reputation av that temple for the next fifty years. “Not so fast,” I
+sez, an’ I held out both my hands wid a wink. That ould thief smiled
+like a father. I tuk him by the back av the neck in case he should be
+wishful to put a knife into me unbeknownst, an’ I ran him up an’ down
+the passage twice to collect his sensibilities! “Be quiet,” sez he, in
+English. “Now you talk sense,” I sez. “Fwhat ‘ll you give me for the
+use av that most iligant palanquin I have no time to take away?”--“Don’t
+tell,” sez he. “Is ut like?” sez I. “But ye might give me my railway
+fare. I’m far from my home an’ I’ve done you a service.” Bhoys, ‘tis a
+good thing to be a priest. The ould man niver throubled himself to dhraw
+from a bank. As I will prove to you subsequint, he philandered all round
+the slack av his clothes an’ began dribblin’ ten-rupee notes, old gold
+mohurs, and rupees into my hand till I could hould no more.’
+
+‘You lie!’ said Ortheris. ‘You’re mad or sunstrook. A native don’t give
+coin unless you cut it out o’ ‘im. ‘Tain’t nature.’
+
+‘Then my lie an’ my sunstroke is concealed under that lump av sod
+yonder,’ retorted Mulvaney unruffled, nodding across the scrub. ‘An’
+there’s a dale more in nature than your squidgy little legs have iver
+taken you to, Orth’ris, me son. Four hundred an’ thirty-four rupees
+by my reckonin’, AN’ a big fat gold necklace that I took from him as a
+remimbrancer, was our share in that business.’
+
+‘An’ ‘e give it you for love?’ said Ortheris.
+
+‘We were alone in that passage. Maybe I was a trifle too pressin’,
+but considher fwhat I had done for the good av the temple and the
+iverlastin’ joy av those women. ‘Twas cheap at the price. I wud ha’
+taken more if I cud ha’ found ut. I turned the ould man upside down
+at the last, but he was milked dhry. Thin he opened a door in another
+passage an’ I found mysilf up to my knees in Benares river-water, an’
+bad smellin’ ut is. More by token I had come out on the river-line close
+to the burnin’ ghat and contagious to a cracklin’ corpse. This was in
+the heart av the night, for I had been four hours in the temple. There
+was a crowd av boats tied up, so I tuk wan an’ wint across the river.
+Thin I came home acrost country, lyin’ up by day.’
+
+‘How on earth did you manage?’ I said.
+
+‘How did Sir Frederick Roberts get from Cabul to Candahar? He marched
+an’ he niver tould how near he was to breakin’ down. That’s why he is
+fwhat he is. An’ now--’ Mulvaney yawned portentously. ‘Now I will go an’
+give myself up for absince widout leave. It’s eight an’ twenty days an’
+the rough end of the colonel’s tongue in orderly room, any way you look
+at ut. But ‘tis cheap at the price.’
+
+‘Mulvaney,’ said I softly. ‘If there happens to be any sort of excuse
+that the colonel can in any way accept, I have a notion that you’ll get
+nothing more than the dressing-gown. The new recruits are in, and--’
+
+‘Not a word more, sorr. Is ut excuses the old man wants? ‘Tis not my
+way, but he shall have thim. I’ll tell him I was engaged in financial
+operations connected wid a church,’ and he flapped his way to
+cantonments and the cells, singing lustily--
+
+    ‘So they sent a corp’ril’s file,
+     And they put me in the gyard-room
+     For conduck unbecomin’ of a soldier.’
+
+And when he was lost in the midst of the moonlight we could hear the
+refrain--
+
+     Bang upon the big drum, bash upon the cymbals,
+     As we go marchin’ along, boys, oh!
+     For although in this campaign
+     There’s no whisky nor champagne,
+     We’ll keep our spirits goin’ with a song, boys!’
+
+Therewith he surrendered himself to the joyful and almost weeping guard,
+and was made much of by his fellows. But to the colonel he said that he
+had been smitten with sunstroke and had lain insensible on a villager’s
+cot for untold hours; and between laughter and goodwill the affair was
+smoothed over, so that he could, next day, teach the new recruits how to
+‘Fear God, Honour the Queen, Shoot Straight, and Keep Clean.’
+
+
+
+
+THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD
+
+
+     What did the colonel’s lady think?
+       Nobody never knew.
+     Somebody asked the sergeant’s wife
+       An’ she told ‘em true.
+     When you git to a man in the case
+       They’re like a row o’ pins,
+     For the colonel’s lady an’ Judy O’Grady
+       Are sisters under their skins.
+                          BARRACK-ROOM BALLAD.
+
+Al day I had followed at the heels of a pursuing army engaged on one of
+the finest battles that ever camp of exercise beheld. Thirty thousand
+troops had by the wisdom of the Government of India been turned loose
+over a few thousand square miles of country to practise in peace what
+they would never attempt in war. Consequently cavalry charged unshaken
+infantry at the trot. Infantry captured artillery by frontal attacks
+delivered in line of quarter columns, and mounted infantry skirmished
+up to the wheels of an armoured train which carried nothing more deadly
+than a twenty-five pounder Armstrong, two Nordenfeldts, and a few score
+volunteers all cased in three-eighths-inch boiler-plate. Yet it was a
+very lifelike camp. Operations did not cease at sundown; nobody knew
+the country and nobody spared man or horse. There was unending cavalry
+scouting and almost unending forced work over broken ground. The Army of
+the South had finally pierced the centre of the Army of the North, and
+was pouring through the gap hot-foot to capture a city of strategic
+importance. Its front extended fanwise, the sticks being represented by
+regiments strung out along the line of route backwards to the divisional
+transport columns and all the lumber that trails behind an army on the
+move. On its right the broken left of the Army of the North was flying
+in mass, chased by the Southern horse and hammered by the Southern guns
+till these had been pushed far beyond the limits of their last support.
+Then the flying sat down to rest, while the elated commandant of the
+pursuing force telegraphed that he held all in check and observation.
+
+Unluckily he did not observe that three miles to his right flank a
+flying column of Northern horse with a detachment of Ghoorkhas and
+British troops had been pushed round, as fast as the failing light
+allowed, to cut across the entire rear of the Southern Army, to break,
+as it were, all the ribs of the fan where they converged by striking
+at the transport, reserve ammunition, and artillery supplies. Their
+instructions were to go in, avoiding the few scouts who might not have
+been drawn off by the pursuit, and create sufficient excitement to
+impress the Southern Army with the wisdom of guarding their own flank
+and rear before they captured cities. It was a pretty manoeuvre, neatly
+carried out.
+
+Speaking for the second division of the Southern Army, our first
+intimation of the attack was at twilight, when the artillery were
+labouring in deep sand, most of the escort were trying to help them
+out, and the main body of the infantry had gone on. A Noah’s Ark of
+elephants, camels, and the mixed menagerie of an Indian transport-train
+bubbled and squealed behind the guns when there appeared from nowhere in
+particular British infantry to the extent of three companies, who sprang
+to the heads of the gun-horses and brought all to a standstill amid
+oaths and cheers.
+
+‘How’s that, umpire?’ said the major commanding the attack, and with one
+voice the drivers and limber gunners answered ‘Hout!’ while the colonel
+of artillery sputtered.
+
+‘All your scouts are charging our main body,’ said the major. ‘Your
+flanks are unprotected for two miles. I think we’ve broken the back of
+this division. And listen,--there go the Ghoorkhas!’
+
+A weak fire broke from the rear-guard more than a mile away, and was
+answered by cheerful howlings. The Ghoorkhas, who should have swung
+clear of the second division, had stepped on its tail in the dark, but
+drawing off hastened to reach the next line of attack, which lay almost
+parallel to us five or six miles away.
+
+Our column swayed and surged irresolutely,--three batteries, the
+divisional ammunition reserve, the baggage, and a section of the
+hospital and bearer corps. The commandant ruefully promised to report
+himself ‘cut up’ to the nearest umpire, and commending his cavalry and
+all other cavalry to the special care of Eblis, toiled on to resume
+touch with the rest of the division.
+
+‘We’ll bivouac here to-night,’ said the major, ‘I have a notion that the
+Ghoorkhas will get caught. They may want us to re-form on. Stand easy
+till the transport gets away.’
+
+A hand caught my beast’s bridle and led him out of the choking dust; a
+larger hand deftly canted me out of the saddle; and two of the hugest
+hands in the world received me sliding. Pleasant is the lot of the
+special correspondent who falls into such hands as those of Privates
+Mulvaney, Ortheris, and Learoyd.
+
+‘An’ that’s all right,’ said the Irishman calmly. ‘We thought we’d find
+you somewheres here by. Is there anything av yours in the transport?
+Orth’ris ‘ll fetch ut out.’
+
+Ortheris did ‘fetch ut out,’ from under the trunk of an elephant, in the
+shape of a servant and an animal both laden with medical comforts. The
+little man’s eyes sparkled.
+
+‘If the brutil an’ licentious soldiery av these parts gets sight av the
+thruck,’ said Mulvaney, making practised investigations, ‘they’ll loot
+ev’rything. They’re bein’ fed on iron-filin’s an’ dog-biscuit these
+days, but glory’s no compensation for a belly-ache. Praise be, we’re
+here to protect you, sorr. Beer, sausage, bread (soft an’ that’s a
+cur’osity), soup in a tin, whisky by the smell av ut, an’ fowls! Mother
+av Moses, but ye take the field like a confectioner! ‘Tis scand’lus.’
+
+‘Ere’s a orficer,’ said Ortheris significantly. ‘When the sergent’s done
+lushin’ the privit may clean the pot.’
+
+I bundled several things into Mulvaney’s haversack before the major’s
+hand fell on my shoulder and he said tenderly, ‘Requisitioned for the
+Queen’s service. Wolseley was quite wrong about special correspondents:
+they are the soldier’s best friends. Come and take pot-luck with us
+to-night.’
+
+And so it happened amid laughter and shoutings that my well-considered
+commissariat melted away to reappear later at the mess-table, which was
+a waterproof sheet spread on the ground. The flying column had taken
+three days’ rations with it, and there be few things nastier than
+government rations--especially when government is experimenting
+with German toys. Erbsenwurst, tinned beef of surpassing tinniness,
+compressed vegetables, and meat-biscuits may be nourishing, but what
+Thomas Atkins needs is bulk in his inside. The major, assisted by
+his brother officers, purchased goats for the camp and so made the
+experiment of no effect. Long before the fatigue-party sent to collect
+brushwood had returned, the men were settled down by their valises,
+kettles and pots had appeared from the surrounding country and were
+dangling over fires as the kid and the compressed vegetable bubbled
+together; there rose a cheerful clinking of mess-tins; outrageous
+demands for ‘a little more stuffin’ with that there liver-wing;’ and
+gust on gust of chaff as pointed as a bayonet and as delicate as a
+gun-butt.
+
+‘The boys are in a good temper,’ said the major. ‘They’ll be singing
+presently. Well, a night like this is enough to keep them happy.’
+
+Over our heads burned the wonderful Indian stars, which are not all
+pricked in on one plane, but, preserving an orderly perspective, draw
+the eye through the velvet darkness of the void up to the barred doors
+of heaven itself. The earth was a gray shadow more unreal than the sky.
+We could hear her breathing lightly in the pauses between the howling of
+the jackals, the movement of the wind in the tamarisks, and the fitful
+mutter of musketry-fire leagues away to the left. A native woman from
+some unseen hut began to sing, the mail-train thundered past on its
+way to Delhi, and a roosting crow cawed drowsily. Then there was a
+belt-loosening silence about the fires, and the even breathing of the
+crowded earth took up the story.
+
+The men, full fed, turned to tobacco and song,--their officers with
+them. The subaltern is happy who can win the approval of the musical
+critics in his regiment, and is honoured among the more intricate
+step-dancers. By him, as by him who plays cricket cleverly, Thomas
+Atkins will stand in time of need, when he will let a better officer
+go on alone. The ruined tombs of forgotten Mussulman saints heard the
+ballad of Agra Town, The Buffalo Battery, Marching to Kabul, The long,
+long Indian Day, The Place where the Punkah-coolie died, and that
+crashing chorus which announces,
+
+     Youth’s daring spirit, manhood’s fire,
+       Firm hand and eagle eye,
+     Must he acquire who would aspire
+       To see the gray boar die.
+
+To-day, of all those jovial thieves who appropriated my commissariat and
+lay and laughed round that water-proof sheet, not one remains. They went
+to camps that were not of exercise and battles without umpires. Burmah,
+the Soudan, and the frontier,--fever and fight,--took them in their
+time.
+
+I drifted across to the men’s fires in search of Mulvaney, whom I
+found strategically greasing his feet by the blaze. There is nothing
+particularly lovely in the sight of a private thus engaged after a long
+day’s march, but when you reflect on the exact proportion of the ‘might,
+majesty, dominion, and power’ of the British Empire which stands on
+those feet you take an interest in the proceedings.
+
+‘There’s a blister, bad luck to ut, on the heel,’ said Mulvaney. ‘I
+can’t touch ut. Prick ut out, little man.’
+
+Ortheris took out his house-wife, eased the trouble with a needle,
+stabbed Mulvaney in the calf with the same weapon, and was swiftly
+kicked into the fire.
+
+‘I’ve bruk the best av my toes over you, ye grinnin’ child av
+disruption,’ said Mulvaney, sitting cross-legged and nursing his feet;
+then seeing me, ‘Oh, ut’s you, sorr! Be welkim, an’ take that maraudin’
+scutt’s place. Jock, hold him down on the cindhers for a bit.’
+
+But Ortheris escaped and went elsewhere, as I took possession of the
+hollow he had scraped for himself and lined with his greatcoat. Learoyd
+on the other side of the fire grinned affably and in a minute fell fast
+asleep.
+
+‘There’s the height av politeness for you,’ said Mulvaney, lighting
+his pipe with a flaming branch. ‘But Jock’s eaten half a box av your
+sardines at wan gulp, an’ I think the tin too. What’s the best wid you,
+sorr, an’ how did you happen to be on the losin’ side this day whin we
+captured you?’
+
+‘The Army of the South is winning all along the line,’ I said.
+
+‘Then that line’s the hangman’s rope, savin’ your presence. You’ll
+learn to-morrow how we rethreated to dhraw thim on before we made thim
+trouble, an’ that’s what a woman does. By the same tokin, we’ll be
+attacked before the dawnin’ an’ ut would be betther not to slip your
+boots. How do I know that? By the light av pure reason. Here are three
+companies av us ever so far inside av the enemy’s flank an’ a crowd av
+roarin’, tarin’, squealin’ cavalry gone on just to turn out the whole
+hornet’s nest av them. Av course the enemy will pursue, by brigades like
+as not, an’ thin we’ll have to run for ut. Mark my words. I am av the
+opinion av Polonius whin he said, “Don’t fight wid ivry scutt for the
+pure joy av fightin’, but if you do, knock the nose av him first an’
+frequint.” We ought to ha’ gone on an’ helped the Ghoorkhas.’
+
+‘But what do you know about Polonius?’ I demanded. This was a new side
+of Mulvaney’s character.
+
+‘All that Shakespeare iver wrote an’ a dale more that the gallery
+shouted,’ said the man of war, carefully lacing his boots. ‘Did I not
+tell you av Silver’s theatre in Dublin, whin I was younger than I am now
+an’ a patron av the drama? Ould Silver wud never pay actor-man or woman
+their just dues, an’ by consequince his comp’nies was collapsible at the
+last minut. Thin the bhoys wud clamour to take a part, an’ oft as not
+ould Silver made them pay for the fun. Faith, I’ve seen Hamlut played
+wid a new black eye an’ the queen as full as a cornucopia. I remimber
+wanst Hogin that ‘listed in the Black Tyrone an’ was shot in South
+Africa, he sejuced ould Silver into givin’ him Hamlut’s part instid av
+me that had a fine fancy for rhetoric in those days. Av course I wint
+into the gallery an’ began to fill the pit wid other people’s hats,
+an’ I passed the time av day to Hogin walkin’ through Denmark like a
+hamstrung mule wid a pall on his back. “Hamlut,” sez I, “there’s a hole
+in your heel. Pull up your shtockin’s, Hamlut,” sez I, “Hamlut, Hamlut,
+for the love av decincy dhrop that skull an’ pull up your shtockin’s.”
+ The whole house begun to tell him that. He stopped his soliloquishms
+mid-between. “My shtockin’s may be comin’ down or they may not,” sez
+he, screwin’ his eye into the gallery, for well he knew who I was. “But
+afther this performince is over me an’ the Ghost ‘ll trample the tripes
+out av you, Terence, wid your ass’s bray!” An’ that’s how I come to know
+about Hamlut. Eyah! Those days, those days! Did you iver have onendin’
+devilmint an’ nothin’ to pay for it in your life, sorr?’
+
+‘Never, without having to pay,’ I said.
+
+‘That’s thrue! ‘Tis mane whin you considher on ut; but ut’s the same wid
+horse or fut. A headache if you dhrink, an’ a belly-ache if you eat too
+much, an’ a heart-ache to kape all down. Faith, the beast only gets the
+colic, an’ he’s the lucky man.’
+
+He dropped his head and stared into the fire, fingering his moustache
+the while. From the far side of the bivouac the voice of Corbet-Nolan,
+senior subaltern of B company, uplifted itself in an ancient and much
+appreciated song of sentiment, the men moaning melodiously behind him.
+
+     The north wind blew coldly, she drooped from that hour,
+     My own little Kathleen, my sweet little Kathleen,
+     Kathleen, my Kathleen, Kathleen O’Moore!
+
+With forty-five O’s in the last word: even at that distance you might
+have cut the soft South Irish accent with a shovel.
+
+‘For all we take we must pay, but the price is cruel high,’ murmured
+Mulvaney when the chorus had ceased.
+
+‘What’s the trouble?’ I said gently, for I knew that he was a man of an
+inextinguishable sorrow.
+
+‘Hear now,’ said he. ‘Ye know what I am now. _I_ know what I mint to be
+at the beginnin’ av my service. I’ve tould you time an’ again, an’ what
+I have not Dinah Shadd has. An’ what am I? Oh, Mary Mother av Hiven, an
+ould dhrunken, untrustable baste av a privit that has seen the reg’ment
+change out from colonel to drummer-boy, not wanst or twice, but scores
+av times! Ay, scores! An’ me not so near gettin’ promotion as in the
+first! An’ me livin’ on an’ kapin’ clear av clink, not by my own good
+conduck, but the kindness av some orf’cer-bhoy young enough to be son
+to me! Do I not know ut? Can I not tell whin I’m passed over at p’rade,
+tho’ I’m rockin’ full av liquor an’ ready to fall all in wan piece,
+such as even a suckin’ child might see, bekaze, “Oh, ‘tis only ould
+Mulvaney!” An’ whin I’m let off in ord’ly-room through some thrick of
+the tongue an’ a ready answer an’ the ould man’s mercy, is ut smilin’
+I feel whin I fall away an’ go back to Dinah Shadd, thryin’ to carry ut
+all off as a joke? Not I! ‘Tis hell to me, dumb hell through ut all;
+an’ next time whin the fit comes I will be as bad again. Good cause the
+reg’ment has to know me for the best soldier in ut. Better cause have I
+to know mesilf for the worst man. I’m only fit to tache the new drafts
+what I’ll niver learn mesilf; an’ I am sure, as tho’ I heard ut, that
+the minut wan av these pink-eyed recruities gets away from my “Mind
+ye now,” an’ “Listen to this, Jim, bhoy,”--sure I am that the
+sergint houlds me up to him for a warnin’. So I tache, as they say at
+musketry-instruction, by direct and ricochet fire. Lord be good to me,
+for I have stud some throuble!’
+
+‘Lie down and go to sleep,’ said I, not being able to comfort or advise.
+‘You’re the best man in the regiment, and, next to Ortheris, the biggest
+fool. Lie down and wait till we’re attacked. What force will they turn
+out? Guns, think you?’
+
+‘Try that wid your lorrds an’ ladies, twistin’ an’ turnin’ the talk,
+tho’ you mint ut well. Ye cud say nothin’ to help me, an’ yet ye niver
+knew what cause I had to be what I am.’
+
+‘Begin at the beginning and go on to the end,’ I said royally. ‘But rake
+up the fire a bit first.’
+
+I passed Ortheris’s bayonet for a poker.
+
+‘That shows how little we know what we do,’ said Mulvaney, putting it
+aside. ‘Fire takes all the heart out av the steel, an’ the next time,
+may be, that our little man is fighting for his life his bradawl
+‘ll break, an’ so you’ll ha’ killed him, manin’ no more than to kape
+yourself warm. ‘Tis a recruity’s thrick that. Pass the clanin’-rod,
+sorr.’
+
+I snuggled down abased; and after an interval the voice of Mulvaney
+began.
+
+‘Did I iver tell you how Dinah Shadd came to be wife av mine?’
+
+I dissembled a burning anxiety that I had felt for some months--ever
+since Dinah Shadd, the strong, the patient, and the infinitely tender,
+had of her own good love and free will washed a shirt for me, moving in
+a barren land where washing was not.
+
+‘I can’t remember,’ I said casually. ‘Was it before or after you made
+love to Annie Bragin, and got no satisfaction?’
+
+The story of Annie Bragin is written in another place. It is one of the
+many less respectable episodes in Mulvaney’s chequered career.
+
+‘Before--before--long before, was that business av Annie Bragin an’ the
+corp’ril’s ghost. Niver woman was the worse for me whin I had married
+Dinah. There’s a time for all things, an’ I know how to kape all things
+in place--barrin’ the dhrink, that kapes me in my place wid no hope av
+comin’ to be aught else.’
+
+‘Begin at the beginning,’ I insisted. ‘Mrs. Mulvaney told me that you
+married her when you were quartered in Krab Bokhar barracks.’
+
+‘An’ the same is a cess-pit,’ said Mulvaney piously. ‘She spoke thrue,
+did Dinah. ‘Twas this way. Talkin’ av that, have ye iver fallen in love,
+sorr?’
+
+I preserved the silence of the damned. Mulvaney continued--
+
+‘Thin I will assume that ye have not. _I_ did. In the days av my youth,
+as I have more than wanst tould you, I was a man that filled the eye an’
+delighted the sowl av women. Niver man was hated as I have bin. Niver
+man was loved as I--no, not within half a day’s march av ut! For the
+first five years av my service, whin I was what I wud give my sowl to be
+now, I tuk whatever was within my reach an’ digested ut--an that’s
+more than most men can say. Dhrink I tuk, an’ ut did me no harm. By the
+Hollow av Hiven, I cud play wid four women at wanst, an’ kape them from
+findin’ out anythin’ about the other three, an’ smile like a full-blown
+marigold through ut all. Dick Coulhan, av the battery we’ll have down on
+us to-night, could drive his team no betther than I mine, an’ I hild
+the worser cattle! An’ so I lived, an’ so I was happy till afther
+that business wid Annie Bragin--she that turned me off as cool as a
+meat-safe, an’ taught me where I stud in the mind av an honest woman.
+‘Twas no sweet dose to swallow.
+
+‘Afther that I sickened awhile an’ tuk thought to my reg’mental work;
+conceiting mesilf I wud study an’ be a sergint, an’ a major-gineral
+twinty minutes afther that. But on top av my ambitiousness there was an
+empty place in my sowl, an’ me own opinion av mesilf cud not fill ut.
+Sez I to mesilf, “Terence, you’re a great man an’ the best set-up in the
+reg’mint. Go on an’ get promotion.” Sez mesilf to me, “What for?” Sez
+I to mesilf, “For the glory av ut!” Sez mesilf to me, “Will that fill
+these two strong arrums av yours, Terence?” “Go to the devil,” sez I
+to mesilf. “Go to the married lines,” sez mesilf to me. “‘Tis the same
+thing,” sez I to mesilf. “Av you’re the same man, ut is,” said mesilf
+to me; an’ wid that I considhered on ut a long while. Did you iver feel
+that way, sorr?’
+
+I snored gently, knowing that if Mulvaney were uninterrupted he would
+go on. The clamour from the bivouac fires beat up to the stars, as the
+rival singers of the companies were pitted against each other.
+
+‘So I felt that way an’ a bad time ut was. Wanst, bein’ a fool, I
+wint into the married lines more for the sake av spakin’ to our ould
+colour-sergint Shadd than for any thruck wid women-folk. I was a
+corp’ril then--rejuced aftherwards, but a corp’ril then. I’ve got a
+photograft av mesilf to prove ut. “You’ll take a cup av tay wid us?” sez
+Shadd. “I will that,” I sez, “tho’ tay is not my divarsion.”
+
+‘“‘Twud be better for you if ut were,” sez ould Mother Shadd, an’
+she had ought to know, for Shadd, in the ind av his service, dhrank
+bung-full each night.
+
+‘Wid that I tuk off my gloves--there was pipe-clay in thim, so that they
+stud alone--an’ pulled up my chair, lookin’ round at the china ornaments
+an’ bits av things in the Shadds’ quarters. They were things that
+belonged to a man, an’ no camp-kit, here to-day an’ dishipated next.
+“You’re comfortable in this place, sergint,” sez I. “‘Tis the wife
+that did ut, boy,” sez he, pointin’ the stem av his pipe to ould Mother
+Shadd, an’ she smacked the top av his bald head apon the compliment.
+“That manes you want money,” sez she.
+
+‘An’ thin--an’ thin whin the kettle was to be filled, Dinah came in--my
+Dinah--her sleeves rowled up to the elbow an’ her hair in a winkin’
+glory over her forehead, the big blue eyes beneath twinklin’ like
+stars on a frosty night, an’ the tread av her two feet lighter than
+waste-paper from the colonel’s basket in ord’ly-room whin ut’s emptied.
+Bein’ but a shlip av a girl she went pink at seein’ me, an’ I twisted me
+moustache an’ looked at a picture forninst the wall. Niver show a
+woman that ye care the snap av a finger for her, an’ begad she’ll come
+bleatin’ to your boot-heels!’
+
+‘I suppose that’s why you followed Annie Bragin till everybody in the
+married quarters laughed at you,’ said I, remembering that unhallowed
+wooing and casting off the disguise of drowsiness.
+
+‘I’m layin’ down the gin’ral theory av the attack,’ said Mulvaney,
+driving his boot into the dying fire. ‘If you read the Soldier’s
+Pocket Book, which niver any soldier reads, you’ll see that there
+are exceptions. Whin Dinah was out av the door (an’ ‘twas as tho’ the
+sunlight had shut too)--“Mother av Hiven, sergint,” sez I, “but is that
+your daughter?”--“I’ve believed that way these eighteen years,” sez ould
+Shadd, his eyes twinklin’; “but Mrs. Shadd has her own opinion, like
+iv’ry woman,”--“‘Tis wid yours this time, for a mericle,” sez Mother
+Shadd. “Thin why in the name av fortune did I niver see her before?”
+ sez I. “Bekaze you’ve been thrapesin’ round wid the married women these
+three years past. She was a bit av a child till last year, an’ she shot
+up wid the spring,” sez ould Mother Shadd. “I’ll thrapese no more,” sez
+I. “D’you mane that?” sez ould Mother Shadd, lookin’ at me side-ways
+like a hen looks at a hawk whin the chickens are runnin’ free. “Try me,
+an’ tell,” sez I. Wid that I pulled on my gloves, dhrank off the tay,
+an’ went out av the house as stiff as at gin’ral p’rade, for well I knew
+that Dinah Shadd’s eyes were in the small av my back out av the scullery
+window. Faith! that was the only time I mourned I was not a cav’lry-man
+for the pride av the spurs to jingle.
+
+‘I wint out to think, an’ I did a powerful lot av thinkin’, but ut all
+came round to that shlip av a girl in the dotted blue dhress, wid the
+blue eyes an’ the sparkil in them. Thin I kept off canteen, an’ I kept
+to the married quarthers, or near by, on the chanst av meetin’ Dinah.
+Did I meet her? Oh, my time past, did I not; wid a lump in my throat as
+big as my valise an’ my heart goin’ like a farrier’s forge on a Saturday
+morning? ‘Twas “Good day to ye, Miss Dinah,” an’ “Good day t’you,
+corp’ril,” for a week or two, and divil a bit further could I get bekaze
+av the respect I had to that girl that I cud ha’ broken betune finger
+an’ thumb.’
+
+Here I giggled as I recalled the gigantic figure of Dinah Shadd when she
+handed me my shirt.
+
+‘Ye may laugh,’ grunted Mulvaney. ‘But I’m speakin’ the trut’, an
+‘tis you that are in fault. Dinah was a girl that wud ha’ taken the
+imperiousness out av the Duchess av Clonmel in those days. Flower hand,
+foot av shod air, an’ the eyes av the livin’ mornin’ she had that is my
+wife to-day--ould Dinah, and niver aught else than Dinah Shadd to me.
+
+‘’Twas after three weeks standin’ off an’ on, an’ niver makin’ headway
+excipt through the eyes, that a little drummer-boy grinned in me face
+whin I had admonished him wid the buckle av my belt for riotin’ all over
+the place. “An’ I’m not the only wan that doesn’t kape to barricks,”
+ sez he. I tuk him by the scruff av his neck,--my heart was hung on a
+hair-thrigger those days, you will onderstand--an’ “Out wid ut,” sez I,
+“or I’ll lave no bone av you unbreakable.”--“Speak to Dempsey,” sez he
+howlin’. “Dempsey which?” sez I, “ye unwashed limb av Satan.”--“Av the
+Bob-tailed Dhragoons,” sez he. “He’s seen her home from her aunt’s
+house in the civil lines four times this fortnight.”--“Child!” sez
+I, dhroppin’ him, “your tongue’s stronger than your body. Go to your
+quarters. I’m sorry I dhressed you down.”
+
+‘At that I went four ways to wanst huntin’ Dempsey. I was mad to think
+that wid all my airs among women I shud ha’ been chated by a basin-faced
+fool av a cav’lry-man not fit to trust on a trunk. Presintly I found
+him in our lines--the Bobtails was quartered next us--an’ a tallowy,
+topheavy son av a she-mule he was wid his big brass spurs an’ his
+plastrons on his epigastrons an’ all. But he niver flinched a hair.
+
+‘“A word wid you, Dempsey,” sez I. “You’ve walked wid Dinah Shadd four
+times this fortnight gone.”
+
+‘“What’s that to you?” sez he. “I’ll walk forty times more, an’ forty on
+top av that, ye shovel-futted clod-breakin’ infantry lance-corp’ril.”
+
+‘Before I cud gyard he had his gloved fist home on my cheek an’ down
+I went full-sprawl. “Will that content you?” sez he, blowin’ on his
+knuckles for all the world like a Scots Greys orf’cer. “Content!” sez
+I. “For your own sake, man, take off your spurs, peel your jackut, an’
+onglove. ‘Tis the beginnin’ av the overture; stand up!”
+
+‘He stud all he know, but he niver peeled his jackut, an’ his shoulders
+had no fair play. I was fightin’ for Dinah Shadd an’ that cut on my
+cheek. What hope had he forninst me? “Stand up,” sez I, time an’ again
+whin he was beginnin’ to quarter the ground an’ gyard high an’ go large.
+“This isn’t ridin’-school,” I sez. “O man, stand up an’ let me get in
+at ye.” But whin I saw he wud be runnin’ about, I grup his shtock in
+my left an’ his waist-belt in my right an’ swung him clear to my right
+front, head undher, he hammerin’ my nose till the wind was knocked out
+av him on the bare ground. “Stand up,” sez I, “or I’ll kick your head
+into your chest!” and I wud ha’ done ut too, so ragin’ mad I was.
+
+‘“My collar-bone’s bruk,” sez he. “Help me back to lines. I’ll walk wid
+her no more.” So I helped him back.’
+
+‘And was his collar-bone broken?’ I asked, for I fancied that only
+Learoyd could neatly accomplish that terrible throw.
+
+‘He pitched on his left shoulder-point. Ut was. Next day the news was in
+both barricks, an’ whin I met Dinah Shadd wid a cheek on me like all the
+reg’mintal tailor’s samples there was no “Good mornin’, corp’ril,”
+ or aught else. “An’ what have I done, Miss Shadd,” sez I, very bould,
+plantin’ mesilf forninst her, “that ye should not pass the time of day?”
+
+‘“Ye’ve half-killed rough-rider Dempsey,” sez she, her dear blue eyes
+fillin’ up.
+
+‘“May be,” sez I. “Was he a friend av yours that saw ye home four times
+in the fortnight?”
+
+‘“Yes,” sez she, but her mouth was down at the corners. “An’--an’ what’s
+that to you?” she sez.
+
+‘“Ask Dempsey,” sez I, purtendin’ to go away.
+
+‘“Did you fight for me then, ye silly man?” she sez, tho’ she knew ut
+all along.
+
+‘“Who else?” sez I, an’ I tuk wan pace to the front.
+
+‘“I wasn’t worth ut,” sez she, fingerin’ in her apron,
+
+‘“That’s for me to say,” sez I. “Shall I say ut?”
+
+‘“Yes,” sez she in a saint’s whisper, an’ at that I explained mesilf;
+and she tould me what ivry man that is a man, an’ many that is a woman,
+hears wanst in his life.
+
+‘“But what made ye cry at startin’, Dinah, darlin’?’” sez I.
+
+‘“Your--your bloody cheek,” sez she, duckin’ her little head down on my
+sash (I was on duty for the day) an’ whimperin’ like a sorrowful angil.
+
+‘Now a man cud take that two ways. I tuk ut as pleased me best an’ my
+first kiss wid ut. Mother av Innocence! but I kissed her on the tip
+av the nose an’ undher the eye; an’ a girl that let’s a kiss come
+tumble-ways like that has never been kissed before. Take note av that,
+sorr. Thin we wint hand in hand to ould Mother Shadd like two little
+childher, an’ she said ‘twas no bad thing, an’ ould Shadd nodded behind
+his pipe, an’ Dinah ran away to her own room. That day I throd on
+rollin’ clouds. All earth was too small to hould me. Begad, I cud ha’
+hiked the sun out av the sky for a live coal to my pipe, so magnificent
+I was. But I tuk recruities at squad-drill instid, an’ began wid general
+battalion advance whin I shud ha’ been balance-steppin’ them. Eyah! that
+day! that day!’
+
+A very long pause. ‘Well?’ said I.
+
+‘’Twas all wrong,’ said Mulvaney, with an enormous sigh. ‘An’ I know
+that ev’ry bit av ut was my own foolishness. That night I tuk maybe the
+half av three pints--not enough to turn the hair of a man in his natural
+senses. But I was more than half drunk wid pure joy, an’ that canteen
+beer was so much whisky to me. I can’t tell how it came about, but
+BEKAZE I had no thought for anywan except Dinah, BEKAZE I hadn’t slipped
+her little white arms from my neck five minuts, BEKAZE the breath of her
+kiss was not gone from my mouth, I must go through the married lines
+on my way to quarters an’ I must stay talkin’ to a red-headed Mullingar
+heifer av a girl, Judy Sheehy, that was daughter to Mother Sheehy, the
+wife of Nick Sheehy, the canteen-sergint--the Black Curse av Shielygh be
+on the whole brood that are above groun’ this day!
+
+“‘An’ what are ye houldin’ your head that high for, corp’ril?” sez Judy.
+“Come in an’ thry a cup av tay,” she sez, standin’ in the doorway. Bein’
+an ontrustable fool, an’ thinkin’ av anything but tay, I wint.
+
+‘“Mother’s at canteen,” sez Judy, smoothin’ the hair av hers that was
+like red snakes, an’ lookin’ at me cornerways out av her green cats’
+eyes. “Ye will not mind, corp’ril?”
+
+‘“I can endure,” sez I; ould Mother Sheehy bein’ no divarsion av mine,
+nor her daughter too. Judy fetched the tea things an’ put thim on the
+table, leanin’ over me very close to get thim square. I dhrew back,
+thinkin’ av Dinah.
+
+‘“Is ut afraid you are av a girl alone?” sez Judy.
+
+‘“No,” sez I. “Why should I be?”
+
+‘“That rests wid the girl,” sez Judy, dhrawin’ her chair next to mine.
+
+‘“Thin there let ut rest,” sez I; an’ thinkin’ I’d been a trifle
+onpolite, I sez, “The tay’s not quite sweet enough for my taste. Put
+your little finger in the cup, Judy. ‘Twill make ut necthar.”
+
+‘“What’s necthar?” sez she.
+
+“‘Somethin’ very sweet,” sez I; an’ for the sinful life av me I cud not
+help lookin’ at her out av the corner av my eye, as I was used to look
+at a woman.
+
+‘“Go on wid ye, corp’ril,” sez she. “You’re a flirrt.”
+
+‘“On me sowl I’m not,” sez I.
+
+‘“Then you’re a cruel handsome man, an’ that’s worse,” sez she, heaving
+big sighs an’ lookin’ crossways.
+
+‘“You know your own mind,” sez I.
+
+‘“‘Twud be better for me if I did not,” she sez.
+
+‘“There’s a dale to be said on both sides av that,” sez I, unthinkin’.
+
+‘“Say your own part av ut, then, Terence, darlin’,” sez she; “for begad
+I’m thinkin’ I’ve said too much or too little for an honest girl,” an’
+wid that she put her arms round my neck an’ kissed me.
+
+‘“There’s no more to be said afther that,” sez I, kissin’ her back
+again--Oh the mane scutt that I was, my head ringin’ wid Dinah Shadd!
+How does ut come about, sorr, that when a man has put the comether on
+wan woman, he’s sure bound to put it on another? ‘Tis the same thing at
+musketry. Wan day ivry shot goes wide or into the bank, an’ the next,
+lay high lay low, sight or snap, ye can’t get off the bull’s-eye for ten
+shots runnin’.’
+
+‘That only happens to a man who has had a good deal of experience. He
+does it without thinking,’ I replied.
+
+‘Thankin’ you for the complimint, sorr, ut may be so. But I’m doubtful
+whether you mint ut for a complimint. Hear now; I sat there wid Judy
+on my knee tellin’ me all manner av nonsinse an’ only sayin’ “yes” an’
+“no,” when I’d much better ha’ kept tongue betune teeth. An’ that was
+not an hour afther I had left Dinah! What I was thinkin’ av I
+cannot say. Presintly, quiet as a cat, ould Mother Sheehy came in
+velvet-dhrunk. She had her daughter’s red hair, but ‘twas bald in
+patches, an’ I cud see in her wicked ould face, clear as lightnin’, what
+Judy wud be twenty years to come. I was for jumpin’ up, but Judy niver
+moved.
+
+‘“Terence has promust, mother,” sez she, an’ the could sweat bruk out
+all over me. Ould Mother Sheehy sat down of a heap an’ began playin’ wid
+the cups. “Thin you’re a well-matched pair,” she sez very thick. “For
+he’s the biggest rogue that iver spoiled the queen’s shoe-leather” an’--
+
+‘“I’m off, Judy,” sez I. “Ye should not talk nonsinse to your mother.
+Get her to bed, girl.”
+
+‘“Nonsinse!” sez the ould woman, prickin’ up her ears like a cat an’
+grippin’ the table-edge. “‘Twill be the most nonsinsical nonsinse for
+you, ye grinnin’ badger, if nonsinse ‘tis. Git clear, you. I’m goin’ to
+bed.”
+
+‘I ran out into the dhark, my head in a stew an’ my heart sick, but I
+had sinse enough to see that I’d brought ut all on mysilf. “It’s this to
+pass the time av day to a panjandhrum av hell-cats,” sez I. “What I’ve
+said, an’ what I’ve not said do not matther. Judy an’ her dam will hould
+me for a promust man, an’ Dinah will give me the go, an’ I desarve ut. I
+will go an’ get dhrunk,” sez I, “an’ forget about ut, for ‘tis plain I’m
+not a marrin’ man.”
+
+‘On my way to canteen I ran against Lascelles, colour-sergint that was
+av E Comp’ny, a hard, hard man, wid a torment av a wife. “You’ve the
+head av a drowned man on your shoulders,” sez he; “an’ you’re goin’
+where you’ll get a worse wan. Come back,” sez he. “Let me go,” sez I.
+“I’ve thrown my luck over the wall wid my own hand!”--“Then that’s not
+the way to get ut back again,” sez he. “Have out wid your throuble, ye
+fool-bhoy.” An’ I tould him how the matther was.
+
+‘He sucked in his lower lip. “You’ve been thrapped,” sez he. “Ju Sheehy
+wud be the betther for a man’s name to hers as soon as can. An’ we
+thought ye’d put the comether on her,--that’s the natural vanity of the
+baste, Terence, you’re a big born fool, but you’re not bad enough
+to marry into that comp’ny. If you said anythin’, an’ for all your
+protestations I’m sure ye did--or did not, which is worse,--eat ut
+all--lie like the father of all lies, but come out av ut free av Judy.
+Do I not know what ut is to marry a woman that was the very spit
+an’ image av Judy whin she was young? I’m gettin’ old an’ I’ve larnt
+patience, but you, Terence, you’d raise hand on Judy an’ kill her in a
+year. Never mind if Dinah gives you the go, you’ve desarved ut; never
+mind if the whole reg’mint laughs you all day. Get shut av Judy an’ her
+mother. They can’t dhrag you to church, but if they do, they’ll dhrag
+you to hell. Go back to your quarters and lie down,” sez he. Thin over
+his shoulder, “You MUST ha’ done with thim.”
+
+‘Next day I wint to see Dinah, but there was no tucker in me as I
+walked. I knew the throuble wud come soon enough widout any handlin’ av
+mine, an’ I dreaded ut sore.
+
+‘I heard Judy callin’ me, but I hild straight on to the Shadds’
+quarthers, an’ Dinah wud ha’ kissed me but I put her back.
+
+‘“Whin all’s said, darlin’,” sez I, “you can give ut me if ye will, tho’
+I misdoubt ‘twill be so easy to come by then.”
+
+‘I had scarce begun to put the explanation into shape before Judy an’
+her mother came to the door. I think there was a verandah, but I’m
+forgettin’.
+
+‘“Will ye not step in?” sez Dinah, pretty and polite, though the Shadds
+had no dealin’s with the Sheehys. Ould Mother Shadd looked up quick, an’
+she was the fust to see the throuble; for Dinah was her daughter.
+
+‘“I’m pressed for time to-day,” sez Judy as bould as brass; “an’ I’ve
+only come for Terence,--my promust man. ‘Tis strange to find him here
+the day afther the day.”
+
+‘Dinah looked at me as though I had hit her, an’ I answered straight.
+
+‘“There was some nonsinse last night at the Sheehys’ quarthers, an’
+Judy’s carryin’ on the joke, darlin’,” sez I.
+
+‘“At the Sheehys’ quarthers?” sez Dinah very slow, an’ Judy cut in wid:
+“He was there from nine till ten, Dinah Shadd, an’ the betther half av
+that time I was sittin’ on his knee, Dinah Shadd. Ye may look and ye may
+look an’ ye may look me up an’ down, but ye won’t look away that Terence
+is my promust man. Terence, darlin’, ‘tis time for us to be comin’
+home.”
+
+‘Dinah Shadd niver said word to Judy. “Ye left me at half-past
+eight,” she sez to me, “an I niver thought that ye’d leave me for
+Judy,--promises or no promises. Go back wid her, you that have to be
+fetched by a girl! I’m done with you,” sez she, and she ran into her own
+room, her mother followin’. So I was alone wid those two women and at
+liberty to spake my sentiments.
+
+‘“Judy Sheehy,” sez I, “if you made a fool av me betune the lights you
+shall not do ut in the day. I niver promised you words or lines.”
+
+‘“You lie,” sez ould Mother Sheehy, “an’ may ut choke you where you
+stand!” She was far gone in dhrink.
+
+‘“An’ tho’ ut choked me where I stud I’d not change,” sez I. “Go home,
+Judy. I take shame for a decent girl like you dhraggin’ your mother out
+bare-headed on this errand. Hear now, and have ut for an answer. I gave
+my word to Dinah Shadd yesterday, an’, more blame to me, I was wid you
+last night talkin’ nonsinse but nothin’ more. You’ve chosen to thry to
+hould me on ut. I will not be held thereby for anythin’ in the world. Is
+that enough?”
+
+‘Judy wint pink all over. “An’ I wish you joy av the perjury,” sez she,
+duckin’ a curtsey. “You’ve lost a woman that would ha’ wore her hand to
+the bone for your pleasure; an’ ‘deed, Terence, ye were not thrapped...”
+ Lascelles must ha’ spoken plain to her. “I am such as Dinah is--‘deed
+I am! Ye’ve lost a fool av a girl that’ll niver look at you again, an’
+ye’ve lost what he niver had,--your common honesty. If you manage your
+men as you manage your love-makin’, small wondher they call you the
+worst corp’ril in the comp’ny. Come away, mother,” sez she.
+
+‘But divil a fut would the ould woman budge! “D’you hould by that?” sez
+she, peerin’ up under her thick gray eyebrows.
+
+‘“Ay, an’ wud,” sez I, “tho’ Dinah give me the go twinty times. I’ll
+have no thruck with you or yours,” sez I. “Take your child away, ye
+shameless woman.”
+
+“‘An’ am I shameless?” sez she, bringin’ her hands up above her head.
+“Thin what are you, ye lyin’, schamin’, weak-kneed, dhirty-souled son
+av a sutler? Am _I_ shameless? Who put the open shame on me an’ my child
+that we shud go beggin’ through the lines in the broad daylight for
+the broken word of a man? Double portion of my shame be on you, Terence
+Mulvaney, that think yourself so strong! By Mary and the saints, by
+blood and water an’ by ivry sorrow that came into the world since the
+beginnin’, the black blight fall on you and yours, so that you may niver
+be free from pain for another when ut’s not your own! May your heart
+bleed in your breast drop by drop wid all your friends laughin’ at the
+bleedin’! Strong you think yourself? May your strength be a curse to you
+to dhrive you into the divil’s hands against your own will! Clear-eyed
+you are? May your eyes see clear ivry step av the dark path you take
+till the hot cindhers av hell put thim out! May the ragin’ dry thirst
+in my own ould bones go to you that you shall niver pass bottle full
+nor glass empty. God preserve the light av your onderstandin’ to you,
+my jewel av a bhoy, that ye may niver forget what you mint to be an’ do,
+whin you’re wallowin’ in the muck! May ye see the betther and follow the
+worse as long as there’s breath in your body; an’ may ye die quick in
+a strange land, watchin’ your death before ut takes you, an’ enable to
+stir hand or foot!”
+
+‘I heard a scufflin’ in the room behind, and thin Dinah Shadd’s hand
+dhropped into mine like a rose-leaf into a muddy road.
+
+‘“The half av that I’ll take,” sez she, “an’ more too if I can. Go home,
+ye silly talkin’ woman,--go home an’ confess.”
+
+‘“Come away! Come away!” sez Judy, pullin’ her mother by the shawl.
+“‘Twas none av Terence’s fault. For the love av Mary stop the talkin’!”
+
+“‘An’ you!” said ould Mother Sheehy, spinnin’ round forninst Dinah.
+“Will ye take the half av that man’s load? Stand off from him,
+Dinah Shadd, before he takes you down too--you that look to be a
+quarther-master-sergeant’s wife in five years. You look too high, child.
+You shall WASH for the quarther-master-sergeant, whin he plases to give
+you the job out av charity; but a privit’s wife you shall be to the end,
+an’ ivry sorrow of a privit’s wife you shall know and niver a joy but
+wan, that shall go from you like the running tide from a rock. The pain
+av bearin’ you shall know but niver the pleasure av giving the breast;
+an’ you shall put away a man-child into the common ground wid niver a
+priest to say a prayer over him, an’ on that man-child ye shall think
+ivry day av your life. Think long, Dinah Shadd, for you’ll niver have
+another tho’ you pray till your knees are bleedin’. The mothers av
+childher shall mock you behind your back when you’re wringing over the
+wash-tub. You shall know what ut is to help a dhrunken husband home an’
+see him go to the gyard-room. Will that plase you, Dinah Shadd, that
+won’t be seen talkin’ to my daughter? You shall talk to worse than
+Judy before all’s over. The sergints’ wives shall look down on you
+contemptuous, daughter av a sergint, an’ you shall cover ut all up wid a
+smiling face when your heart’s burstin’. Stand off av him, Dinah Shadd,
+for I’ve put the Black Curse of Shielygh upon him an’ his own mouth
+shall make ut good.”
+
+‘She pitched forward on her head an’ began foamin’ at the mouth. Dinah
+Shadd ran out wid water, an’ Judy dhragged the ould woman into the
+verandah till she sat up.
+
+‘“I’m old an’ forlore,” she sez, thremblin’ an’ cryin’, “and ‘tis like I
+say a dale more than I mane.”
+
+‘“When you’re able to walk,--go,” says ould Mother Shadd. “This house
+has no place for the likes av you that have cursed my daughter.”
+
+‘“Eyah!” said the ould woman. “Hard words break no bones, an’ Dinah
+Shadd’ll kape the love av her husband till my bones are green corn. Judy
+darlin’, I misremember what I came here for. Can you lend us the bottom
+av a taycup av tay, Mrs. Shadd?”
+
+‘But Judy dhragged her off cryin’ as tho’ her heart wud break. An’ Dinah
+Shadd an’ I, in ten minutes we had forgot ut all.’
+
+‘Then why do you remember it now?’ said I.
+
+‘Is ut like I’d forget? Ivry word that wicked ould woman spoke fell
+thrue in my life aftherwards, an’ I cud ha’ stud ut all--stud ut
+all--excipt when my little Shadd was born. That was on the line av march
+three months afther the regiment was taken with cholera. We were betune
+Umballa an’ Kalka thin, an’ I was on picket. Whin I came off duty the
+women showed me the child, an’ ut turned on uts side an’ died as I
+looked. We buried him by the road, an’ Father Victor was a day’s march
+behind wid the heavy baggage, so the comp’ny captain read a prayer.
+An’ since then I’ve been a childless man, an’ all else that ould Mother
+Sheehy put upon me an’ Dinah Shadd. What do you think, sorr?’
+
+I thought a good deal, but it seemed better then to reach out for
+Mulvaney’s hand. The demonstration nearly cost me the use of three
+fingers. Whatever he knows of his weaknesses, Mulvaney is entirely
+ignorant of his strength.
+
+‘But what do you think?’ he repeated, as I was straightening out the
+crushed fingers.
+
+My reply was drowned in yells and outcries from the next fire, where
+ten men were shouting for ‘Orth’ris,’ ‘Privit Orth’ris,’ ‘Mistah
+Or--ther--ris!’ ‘Deah boy,’ ‘Cap’n Orth’ris,’ ‘Field-Marshal Orth’ris,’
+‘Stanley, you pen’north o’ pop, come ‘ere to your own comp’ny!’ And the
+cockney, who had been delighting another audience with recondite and
+Rabelaisian yarns, was shot down among his admirers by the major force.
+
+‘You’ve crumpled my dress-shirt ‘orrid,’ said he, ‘an’ I shan’t sing no
+more to this ‘ere bloomin’ drawin’-room.’
+
+Learoyd, roused by the confusion, uncoiled himself, crept behind
+Ortheris, and slung him aloft on his shoulders.
+
+‘Sing, ye bloomin’ hummin’ bird!’ said he, and Ortheris, beating time
+on Learoyd’s skull, delivered himself, in the raucous voice of the
+Ratcliffe Highway, of this song:--
+
+    My girl she give me the go onst,
+      When I was a London lad,
+    An’ I went on the drink for a fortnight,
+      An’ then I went to the bad.
+    The Queen she give me a shillin’
+      To fight for ‘er over the seas;
+    But Guv’ment built me a fever-trap,
+      An’ Injia give me disease.
+
+Chorus.
+
+    Ho! don’t you ‘eed what a girl says,
+      An’ don’t you go for the beer;
+    But I was an ass when I was at grass,
+      An’ that is why I’m ‘ere.
+
+   I fired a shot at a Afghan,
+      The beggar ‘e fired again,
+    An’ I lay on my bed with a ‘ole in my ‘ed;
+      An’ missed the next campaign!
+    I up with my gun at a Burman
+      Who carried a bloomin’ dah,
+    But the cartridge stuck and the bay’nit bruk,
+      An’ all I got was the scar.
+
+Chorus.
+
+    Ho! don’t you aim at a Afghan
+       When you stand on the sky-line clear;
+    An’ don’t you go for a Burman
+      If none o’ your friends is near.
+
+    I served my time for a corp’ral,
+      An’ wetted my stripes with pop,
+    For I went on the bend with a intimate friend,
+      An’ finished the night in the ‘shop.’
+    I served my time for a sergeant;
+      The colonel ‘e sez ‘No!
+    The most you’ll see is a full C. B.’
+
+
+[Footnote: Confined to barracks.]
+      An’...very next night ‘twas so.
+
+Chorus.
+
+    Ho! don’t you go for a corp’ral
+      Unless your ‘ed is clear;
+    But I was an ass when I was at grass,
+      An’ that is why I’m ‘ere.
+
+    I’ve tasted the luck o’ the army
+      In barrack an’ camp an’ clink,
+    An’ I lost my tip through the bloomin’ trip
+      Along o’ the women an’ drink.
+    I’m down at the heel o’ my service
+      An’ when I am laid on the shelf,
+    My very wust friend from beginning to end
+      By the blood of a mouse was myself!
+
+Chorus.
+
+    Ho! don’t you ‘eed what a girl says,
+      An’ don’t you go for the beer;
+    But I was an ass when I was at grass,
+      An’ that is why I’m ‘ere.
+
+‘Ay, listen to our little man now, singin’ an’ shoutin’ as tho’
+trouble had niver touched him. D’you remember when he went mad with the
+home-sickness?’ said Mulvaney, recalling a never-to-be-forgotten season
+when Ortheris waded through the deep waters of affliction and behaved
+abominably. ‘But he’s talkin’ bitter truth, though. Eyah!
+
+   ‘My very worst frind from beginnin’ to ind
+    By the blood av a mouse was mesilf!’
+
+When I woke I saw Mulvaney, the night-dew gemming his moustache, leaning
+on his rifle at picket, lonely as Prometheus on his rock, with I know
+not what vultures tearing his liver.
+
+
+
+
+ON GREENHOW HILL
+
+
+ To Love’s low voice she lent a careless ear;
+ Her hand within his rosy fingers lay,
+ A chilling weight. She would not turn or hear;
+ But with averted face went on her way.
+ But when pale Death, all featureless and grim,
+ Lifted his bony hand, and beckoning
+ Held out his cypress-wreath, she followed him,
+ And Love was left forlorn and wondering,
+ That she who for his bidding would not stay,
+ At Death’s first whisper rose and went away.
+                                 RIVALS.
+
+‘Ohe, Ahmed Din! Shafiz Ullah ahoo! Bahadur Khan, where are you? Come
+out of the tents, as I have done, and fight against the English. Don’t
+kill your own kin! Come out to me!’
+
+The deserter from a native corps was crawling round the outskirts of the
+camp, firing at intervals, and shouting invitations to his old comrades.
+Misled by the rain and the darkness, he came to the English wing of the
+camp, and with his yelping and rifle-practice disturbed the men. They
+had been making roads all day, and were tired.
+
+Ortheris was sleeping at Learoyd’s feet. ‘Wot’s all that?’ he said
+thickly. Learoyd snored, and a Snider bullet ripped its way through
+the tent wall. The men swore. ‘It’s that bloomin’ deserter from the
+Aurangabadis,’ said Ortheris. ‘Git up, some one, an’ tell ‘im ‘e’s come
+to the wrong shop.’
+
+‘Go to sleep, little man,’ said Mulvaney, who was steaming nearest the
+door. ‘I can’t arise an’ expaytiate with him. ‘Tis rainin’ entrenchin’
+tools outside.’
+
+‘’Tain’t because you bloomin’ can’t. It’s ‘cause you bloomin’ won’t, ye
+long, limp, lousy, lazy beggar, you. ‘Ark to’im ‘owlin’!’
+
+‘Wot’s the good of argifying? Put a bullet into the swine! ‘E’s keepin’
+us awake!’ said another voice.
+
+A subaltern shouted angrily, and a dripping sentry whined from the
+darkness--
+
+‘’Tain’t no good, sir. I can’t see ‘im. ‘E’s ‘idin’ somewhere down
+‘ill.’
+
+Ortheris tumbled out of his blanket. ‘Shall I try to get ‘im, sir?’ said
+he.
+
+‘No,’ was the answer. ‘Lie down. I won’t have the whole camp shooting
+all round the clock. Tell him to go and pot his friends.’
+
+Ortheris considered for a moment. Then, putting his head under the
+tent wall, he called, as a ‘bus conductor calls in a block, ‘’Igher up,
+there! ‘Igher up!’
+
+The men laughed, and the laughter was carried down wind to the deserter,
+who, hearing that he had made a mistake, went off to worry his own
+regiment half a mile away. He was received with shots; the Aurangabadis
+were very angry with him for disgracing their colours.
+
+‘An’ that’s all right,’ said Ortheris, withdrawing his head as he heard
+the hiccough of the Sniders in the distance. ‘S’elp me Gawd, tho’, that
+man’s not fit to live--messin’ with my beauty-sleep this way.’
+
+‘Go out and shoot him in the morning, then,’ said the subaltern
+incautiously. ‘Silence in the tents now. Get your rest, men.’
+
+Ortheris lay down with a happy little sigh, and in two minutes there
+was no sound except the rain on the canvas and the all-embracing and
+elemental snoring of Learoyd.
+
+The camp lay on a bare ridge of the Himalayas, and for a week had been
+waiting for a flying column to make connection. The nightly rounds of
+the deserter and his friends had become a nuisance.
+
+In the morning the men dried themselves in hot sunshine and cleaned
+their grimy accoutrements. The native regiment was to take its turn of
+road-making that day while the Old Regiment loafed.
+
+‘I’m goin’ to lay for a shot at that man,’ said Ortheris, when he had
+finished washing out his rifle. ‘’E comes up the watercourse every
+evenin’ about five o’clock. If we go and lie out on the north ‘ill a bit
+this afternoon we’ll get ‘im.’
+
+‘You’re a bloodthirsty little mosquito,’ said Mulvaney, blowing blue
+clouds into the air. ‘But I suppose I will have to come wid you.
+Fwhere’s Jock?’
+
+‘Gone out with the Mixed Pickles, ‘cause ‘e thinks ‘isself a bloomin’
+marksman,’ said Ortheris with scorn.
+
+The ‘Mixed Pickles’ were a detachment of picked shots, generally
+employed in clearing spurs of hills when the enemy were too impertinent.
+This taught the young officers how to handle men, and did not do the
+enemy much harm. Mulvaney and Ortheris strolled out of camp, and passed
+the Aurangabadis going to their road-making.
+
+‘You’ve got to sweat to-day,’ said Ortheris genially. ‘We’re going to
+get your man. You didn’t knock ‘im out last night by any chance, any of
+you?’
+
+‘No. The pig went away mocking us. I had one shot at him,’ said a
+private. ‘He’s my cousin, and _I_ ought to have cleared our dishonour.
+But good luck to you.’
+
+They went cautiously to the north hill, Ortheris leading, because, as he
+explained, ‘this is a long-range show, an’ I’ve got to do it.’ His was an
+almost passionate devotion to his rifle, which, by barrack-room report,
+he was supposed to kiss every night before turning in. Charges and
+scuffles he held in contempt, and, when they were inevitable, slipped
+between Mulvaney and Learoyd, bidding them to fight for his skin as well
+as their own. They never failed him. He trotted along, questing like a
+hound on a broken trail, through the wood of the north hill. At last
+he was satisfied, and threw himself down on the soft pine-needled
+slope that commanded a clear view of the watercourse and a brown, bare
+hillside beyond it. The trees made a scented darkness in which an army
+corps could have hidden from the sun-glare without.
+
+‘’Ere’s the tail o’ the wood,’ said Ortheris. ‘’E’s got to come up the
+watercourse, ‘cause it gives ‘im cover. We’ll lay ‘ere. ‘Tain’t not arf
+so bloomin’ dusty neither.’
+
+He buried his nose in a clump of scentless white violets. No one had
+come to tell the flowers that the season of their strength was long
+past, and they had bloomed merrily in the twilight of the pines.
+
+‘This is something like,’ he said luxuriously. ‘Wot a ‘evinly clear drop
+for a bullet acrost! How much d’you make it, Mulvaney?’
+
+‘Seven hunder. Maybe a trifle less, bekaze the air’s so thin.’
+
+WOP! WOP! WOP! went a volley of musketry on the rear face of the north
+hill.
+
+‘Curse them Mixed Pickles firin’ at nothin’! They’ll scare arf the
+country.’
+
+‘Thry a sightin’ shot in the middle of the row,’ said Mulvaney, the man
+of many wiles. ‘There’s a red rock yonder he’ll be sure to pass. Quick!’
+
+Ortheris ran his sight up to six hundred yards and fired. The bullet
+threw up a feather of dust by a clump of gentians at the base of the
+rock.
+
+‘Good enough!’ said Ortheris, snapping the scale down. ‘You snick
+your sights to mine or a little lower. You’re always firin’ high. But
+remember, first shot to me. O Lordy! but it’s a lovely afternoon.’
+
+The noise of the firing grew louder, and there was a tramping of men in
+the wood. The two lay very quiet, for they knew that the British soldier
+is desperately prone to fire at anything that moves or calls. Then
+Learoyd appeared, his tunic ripped across the breast by a bullet,
+looking ashamed of himself. He flung down on the pine-needles, breathing
+in snorts.
+
+‘One o’ them damned gardeners o’ th’ Pickles,’ said he, fingering the
+rent. ‘Firin’ to th’ right flank, when he knowed I was there. If I knew
+who he was I’d ‘a’ rippen the hide offan him. Look at ma tunic!’
+
+‘That’s the spishil trustability av a marksman. Train him to hit a fly
+wid a stiddy rest at seven hunder, an’ he loose on anythin’ he sees or
+hears up to th’ mile. You’re well out av that fancy-firin’ gang, Jock.
+Stay here.’
+
+‘Bin firin’ at the bloomin’ wind in the bloomin’ tree-tops,’ said
+Ortheris with a chuckle. ‘I’ll show you some firin’ later on.’
+
+They wallowed in the pine-needles, and the sun warmed them where they
+lay. The Mixed Pickles ceased firing, and returned to camp, and left the
+wood to a few scared apes. The watercourse lifted up its voice in the
+silence, and talked foolishly to the rocks. Now and again the dull thump
+of a blasting charge three miles away told that the Aurangabadis were in
+difficulties with their road-making. The men smiled as they listened and
+lay still, soaking in the warm leisure. Presently Learoyd, between the
+whiffs of his pipe--
+
+‘Seems queer--about ‘im yonder--desertin’ at all.’
+
+‘’E’ll be a bloomin’ side queerer when I’ve done with ‘im,’ said
+Ortheris. They were talking in whispers, for the stillness of the wood
+and the desire of slaughter lay heavy upon them.
+
+‘I make no doubt he had his reasons for desertin’; but, my faith! I make
+less doubt ivry man has good reason for killin’ him,’ said Mulvaney.
+
+‘Happen there was a lass tewed up wi’ it. Men do more than more for th’
+sake of a lass.’
+
+‘They make most av us ‘list. They’ve no manner av right to make us
+desert.’
+
+‘Ah; they make us ‘list, or their fathers do,’ said Learoyd softly,
+his helmet over his eyes. Ortheris’s brows contracted savagely. He was
+watching the valley. ‘If it’s a girl I’ll shoot the beggar twice over,
+an’ second time for bein’ a fool. You’re blasted sentimental all of a
+sudden. Thinkin’ o’ your last near shave?’
+
+‘Nay, lad; ah was but thinkin’ o’ what had happened.’
+
+‘An’ fwhat has happened, ye lumberin’ child av calamity, that you’re
+lowing like a cow-calf at the back av the pasture, an’ suggestin’
+invidious excuses for the man Stanley’s goin’ to kill. Ye’ll have to
+wait another hour yet, little man. Spit it out, Jock, an’ bellow melojus
+to the moon. It takes an earthquake or a bullet graze to fetch aught out
+av you. Discourse, Don Juan! The a-moors av Lotharius Learoyd! Stanley,
+kape a rowlin’ rig’mental eye on the valley.’
+
+‘It’s along o’ yon hill there,’ said Learoyd, watching the bare
+sub-Himalayan spur that reminded him of his Yorkshire moors. He was
+speaking more to himself than his fellows. ‘Ay,’ said he, ‘Rumbolds Moor
+stands up ower Skipton town, an’ Greenhow Hill stands up ower Pately
+Brig. I reckon you’ve never heeard tell o’ Greenhow Hill, but you bit
+o’ bare stuff if there was nobbut a white road windin’ is like ut;
+strangely like. Moors an’ moors an’ moors, wi’ never a tree for shelter,
+an’ gray houses wi’ flagstone rooves, and pewits cryin’, an’ a windhover
+goin’ to and fro just like these kites. And cold! A wind that cuts you
+like a knife. You could tell Greenhow Hill folk by the red-apple
+colour o’ their cheeks an’ nose tips, and their blue eyes, driven
+into pinpoints by the wind. Miners mostly, burrowin’ for lead i’ th’
+hillsides, followin’ the trail of th’ ore vein same as a field-rat. It
+was the roughest minin’ I ever seen. Yo’d come on a bit o’ creakin’ wood
+windlass like a well-head, an’ you was let down i’ th’ bight of a rope,
+fendin’ yoursen off the side wi’ one hand, carryin’ a candle stuck in
+a lump o’ clay with t’other, an’ clickin’ hold of a rope with t’other
+hand.’
+
+‘An’ that’s three of them,’ said Mulvaney. ‘Must be a good climate in
+those parts.’
+
+Learoyd took no heed.
+
+‘An’ then yo’ came to a level, where you crept on your hands and knees
+through a mile o’ windin’ drift, an’ you come out into a cave-place as
+big as Leeds Townhall, with a engine pumpin’ water from workin’s ‘at
+went deeper still. It’s a queer country, let alone minin’, for the hill
+is full of those natural caves, an’ the rivers an’ the becks drops into
+what they call pot-holes, an’ come out again miles away.’
+
+‘Wot was you doin’ there?’ said Ortheris.
+
+‘I was a young chap then, an’ mostly went wi’ ‘osses, leadin’ coal and
+lead ore; but at th’ time I’m tellin’ on I was drivin’ the waggon-team
+i’ th’ big sumph. I didn’t belong to that country-side by rights. I went
+there because of a little difference at home, an’ at fust I took up wi’
+a rough lot. One night we’d been drinkin’, an’ I must ha’ hed more than
+I could stand, or happen th’ ale was none so good. Though i’ them days,
+By for God, I never seed bad ale.’ He flung his arms over his head, and
+gripped a vast handful of white violets. ‘Nah,’ said he, ‘I never seed
+the ale I could not drink, the bacca I could not smoke, nor the lass I
+could not kiss. Well, we mun have a race home, the lot on us. I lost
+all th’ others, an’ when I was climbin’ ower one of them walls built o’
+loose stones, I comes down into the ditch, stones and all, an’ broke my
+arm. Not as I knawed much about it, for I fell on th’ back of my head,
+an’ was knocked stupid like. An’ when I come to mysen it were mornin’,
+an’ I were lyin’ on the settle i’ Jesse Roantree’s houseplace, an’ ‘Liza
+Roantree was settin’ sewin’, I ached all ovver, and my mouth were like
+a lime-kiln. She gave me a drink out of a china mug wi’ gold letters--“A
+Present from Leeds”--as I looked at many and many a time at after.
+“Yo’re to lie still while Dr. Warbottom comes, because your arm’s
+broken, and father has sent a lad to fetch him. He found yo’ when he was
+goin’ to work, an’ carried you here on his back,” sez she. “Oa!” sez I;
+an’ I shet my eyes, for I felt ashamed o’ mysen. “Father’s gone to his
+work these three hours, an’ he said he’d tell ‘em to get somebody to
+drive the tram.” The clock ticked, an’ a bee comed in the house, an’
+they rung i’ my head like mill-wheels. An’ she give me another drink
+an’ settled the pillow. “Eh, but yo’re young to be getten drunk an’ such
+like, but yo’ won’t do it again, will yo’?”--“Noa,” sez I, “I wouldn’t
+if she’d not but stop they mill-wheels clatterin’.”’
+
+‘Faith, it’s a good thing to be nursed by a woman when you’re sick!’
+said Mulvaney. ‘Dir’ cheap at the price av twenty broken heads.’
+
+Ortheris turned to frown across the valley. He had not been nursed by
+many women in his life.
+
+‘An’ then Dr. Warbottom comes ridin’ up, an’ Jesse Roantree along with
+‘im. He was a high-larned doctor, but he talked wi’ poor folk same as
+theirsens. “What’s ta big agaate on naa?” he sings out. “Brekkin’ tha
+thick head?” An’ he felt me all ovver. “That’s none broken. Tha’ nobbut
+knocked a bit sillier than ordinary, an’ that’s daaft eneaf.” An’ soa he
+went on, callin’ me all the names he could think on, but settin’ my arm,
+wi’ Jesse’s help, as careful as could be. “Yo’ mun let the big oaf bide
+here a bit, Jesse,” he says, when he hed strapped me up an’ given me a
+dose o’ physic; “an’ you an’ Liza will tend him, though he’s scarcelins
+worth the trouble. An’ tha’ll lose tha work,” sez he, “an’ tha’ll be
+upon th’ Sick Club for a couple o’ months an’ more. Doesn’t tha think
+tha’s a fool?”’
+
+‘But whin was a young man, high or low, the other av a fool, I’d like
+to know?’ said Mulvaney. ‘Sure, folly’s the only safe way to wisdom, for
+I’ve thried it.’
+
+‘Wisdom!’ grinned Ortheris, scanning his comrades with uplifted chin.
+‘You’re bloomin’ Solomons, you two, ain’t you?’
+
+Learoyd went calmly on, with a steady eye like an ox chewing the cud.
+
+‘And that was how I come to know ‘Liza Roantree. There’s some tunes as
+she used to sing--aw, she were always singin’--that fetches Greenhow
+Hill before my eyes as fair as yon brow across there. And she would
+learn me to sing bass, an’ I was to go to th’ chapel wi’ ‘em where
+Jesse and she led the singin’, th’ old man playin’ the fiddle. He was a
+strange chap, old Jesse, fair mad wi’ music, an’ he made me promise to
+learn the big fiddle when my arm was better. It belonged to him, and
+it stood up in a big case alongside o’ th’ eight-day clock, but
+Willie Satterthwaite, as played it in the chapel, had getten deaf as a
+door-post, and it vexed Jesse, as he had to rap him ower his head wi’
+th’ fiddle-stick to make him give ower sawin’ at th’ right time.
+
+‘But there was a black drop in it all, an’ it was a man in a black coat
+that brought it. When th’ Primitive Methodist preacher came to Greenhow,
+he would always stop wi’ Jesse Roantree, an’ he laid hold of me from th’
+beginning. It seemed I wor a soul to be saved, and he meaned to do it.
+At th’ same time I jealoused ‘at he were keen o’ savin’ ‘Liza Roantree’s
+soul as well, and I could ha’ killed him many a time. An’ this went on
+till one day I broke out, an’ borrowed th’ brass for a drink from ‘Liza.
+After fower days I come back, wi’ my tail between my legs, just to see
+‘Liza again. But Jesse were at home an’ th’ preacher--th’ Reverend Amos
+Barraclough. ‘Liza said naught, but a bit o’ red come into her face as
+were white of a regular thing. Says Jesse, tryin’ his best to be civil,
+“Nay, lad, it’s like this. You’ve getten to choose which way it’s
+goin’ to be. I’ll ha’ nobody across ma doorstep as goes a-drinkin’,
+an’ borrows my lass’s money to spend i’ their drink. Ho’d tha tongue,
+‘Liza,” sez he, when she wanted to put in a word ‘at I were welcome to
+th’ brass, and she were none afraid that I wouldn’t pay it back. Then
+the Reverend cuts in, seein’ as Jesse were losin’ his temper, an’ they
+fair beat me among them. But it were ‘Liza, as looked an’ said naught,
+as did more than either o’ their tongues, an’ soa I concluded to get
+converted.’
+
+‘Fwhat?’ shouted Mulvaney. Then, checking himself, he said softly, ‘Let
+be! Let be! Sure the Blessed Virgin is the mother of all religion an’
+most women; an’ there’s a dale av piety in a girl if the men would
+only let ut stay there. I’d ha’ been converted myself under the
+circumstances.’
+
+‘Nay, but,’ pursued Learoyd with a blush, ‘I meaned it.’
+
+Ortheris laughed as loudly as he dared, having regard to his business at
+the time.
+
+‘Ay, Ortheris, you may laugh, but you didn’t know yon preacher
+Barraclough--a little white-faced chap, wi’ a voice as ‘ud wile a bird
+off an a bush, and a way o’ layin’ hold of folks as made them think
+they’d never had a live man for a friend before. You never saw him,
+an’--an’--you never seed ‘Liza Roantree--never seed ‘Liza Roantree....
+Happen it was as much ‘Liza as th’ preacher and her father, but anyways
+they all meaned it, an’ I was fair shamed o’ mysen, an’ so I become what
+they call a changed character. And when I think on, it’s hard to believe
+as yon chap going to prayer-meetin’s, chapel, and class-meetin’s were
+me. But I never had naught to say for mysen, though there was a deal o’
+shoutin’, and old Sammy Strother, as were almost clemmed to death and
+doubled up with the rheumatics, would sing out, “Joyful! Joyful!” and
+‘at it were better to go up to heaven in a coal-basket than down to hell
+i’ a coach an’ six. And he would put his poor old claw on my shoulder,
+sayin’, “Doesn’t tha feel it, tha great lump? Doesn’t tha feel it?” An’
+sometimes I thought I did, and then again I thought I didn’t, an’ how
+was that?’
+
+‘The iverlastin’ nature av mankind,’ said Mulvaney. ‘An’, furthermore,
+I misdoubt you were built for the Primitive Methodians. They’re a new
+corps anyways. I hold by the Ould Church, for she’s the mother of them
+all--ay, an’ the father, too. I like her bekaze she’s most remarkable
+regimental in her fittings. I may die in Honolulu, Nova Zambra, or Cape
+Cayenne, but wherever I die, me bein’ fwhat I am, an’ a priest handy, I
+go under the same orders an’ the same words an’ the same unction as tho’
+the Pope himself come down from the roof av St. Peter’s to see me
+off. There’s neither high nor low, nor broad nor deep, nor betwixt nor
+between wid her, an’ that’s what I like. But mark you, she’s no manner
+av Church for a wake man, bekaze she takes the body and the soul av him,
+onless he has his proper work to do. I remember when my father died that
+was three months comin’ to his grave; begad he’d ha’ sold the shebeen
+above our heads for ten minutes’ quittance of purgathory. An’ he did all
+he could. That’s why I say ut takes a strong man to deal with the Ould
+Church, an’ for that reason you’ll find so many women go there. An’ that
+same’s a conundrum.’
+
+‘Wot’s the use o’ worritin’ ‘bout these things?’ said Ortheris. ‘You’re
+bound to find all out quicker nor you want to, any’ow.’ He jerked the
+cartridge out of the breech-block into the palm of his hand. ‘’Ere’s my
+chaplain,’ he said, and made the venomous black-headed bullet bow like
+a marionette. ‘’E’s goin’ to teach a man all about which is which, an’
+wot’s true, after all, before sundown. But wot ‘appened after that,
+Jock?’
+
+‘There was one thing they boggled at, and almost shut th’ gate i’ my
+face for, and that were my dog Blast, th’ only one saved out o’ a litter
+o’ pups as was blowed up when a keg o’ minin’ powder loosed off in th’
+store-keeper’s hut. They liked his name no better than his business,
+which were fightin’ every dog he comed across; a rare good dog, wi’
+spots o’ black and pink on his face, one ear gone, and lame o’ one side
+wi’ being driven in a basket through an iron roof, a matter of half a
+mile.
+
+‘They said I mun give him up ‘cause he were worldly and low; and would
+I let mysen be shut out of heaven for the sake on a dog? “Nay,” says I,
+“if th’ door isn’t wide enough for th’ pair on us, we’ll stop outside,
+for we’ll none be parted.” And th’ preacher spoke up for Blast, as had a
+likin’ for him from th’ first--I reckon that was why I come to like th’
+preacher--and wouldn’t hear o’ changin’ his name to Bless, as some o’
+them wanted. So th’ pair on us became reg’lar chapel-members. But it’s
+hard for a young chap o’ my build to cut traces from the world, th’
+flesh, an’ the devil all uv a heap. Yet I stuck to it for a long time,
+while th’ lads as used to stand about th’ town-end an’ lean ower th’
+bridge, spittin’ into th’ beck o’ a Sunday, would call after me,
+“Sitha, Learoyd, when’s ta bean to preach, ‘cause we’re comin’ to hear
+tha.”--“Ho’d tha jaw. He hasn’t getten th’ white choaker on ta morn,”
+ another lad would say, and I had to double my fists hard i’ th’ bottom
+of my Sunday coat, and say to mysen, “If ‘twere Monday and I warn’t a
+member o’ the Primitive Methodists, I’d leather all th’ lot of yond’.”
+ That was th’ hardest of all--to know that I could fight and I mustn’t
+fight.’
+
+Sympathetic grunts from Mulvaney.
+
+‘So what wi’ singin’, practising and class-meetin’s, and th’ big fiddle,
+as he made me take between my knees, I spent a deal o’ time i’ Jesse
+Roantree’s house-place. But often as I was there, th’ preacher fared to
+me to go oftener, and both th’ old man an’ th’ young woman were pleased
+to have him. He lived i’ Pately Brig, as were a goodish step off, but he
+come. He come all the same. I liked him as well or better as any man I’d
+ever seen i’ one way, and yet I hated him wi’ all my heart i’ t’other,
+and we watched each other like cat and mouse, but civil as you please,
+for I was on my best behaviour, and he was that fair and open that I was
+bound to be fair with him. Rare good company he was, if I hadn’t wanted
+to wring his cliver little neck half of the time. Often and often when
+he was goin’ from Jesse’s I’d set him a bit on the road.’
+
+‘See ‘im ‘ome, you mean?’ said Ortheris.
+
+‘Ay. It’s a way we have i’ Yorkshire o’ seein’ friends off. You was a
+friend as I didn’t want to come back, and he didn’t want me to come back
+neither, and so we’d walk together towards Pately, and then he’d set
+me back again, and there we’d be wal two o’clock i’ the mornin’ settin’
+each other to an’ fro like a blasted pair o’ pendulums twixt hill and
+valley, long after th’ light had gone out i’ ‘Liza’s window, as both on
+us had been looking at, pretending to watch the moon.’
+
+‘Ah!’ broke in Mulvaney, ‘ye’d no chanst against the maraudin’
+psalm-singer. They’ll take the airs an’ the graces instid av the
+man nine times out av ten, an’ they only find the blunder later--the
+wimmen.’
+
+‘That’s just where yo’re wrong,’ said Learoyd, reddening under the
+freckled tan of his cheeks. ‘I was th’ first wi’ ‘Liza, an’ yo’d think
+that were enough. But th’ parson were a steady-gaited sort o’ chap, and
+Jesse were strong o’ his side, and all th’ women i’ the congregation
+dinned it to ‘Liza ‘at she were fair fond to take up wi’ a wastrel
+ne’er-do-weel like me, as was scarcelins respectable an’ a fighting
+dog at his heels. It was all very well for her to be doing me good and
+saving my soul, but she must mind as she didn’t do herself harm. They
+talk o’ rich folk bein’ stuck up an’ genteel, but for cast-iron pride o’
+respectability there’s naught like poor chapel folk. It’s as cold as th’
+wind o’ Greenhow Hill--ay, and colder, for ‘twill never change. And
+now I come to think on it, one at strangest things I know is ‘at they
+couldn’t abide th’ thought o’ soldiering. There’s a vast o’ fightin’
+i’ th’ Bible, and there’s a deal of Methodists i’ th’ army; but to hear
+chapel folk talk yo’d think that soldierin’ were next door, an’ t’other
+side, to hangin’. I’ their meetin’s all their talk is o’ fightin’. When
+Sammy Strother were stuck for summat to say in his prayers, he’d sing
+out, “Th’ sword o’ th’ Lord and o’ Gideon.” They were allus at it about
+puttin’ on th’ whole armour o’ righteousness, an’ fightin’ the good
+fight o’ faith. And then, atop o’ ‘t all, they held a prayer-meetin’
+ower a young chap as wanted to ‘list, and nearly deafened him, till
+he picked up his hat and fair ran away. And they’d tell tales in
+th’ Sunday-school o’ bad lads as had been thumped and brayed for
+bird-nesting o’ Sundays and playin’ truant o’ week-days, and how they
+took to wrestlin’, dog-fightin’, rabbit-runnin’, and drinkin’, till at
+last, as if ‘twere a hepitaph on a gravestone, they damned him across
+th’ moors wi’, “an’ then he went and ‘listed for a soldier,” an’ they’d
+all fetch a deep breath, and throw up their eyes like a hen drinkin’.’
+
+‘Fwhy is ut?’ said Mulvaney, bringing down his hand on his thigh with a
+crack.’ In the name av God, fwhy is ut? I’ve seen ut, tu. They cheat an’
+they swindle an’ they lie an’ they slander, an’ fifty things fifty times
+worse; but the last an’ the worst by their reckonin’ is to serve the
+Widdy honest. It’s like the talk av childher--seein’ things all round.’
+
+‘Plucky lot of fightin’ good fights of whatsername they’d do if we
+didn’t see they had a quiet place to fight in. And such fightin’ as
+theirs is! Cats on the tiles. T’other callin’ to which to come on. I’d
+give a month’s pay to get some o’ them broad-backed beggars in London
+sweatin’ through a day’s road-makin’ an’ a night’s rain. They’d carry on
+a deal afterwards--same as we’re supposed to carry on. I’ve bin turned
+out of a measly arf-license pub down Lambeth way, full o’ greasy kebmen,
+‘fore now,’ said Ortheris with an oath.
+
+‘Maybe you were dhrunk,’ said Mulvaney soothingly.
+
+‘Worse nor that. The Forders were drunk. _I_ was wearin’ the Queen’s
+uniform.’
+
+‘I’d no particular thought to be a soldier i’ them days,’ said Learoyd,
+still keeping his eye on the bare hill opposite, ‘but this sort o’ talk
+put it i’ my head. They was so good, th’ chapel folk, that they tumbled
+ower t’other side. But I stuck to it for ‘Liza’s sake, specially as
+she was learning me to sing the bass part in a horotorio as Jesse were
+gettin’ up. She sung like a throstle hersen, and we had practisin’s
+night after night for a matter of three months.’
+
+‘I know what a horotorio is,’ said Ortheris pertly. ‘It’s a sort of
+chaplain’s sing-song--words all out of the Bible, and hullabaloojah
+choruses.’
+
+‘Most Greenhow Hill folks played some instrument or t’other, an’ they
+all sung so you might have heard them miles away, and they were so
+pleased wi’ the noise they made they didn’t fair to want anybody to
+listen. The preacher sung high seconds when he wasn’t playin’ the
+flute, an’ they set me, as hadn’t got far with big fiddle, again Willie
+Satterthwaite, to jog his elbow when he had to get a’ gate playin’. Old
+Jesse was happy if ever a man was, for he were th’ conductor an’ th’
+first fiddle an’ th’ leadin’ singer, beatin’ time wi’ his fiddle-stick,
+till at times he’d rap with it on the table, and cry out, “Now, you mun
+all stop; it’s my turn.” And he’d face round to his front, fair
+sweating wi’ pride, to sing th’ tenor solos. But he were grandest i’ th’
+choruses, waggin’ his head, flinging his arms round like a windmill, and
+singin’ hisself black in the face. A rare singer were Jesse.
+
+‘Yo’ see, I was not o’ much account wi’ ‘em all exceptin’ to ‘Liza
+Roantree, and I had a deal o’ time settin’ quiet at meetings and
+horotorio practises to hearken their talk, and if it were strange to me
+at beginnin’, it got stranger still at after, when I was shut on it, and
+could study what it meaned.
+
+‘Just after th’ horotorios come off, ‘Liza, as had allus been weakly
+like, was took very bad. I walked Dr. Warbottom’s horse up and down
+a deal of times while he were inside, where they wouldn’t let me go,
+though I fair ached to see her.
+
+‘“She’ll be better i’ noo, lad--better i’ noo,” he used to say. “Tha
+mun ha’ patience.” Then they said if I was quiet I might go in, and th’
+Reverend Amos Barraclough used to read to her lyin’ propped up among th’
+pillows. Then she began to mend a bit, and they let me carry her on to
+th’ settle, and when it got warm again she went about same as afore. Th’
+preacher and me and Blast was a deal together i’ them days, and i’ one
+way we was rare good comrades. But I could ha’ stretched him time and
+again with a good will. I mind one day he said he would like to go
+down into th’ bowels o’ th’ earth, and see how th’ Lord had builded th’
+framework o’ th’ everlastin’ hills. He were one of them chaps as had
+a gift o’ sayin’ things. They rolled off the tip of his clever tongue,
+same as Mulvaney here, as would ha’ made a rare good preacher if he had
+nobbut given his mind to it. I lent him a suit o’ miner’s kit as almost
+buried th’ little man, and his white face down i’ th’ coat-collar and
+hat-flap looked like the face of a boggart, and he cowered down i’ th’
+bottom o’ the waggon. I was drivin’ a tram as led up a bit of an incline
+up to th’ cave where the engine was pumpin’, and where th’ ore was
+brought up and put into th’ waggons as went down o’ themselves, me
+puttin’ th’ brake on and th’ horses a-trottin’ after. Long as it was
+daylight we were good friends, but when we got fair into th’ dark,
+and could nobbut see th’ day shinin’ at the hole like a lamp at a
+street-end, I feeled downright wicked. Ma religion dropped all away from
+me when I looked back at him as were always comin’ between me and ‘Liza.
+The talk was ‘at they were to be wed when she got better, an’ I couldn’t
+get her to say yes or nay to it. He began to sing a hymn in his thin
+voice, and I came out wi’ a chorus that was all cussin’ an’ swearin’ at
+my horses, an’ I began to know how I hated him. He were such a little
+chap, too. I could drop him wi’ one hand down Garstang’s Copper-hole--a
+place where th’ beck slithered ower th’ edge on a rock, and fell wi’ a
+bit of a whisper into a pit as no rope i’ Greenhow could plump.’
+
+Again Learoyd rooted up the innocent violets. ‘Ay, he should see th’
+bowels o’ th’ earth an’ never naught else. I could take him a mile
+or two along th’ drift, and leave him wi’ his candle doused to cry
+hallelujah, wi’ none to hear him and say amen. I was to lead him down
+th’ ladder-way to th’ drift where Jesse Roantree was workin’, and why
+shouldn’t he slip on th’ ladder, wi’ my feet on his fingers till they
+loosed grip, and I put him down wi’ my heel? If I went fust down th’
+ladder I could click hold on him and chuck him over my head, so as he
+should go squshin’ down the shaft, breakin’ his bones at ev’ry timberin’
+as Bill Appleton did when he was fresh, and hadn’t a bone left when he
+wrought to th’ bottom. Niver a blasted leg to walk from Pately. Niver an
+arm to put round ‘Liza Roantree’s waist. Niver no more--niver no more.’
+
+The thick lips curled back over the yellow teeth, and that flushed face
+was not pretty to look upon. Mulvaney nodded sympathy, and Ortheris,
+moved by his comrade’s passion, brought up the rifle to his shoulder,
+and searched the hillside for his quarry, muttering ribaldry about a
+sparrow, a spout, and a thunder-storm. The voice of the watercourse
+supplied the necessary small talk till Learoyd picked up his story.
+
+‘But it’s none so easy to kill a man like you. When I’d given up my
+horses to th’ lad as took my place and I was showin’ th’ preacher th’
+workin’s, shoutin’ into his ear across th’ clang o’ th’ pumpin’ engines,
+I saw he were afraid o’ naught; and when the lamplight showed his black
+eyes, I could feel as he was masterin’ me again. I were no better nor
+Blast chained up short and growlin’ i’ the depths of him while a strange
+dog went safe past.
+
+‘“Th’art a coward and a fool,” I said to mysen; an’ I wrestled i’ my
+mind again’ him till, when we come to Garstang’s Copper-hole, I laid
+hold o’ the preacher and lifted him up over my head and held him into
+the darkest on it. “Now, lad,” I says “it’s to be one or t’other on
+us--thee or me--for ‘Liza Roantree. Why, isn’t thee afraid for thysen?”
+ I says, for he were still i’ my arms as a sack. “Nay; I’m but afraid
+for thee, my poor lad, as knows naught,” says he. I set him down on th’
+edge, an’ th’ beck run stiller, an’ there was no more buzzin’ in my head
+like when th’ bee come through th’ window o’ Jesse’s house. “What dost
+tha mean?” says I.
+
+‘“I’ve often thought as thou ought to know,” says he, “but ‘twas hard
+to tell thee. ‘Liza Roantree’s for neither on us, nor for nobody o’
+this earth. Dr. Warbottom says--and he knows her, and her mother before
+her--that she is in a decline, and she cannot live six months longer.
+He’s known it for many a day. Steady, John! Steady!” says he. And that
+weak little man pulled me further back and set me again’ him, and talked
+it all over quiet and still, me turnin’ a bunch o’ candles in my hand,
+and counting them ower and ower again as I listened. A deal on it were
+th’ regular preachin’ talk, but there were a vast lot as made me begin
+to think as he were more of a man than I’d ever given him credit for,
+till I were cut as deep for him as I were for mysen.
+
+‘Six candles we had, and we crawled and climbed all that day while they
+lasted, and I said to mysen, “‘Liza Roantree hasn’t six months to live.”
+ And when we came into th’ daylight again we were like dead men to look
+at, an’ Blast come behind us without so much as waggin’ his tail. When
+I saw ‘Liza again she looked at me a minute and says, “Who’s telled tha?
+For I see tha knows.” And she tried to smile as she kissed me, and I
+fair broke down.
+
+‘Yo’ see, I was a young chap i’ them days, and had seen naught o’ life,
+let alone death, as is allus a-waitin’. She telled me as Dr. Warbottom
+said as Greenhow air was too keen, and they were goin’ to Bradford, to
+Jesse’s brother David, as worked i’ a mill, and I mun hold up like a man
+and a Christian, and she’d pray for me. Well, and they went away, and
+the preacher that same back end o’ th’ year were appointed to another
+circuit, as they call it, and I were left alone on Greenhow Hill.
+
+‘I tried, and I tried hard, to stick to th’ chapel, but ‘tweren’t th’
+same thing at after. I hadn’t ‘Liza’s voice to follow i’ th’ singin’,
+nor her eyes a-shinin’ acrost their heads. And i’ th’ class-meetings
+they said as I mun have some experiences to tell, and I hadn’t a word to
+say for mysen.
+
+‘Blast and me moped a good deal, and happen we didn’t behave ourselves
+over well, for they dropped us and wondered however they’d come to take
+us up. I can’t tell how we got through th’ time, while i’ th’ winter I
+gave up my job and went to Bradford. Old Jesse were at th’ door o’ th’
+house, in a long street o’ little houses. He’d been sendin’ th’ children
+‘way as were clatterin’ their clogs in th’ causeway, for she were
+asleep.
+
+‘“Is it thee?” he says; “but you’re not to see her. I’ll none have her
+wakened for a nowt like thee. She’s goin’ fast, and she mun go in peace.
+Thou’lt never be good for naught i’ th’ world, and as long as thou lives
+thou’ll never play the big fiddle. Get away, lad, get away!” So he shut
+the door softly i’ my face.
+
+‘Nobody never made Jesse my master, but it seemed to me he was about
+right, and I went away into the town and knocked up against a recruiting
+sergeant. The old tales o’ th’ chapel folk came buzzin’ into my head. I
+was to get away, and this were th’ regular road for the likes o’ me. I
+‘listed there and then, took th’ Widow’s shillin’, and had a bunch o’
+ribbons pinned i’ my hat.
+
+‘But next day I found my way to David Roantree’s door, and Jesse came
+to open it. Says he, “Thou’s come back again wi’ th’ devil’s colours
+flyin’--thy true colours, as I always telled thee.”
+
+‘But I begged and prayed of him to let me see her nobbut to say
+good-bye, till a woman calls down th’ stairway, “She says John Learoyd’s
+to come up.” Th’ old man shifts aside in a flash, and lays his hand on
+my arm, quite gentle like. “But thou’lt be quiet, John,” says he, “for
+she’s rare and weak. Thou was allus a good lad.”
+
+‘Her eyes were all alive wi’ light, and her hair was thick on the pillow
+round her, but her cheeks were thin--thin to frighten a man that’s
+strong. “Nay, father, yo mayn’t say th’ devil’s colours. Them ribbons
+is pretty.” An’ she held out her hands for th’ hat, an’ she put all
+straight as a woman will wi’ ribbons. “Nay, but what they’re pretty,”
+ she says. “Eh, but I’d ha’ liked to see thee i’ thy red coat, John, for
+thou was allus my own lad--my very own lad, and none else.”
+
+‘She lifted up her arms, and they come round my neck i’ a gentle grip,
+and they slacked away, and she seemed fainting. “Now yo’ mun get away,
+lad,” says Jesse, and I picked up my hat and I came downstairs.
+
+‘Th’ recruiting sergeant were waitin’ for me at th’ corner public-house.
+“Yo’ve seen your sweetheart?” says he. “Yes, I’ve seen her,” says I.
+“Well, we’ll have a quart now, and you’ll do your best to forget her,”
+ says he, bein’ one o’ them smart, bustlin’ chaps. “Ay, sergeant,” says
+I. “Forget her.” And I’ve been forgettin’ her ever since.’
+
+He threw away the wilted clump of white violets as he spoke. Ortheris
+suddenly rose to his knees, his rifle at his shoulder, and peered across
+the valley in the clear afternoon light. His chin cuddled the stock, and
+there was a twitching of the muscles of the right cheek as he sighted;
+Private Stanley Ortheris was engaged on his business. A speck of white
+crawled up the watercourse.
+
+‘See that beggar? . . . Got ‘im.’
+
+Seven hundred yards away, and a full two hundred down the hillside, the
+deserter of the Aurangabadis pitched forward, rolled down a red rock,
+and lay very still, with his face in a clump of blue gentians, while a
+big raven flapped out of the pine wood to make investigation.
+
+‘That’s a clean shot, little man,’ said Mulvaney.
+
+Learoyd thoughtfully watched the smoke clear away.
+
+‘Happen there was a lass tewed up wi’ him, too,’ said he.
+
+Ortheris did not reply. He was staring across the valley, with the smile
+of the artist who looks on the completed work.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO WAS
+
+
+ The Earth gave up her dead that tide,
+      Into our camp he came,
+ And said his say, and went his way,
+      And left our hearts aflame.
+
+ Keep tally--on the gun-butt score
+      The vengeance we must take,
+ When God shall bring full reckoning,
+      For our dead comrade’s sake.
+                        BALLAD.
+
+Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person
+till he tucks in his shirt. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only
+when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of western
+peoples instead of the most westerly of easterns that he becomes a
+racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows which
+side of his nature is going to turn up next.
+
+Dirkovitch was a Russian--a Russian of the Russians--who appeared to get
+his bread by serving the Czar as an officer in a Cossack regiment, and
+corresponding for a Russian newspaper with a name that was never twice
+alike. He was a handsome young Oriental, fond of wandering through
+unexplored portions of the earth, and he arrived in India from nowhere
+in particular. At least no living man could ascertain whether it was by
+way of Balkh, Badakshan, Chitral, Beluchistan, or Nepaul, or anywhere
+else. The Indian Government, being in an unusually affable mood, gave
+orders that he was to be civilly treated and shown everything that was
+to be seen. So he drifted, talking bad English and worse French, from
+one city to another, till he foregathered with Her Majesty’s White
+Hussars in the city of Peshawur, which stands at the mouth of that
+narrow swordcut in the hills that men call the Khyber Pass. He was
+undoubtedly an officer, and he was decorated after the manner of the
+Russians with little enamelled crosses, and he could talk, and (though
+this has nothing to do with his merits) he had been given up as a
+hopeless task, or cask, by the Black Tyrone, who individually and
+collectively, with hot whisky and honey, mulled brandy, and mixed
+spirits of every kind, had striven in all hospitality to make him drunk.
+And when the Black Tyrone, who are exclusively Irish, fail to disturb
+the peace of head of a foreigner--that foreigner is certain to be a
+superior man.
+
+The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in
+charging the enemy. All that they possessed, including some wondrous
+brandy, was placed at the absolute disposition of Dirkovitch, and he
+enjoyed himself hugely--even more than among the Black Tyrones.
+
+But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White Hussars
+were ‘My dear true friends,’ ‘Fellow-soldiers glorious,’ and ‘Brothers
+inseparable.’ He would unburden himself by the hour on the glorious
+future that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia when their
+hearts and their territories should run side by side and the great
+mission of civilising Asia should begin. That was unsatisfactory,
+because Asia is not going to be civilised after the methods of the West.
+There is too much Asia and she is too old. You cannot reform a lady of
+many lovers, and Asia has been insatiable in her flirtations aforetime.
+She will never attend Sunday-school or learn to vote save with swords
+for tickets.
+
+Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to talk
+special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he could. Now
+and then he volunteered a little, a very little, information about
+his own sotnia of Cossacks, left apparently to look after themselves
+somewhere at the back of beyond. He had done rough work in Central Asia,
+and had seen rather more help-yourself fighting than most men of his
+years. But he was careful never to betray his superiority, and more than
+careful to praise on all occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and
+organisation of Her Majesty’s White Hussars. And indeed they were a
+regiment to be admired. When Lady Durgan, widow of the late Sir John
+Durgan, arrived in their station, and after a short time had been
+proposed to by every single man at mess, she put the public sentiment
+very neatly when she explained that they were all so nice that unless
+she could marry them all, including the colonel and some majors already
+married, she was not going to content herself with one hussar.
+Wherefore she wedded a little man in a rifle regiment, being by nature
+contradictious; and the White Hussars were going to wear crape on their
+arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in full force, and lining
+the aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted them all--from
+Basset-Holmer the senior captain to little Mildred the junior subaltern,
+who could have given her four thousand a year and a title.
+
+The only persons who did not share the general regard for the White
+Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived
+across the border, and answered to the name of Pathan. They had once met
+the regiment officially and for something less than twenty minutes, but
+the interview, which was complicated with many casualties, had filled
+them with prejudice. They even called the White Hussars children of the
+devil and sons of persons whom it would be perfectly impossible to meet
+in decent society. Yet they were not above making their aversion
+fill their money-belts. The regiment possessed carbines--beautiful
+Martini-Henri carbines that would lob a bullet into an enemy’s camp at
+one thousand yards, and were even handier than the long rifle. Therefore
+they were coveted all along the border, and since demand inevitably
+breeds supply, they were supplied at the risk of life and limb for
+exactly their weight in coined silver--seven and one-half pounds weight
+of rupees, or sixteen pounds sterling reckoning the rupee at par.
+They were stolen at night by snaky-haired thieves who crawled on their
+stomachs under the nose of the sentries; they disappeared mysteriously
+from locked arm-racks, and in the hot weather, when all the barrack
+doors and windows were open, they vanished like puffs of their
+own smoke. The border people desired them for family vendettas and
+contingencies. But in the long cold nights of the northern Indian winter
+they were stolen most extensively. The traffic of murder was liveliest
+among the hills at that season, and prices ruled high. The regimental
+guards were first doubled and then trebled. A trooper does not much
+care if he loses a weapon--Government must make it good--but he deeply
+resents the loss of his sleep. The regiment grew very angry, and one
+rifle-thief bears the visible marks of their anger upon him to this
+hour. That incident stopped the burglaries for a time, and the guards
+were reduced accordingly, and the regiment devoted itself to polo with
+unexpected results; for it beat by two goals to one that very terrible
+polo corps the Lushkar Light Horse, though the latter had four ponies
+apiece for a short hour’s fight, as well as a native officer who played
+like a lambent flame across the ground.
+
+They gave a dinner to celebrate the event. The Lushkar team came, and
+Dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform of a Cossack officer, which
+is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced to the Lushkars, and
+opened his eyes as he regarded. They were lighter men than the Hussars,
+and they carried themselves with the swing that is the peculiar right of
+the Punjab Frontier Force and all Irregular Horse. Like everything else
+in the Service it has to be learnt, but, unlike many things, it is never
+forgotten, and remains on the body till death.
+
+The great beam-roofed mess-room of the White Hussars was a sight to be
+remembered. All the mess plate was out on the long table--the same table
+that had served up the bodies of five officers after a forgotten fight
+long and long ago--the dingy, battered standards faced the door of
+entrance, clumps of winter-roses lay between the silver candlesticks,
+and the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked down on their
+successors from between the heads of sambhur, nilghai, markhor,
+and, pride of all the mess, two grinning snow-leopards that had cost
+Basset-Holmer four months’ leave that he might have spent in England,
+instead of on the road to Thibet and the daily risk of his life by
+ledge, snow-slide, and grassy slope.
+
+The servants in spotless white muslin and the crest of their regiments
+on the brow of their turbans waited behind their masters, who were clad
+in the scarlet and gold of the White Hussars, and the cream and silver
+of the Lushkar Light Horse. Dirkovitch’s dull green uniform was the only
+dark spot at the board, but his big onyx eyes made up for it. He was
+fraternising effusively with the captain of the Lushkar team, who
+was wondering how many of Dirkovitch’s Cossacks his own dark wiry
+down-countrymen could account for in a fair charge. But one does not
+speak of these things openly.
+
+The talk rose higher and higher, and the regimental band played between
+the courses, as is the immemorial custom, till all tongues ceased for
+a moment with the removal of the dinner-slips and the first toast of
+obligation, when an officer rising said, ‘Mr. Vice, the Queen,’ and
+little Mildred from the bottom of the table answered, ‘The Queen, God
+bless her,’ and the big spurs clanked as the big men heaved themselves
+up and drank the Queen upon whose pay they were falsely supposed to
+settle their mess-bills. That Sacrament of the Mess never grows old, and
+never ceases to bring a lump into the throat of the listener wherever he
+be by sea or by land. Dirkovitch rose with his ‘brothers glorious,’ but
+he could not understand. No one but an officer can tell what the toast
+means; and the bulk have more sentiment than comprehension. Immediately
+after the little silence that follows on the ceremony there entered the
+native officer who had played for the Lushkar team. He could not, of
+course, eat with the mess, but he came in at dessert, all six feet
+of him, with the blue and silver turban atop, and the big black boots
+below. The mess rose joyously as he thrust forward the hilt of his sabre
+in token of fealty for the colonel of the White Hussars to touch, and
+dropped into a vacant chair amid shouts of: ‘Rung ho, Hira Singh!’
+(which being translated means ‘Go in and win’). ‘Did I whack you over
+the knee, old man?’ ‘Ressaidar Sahib, what the devil made you play that
+kicking pig of a pony in the last ten minutes?’ ‘Shabash, Ressaidar
+Sahib!’ Then the voice of the colonel, ‘The health of Ressaidar Hira
+Singh!’
+
+After the shouting had died away Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was
+the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king’s son, and knew what was
+due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular:--‘Colonel Sahib
+and officers of this regiment. Much honour have you done me. This will I
+remember. We came down from afar to play you. But we were beaten.’ [‘No
+fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own ground y’know. Your
+ponies were cramped from the railway. Don’t apologise!’) ‘Therefore
+perhaps we will come again if it be so ordained.’ [‘Hear! Hear! Hear,
+indeed! Bravo! Hsh!’) ‘Then we will play you afresh’ [‘Happy to meet
+you.’) ‘till there are left no feet upon our ponies. Thus far for
+sport.’ He dropped one hand on his sword-hilt and his eye wandered to
+Dirkovitch lolling back in his chair. ‘But if by the will of God there
+arises any other game which is not the polo game, then be assured,
+Colonel Sahib and officers, that we will play it out side by side,
+though THEY,’ again his eye sought Dirkovitch, ‘though THEY I say have
+fifty ponies to our one horse.’ And with a deep-mouthed Rung ho! that
+sounded like a musket-butt on flagstones he sat down amid leaping
+glasses.
+
+Dirkovitch, who had devoted himself steadily to the brandy--the terrible
+brandy aforementioned--did not understand, nor did the expurgated
+translations offered to him at all convey the point. Decidedly Hira
+Singh’s was the speech of the evening, and the clamour might have
+continued to the dawn had it not been broken by the noise of a shot
+without that sent every man feeling at his defenceless left side. Then
+there was a scuffle and a yell of pain.
+
+‘Carbine-stealing again!’ said the adjutant, calmly sinking back in
+his chair. ‘This comes of reducing the guards. I hope the sentries have
+killed him.’
+
+The feet of armed men pounded on the verandah flags, and it was as
+though something was being dragged.
+
+‘Why don’t they put him in the cells till the morning?’ said the colonel
+testily. ‘See if they’ve damaged him, sergeant.’
+
+The mess sergeant fled out into the darkness and returned with two
+troopers and a corporal, all very much perplexed.
+
+‘Caught a man stealin’ carbines, sir,’ said the corporal. ‘Leastways ‘e
+was crawlin’ towards the barricks, sir, past the main road sentries, an’
+the sentry ‘e sez, sir--’
+
+The limp heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. Never was seen so
+destitute and demoralised an Afghan. He was turbanless, shoeless, caked
+with dirt, and all but dead with rough handling. Hira Singh started
+slightly at the sound of the man’s pain. Dirkovitch took another glass
+of brandy.
+
+‘WHAT does the sentry say?’ said the colonel.
+
+‘Sez ‘e speaks English, sir,’ said the corporal.
+
+‘So you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the
+sergeant! If he spoke all the Tongues of the Pentecost you’ve no
+business--’
+
+Again the bundle groaned and muttered. Little Mildred had risen from his
+place to inspect. He jumped back as though he had been shot.
+
+‘Perhaps it would be better, sir, to send the men away,’ said he to the
+colonel, for he was a much privileged subaltern. He put his arms round
+the ragbound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair. It may
+not have been explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in his being
+six feet four and big in proportion. The corporal seeing that an officer
+was disposed to look after the capture, and that the colonel’s eye was
+beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and his men. The mess was
+left alone with the carbine-thief, who laid his head on the table and
+wept bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably, as little children weep.
+
+Hira Singh leapt to his feet. ‘Colonel Sahib,’ said he, ‘that man is no
+Afghan, for they weep Ai! Ai! Nor is he of Hindustan, for they weep Oh!
+Ho! He weeps after the fashion of the white men, who say Ow! Ow!’
+
+‘Now where the dickens did you get that knowledge, Hira Singh?’ said the
+captain of the Lushkar team.
+
+‘Hear him!’ said Hira Singh simply, pointing at the crumpled figure that
+wept as though it would never cease.
+
+‘He said, “My God!”’ said little Mildred. ‘I heard him say it.’
+
+The colonel and the mess-room looked at the man in silence. It is a
+horrible thing to hear a man cry. A woman can sob from the top of her
+palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man must cry from his
+diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces.
+
+‘Poor devil!’ said the colonel, coughing tremendously. ‘We ought to send
+him to hospital. He’s been man-handled.’
+
+Now the adjutant loved his carbines. They were to him as his
+grandchildren, the men standing in the first place. He grunted
+rebelliously: ‘I can understand an Afghan stealing, because he’s built
+that way. But I can’t understand his crying. That makes it worse.’
+
+The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair
+and stared at the ceiling. There was nothing special in the ceiling
+beyond a shadow as of a huge black coffin. Owing to some peculiarity in
+the construction of the mess-room this shadow was always thrown when
+the candles were lighted. It never disturbed the digestion of the White
+Hussars. They were in fact rather proud of it.
+
+‘Is he going to cry all night?’ said the colonel, ‘or are we supposed to
+sit up with little Mildred’s guest until he feels better?’
+
+The man in the chair threw up his head and stared at the mess. ‘Oh, my
+God!’ he said, and every soul in the mess rose to his feet. Then the
+Lushkar captain did a deed for which he ought to have been given the
+Victoria Cross--distinguished gallantry in a fight against overwhelming
+curiosity. He picked up his team with his eyes as the hostess picks up
+the ladies at the opportune moment, and pausing only by the colonel’s
+chair to say, ‘This isn’t OUR affair, you know, sir,’ led them into the
+verandah and the gardens. Hira Singh was the last to go, and he looked
+at Dirkovitch. But Dirkovitch had departed into a brandy-paradise of his
+own. His lips moved without sound and he was studying the coffin on the
+ceiling.
+
+‘White--white all over,’ said Basset-Holmer, the adjutant. ‘What a
+pernicious renegade he must be! I wonder where he came from?’
+
+The colonel shook the man gently by the arm, and ‘Who are you?’ said he.
+
+There was no answer. The man stared round the mess-room and smiled in
+the colonel’s face. Little Mildred, who was always more of a woman than
+a man till ‘Boot and saddle’ was sounded, repeated the question in a
+voice that would have drawn confidences from a geyser. The man only
+smiled. Dirkovitch at the far end of the table slid gently from his
+chair to the floor.
+
+No son of Adam in this present imperfect world can mix the Hussars’
+champagne with the Hussars’ brandy by five and eight glasses of each
+without remembering the pit whence he was digged and descending thither.
+The band began to play the tune with which the White Hussars from the
+date of their formation have concluded all their functions. They would
+sooner be disbanded than abandon that tune; it is a part of their
+system. The man straightened himself in his chair and drummed on the
+table with his fingers.
+
+‘I don’t see why we should entertain lunatics,’ said the colonel. ‘Call
+a guard and send him off to the cells. We’ll look into the business in
+the morning. Give him a glass of wine first though.’
+
+Little Mildred filled a sherry-glass with the brandy and thrust it over
+to the man. He drank, and the tune rose louder, and he straightened
+himself yet more. Then he put out his long-taloned hands to a piece of
+plate opposite and fingered it lovingly. There was a mystery connected
+with that piece of plate, in the shape of a spring which converted what
+was a seven-branched candlestick, three springs on each side and one in
+the middle, into a sort of wheel-spoke candelabrum. He found the spring,
+pressed it, and laughed weakly. He rose from his chair and inspected a
+picture on the wall, then moved on to another picture, the mess watching
+him without a word. When he came to the mantelpiece he shook his head
+and seemed distressed. A piece of plate representing a mounted hussar
+in full uniform caught his eye. He pointed to it, and then to the
+mantelpiece with inquiry in his eyes.
+
+‘What is it--Oh what is it?’ said little Mildred. Then as a mother might
+speak to a child, ‘That is a horse. Yes, a horse.’
+
+Very slowly came the answer in a thick, passionless guttural--‘Yes,
+I--have seen. But--where is THE horse?’
+
+You could have heard the hearts of the mess beating as the men drew back
+to give the stranger full room in his wanderings. There was no question
+of calling the guard.
+
+Again he spoke--very slowly, ‘Where is OUR horse?’
+
+There is but one horse in the White Hussars, and his portrait hangs
+outside the door of the mess-room. He is the piebald drum-horse,
+the king of the regimental band, that served the regiment for
+seven-and-thirty years, and in the end was shot for old age. Half the
+mess tore the thing down from its place and thrust it into the man’s
+hands. He placed it above the mantel-piece, it clattered on the ledge
+as his poor hands dropped it, and he staggered towards the bottom of
+the table, falling into Mildred’s chair. Then all the men spoke to one
+another something after this fashion, ‘The drum-horse hasn’t hung over
+the mantelpiece since ‘67.’ ‘How does he know?’ ‘Mildred, go and speak
+to him again.’ ‘Colonel, what are you going to do?’ ‘Oh, dry up, and
+give the poor devil a chance to pull himself together.’ ‘It isn’t
+possible anyhow. The man’s a lunatic.’
+
+Little Mildred stood at the colonel’s side talking in his ear. ‘Will you
+be good enough to take your seats please, gentlemen!’ he said, and the
+mess dropped into the chairs. Only Dirkovitch’s seat, next to little
+Mildred’s, was blank, and little Mildred himself had found Hira Singh’s
+place. The wide-eyed mess-sergeant filled the glasses in deep silence.
+Once more the colonel rose, but his hand shook and the port spilled on
+the table as he looked straight at the man in little Mildred’s chair and
+said hoarsely, ‘Mr. Vice, the Queen.’ There was a little pause, but the
+man sprung to his feet and answered without hesitation, ‘The Queen,
+God bless her!’ and as he emptied the thin glass he snapped the shank
+between his fingers.
+
+Long and long ago, when the Empress of India was a young woman and there
+were no unclean ideals in the land, it was the custom of a few messes
+to drink the Queen’s toast in broken glass, to the vast delight of the
+mess-contractors. The custom is now dead, because there is nothing to
+break anything for, except now and again the word of a Government, and
+that has been broken already.
+
+‘That settles it,’ said the colonel, with a gasp. ‘He’s not a sergeant.
+What in the world is he?’
+
+The entire mess echoed the word, and the volley of questions would have
+scared any man. It was no wonder that the ragged, filthy invader could
+only smile and shake his head.
+
+From under the table, calm and smiling, rose Dirkovitch, who had been
+roused from healthful slumber by feet upon his body. By the side of the
+man he rose, and the man shrieked and grovelled. It was a horrible sight
+coming so swiftly upon the pride and glory of the toast that had brought
+the strayed wits together.
+
+Dirkovitch made no offer to raise him, but little Mildred heaved him
+up in an instant. It is not good that a gentleman who can answer to the
+Queen’s toast should lie at the feet of a subaltern of Cossacks.
+
+The hasty action tore the wretch’s upper clothing nearly to the waist,
+and his body was seamed with dry black scars. There is only one weapon
+in the world that cuts: in parallel lines, and it is neither the cane
+nor the cat. Dirkovitch saw the marks, and the pupils of his eyes
+dilated. Also his face changed. He said something that sounded like Shto
+ve takete, and the man fawning answered, Chetyre.
+
+‘What’s that?’ said everybody together.
+
+‘His number. That is number four, you know.’ Dirkovitch spoke very
+thickly.
+
+‘What has a Queen’s officer to do with a qualified number?’ said the
+Colonel, and an unpleasant growl ran round the table.
+
+‘How can I tell?’ said the affable Oriental with a sweet smile. ‘He
+is a--how you have it?--escape--run-a-way, from over there.’ He nodded
+towards the darkness of the night.
+
+‘Speak to him if he’ll answer you, and speak to him gently,’ said little
+Mildred, settling the man in a chair. It seemed most improper to all
+present that Dirkovitch should sip brandy as he talked in purring,
+spitting Russian to the creature who answered so feebly and with such
+evident dread. But since Dirkovitch appeared to understand no one said
+a word. All breathed heavily, leaning forward, in the long gaps of the
+conversation. The next time that they have no engagements on hand the
+White Hussars intend to go to St. Petersburg in a body to learn Russian.
+
+‘He does not know how many years ago,’ said Dirkovitch, facing the mess,
+‘but he says it was very long ago in a war. I think that there was an
+accident. He says he was of this glorious and distinguished regiment in
+the war.’
+
+‘The rolls! The rolls! Holmer, get the rolls!’ said little Mildred,
+and the adjutant dashed off bare-headed to the orderly-room, where the
+muster-rolls of the regiment were kept. He returned just in time to hear
+Dirkovitch conclude, ‘Therefore, my dear friends, I am most sorry to
+say there was an accident which would have been reparable if he had
+apologised to that our colonel, which he had insulted.’
+
+Then followed another growl which the colonel tried to beat down. The
+mess was in no mood just then to weigh insults to Russian colonels.
+
+‘He does not remember, but I think that there was an accident, and so
+he was not exchanged among the prisoners, but he was sent to another
+place--how do you say?--the country. SO, he says, he came here. He does
+not know how he came. Eh? He was at Chepany’--the man caught the word,
+nodded, and shivered--‘at Zhigansk and Irkutsk. I cannot understand how
+he escaped. He says, too, that he was in the forests for many years,
+but how many years he has forgotten--that with many things. It was an
+accident; done because he did not apologise to that our colonel. Ah!’
+
+Instead of echoing Dirkovitch’s sigh of regret, it is sad to record
+that the White Hussars livelily exhibited un-Christian delight and other
+emotions, hardly restrained by their sense of hospitality. Holmer flung
+the frayed and yellow regimental rolls on the table, and the men flung
+themselves at these.
+
+‘Steady! Fifty-six--fifty-five--fifty-four,’ said Holmer. ‘Here we are.
+“Lieutenant Austin Limmason. MISSING.” That was before Sebastopol.
+What an infernal shame! Insulted one of their colonels, and was quietly
+shipped off. Thirty years of his life wiped out.’
+
+‘But he never apologised. Said he’d see him damned first,’ chorused the
+mess.
+
+‘Poor chap! I suppose he never had the chance afterwards. How did he
+come here?’ said the colonel.
+
+The dingy heap in the chair could give no answer.
+
+‘Do you know who you are?’
+
+It laughed weakly.
+
+‘Do you know that you are Limmason--Lieutenant Limmason of the White
+Hussars?’
+
+Swiftly as a shot came the answer, in a slightly surprised tone, ‘Yes,
+I’m Limmason, of course.’ The light died out in his eyes, and the man
+collapsed, watching every motion of Dirkovitch with terror. A flight
+from Siberia may fix a few elementary facts in the mind, but it does not
+seem to lead to continuity of thought. The man could not explain how,
+like a homing pigeon, he had found his way to his own old mess again.
+Of what he had suffered or seen he knew nothing. He cringed before
+Dirkovitch as instinctively as he had pressed the spring of the
+candlestick, sought the picture of the drum-horse, and answered to the
+toast of the Queen. The rest was a blank that the dreaded Russian tongue
+could only in part remove. His head bowed on his breast, and he giggled
+and cowered alternately.
+
+The devil that lived in the brandy prompted Dirkovitch at this extremely
+inopportune moment to make a speech. He rose, swaying slightly, gripped
+the table-edge, while his eyes glowed like opals, and began:
+
+‘Fellow-soldiers glorious--true friends and hospitables. It was an
+accident, and deplorable--most deplorable.’ Here he smiled sweetly all
+round the mess. ‘But you will think of this little, little thing. So
+little, is it not? The Czar! Posh! I slap my fingers--I snap my fingers
+at him. Do I believe in him? No! But in us Slav who has done nothing,
+HIM I believe. Seventy--how much--millions peoples that have done
+nothing--not one thing. Posh! Napoleon was an episode.’ He banged a
+hand on the table. ‘Hear you, old peoples, we have done nothing in
+the world--out here. All our work is to do; and it shall be done, old
+peoples. Get a-way!’ He waved his hand imperiously, and pointed to the
+man. ‘You see him. He is not good to see. He was just one little--oh,
+so little--accident, that no one remembered. Now he is THAT! So will you
+be, brother-soldiers so brave--so will you be. But you will never come
+back. You will all go where he is gone, or’--he pointed to the great
+coffin-shadow on the ceiling, and muttering, ‘Seventy millions--get
+a-way, you old peoples,’ fell asleep.
+
+‘Sweet, and to the point,’ said little Mildred. ‘What’s the use of
+getting wroth? Let’s make this poor devil comfortable.’
+
+But that was a matter suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands
+of the White Hussars. The lieutenant had returned only to go away again
+three days later, when the wail of the Dead March, and the tramp of the
+squadrons, told the wondering Station, who saw no gap in the mess-table,
+that an officer of the regiment had resigned his new-found commission.
+
+And Dirkovitch, bland, supple, and always genial, went away too by a
+night train. Little Mildred and another man saw him off, for he was the
+guest of the mess, and even had he smitten the colonel with the open
+hand, the law of that mess allowed no relaxation of hospitality.
+
+‘Good-bye, Dirkovitch, and a pleasant journey,’ said little Mildred.
+
+‘Au revoir,’ said the Russian.
+
+‘Indeed! But we thought you were going home?’
+
+‘Yes, but I will come again. My dear friends, is that road shut?’ He
+pointed to where the North Star burned over the Khyber Pass.
+
+‘By Jove! I forgot. Of course. Happy to meet you, old man, any time you
+like. Got everything you want? Cheroots, ice, bedding? That’s all right.
+Well, au revoir, Dirkovitch.’
+
+‘Um,’ said the other man, as the tail-lights of the train grew small.
+‘Of--all--the--unmitigated--!’
+
+Little Mildred answered nothing, but watched the North Star and hummed
+a selection from a recent Simla burlesque that had much delighted the
+White Hussars. It ran--
+
+     I’m sorry for Mister Bluebeard,
+     I’m sorry to cause him pain;
+     But a terrible spree there’s sure to be
+     When he comes back again.
+
+
+
+
+THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT
+
+
+    There’s a convict more in the Central Jail,
+       Behind the old mud wall;
+     There’s a lifter less on the Border trail,
+       And the Queen’s Peace over all,
+                                    Dear boys
+     The Queen’s Peace over all.
+
+    For we must bear our leader’s blame,
+       On us the shame will fall,
+     If we lift our hand from a fettered land
+       And the Queen’s Peace over all,
+                                    Dear boys,
+     The Queen’s Peace over all!
+                      THE RUNNING OF SHINDAND.
+
+I
+
+The Indus had risen in flood without warning. Last night it was a
+fordable shallow; to-night five miles of raving muddy water parted bank
+and caving bank, and the river was still rising under the moon. A litter
+borne by six bearded men, all unused to the work, stopped in the white
+sand that bordered the whiter plain.
+
+‘It’s God’s will,’ they said. ‘We dare not cross to-night, even in a
+boat. Let us light a fire and cook food. We be tired men.’
+
+They looked at the litter inquiringly. Within, the Deputy Commissioner
+of the Kot-Kumharsen district lay dying of fever. They had brought him
+across country, six fighting-men of a frontier clan that he had won over
+to the paths of a moderate righteousness, when he had broken down at the
+foot of their inhospitable hills. And Tallantire, his assistant, rode
+with them, heavy-hearted as heavy-eyed with sorrow and lack of sleep. He
+had served under the sick man for three years, and had learned to love
+him as men associated in toil of the hardest learn to love--or hate.
+Dropping from his horse he parted the curtains of the litter and peered
+inside.
+
+‘Orde--Orde, old man, can you hear? We have to wait till the river goes
+down, worse luck.’
+
+‘I hear,’ returned a dry whisper. ‘Wait till the river goes down. I
+thought we should reach camp before the dawn. Polly knows. She’ll meet
+me.’
+
+One of the litter-men stared across the river and caught a faint twinkle
+of light on the far side. He whispered to Tallantire, ‘There are his
+camp-fires, and his wife. They will cross in the morning, for they have
+better boats. Can he live so long?’
+
+Tallantire shook his head. Yardley-Orde was very near to death. What
+need to vex his soul with hopes of a meeting that could not be? The
+river gulped at the banks, brought down a cliff of sand, and snarled
+the more hungrily. The litter-men sought for fuel in the waste-dried
+camel-thorn and refuse of the camps that had waited at the ford. Their
+sword-belts clinked as they moved softly in the haze of the moonlight,
+and Tallantire’s horse coughed to explain that he would like a blanket.
+
+‘I’m cold too,’ said the voice from the litter. ‘I fancy this is the
+end. Poor Polly!’
+
+Tallantire rearranged the blankets. Khoda Dad Khan, seeing this,
+stripped off his own heavy-wadded sheepskin coat and added it to the
+pile. ‘I shall be warm by the fire presently,’ said he. Tallantire
+took the wasted body of his chief into his arms and held it against his
+breast. Perhaps if they kept him very warm Orde might live to see his
+wife once more. If only blind Providence would send a three-foot fall in
+the river!
+
+‘That’s better,’ said Orde faintly. ‘Sorry to be a nuisance, but is--is
+there anything to drink?’
+
+They gave him milk and whisky, and Tallantire felt a little warmth
+against his own breast. Orde began to mutter.
+
+‘It isn’t that I mind dying,’ he said. ‘It’s leaving Polly and
+the district. Thank God! we have no children. Dick, you know, I’m
+dipped--awfully dipped--debts in my first five years’ service. It isn’t
+much of a pension, but enough for her. She has her mother at home.
+Getting there is the difficulty. And--and--you see, not being a
+soldier’s wife--’
+
+‘We’ll arrange the passage home, of course,’ said Tallantire quietly.
+
+‘It’s not nice to think of sending round the hat; but, good Lord! how
+many men I lie here and remember that had to do it! Morten’s dead--he
+was of my year. Shaughnessy is dead, and he had children; I remember he
+used to read us their school-letters; what a bore we thought him! Evans
+is dead--Kot-Kumharsen killed him! Ricketts of Myndonie is dead--and I’m
+going too. “Man that is born of a woman is small potatoes and few in
+the hill.” That reminds me, Dick; the four Khusru Kheyl villages in our
+border want a one-third remittance this spring. That’s fair; their crops
+are bad. See that they get it, and speak to Ferris about the canal. I
+should like to have lived till that was finished; it means so much for
+the North-Indus villages--but Ferris is an idle beggar--wake him up.
+You’ll have charge of the district till my successor comes. I wish they
+would appoint you permanently; you know the folk. I suppose it will
+be Bullows, though. ‘Good man, but too weak for frontier work; and he
+doesn’t understand the priests. The blind priest at Jagai will bear
+watching. You’ll find it in my papers,--in the uniform-case, I think.
+Call the Khusru Kheyl men up; I’ll hold my last public audience. Khoda
+Dad Khan!’
+
+The leader of the men sprang to the side of the litter, his companions
+following.
+
+‘Men, I’m dying,’ said Orde quickly, in the vernacular; ‘and soon there
+will be no more Orde Sahib to twist your tails and prevent you from
+raiding cattle.’
+
+‘God forbid this thing!’ broke out the deep bass chorus. ‘The Sahib is
+not going to die.’
+
+‘Yes, he is; and then he will know whether Mahomed speaks truth, or
+Moses. But you must be good men, when I am not here. Such of you as live
+in our borders must pay your taxes quietly as before. I have spoken of
+the villages to be gently treated this year. Such of you as live in the
+hills must refrain from cattle-lifting, and burn no more thatch, and
+turn a deaf ear to the voice of the priests, who, not knowing the
+strength of the Government, would lead you into foolish wars, wherein
+you will surely die and your crops be eaten by strangers. And you must
+not sack any caravans, and must leave your arms at the police-post when
+you come in; as has been your custom, and my order. And Tallantire Sahib
+will be with you, but I do not know who takes my place. I speak now true
+talk, for I am as it were already dead, my children,--for though ye be
+strong men, ye are children.’
+
+‘And thou art our father and our mother,’ broke in Khoda Dad Khan with
+an oath. ‘What shall we do, now there is no one to speak for us, or to
+teach us to go wisely!’
+
+‘There remains Tallantire Sahib. Go to him; he knows your talk and your
+heart. Keep the young men quiet, listen to the old men, and obey. Khoda
+Dad Khan, take my ring. The watch and chain go to thy brother. Keep
+those things for my sake, and I will speak to whatever God I may
+encounter and tell him that the Khusru Kheyl are good men. Ye have my
+leave to go.’
+
+Khoda Dad Khan, the ring upon his finger, choked audibly as he caught
+the well-known formula that closed an interview. His brother turned
+to look across the river. The dawn was breaking, and a speck of white
+showed on the dull silver of the stream. ‘She comes,’ said the man
+under his breath. ‘Can he live for another two hours?’ And he pulled the
+newly-acquired watch out of his belt and looked uncomprehendingly at the
+dial, as he had seen Englishmen do.
+
+For two hours the bellying sail tacked and blundered up and down the
+river, Tallantire still clasping Orde in his arms, and Khoda Dad Khan
+chafing his feet. He spoke now and again of the district and his wife,
+but, as the end neared, more frequently of the latter. They hoped he did
+not know that she was even then risking her life in a crazy native boat
+to regain him. But the awful foreknowledge of the dying deceived them.
+Wrenching himself forward, Orde looked through the curtains and saw how
+near was the sail. ‘That’s Polly,’ he said simply, though his mouth was
+wried with agony. ‘Polly and--the grimmest practical joke ever played on
+a man. Dick--you’ll--have--to--explain.’
+
+And an hour later Tallantire met on the bank a woman in a gingham
+riding-habit and a sun-hat who cried out to him for her husband--her
+boy and her darling--while Khoda Dad Khan threw himself face-down on the
+sand and covered his eyes.
+
+II
+
+The very simplicity of the notion was its charm. What more easy to win
+a reputation for far-seeing statesmanship, originality, and, above all,
+deference to the desires of the people, than by appointing a child of
+the country to the rule of that country? Two hundred millions of the
+most loving and grateful folk under Her Majesty’s dominion would laud
+the fact, and their praise would endure for ever. Yet he was indifferent
+to praise or blame, as befitted the Very Greatest of All the Viceroys.
+His administration was based upon principle, and the principle must be
+enforced in season and out of season. His pen and tongue had created the
+New India, teeming with possibilities--loud-voiced, insistent, a nation
+among nations--all his very own. Wherefore the Very Greatest of All the
+Viceroys took another step in advance, and with it counsel of those
+who should have advised him on the appointment of a successor to
+Yardley-Orde. There was a gentleman and a member of the Bengal Civil
+Service who had won his place and a university degree to boot in fair
+and open competition with the sons of the English. He was cultured,
+of the world, and, if report spoke truly, had wisely and, above all,
+sympathetically ruled a crowded district in South-Eastern Bengal. He had
+been to England and charmed many drawing-rooms there. His name, if the
+Viceroy recollected aright, was Mr. Grish Chunder De, M. A. In short,
+did anybody see any objection to the appointment, always on principle,
+of a man of the people to rule the people? The district in South-Eastern
+Bengal might with advantage, he apprehended, pass over to a younger
+civilian of Mr. G. C. De’s nationality (who had written a remarkably
+clever pamphlet on the political value of sympathy in administration);
+and Mr. G. C. De could be transferred northward to Kot-Kumharsen. The
+Viceroy was averse, on principle, to interfering with appointments under
+control of the Provincial Governments. He wished it to be understood
+that he merely recommended and advised in this instance. As regarded the
+mere question of race, Mr. Grish Chunder De was more English than the
+English, and yet possessed of that peculiar sympathy and insight which
+the best among the best Service in the world could only win to at the
+end of their service.
+
+The stern, black-bearded kings who sit about the Council-board of India
+divided on the step, with the inevitable result of driving the Very
+Greatest of All the Viceroys into the borders of hysteria, and a
+bewildered obstinacy pathetic as that of a child.
+
+‘The principle is sound enough,’ said the weary-eyed Head of the Red
+Provinces in which Kot-Kumharsen lay, for he too held theories. ‘The
+only difficulty is--’
+
+‘Put the screw on the District officials; brigade De with a very strong
+Deputy Commissioner on each side of him; give him the best assistant
+in the Province; rub the fear of God into the people beforehand; and
+if anything goes wrong, say that his colleagues didn’t back him up. All
+these lovely little experiments recoil on the District-Officer in the
+end,’ said the Knight of the Drawn Sword with a truthful brutality that
+made the Head of the Red Provinces shudder. And on a tacit understanding
+of this kind the transfer was accomplished, as quietly as might be for
+many reasons.
+
+It is sad to think that what goes for public opinion in India did not
+generally see the wisdom of the Viceroy’s appointment. There were not
+lacking indeed hireling organs, notoriously in the pay of a tyrannous
+bureaucracy, who more than hinted that His Excellency was a fool, a
+dreamer of dreams, a doctrinaire, and, worst of all, a trifler with the
+lives of men. ‘The Viceroy’s Excellence Gazette,’ published in Calcutta,
+was at pains to thank ‘Our beloved Viceroy for once more and again thus
+gloriously vindicating the potentialities of the Bengali nations for
+extended executive and administrative duties in foreign parts beyond
+our ken. We do not at all doubt that our excellent fellow-townsman, Mr.
+Grish Chunder De, Esq., M. A., will uphold the prestige of the Bengali,
+notwithstanding what underhand intrigue and peshbundi may be set on
+foot to insidiously nip his fame and blast his prospects among the proud
+civilians, some of which will now have to serve under a despised native
+and take orders too. How will you like that, Misters? We entreat
+our beloved Viceroy still to substantiate himself superiorly to
+race-prejudice and colour-blindness, and to allow the flower of this now
+OUR Civil Service all the full pays and allowances granted to his more
+fortunate brethren.’
+
+III
+
+‘When does this man take over charge? I’m alone just now, and I gather
+that I’m to stand fast under him.’
+
+‘Would you have cared for a transfer?’ said Bullows keenly. Then, laying
+his hand on Tallantire’s shoulder: ‘We’re all in the same boat; don’t
+desert us. And yet, why the devil should you stay, if you can get
+another charge?’
+
+‘It was Orde’s,’ said Tallantire simply.
+
+‘Well, it’s De’s now. He’s a Bengali of the Bengalis, crammed with code
+and case law; a beautiful man so far as routine and deskwork go, and
+pleasant to talk to. They naturally have always kept him in his own home
+district, where all his sisters and his cousins and his aunts lived,
+somewhere south of Dacca. He did no more than turn the place into a
+pleasant little family preserve, allowed his subordinates to do what
+they liked, and let everybody have a chance at the shekels. Consequently
+he’s immensely popular down there.’
+
+‘I’ve nothing to do with that. How on earth am I to explain to the
+district that they are going to be governed by a Bengali? Do you--does
+the Government, I mean--suppose that the Khusru Kheyl will sit quiet
+when they once know? What will the Mahomedan heads of villages say? How
+will the police--Muzbi Sikhs and Pathans--how will THEY work under him?
+We couldn’t say anything if the Government appointed a sweeper; but
+my people will say a good deal, you know that. It’s a piece of cruel
+folly!’
+
+‘My dear boy, I know all that, and more. I’ve represented it, and have
+been told that I am exhibiting “culpable and puerile prejudice.” By
+Jove, if the Khusru Kheyl don’t exhibit something worse than that I
+don’t know the Border! The chances are that you will have the district
+alight on your hands, and I shall have to leave my work and help you
+pull through. I needn’t ask you to stand by the Bengali man in every
+possible way. You’ll do that for your own sake.’
+
+‘For Orde’s. I can’t say that I care twopence personally.’
+
+‘Don’t be an ass. It’s grievous enough, God knows, and the Government
+will know later on; but that’s no reason for your sulking. YOU must try
+to run the district, YOU must stand between him and as much insult as
+possible; YOU must show him the ropes; YOU must pacify the Khusru Kheyl,
+and just warn Curbar of the Police to look out for trouble by the way.
+I’m always at the end of a telegraph-wire, and willing to peril my
+reputation to hold the district together. You’ll lose yours, of course,
+If you keep things straight, and he isn’t actually beaten with a stick
+when he’s on tour, he’ll get all the credit. If anything goes wrong,
+you’ll be told that you didn’t support him loyally.’
+
+‘I know what I’ve got to do,’ said Tallantire wearily, ‘and I’m going to
+do it. But it’s hard.’
+
+‘The work is with us, the event is with Allah,--as Orde used to say when
+he was more than usually in hot water.’ And Bullows rode away.
+
+That two gentlemen in Her Majesty’s Bengal Civil Service should thus
+discuss a third, also in that service, and a cultured and affable man
+withal, seems strange and saddening. Yet listen to the artless babble of
+the Blind Mullah of Jagai, the priest of the Khusru Kheyl, sitting upon
+a rock overlooking the Border. Five years before, a chance-hurled shell
+from a screw-gun battery had dashed earth in the face of the Mullah,
+then urging a rush of Ghazis against half a dozen British bayonets.
+So he became blind, and hated the English none the less for the little
+accident. Yardley-Orde knew his failing, and had many times laughed at
+him therefor.
+
+‘Dogs you are,’ said the Blind Mullah to the listening tribesmen round
+the fire. ‘Whipped dogs! Because you listened to Orde Sahib and called
+him father and behaved as his children, the British Government have
+proven how they regard you. Orde Sahib ye know is dead.’
+
+‘Ai! ai! ai!’ said half a dozen voices.
+
+‘He was a man. Comes now in his stead, whom think ye? A Bengali of
+Bengal--an eater of fish from the South.’
+
+‘A lie!’ said Khoda Dad Khan. ‘And but for the small matter of thy
+priesthood, I’d drive my gun butt-first down thy throat.’
+
+‘Oho, art thou there, lickspittle of the English? Go in to-morrow across
+the Border to pay service to Orde Sahib’s successor, and thou shalt slip
+thy shoes at the tent-door of a Bengali, as thou shalt hand thy offering
+to a Bengali’s black fist. This I know; and in my youth, when a young
+man spoke evil to a Mullah holding the doors of Heaven and Hell, the
+gun-butt was not rammed down the Mullah’s gullet. No!’
+
+The Blind Mullah hated Khoda Dad Khan with Afghan hatred; both being
+rivals for the headship of the tribe; but the latter was feared for
+bodily as the other for spiritual gifts. Khoda Dad Khan looked at Orde’s
+ring and grunted, ‘I go in to-morrow because I am not an old fool,
+preaching war against the English. If the Government, smitten with
+madness, have done this, then...’
+
+‘Then,’ croaked the Mullah, ‘thou wilt take out the young men and strike
+at the four villages within the Border?’
+
+‘Or wring thy neck, black raven of Jehannum, for a bearer of
+ill-tidings.’
+
+Khoda Dad Khan oiled his long locks with great care, put on his best
+Bokhara belt, a new turban-cap and fine green shoes, and accompanied by
+a few friends came down from the hills to pay a visit to the new Deputy
+Commissioner of Kot-Kumharsen. Also he bore tribute--four or five
+priceless gold mohurs of Akbar’s time in a white handkerchief. These the
+Deputy Commissioner would touch and remit. The little ceremony used to
+be a sign that, so far as Khoda Dad Khan’s personal influence went,
+the Khusru Kheyl would be good boys,--till the next time; especially
+if Khoda Dad Khan happened to like the new Deputy Commissioner. In
+Yardley-Orde’s consulship his visit concluded with a sumptuous dinner
+and perhaps forbidden liquors; certainly with some wonderful tales and
+great good-fellowship. Then Khoda Dad Khan would swagger back to
+his hold, vowing that Orde Sahib was one prince and Tallantire Sahib
+another, and that whosoever went a-raiding into British territory would
+be flayed alive. On this occasion he found the Deputy Commissioner’s
+tents looking much as usual. Regarding himself as privileged he strode
+through the open door to confont a suave, portly Bengali in English
+costume writing at a table. Unversed in the elevating influence of
+education, and not in the least caring for university degrees, Khoda
+Dad Khan promptly set the man down for a Babu--the native clerk of the
+Deputy Commissioner--a hated and despised animal.
+
+‘Ugh!’ said he cheerfully. ‘Where’s your master, Babujee?’
+
+‘I am the Deputy Commissioner,’ said the gentleman in English. Now he
+overvalued the effects of university degrees, and stared Khoda Dad Khan
+in the face. But if from your earliest infancy you have been accustomed
+to look on battle, murder, and sudden death, if spilt blood affects
+your nerves as much as red paint, and, above all, if you have faithfully
+believed that the Bengali was the servant of all Hindustan, and that all
+Hindustan was vastly inferior to your own large, lustful self, you can
+endure, even though uneducated, a very large amount of looking over. You
+can even stare down a graduate of an Oxford college if the latter
+has been born in a hothouse, of stock bred in a hothouse, and fearing
+physical pain as some men fear sin; especially if your opponent’s mother
+has frightened him to sleep in his youth with horrible stories of devils
+inhabiting Afghanistan, and dismal legends of the black North. The eyes
+behind the gold spectacles sought the floor. Khoda Dad Khan chuckled,
+and swung out to find Tallantire hard by. ‘Here,’ said he roughly,
+thrusting the coins before him, ‘touch and remit. That answers for MY
+good behaviour. But, O Sahib, has the Government gone mad to send a
+black Bengali dog to us? And am I to pay service to such an one? And
+are you to work under him? What does it mean?’ ‘It is an order,’ said
+Tallantire. He had expected something of this kind. ‘He is a very clever
+S-sahib.’
+
+‘He a Sahib! He’s a kala admi--a black man--unfit to run at the tail of
+a potter’s donkey. All the peoples of the earth have harried Bengal. It
+is written. Thou knowest when we of the North wanted women or plunder
+whither went we? To Bengal--where else? What child’s talk is this of
+Sahibdom--after Orde Sahib too! Of a truth the Blind Mullah was right.’
+
+‘What of him?’ asked Tallantire uneasily. He mistrusted that old man
+with his dead eyes and his deadly tongue.
+
+‘Nay, now, because of the oath that I sware to Orde Sahib when we
+watched him die by the river yonder, I will tell. In the first place, is
+it true that the English have set the heel of the Bengali on their own
+neck, and that there is no more English rule in the land?’
+
+‘I am here,’ said Tallantire, ‘and I serve the Maharanee of England.’
+
+‘The Mullah said otherwise, and further that because we loved Orde Sahib
+the Government sent us a pig to show that we were dogs, who till now
+have been held by the strong hand. Also that they were taking away
+the white soldiers, that more Hindustanis might come, and that all was
+changing.’
+
+This is the worst of ill-considered handling of a very large country.
+What looks so feasible in Calcutta, so right in Bombay, so unassailable
+in Madras, is misunderstood by the North and entirely changes its
+complexion on the banks of the Indus. Khoda Dad Khan explained as
+clearly as he could that, though he himself intended to be good, he
+really could not answer for the more reckless members of his tribe under
+the leadership of the Blind Mullah. They might or they might not give
+trouble, but they certainly had no intention whatever of obeying the new
+Deputy Commissioner. Was Tallantire perfectly sure that in the event
+of any systematic border-raiding the force in the district could put it
+down promptly?
+
+‘Tell the Mullah if he talks any more fool’s talk,’ said Tallantire
+curtly, ‘that he takes his men on to certain death, and his tribe to
+blockade, trespass-fine, and blood-money. But why do I talk to one who
+no longer carries weight in the counsels of the tribe?’
+
+Khoda Dad Khan pocketed that insult. He had learned something that
+he much wanted to know, and returned to his hills to be sarcastically
+complimented by the Mullah, whose tongue raging round the camp-fires was
+deadlier flame than ever dung-cake fed.
+
+IV
+
+Be pleased to consider here for a moment the unknown district of
+Kot-Kumharsen. It lay cut lengthways by the Indus under the line of
+the Khusru hills--ramparts of useless earth and tumbled stone. It was
+seventy miles long by fifty broad, maintained a population of something
+less than two hundred thousand, and paid taxes to the extent of forty
+thousand pounds a year on an area that was by rather more than half
+sheer, hopeless waste. The cultivators were not gentle people, the
+miners for salt were less gentle still, and the cattle-breeders least
+gentle of all. A police-post in the top right-hand corner and a tiny mud
+fort in the top left-hand corner prevented as much salt-smuggling and
+cattle-lifting as the influence of the civilians could not put down; and
+in the bottom right-hand corner lay Jumala, the district headquarters--a
+pitiful knot of lime-washed barns facetiously rented as houses, reeking
+with frontier fever, leaking in the rain, and ovens in the summer.
+
+It was to this place that Grish Chunder De was travelling, there
+formally to take over charge of the district. But the news of his coming
+had gone before. Bengalis were as scarce as poodles among the simple
+Borderers, who cut each other’s heads open with their long spades and
+worshipped impartially at Hindu and Mahomedan shrines. They crowded
+to see him, pointing at him, and diversely comparing him to a gravid
+milch-buffalo, or a broken-down horse, as their limited range of
+metaphor prompted. They laughed at his police-guard, and wished to know
+how long the burly Sikhs were going to lead Bengali apes. They inquired
+whether he had brought his women with him, and advised him explicitly
+not to tamper with theirs. It remained for a wrinkled hag by the
+roadside to slap her lean breasts as he passed, crying, ‘I have suckled
+six that could have eaten six thousand of HIM. The Government shot
+them, and made this That a king!’ Whereat a blue-turbaned huge-boned
+plough-mender shouted, ‘Have hope, mother o’ mine! He may yet go the
+way of thy wastrels.’ And the children, the little brown puff-balls,
+regarded curiously. It was generally a good thing for infancy to stray
+into Orde Sahib’s tent, where copper coins were to be won for the mere
+wishing, and tales of the most authentic, such as even their mothers
+knew but the first half of. No! This fat black man could never tell them
+how Pir Prith hauled the eye-teeth out of ten devils; how the big stones
+came to lie all in a row on top of the Khusru hills, and what happened
+if you shouted through the village-gate to the gray wolf at even ‘Badl
+Khas is dead.’ Meantime Grish Chunder De talked hastily and much to
+Tallantire, after the manner of those who are ‘more English than the
+English,’--of Oxford and ‘home,’ with much curious book-knowledge of
+bump-suppers, cricket-matches, hunting-runs, and other unholy sports of
+the alien. ‘We must get these fellows in hand,’ he said once or twice
+uneasily; ‘get them well in hand, and drive them on a tight rein. No
+use, you know, being slack with your district.’
+
+And a moment later Tallantire heard Debendra Nath De, who brotherliwise
+had followed his kinsman’s fortune and hoped for the shadow of his
+protection as a pleader, whisper in Bengali, ‘Better are dried fish at
+Dacca than drawn swords at Delhi. Brother of mine, these men are devils,
+as our mother said. And you will always have to ride upon a horse!’
+
+That night there was a public audience in a broken-down little town
+thirty miles from Jumala, when the new Deputy Commissioner, in reply to
+the greetings of the subordinate native officials, delivered a speech.
+It was a carefully thought-out speech, which would have been very
+valuable had not his third sentence begun with three innocent words,
+‘Hamara hookum hai--It is my order.’ Then there was a laugh, clear and
+bell-like, from the back of the big tent, where a few border landholders
+sat, and the laugh grew and scorn mingled with it, and the lean, keen
+face of Debendra Nath De paled, and Grish Chunder turning to Tallantire
+spake: ‘YOU--you put up this arrangement.’ Upon that instant the
+noise of hoofs rang without, and there entered Curbar, the District
+Superintendent of Police, sweating and dusty. The State had tossed him
+into a corner of the province for seventeen weary years, there to check
+smuggling of salt, and to hope for promotion that never came. He had
+forgotten how to keep his white uniform clean, had screwed rusty spurs
+into patent-leather shoes, and clothed his head indifferently with a
+helmet or a turban. Soured, old, worn with heat and cold, he waited till
+he should be entitled to sufficient pension to keep him from starving.
+
+‘Tallantire,’ said he, disregarding Grish Chunder De, ‘come outside.
+I want to speak to you.’ They withdrew. ‘It’s this,’ continued Curbar.
+‘The Khusru Kheyl have rushed and cut up half a dozen of the coolies on
+Ferris’s new canal-embankment; killed a couple of men and carried off
+a woman. I wouldn’t trouble you about that--Ferris is after them and
+Hugonin, my assistant, with ten mounted police. But that’s only the
+beginning, I fancy. Their fires are out on the Hassan Ardeb heights, and
+unless we’re pretty quick there’ll be a flare-up all along our Border.
+They are sure to raid the four Khusru villages on our side of the line;
+there’s been bad blood between them for years; and you know the Blind
+Mullah has been preaching a holy war since Orde went out. What’s your
+notion?’
+
+‘Damn!’ said Tallantire thoughtfully. ‘They’ve begun quick. Well, it
+seems to me I’d better ride off to Fort Ziar and get what men I can
+there to picket among the lowland villages, if it’s not too late. Tommy
+Dodd commands at Fort Ziar, I think. Ferris and Hugonin ought to teach
+the canal-thieves a lesson, and--No, we can’t have the Head of the
+Police ostentatiously guarding the Treasury. You go back to the canal.
+I’ll wire Bullows to come into Jumala with a strong police-guard, and
+sit on the Treasury. They won’t touch the place, but it looks well.’
+
+‘I--I--I insist upon knowing what this means,’ said the voice of the
+Deputy Commissioner, who had followed the speakers.
+
+‘Oh!’ said Curbar, who being in the Police could not understand that
+fifteen years of education must, on principle, change the Bengali into
+a Briton. ‘There has been a fight on the Border, and heaps of men
+are killed. There’s going to be another fight, and heaps more will be
+killed.’
+
+‘What for?’
+
+‘Because the teeming millions of this district don’t exactly approve of
+you, and think that under your benign rule they are going to have a good
+time. It strikes me that you had better make arrangements. I act, as you
+know, by your orders. What do you advise?’
+
+‘I--I take you all to witness that I have not yet assumed charge of the
+district,’ stammered the Deputy Commissioner, not in the tones of the
+‘more English.’
+
+‘Ah, I thought so. Well, as I was saying, Tallantire, your plan is
+sound. Carry it out. Do you want an escort?’
+
+‘No; only a decent horse. But how about wiring to headquarters?’
+
+‘I fancy, from the colour of his cheeks, that your superior officer will
+send some wonderful telegrams before the night’s over. Let him do that,
+and we shall have half the troops of the province coming up to see
+what’s the trouble. Well, run along, and take care of yourself--the
+Khusru Kheyl jab upwards from below, remember. Ho! Mir Khan, give
+Tallantire Sahib the best of the horses, and tell five men to ride to
+Jumala with the Deputy Commissioner Sahib Bahadur. There is a hurry
+toward.’
+
+There was; and it was not in the least bettered by Debendra Nath De
+clinging to a policeman’s bridle and demanding the shortest, the
+very shortest way to Jumala. Now originality is fatal to the Bengali.
+Debendra Nath should have stayed with his brother, who rode steadfastly
+for Jumala on the railway-line, thanking gods entirely unknown to
+the most catholic of universities that he had not taken charge of the
+district, and could still--happy resource of a fertile race!--fall sick.
+
+And I grieve to say that when he reached his goal two policemen, not
+devoid of rude wit, who had been conferring together as they bumped in
+their saddles, arranged an entertainment for his behoof. It consisted of
+first one and then the other entering his room with prodigious details
+of war, the massing of bloodthirsty and devilish tribes, and the burning
+of towns. It was almost as good, said these scamps, as riding with
+Curbar after evasive Afghans. Each invention kept the hearer at work
+for half an hour on telegrams which the sack of Delhi would hardly
+have justified. To every power that could move a bayonet or transfer a
+terrified man, Grish Chunder De appealed telegraphically. He was alone,
+his assistants had fled, and in truth he had not taken over charge of
+the district. Had the telegrams been despatched many things would have
+occurred; but since the only signaller in Jumala had gone to bed, and
+the station-master, after one look at the tremendous pile of paper,
+discovered that railway regulations forbade the forwarding of imperial
+messages, policemen Ram Singh and Nihal Singh were fain to turn the
+stuff into a pillow and slept on it very comfortably.
+
+Tallantire drove his spurs into a rampant skewbald stallion with
+china-blue eyes, and settled himself for the forty-mile ride to Fort
+Ziar. Knowing his district blindfold, he wasted no time hunting for
+short cuts, but headed across the richer grazing-ground to the ford
+where Orde had died and been buried. The dusty ground deadened the noise
+of his horse’s hoofs, the moon threw his shadow, a restless goblin,
+before him, and the heavy dew drenched him to the skin. Hillock, scrub
+that brushed against the horse’s belly, unmetalled road where the
+whip-like foliage of the tamarisks lashed his forehead, illimitable
+levels of lowland furred with bent and speckled with drowsing cattle,
+waste, and hillock anew, dragged themselves past, and the skewbald was
+labouring in the deep sand of the Indus-ford. Tallantire was conscious
+of no distinct thought till the nose of the dawdling ferry-boat grounded
+on the farther side, and his horse shied snorting at the white headstone
+of Orde’s grave. Then he uncovered, and shouted that the dead might
+hear, ‘They’re out, old man! Wish me luck.’ In the chill of the dawn he
+was hammering with a stirrup-iron at the gate of Fort Ziar, where fifty
+sabres of that tattered regiment, the Belooch Beshaklis were supposed to
+guard Her Majesty’s interests along a few hundred miles of Border. This
+particular fort was commanded by a subaltern, who, born of the ancient
+family of the Derouletts, naturally answered to the name of Tommy Dodd.
+Him Tallantire found robed in a sheepskin coat, shaking with fever like
+an aspen, and trying to read the native apothecary’s list of invalids.
+
+‘So you’ve come, too,’ said he. ‘Well, we’re all sick here, and I don’t
+think I can horse thirty men; but we’re bub--bub--bub blessed willing.
+Stop, does this impress you as a trap or a lie?’ He tossed a scrap of
+paper to Tallantire, on which was written painfully in crabbed Gurmukhi,
+‘We cannot hold young horses. They will feed after the moon goes down in
+the four border villages issuing from the Jagai pass on the next night.’
+Then in English round hand--‘Your sincere friend.’
+
+‘Good man!’ said Tallantire. ‘That’s Khoda Dad Khan’s work, I know.
+It’s the only piece of English he could ever keep in his head, and he
+is immensely proud of it. He is playing against the Blind Mullah for his
+own hand--the treacherous young ruffian!’
+
+‘Don’t know the politics of the Khusru Kheyl, but if you’re satisfied, I
+am. That was pitched in over the gate-head last night, and I thought we
+might pull ourselves together and see what was on. Oh, but we’re sick
+with fever here and no mistake! Is this going to be a big business,
+think you?’ said Tommy Dodd.
+
+Tallantire gave him briefly the outlines of the case, and Tommy Dodd
+whistled and shook with fever alternately. That day he devoted to
+strategy, the art of war, and the enlivenment of the invalids, till at
+dusk there stood ready forty-two troopers, lean, worn, and dishevelled,
+whom Tommy Dodd surveyed with pride, and addressed thus: ‘O men! If you
+die you will go to Hell. Therefore endeavour to keep alive. But if you
+go to Hell that place cannot be hotter than this place, and we are not
+told that we shall there suffer from fever. Consequently be not afraid
+of dying. File out there!’ They grinned, and went.
+
+V
+
+It will be long ere the Khusru Kheyl forget their night attack on the
+lowland villages. The Mullah had promised an easy victory and unlimited
+plunder; but behold, armed troopers of the Queen had risen out of the
+very earth, cutting, slashing, and riding down under the stars, so that
+no man knew where to turn, and all feared that they had brought an army
+about their ears, and ran back to the hills. In the panic of that flight
+more men were seen to drop from wounds inflicted by an Afghan knife
+jabbed upwards, and yet more from long-range carbine-fire. Then there
+rose a cry of treachery, and when they reached their own guarded
+heights, they had left, with some forty dead and sixty wounded,
+all their confidence in the Blind Mullah on the plains below. They
+clamoured, swore, and argued round the fires; the women wailing for the
+lost, and the Mullah shrieking curses on the returned.
+
+Then Khoda Dad Khan, eloquent and unbreathed, for he had taken no part
+in the fight, rose to improve the occasion. He pointed out that the
+tribe owed every item of its present misfortune to the Blind Mullah, who
+had lied in every possible particular and talked them into a trap. It
+was undoubtedly an insult that a Bengali, the son of a Bengali, should
+presume to administer the Border, but that fact did not, as the Mullah
+pretended, herald a general time of license and lifting; and the
+inexplicable madness of the English had not in the least impaired
+their power of guarding their marches. On the contrary, the baffled and
+out-generalled tribe would now, just when their food-stock was lowest,
+be blockaded from any trade with Hindustan until they had sent hostages
+for good behaviour, paid compensation for disturbance, and blood-money
+at the rate of thirty-six English pounds per head for every villager
+that they might have slain. ‘And ye know that those lowland dogs will
+make oath that we have slain scores. Will the Mullah pay the fines or
+must we sell our guns?’ A low growl ran round the fires. ‘Now, seeing
+that all this is the Mullah’s work, and that we have gained nothing but
+promises of Paradise thereby, it is in my heart that we of the Khusru
+Kheyl lack a shrine whereat to pray. We are weakened, and henceforth
+how shall we dare to cross into the Madar Kheyl border, as has been our
+custom, to kneel to Pir Sajji’s tomb? The Madar men will fall upon us,
+and rightly. But our Mullah is a holy man. He has helped two score of us
+into Paradise this night. Let him therefore accompany his flock, and we
+will build over his body a dome of the blue tiles of Mooltan, and burn
+lamps at his feet every Friday night. He shall be a saint: we shall have
+a shrine; and there our women shall pray for fresh seed to fill the gaps
+in our fighting-tale. How think you?’
+
+A grim chuckle followed the suggestion, and the soft wheep, wheep of
+unscabbarded knives followed the chuckle. It was an excellent notion,
+and met a long felt want of the tribe. The Mullah sprang to his feet,
+glaring with withered eyeballs at the drawn death he could not see, and
+calling down the curses of God and Mahomed on the tribe. Then began a
+game of blind man’s buff round and between the fires, whereof Khuruk
+Shah, the tribal poet, has sung in verse that will not die.
+
+They tickled him gently under the armpit with the knife-point. He leaped
+aside screaming, only to feel a cold blade drawn lightly over the back
+of his neck, or a rifle-muzzle rubbing his beard. He called on his
+adherents to aid him, but most of these lay dead on the plains, for
+Khoda Dad Khan had been at some pains to arrange their decease. Men
+described to him the glories of the shrine they would build, and the
+little children clapping their hands cried, ‘Run, Mullah, run! There’s
+a man behind you!’ In the end, when the sport wearied, Khoda Dad Khan’s
+brother sent a knife home between his ribs. ‘Wherefore,’ said Khoda Dad
+Khan with charming simplicity, ‘I am now Chief of the Khusru Kheyl!’ No
+man gainsaid him; and they all went to sleep very stiff and sore.
+
+On the plain below Tommy Dodd was lecturing on the beauties of a cavalry
+charge by night, and Tallantire, bowed on his saddle, was gasping
+hysterically because there was a sword dangling from his wrist flecked
+with the blood of the Khusru Kheyl, the tribe that Orde had kept in
+leash so well. When a Rajpoot trooper pointed out that the skewbald’s
+right ear had been taken off at the root by some blind slash of its
+unskilled rider, Tallantire broke down altogether, and laughed and
+sobbed till Tommy Dodd made him lie down and rest.
+
+‘We must wait about till the morning,’ said he. ‘I wired to the Colonel
+just before we left, to send a wing of the Beshaklis after us. He’ll be
+furious with me for monopolising the fun, though. Those beggars in the
+hills won’t give us any more trouble.’
+
+‘Then tell the Beshaklis to go on and see what has happened to Curbar
+on the canal. We must patrol the whole line of the Border. You’re quite
+sure, Tommy, that--that stuff was--was only the skewbald’s ear?’
+
+‘Oh, quite,’ said Tommy. ‘You just missed cutting off his head. _I_ saw
+you when we went into the mess. Sleep, old man.’
+
+Noon brought two squadrons of Beshaklis and a knot of furious brother
+officers demanding the court-martial of Tommy Dodd for ‘spoiling the
+picnic,’ and a gallop across country to the canal-works where Ferris,
+Curbar, and Hugonin were haranguing the terror-stricken coolies on the
+enormity of abandoning good work and high pay, merely because half a
+dozen of their fellows had been cut down. The sight of a troop of the
+Beshaklis restored wavering confidence, and the police-hunted section
+of the Khusru Kheyl had the joy of watching the canal-bank humming
+with life as usual, while such of their men as had taken refuge in
+the watercourses and ravines were being driven out by the troopers.
+By sundown began the remorseless patrol of the Border by police and
+trooper, most like the cow-boys’ eternal ride round restless cattle.
+
+‘Now,’ said Khoda Dad Khan to his fellows, pointing out a line of
+twinkling fires below, ‘ye may see how far the old order changes. After
+their horse will come the little devil-guns that they can drag up to the
+tops of the hills, and, for aught I know, to the clouds when we crown
+the hills. If the tribe-council thinks good, I will go to Tallantire
+Sahib--who loves me--and see if I can stave off at least the blockade.
+Do I speak for the tribe?’
+
+‘Ay, speak for the tribe in God’s name. How those accursed fires wink!
+Do the English send their troops on the wire--or is this the work of the
+Bengali?’
+
+As Khoda Dad Khan went down the hill he was delayed by an interview
+with a hard-pressed tribesman, which caused him to return hastily
+for something he had forgotten. Then, handing himself over to the
+two troopers who had been chasing his friend, he claimed escort to
+Tallantire Sahib, then with Bullows at Jumala. The Border was safe, and
+the time for reasons in writing had begun.
+
+‘Thank Heaven!’ said Bullows, ‘that the trouble came at once. Of course
+we can never put down the reason in black and white, but all India will
+understand. And it is better to have a sharp short outbreak than five
+years of impotent administration inside the Border. It costs less. Grish
+Chunder De has reported himself sick, and has been transferred to his
+own province without any sort of reprimand. He was strong on not having
+taken over the district.’
+
+‘Of course,’ said Tallantire bitterly. ‘Well, what am I supposed to have
+done that was wrong?’
+
+‘Oh, you will be told that you exceeded all your powers, and should
+have reported, and written, and advised for three weeks until the Khusru
+Kheyl could really come down in force. But I don’t think the authorities
+will dare to make a fuss about it. They’ve had their lesson. Have you
+seen Curbar’s version of the affair? He can’t write a report, but he can
+speak the truth.’
+
+‘What’s the use of the truth? He’d much better tear up the report. I’m
+sick and heartbroken over it all. It was so utterly unnecessary--except
+in that it rid us of that Babu.’
+
+Entered unabashed Khoda Dad Khan, a stuffed forage-net in his hand, and
+the troopers behind him.
+
+‘May you never be tired!’ said he cheerily. ‘Well, Sahibs, that was a
+good fight, and Naim Shah’s mother is in debt to you, Tallantire Sahib.
+A clean cut, they tell me, through jaw, wadded coat, and deep into the
+collar-bone. Well done! But I speak for the tribe. There has been a
+fault--a great fault. Thou knowest that I and mine, Tallantire Sahib,
+kept the oath we sware to Orde Sahib on the banks of the Indus.’
+
+‘As an Afghan keeps his knife--sharp on one side, blunt on the other,’
+said Tallantire.
+
+‘The better swing in the blow, then. But I speak God’s truth. Only the
+Blind Mullah carried the young men on the tip of his tongue, and said
+that there was no more Border-law because a Bengali had been sent, and
+we need not fear the English at all. So they came down to avenge that
+insult and get plunder. Ye know what befell, and how far I helped. Now
+five score of us are dead or wounded, and we are all shamed and sorry,
+and desire no further war. Moreover, that ye may better listen to us,
+we have taken off the head of the Blind Mullah, whose evil counsels have
+led us to folly. I bring it for proof,’--and he heaved on the floor the
+head. ‘He will give no more trouble, for I am chief now, and so I sit
+in a higher place at all audiences. Yet there is an offset to this head.
+That was another fault. One of the men found that black Bengali beast,
+through whom this trouble arose, wandering on horseback and weeping.
+Reflecting that he had caused loss of much good life, Alla Dad Khan,
+whom, if you choose, I will to-morrow shoot, whipped off this head, and
+I bring it to you to cover your shame, that ye may bury it. See, no man
+kept the spectacles, though they were of gold.’
+
+Slowly rolled to Tallantire’s feet the crop-haired head of a spectacled
+Bengali gentleman, open-eyed, open-mouthed--the head of Terror
+incarnate. Bullows bent down. ‘Yet another blood-fine and a heavy
+one, Khoda Dad Khan, for this is the head of Debendra Nath, the man’s
+brother. The Babu is safe long since. All but the fools of the Khusru
+Kheyl know that.’
+
+‘Well, I care not for carrion. Quick meat for me. The thing was under
+our hills asking the road to Jumala and Alla Dad Khan showed him the
+road to Jehannum, being, as thou sayest, but a fool. Remains now what
+the Government will do to us. As to the blockade--’
+
+‘Who art thou, seller of dog’s flesh,’ thundered Tallantire, ‘to speak
+of terms and treaties? Get hence to the hills--go, and wait there
+starving, till it shall please the Government to call thy people out
+for punishment--children and fools that ye be! Count your dead, and be
+still. Best assured that the Government will send you a MAN!’
+
+‘Ay,’ returned Khoda Dad Khan, ‘for we also be men.’
+
+As he looked Tallantire between the eyes, he added, ‘And by God, Sahib,
+may thou be that man!’
+
+
+
+
+WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY
+
+
+     Before my Spring I garnered Autumn’s gain,
+     Out of her time my field was white with grain,
+       The year gave up her secrets to my woe.
+     Forced and deflowered each sick season lay,
+     In mystery of increase and decay;
+     I saw the sunset ere men saw the day,
+       Who am too wise in that I should not know.
+                             BITTER WATERS.
+
+I
+
+‘But if it be a girl?’
+
+‘Lord of my life, it cannot be. I have prayed for so many nights, and
+sent gifts to Sheikh Badl’s shrine so often, that I know God will give
+us a son--a man-child that shall grow into a man. Think of this and be
+glad. My mother shall be his mother till I can take him again, and the
+mullah of the Pattan mosque shall cast his nativity--God send he be born
+in an auspicious hour!--and then, and then thou wilt never weary of me,
+thy slave.’
+
+‘Since when hast thou been a slave, my queen?’
+
+‘Since the beginning--till this mercy came to me. How could I be sure of
+thy love when I knew that I had been bought with silver?’
+
+‘Nay, that was the dowry. I paid it to thy mother.’
+
+‘And she has buried it, and sits upon it all day long like a hen. What
+talk is yours of dower! I was bought as though I had been a Lucknow
+dancing-girl instead of a child.’
+
+‘Art thou sorry for the sale?’
+
+‘I have sorrowed; but to-day I am glad. Thou wilt never cease to love me
+now?--answer, my king.’
+
+‘Never--never. No.’
+
+‘Not even though the mem-log--the white women of thy own blood--love
+thee? And remember, I have watched them driving in the evening; they are
+very fair.’
+
+‘I have seen fire-balloons by the hundred. I have seen the moon,
+and--then I saw no more fire-balloons.’
+
+Ameera clapped her hands and laughed. ‘Very good talk,’ she said. Then
+with an assumption of great stateliness, ‘It is enough. Thou hast my
+permission to depart,--if thou wilt.’
+
+The man did not move. He was sitting on a low red-lacquered couch in a
+room furnished only with a blue and white floor-cloth, some rugs, and a
+very complete collection of native cushions. At his feet sat a woman of
+sixteen, and she was all but all the world in his eyes. By every rule
+and law she should have been otherwise, for he was an Englishman, and
+she a Mussulman’s daughter bought two years before from her mother, who,
+being left without money, would have sold Ameera shrieking to the Prince
+of Darkness if the price had been sufficient.
+
+It was a contract entered into with a light heart; but even before the
+girl had reached her bloom she came to fill the greater portion of John
+Holden’s life. For her, and the withered hag her mother, he had taken a
+little house overlooking the great red-walled city, and found,--when
+the marigolds had sprung up by the well in the courtyard and Ameera
+had established herself according to her own ideas of comfort, and her
+mother had ceased grumbling at the inadequacy of the cooking-places,
+the distance from the daily market, and at matters of house-keeping in
+general,--that the house was to him his home. Any one could enter his
+bachelor’s bungalow by day or night, and the life that he led there
+was an unlovely one. In the house in the city his feet only could pass
+beyond the outer courtyard to the women’s rooms; and when the big wooden
+gate was bolted behind him he was king in his own territory, with Ameera
+for queen. And there was going to be added to this kingdom a third
+person whose arrival Holden felt inclined to resent. It interfered with
+his perfect happiness. It disarranged the orderly peace of the house
+that was his own. But Ameera was wild with delight at the thought of it,
+and her mother not less so. The love of a man, and particularly a white
+man, was at the best an inconstant affair, but it might, both women
+argued, be held fast by a baby’s hands. ‘And then,’ Ameera would always
+say, ‘then he will never care for the white mem-log. I hate them all--I
+hate them all.’
+
+‘He will go back to his own people in time,’ said the mother; ‘but by
+the blessing of God that time is yet afar off.’
+
+Holden sat silent on the couch thinking of the future, and his thoughts
+were not pleasant. The drawbacks of a double life are manifold. The
+Government, with singular care, had ordered him out of the station for a
+fortnight on special duty in the place of a man who was watching by the
+bedside of a sick wife. The verbal notification of the transfer had been
+edged by a cheerful remark that Holden ought to think himself lucky in
+being a bachelor and a free man. He came to break the news to Ameera.
+
+‘It is not good,’ she said slowly, ‘but it is not all bad. There is my
+mother here, and no harm will come to me--unless indeed I die of pure
+joy. Go thou to thy work and think no troublesome thoughts. When the
+days are done I believe... nay, I am sure. And--and then I shall lay HIM
+in thy arms, and thou wilt love me for ever. The train goes to-night, at
+midnight is it not? Go now, and do not let thy heart be heavy by cause
+of me. But thou wilt not delay in returning? Thou wilt not stay on the
+road to talk to the bold white mem-log. Come back to me swiftly, my
+life.’
+
+As he left the courtyard to reach his horse that was tethered to the
+gate-post, Holden spoke to the white-haired old watchman who guarded the
+house, and bade him under certain contingencies despatch the filled-up
+telegraph-form that Holden gave him. It was all that could be done, and
+with the sensations of a man who has attended his own funeral Holden
+went away by the night mail to his exile. Every hour of the day he
+dreaded the arrival of the telegram, and every hour of the night he
+pictured to himself the death of Ameera. In consequence his work for
+the State was not of first-rate quality, nor was his temper towards his
+colleagues of the most amiable. The fortnight ended without a sign from
+his home, and, torn to pieces by his anxieties, Holden returned to be
+swallowed up for two precious hours by a dinner at the club, wherein he
+heard, as a man hears in a swoon, voices telling him how execrably he
+had performed the other man’s duties, and how he had endeared himself to
+all his associates. Then he fled on horseback through the night with
+his heart in his mouth. There was no answer at first to his blows on
+the gate, and he had just wheeled his horse round to kick it in when Pir
+Khan appeared with a lantern and held his stirrup.
+
+‘Has aught occurred?’ said Holden.
+
+‘The news does not come from my mouth, Protector of the Poor, but--’
+He held out his shaking hand as befitted the bearer of good news who is
+entitled to a reward.
+
+Holden hurried through the courtyard. A light burned in the upper room.
+His horse neighed in the gateway, and he heard a shrill little wail that
+sent all the blood into the apple of his throat. It was a new voice, but
+it did not prove that Ameera was alive.
+
+‘Who is there?’ he called up the narrow brick staircase.
+
+There was a cry of delight from Ameera, and then the voice of
+the mother, tremulous with old age and pride--‘We be two women
+and--the--man--thy--son.’
+
+On the threshold of the room Holden stepped on a naked dagger, that
+was laid there to avert ill-luck, and it broke at the hilt under his
+impatient heel.
+
+‘God is great!’ cooed Ameera in the half-light. ‘Thou hast taken his
+misfortunes on thy head.’
+
+‘Ay, but how is it with thee, life of my life? Old woman, how is it with
+her?’
+
+‘She has forgotten her sufferings for joy that the child is born. There
+is no harm; but speak softly,’ said the mother.
+
+‘It only needed thy presence to make me all well,’ said Ameera. ‘My
+king, thou hast been very long away. What gifts hast thou for me? Ah,
+ah! It is I that bring gifts this time. Look, my life, look. Was there
+ever such a babe? Nay, I am too weak even to clear my arm from him.’
+
+‘Rest then, and do not talk. I am here, bachari [little woman].’
+
+‘Well said, for there is a bond and a heel-rope [peecharee] between us
+now that nothing can break. Look--canst thou see in this light? He is
+without spot or blemish. Never was such a man-child. Ya illah! he shall
+be a pundit--no, a trooper of the Queen. And, my life, dost thou love me
+as well as ever, though I am faint and sick and worn? Answer truly.’
+
+‘Yea. I love as I have loved, with all my soul. Lie still, pearl, and
+rest.’
+
+‘Then do not go. Sit by my side here--so. Mother, the lord of this house
+needs a cushion. Bring it.’ There was an almost imperceptible movement
+on the part of the new life that lay in the hollow of Ameera’s arm.
+‘Aho!’ she said, her voice breaking with love. ‘The babe is a champion
+from his birth. He is kicking me in the side with mighty kicks. Was
+there ever such a babe! And he is ours to us--thine and mine. Put thy
+hand on his head, but carefully, for he is very young, and men are
+unskilled in such matters.’
+
+Very cautiously Holden touched with the tips of his fingers the downy
+head.
+
+‘He is of the faith,’ said Ameera; ‘for lying here in the night-watches
+I whispered the call to prayer and the profession of faith into his
+ears. And it is most marvellous that he was born upon a Friday, as I
+was born. Be careful of him, my life; but he can almost grip with his
+hands.’
+
+Holden found one helpless little hand that closed feebly on his finger.
+And the clutch ran through his body till it settled about his heart.
+Till then his sole thought had been for Ameera. He began to realise that
+there was some one else in the world, but he could not feel that it
+was a veritable son with a soul. He sat down to think, and Ameera dozed
+lightly.
+
+‘Get hence, sahib,’ said her mother under her breath. ‘It is not good
+that she should find you here on waking. She must be still.’
+
+‘I go,’ said Holden submissively. ‘Here be rupees. See that my baba gets
+fat and finds all that he needs.’
+
+The chink of the silver roused Ameera. ‘I am his mother, and no
+hireling,’ she said weakly. ‘Shall I look to him more or less for the
+sake of money? Mother, give it back. I have born my lord a son.’
+
+The deep sleep of weakness came upon her almost before the sentence was
+completed. Holden went down to the courtyard very softly with his heart
+at ease. Pir Khan, the old watchman, was chuckling with delight. ‘This
+house is now complete,’ he said, and without further comment thrust
+into Holden’s hands the hilt of a sabre worn many years ago when he, Pir
+Khan, served the Queen in the police. The bleat of a tethered goat came
+from the well-kerb.
+
+‘There be two,’ said Pir Khan, ‘two goats of the best. I bought them,
+and they cost much money; and since there is no birth-party assembled
+their flesh will be all mine. Strike craftily, sahib! ‘Tis an
+ill-balanced sabre at the best. Wait till they raise their heads from
+cropping the marigolds.’
+
+‘And why?’ said Holden, bewildered.
+
+‘For the birth-sacrifice. What else? Otherwise the child being unguarded
+from fate may die. The Protector of the Poor knows the fitting words to
+be said.’
+
+Holden had learned them once with little thought that he would ever
+speak them in earnest. The touch of the cold sabre-hilt in his palm
+turned suddenly to the clinging grip of the child upstairs--the child
+that was his own son--and a dread of loss filled him.
+
+‘Strike!’ said Pir Khan. ‘Never life came into the world but life was
+paid for it. See, the goats have raised their heads. Now! With a drawing
+cut!’
+
+Hardly knowing what he did Holden cut twice as he muttered the Mahomedan
+prayer that runs: ‘Almighty! In place of this my son I offer life for
+life, blood for blood, head for head, bone for bone, hair for hair, skin
+for skin.’ The waiting horse snorted and bounded in his pickets at the
+smell of the raw blood that spirted over Holden’s riding-boots.
+
+‘Well smitten!’ said Pir Khan, wiping the sabre. ‘A swordsman was lost
+in thee. Go with a light heart, Heaven-born. I am thy servant, and the
+servant of thy son. May the Presence live a thousand years and... the
+flesh of the goats is all mine?’ Pir Khan drew back richer by a month’s
+pay. Holden swung himself into the saddle and rode off through
+the low-hanging wood-smoke of the evening. He was full of riotous
+exultation, alternating with a vast vague tenderness directed towards no
+particular object, that made him choke as he bent over the neck of his
+uneasy horse. ‘I never felt like this in my life,’ he thought. ‘I’ll go
+to the club and pull myself together.’
+
+A game of pool was beginning, and the room was full of men. Holden
+entered, eager to get to the light and the company of his fellows,
+singing at the top of his voice--
+
+    In Baltimore a-walking, a lady I did meet!
+
+‘Did you?’ said the club-secretary from his corner. ‘Did she happen to
+tell you that your boots were wringing wet? Great goodness, man, it’s
+blood!’
+
+‘Bosh!’ said Holden, picking his cue from the rack. ‘May I cut in? It’s
+dew. I’ve been riding through high crops. My faith! my boots are in a
+mess though!
+
+    ‘And if it be a girl she shall wear a wedding-ring,
+     And if it be a boy he shall fight for his king,
+     With his dirk, and his cap, and his little jacket blue,
+     He shall walk the quarter-deck--’
+
+‘Yellow on blue--green next player,’ said the marker monotonously.
+
+‘He shall walk the quarter-deck,--Am I green, marker? He shall walk the
+quarter-deck,--eh! that’s a bad shot,--As his daddy used to do!’
+
+‘I don’t see that you have anything to crow about,’ said a zealous
+junior civilian acidly. ‘The Government is not exactly pleased with your
+work when you relieved Sanders.’
+
+‘Does that mean a wigging from headquarters?’ said Holden with an
+abstracted smile. ‘I think I can stand it.’
+
+The talk beat up round the ever-fresh subject of each man’s work, and
+steadied Holden till it was time to go to his dark empty bungalow, where
+his butler received him as one who knew all his affairs. Holden remained
+awake for the greater part of the night, and his dreams were pleasant
+ones.
+
+II
+
+‘How old is he now?’
+
+‘Ya illah! What a man’s question! He is all but six weeks old; and on
+this night I go up to the housetop with thee, my life, to count the
+stars. For that is auspicious. And he was born on a Friday under the
+sign of the Sun, and it has been told to me that he will outlive us both
+and get wealth. Can we wish for aught better, beloved?’
+
+‘There is nothing better. Let us go up to the roof, and thou shalt count
+the stars--but a few only, for the sky is heavy with cloud.’
+
+‘The winter rains are late, and maybe they come out of season. Come,
+before all the stars are hid. I have put on my richest jewels.’
+
+‘Thou hast forgotten the best of all.’
+
+‘Ai! Ours. He comes also. He has never yet seen the skies.’
+
+Ameera climbed the narrow staircase that led to the flat roof. The
+child, placid and unwinking, lay in the hollow of her right arm,
+gorgeous in silver-fringed muslin with a small skull-cap on his head.
+Ameera wore all that she valued most. The diamond nose-stud that takes
+the place of the Western patch in drawing attention to the curve of the
+nostril, the gold ornament in the centre of the forehead studded with
+tallow-drop emeralds and flawed rubies, the heavy circlet of beaten gold
+that was fastened round her neck by the softness of the pure metal, and
+the chinking curb-patterned silver anklets hanging low over the rosy
+ankle-bone. She was dressed in jade-green muslin as befitted a daughter
+of the Faith, and from shoulder to elbow and elbow to wrist ran
+bracelets of silver tied with floss silk, frail glass bangles slipped
+over the wrist in proof of the slenderness of the hand, and certain
+heavy gold bracelets that had no part in her country’s ornaments but,
+since they were Holden’s gift and fastened with a cunning European snap,
+delighted her immensely.
+
+They sat down by the low white parapet of the roof, overlooking the city
+and its lights.
+
+‘They are happy down there,’ said Ameera. ‘But I do not think that they
+are as happy as we. Nor do I think the white mem-log are as happy. And
+thou?’
+
+‘I know they are not.’
+
+‘How dost thou know?’
+
+‘They give their children over to the nurses.’
+
+‘I have never seen that,’ said Ameera with a sigh, ‘nor do I wish to
+see. Ahi!--she dropped her head on Holden’s shoulder,--‘I have counted
+forty stars, and I am tired. Look at the child, love of my life, he is
+counting too.’
+
+The baby was staring with round eyes at the dark of the heavens. Ameera
+placed him in Holden’s arms, and he lay there without a cry.
+
+‘What shall we call him among ourselves?’ she said. ‘Look! Art thou ever
+tired of looking? He carries thy very eyes. But the mouth--’
+
+‘Is thine, most dear. Who should know better than I?’
+
+‘’Tis such a feeble mouth. Oh, so small! And yet it holds my heart
+between its lips. Give him to me now. He has been too long away.’
+
+‘Nay, let him lie; he has not yet begun to cry.’
+
+‘When he cries thou wilt give him back--eh? What a man of mankind thou
+art! If he cried he were only the dearer to me. But, my life, what
+little name shall we give him?’
+
+The small body lay close to Holden’s heart. It was utterly helpless and
+very soft. He scarcely dared to breathe for fear of crushing it. The
+caged green parrot that is regarded as a sort of guardian-spirit in most
+native households moved on its perch and fluttered a drowsy wing.
+
+‘There is the answer,’ said Holden. ‘Mian Mittu has spoken. He shall be
+the parrot. When he is ready he will talk mightily and run about. Mian
+Mittu is the parrot in thy--in the Mussulman tongue, is it not?’
+
+‘Why put me so far off?’ said Ameera fretfully. ‘Let it be like unto
+some English name--but not wholly. For he is mine.’
+
+‘Then call him Tota, for that is likest English.’
+
+‘Ay, Tota, and that is still the parrot. Forgive me, my lord, for a
+minute ago, but in truth he is too little to wear all the weight of Mian
+Mittu for name. He shall be Tota--our Tota to us. Hearest thou, O small
+one? Littlest, thou art Tota.’ She touched the child’s cheek, and he
+waking wailed, and it was necessary to return him to his mother, who
+soothed him with the wonderful rhyme of Are koko, Jare koko! which says:
+
+     Oh crow! Go crow! Baby’s sleeping sound,
+     And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound.
+     Only a penny a pound, baba, only a penny a pound.
+
+Reassured many times as to the price of those plums, Tota cuddled
+himself down to sleep. The two sleek, white well-bullocks in the
+courtyard were steadily chewing the cud of their evening meal; old Pir
+Khan squatted at the head of Holden’s horse, his police sabre across
+his knees, pulling drowsily at a big water-pipe that croaked like a
+bull-frog in a pond. Ameera’s mother sat spinning in the lower
+verandah, and the wooden gate was shut and barred. The music of a
+marriage-procession came to the roof above the gentle hum of the city,
+and a string of flying-foxes crossed the face of the low moon.
+
+‘I have prayed,’ said Ameera after a long pause, ‘I have prayed for two
+things. First, that I may die in thy stead if thy death is demanded, and
+in the second that I may die in the place of the child. I have prayed to
+the Prophet and to Beebee Miriam [the Virgin Mary]. Thinkest thou either
+will hear?’
+
+‘From thy lips who would not hear the lightest word?’
+
+‘I asked for straight talk, and thou hast given me sweet talk. Will my
+prayers be heard?’
+
+‘How can I say? God is very good.’
+
+‘Of that I am not sure. Listen now. When I die, or the child dies, what
+is thy fate? Living, thou wilt return to the bold white mem-log, for
+kind calls to kind.’
+
+‘Not always.’
+
+‘With a woman, no; with a man it is otherwise. Thou wilt in this life,
+later on, go back to thine own folk. That I could almost endure, for
+I should be dead. But in thy very death thou wilt be taken away to a
+strange place and a paradise that I do not know.’
+
+‘Will it be paradise?’
+
+‘Surely, for who would harm thee? But we two--I and the child--shall be
+elsewhere, and we cannot come to thee, nor canst thou come to us. In the
+old days, before the child was born, I did not think of these things;
+but now I think of them always. It is very hard talk.’
+
+‘It will fall as it will fall. To-morrow we do not know, but to-day and
+love we know well. Surely we are happy now.’
+
+‘So happy that it were well to make our happiness assured. And thy
+Beebee Miriam should listen to me; for she is also a woman. But then she
+would envy me! It is not seemly for men to worship a woman.’
+
+Holden laughed aloud at Ameera’s little spasm of jealousy.
+
+‘Is it not seemly? Why didst thou not turn me from worship of thee,
+then?’
+
+‘Thou a worshipper! And of me? My king, for all thy sweet words, well I
+know that I am thy servant and thy slave, and the dust under thy feet.
+And I would not have it otherwise. See!’
+
+Before Holden could prevent her she stooped forward and touched his
+feet; recovering herself with a little laugh she hugged Tota closer to
+her bosom. Then, almost savagely--
+
+‘Is it true that the bold white mem-log live for three times the length
+of my life? Is it true that they make their marriages not before they
+are old women?’
+
+‘They marry as do others--when they are women.’
+
+‘That I know, but they wed when they are twenty-five. Is that true?’
+
+‘That is true.’
+
+‘Ya illah! At twenty-five! Who would of his own will take a wife even of
+eighteen? She is a woman--aging every hour. Twenty-five! I shall be an
+old woman at that age, and--Those mem-log remain young for ever. How I
+hate them!’ ‘What have they to do with us?’
+
+‘I cannot tell. I know only that there may now be alive on this earth a
+woman ten years older than I who may come to thee and take thy love ten
+years after I am an old woman, gray-headed, and the nurse of Tota’s son.
+That is unjust and evil. They should die too.’
+
+‘Now, for all thy years thou art a child, and shalt be picked up and
+carried down the staircase.’
+
+‘Tota! Have a care for Tota, my lord! Thou at least art as foolish as
+any babe!’ Ameera tucked Tota out of harm’s way in the hollow of her
+neck, and was carried downstairs laughing in Holden’s arms, while Tota
+opened his eyes and smiled after the manner of the lesser angels.
+
+He was a silent infant, and, almost before Holden could realise that he
+was in the world, developed into a small gold-coloured little god and
+unquestioned despot of the house overlooking the city. Those were months
+of absolute happiness to Holden and Ameera--happiness withdrawn from
+the world, shut in behind the wooden gate that Pir Khan guarded. By
+day Holden did his work with an immense pity for such as were not so
+fortunate as himself, and a sympathy for small children that amazed and
+amused many mothers at the little station-gatherings. At nightfall he
+returned to Ameera,--Ameera, full of the wondrous doings of Tota; how
+he had been seen to clap his hands together and move his fingers with
+intention and purpose--which was manifestly a miracle--how later, he had
+of his own initiative crawled out of his low bedstead on to the floor
+and swayed on both feet for the space of three breaths.
+
+‘And they were long breaths, for my heart stood still with delight,’
+said Ameera.
+
+Then Tota took the beasts into his councils--the well-bullocks, the
+little gray squirrels, the mongoose that lived in a hole near the well,
+and especially Mian Mittu, the parrot, whose tail he grievously pulled,
+and Mian Mittu screamed till Ameera and Holden arrived.
+
+‘O villain! Child of strength! This to thy brother on the house-top!
+Tobah, tobah! Fie! Fie! But I know a charm to make him wise as Suleiman
+and Aflatoun [Solomon and Plato]. Now look,’ said Ameera. She drew from
+an embroidered bag a handful of almonds. ‘See! we count seven. In the
+name of God!’
+
+She placed Mian Mittu, very angry and rumpled, on the top of his cage,
+and seating herself between the babe and the bird she cracked and peeled
+an almond less white than her teeth. ‘This is a true charm, my life, and
+do not laugh. See! I give the parrot one half and Tota the other.’ Mian
+Mittu with careful beak took his share from between Ameera’s lips, and
+she kissed the other half into the mouth of the child, who ate it slowly
+with wondering eyes. ‘This I will do each day of seven, and without
+doubt he who is ours will be a bold speaker and wise. Eh, Tota, what
+wilt thou be when thou art a man and I am gray-headed?’ Tota tucked his
+fat legs into adorable creases. He could crawl, but he was not going
+to waste the spring of his youth in idle speech. He wanted Mian Mittu’s
+tail to tweak.
+
+When he was advanced to the dignity of a silver belt--which, with a
+magic square engraved on silver and hung round his neck, made up the
+greater part of his clothing--he staggered on a perilous journey down
+the garden to Pir Khan and proffered him all his jewels in exchange
+for one little ride on Holden’s horse, having seen his mother’s mother
+chaffering with pedlars in the verandah. Pir Khan wept and set the
+untried feet on his own gray head in sign of fealty, and brought the
+bold adventurer to his mother’s arms, vowing that Tota would be a leader
+of men ere his beard was grown.
+
+One hot evening, while he sat on the roof between his father and mother
+watching the never-ending warfare of the kites that the city boys flew,
+he demanded a kite of his own with Pir Khan to fly it, because he had
+a fear of dealing with anything larger than himself, and when Holden
+called him a ‘spark,’ he rose to his feet and answered slowly in defence
+of his new-found individuality, ‘Hum’park nahin hai. Hum admi hai [I am
+no spark, but a man].’
+
+The protest made Holden choke and devote himself very seriously to a
+consideration of Tota’s future. He need hardly have taken the trouble.
+The delight of that life was too perfect to endure. Therefore it was
+taken away as many things are taken away in India--suddenly and without
+warning. The little lord of the house, as Pir Khan called him, grew
+sorrowful and complained of pains who had never known the meaning of
+pain. Ameera, wild with terror, watched him through the night, and
+in the dawning of the second day the life was shaken out of him by
+fever--the seasonal autumn fever. It seemed altogether impossible
+that he could die, and neither Ameera nor Holden at first believed the
+evidence of the little body on the bedstead. Then Ameera beat her head
+against the wall and would have flung herself down the well in the
+garden had Holden not restrained her by main force.
+
+One mercy only was granted to Holden. He rode to his office in broad
+daylight and found waiting him an unusually heavy mail that demanded
+concentrated attention and hard work. He was not, however, alive to this
+kindness of the gods.
+
+III
+
+The first shock of a bullet is no more than a brisk pinch. The wrecked
+body does not send in its protest to the soul till ten or fifteen
+seconds later. Holden realised his pain slowly, exactly as he had
+realised his happiness, and with the same imperious necessity for hiding
+all trace of it. In the beginning he only felt that there had been a
+loss, and that Ameera needed comforting, where she sat with her head on
+her knees shivering as Mian Mittu from the house-top called, Tota! Tota!
+Tota! Later all his world and the daily life of it rose up to hurt him.
+It was an outrage that any one of the children at the band-stand in the
+evening should be alive and clamorous, when his own child lay dead. It
+was more than mere pain when one of them touched him, and stories told
+by over-fond fathers of their children’s latest performances cut him to
+the quick. He could not declare his pain. He had neither help, comfort,
+nor sympathy; and Ameera at the end of each weary day would lead him
+through the hell of self-questioning reproach which is reserved for
+those who have lost a child, and believe that with a little--just a
+little--more care it might have been saved.
+
+‘Perhaps,’ Ameera would say, ‘I did not take sufficient heed. Did I, or
+did I not? The sun on the roof that day when he played so long alone
+and I was--ahi! braiding my hair--it may be that the sun then bred the
+fever. If I had warned him from the sun he might have lived. But, oh my
+life, say that I am guiltless! Thou knowest that I loved him as I love
+thee. Say that there is no blame on me, or I shall die--I shall die!’
+
+‘There is no blame,--before God, none. It was written and how could we
+do aught to save? What has been, has been. Let it go, beloved.’
+
+‘He was all my heart to me. How can I let the thought go when my arm
+tells me every night that he is not here? Ahi! Ahi! O Tota, come back to
+me--come back again, and let us be all together as it was before!’
+
+‘Peace, peace! For thine own sake, and for mine also, if thou lovest
+me--rest.’
+
+‘By this I know thou dost not care; and how shouldst thou? The white men
+have hearts of stone and souls of iron. Oh, that I had married a man of
+mine own people--though he beat me--and had never eaten the bread of an
+alien!’
+
+‘Am I an alien--mother of my son?’
+
+‘What else--Sahib?... Oh, forgive me--forgive! The death has driven me
+mad. Thou art the life of my heart, and the light of my eyes, and the
+breath of my life, and--and I have put thee from me, though it was but
+for a moment. If thou goest away, to whom shall I look for help? Do not
+be angry. Indeed, it was the pain that spoke and not thy slave.’
+
+‘I know, I know. We be two who were three. The greater need therefore
+that we should be one.’
+
+They were sitting on the roof as of custom. The night was a warm one in
+early spring, and sheet-lightning was dancing on the horizon to a broken
+tune played by far-off thunder. Ameera settled herself in Holden’s arms.
+
+‘The dry earth is lowing like a cow for the rain, and I--I am afraid. It
+was not like this when we counted the stars. But thou lovest me as much
+as before, though a bond is taken away? Answer!’
+
+‘I love more because a new bond has come out of the sorrow that we have
+eaten together, and that thou knowest.’
+
+‘Yea, I knew,’ said Ameera in a very small whisper. ‘But it is good to
+hear thee say so, my life, who art so strong to help. I will be a child
+no more, but a woman and an aid to thee. Listen! Give me my sitar and I
+will sing bravely.’
+
+She took the light silver-studded sitar and began a song of the great
+hero Rajah Rasalu. The hand failed on the strings, the tune halted,
+checked, and at a low note turned off to the poor little nursery-rhyme
+about the wicked crow--
+
+     And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound.
+     Only a penny a pound, baba--only . . .
+
+Then came the tears, and the piteous rebellion against fate till she
+slept, moaning a little in her sleep, with the right arm thrown clear
+of the body as though it protected something that was not there. It
+was after this night that life became a little easier for Holden. The
+ever-present pain of loss drove him into his work, and the work repaid
+him by filling up his mind for nine or ten hours a day. Ameera sat alone
+in the house and brooded, but grew happier when she understood that
+Holden was more at ease, according to the custom of women. They touched
+happiness again, but this time with caution.
+
+‘It was because we loved Tota that he died. The jealousy of God was upon
+us,’ said Ameera. ‘I have hung up a large black jar before our window to
+turn the evil eye from us, and we must make no protestations of delight,
+but go softly underneath the stars, lest God find us out. Is that not
+good talk, worthless one?’
+
+She had shifted the accent on the word that means ‘beloved,’ in proof
+of the sincerity of her purpose. But the kiss that followed the new
+christening was a thing that any deity might have envied. They went
+about henceforward saying, ‘It is naught, it is naught;’ and hoping that
+all the Powers heard.
+
+The Powers were busy on other things. They had allowed thirty million
+people four years of plenty wherein men fed well and the crops were
+certain, and the birth-rate rose year by year; the districts reported a
+purely agricultural population varying from nine hundred to two thousand
+to the square mile of the overburdened earth; and the Member for Lower
+Tooting, wandering about India in pot-hat and frock-coat, talked largely
+of the benefits of British rule and suggested as the one thing needful
+the establishment of a duly qualified electoral system and a general
+bestowal of the franchise. His long-suffering hosts smiled and made him
+welcome, and when he paused to admire, with pretty picked words, the
+blossom of the blood-red dhak-tree that had flowered untimely for a sign
+of what was coming, they smiled more than ever.
+
+It was the Deputy Commissioner of Kot-Kumharsen, staying at the club for
+a day, who lightly told a tale that made Holden’s blood run cold as he
+overheard the end.
+
+‘He won’t bother any one any more. Never saw a man so astonished in my
+life. By Jove, I thought he meant to ask a question in the House about
+it. Fellow-passenger in his ship--dined next him--bowled over by cholera
+and died in eighteen hours. You needn’t laugh, you fellows. The Member
+for Lower Tooting is awfully angry about it; but he’s more scared. I
+think he’s going to take his enlightened self out of India.’
+
+‘I’d give a good deal if he were knocked over. It might keep a few
+vestrymen of his kidney to their own parish. But what’s this about
+cholera? It’s full early for anything of that kind,’ said the warden of
+an unprofitable salt-lick.
+
+‘Don’t know,’ said the Deputy Commissioner reflectively. ‘We’ve got
+locusts with us. There’s sporadic cholera all along the north--at least
+we’re calling it sporadic for decency’s sake. The spring crops are short
+in five districts, and nobody seems to know where the rains are. It’s
+nearly March now. I don’t want to scare anybody, but it seems to me that
+Nature’s going to audit her accounts with a big red pencil this summer.’
+
+‘Just when I wanted to take leave, too!’ said a voice across the room.
+
+‘There won’t be much leave this year, but there ought to be a great
+deal of promotion. I’ve come in to persuade the Government to put my pet
+canal on the list of famine-relief works. It’s an ill-wind that blows no
+good. I shall get that canal finished at last.’
+
+‘Is it the old programme then,’ said Holden; ‘famine, fever, and
+cholera?’
+
+‘Oh no. Only local scarcity and an unusual prevalence of seasonal
+sickness. You’ll find it all in the reports if you live till next year.
+You’re a lucky chap. YOU haven’t got a wife to send out of harm’s way.
+The hill-stations ought to be full of women this year.’
+
+‘I think you’re inclined to exaggerate the talk in the bazars’ said a
+young civilian in the Secretariat. ‘Now I have observed--’
+
+‘I daresay you have,’ said the Deputy Commissioner, ‘but you’ve a great
+deal more to observe, my son. In the meantime, I wish to observe to
+you--’ and he drew him aside to discuss the construction of the canal
+that was so dear to his heart. Holden went to his bungalow and began
+to understand that he was not alone in the world, and also that he was
+afraid for the sake of another,--which is the most soul-satisfying fear
+known to man.
+
+Two months later, as the Deputy had foretold, Nature began to audit her
+accounts with a red pencil. On the heels of the spring-reapings came a
+cry for bread, and the Government, which had decreed that no man should
+die of want, sent wheat. Then came the cholera from all four quarters of
+the compass. It struck a pilgrim-gathering of half a million at a sacred
+shrine. Many died at the feet of their god; the others broke and ran
+over the face of the land carrying the pestilence with them. It smote a
+walled city and killed two hundred a day. The people crowded the
+trains, hanging on to the footboards and squatting on the roofs of
+the carriages, and the cholera followed them, for at each station they
+dragged out the dead and the dying. They died by the roadside, and the
+horses of the Englishmen shied at the corpses in the grass. The rains
+did not come, and the earth turned to iron lest man should escape death
+by hiding in her. The English sent their wives away to the hills and
+went about their work, coming forward as they were bidden to fill the
+gaps in the fighting-line. Holden, sick with fear of losing his chiefest
+treasure on earth, had done his best to persuade Ameera to go away with
+her mother to the Himalayas.
+
+‘Why should I go?’ said she one evening on the roof.
+
+‘There is sickness, and people are dying, and all the white mem-log have
+gone.’
+
+‘All of them?’
+
+‘All--unless perhaps there remain some old scald-head who vexes her
+husband’s heart by running risk of death.’
+
+‘Nay; who stays is my sister, and thou must not abuse her, for I will be
+a scald-head too. I am glad all the bold mem-log are gone.’
+
+‘Do I speak to a woman or a babe? Go to the hills and I will see to
+it that thou goest like a queen’s daughter. Think, child. In a
+red-lacquered bullock-cart, veiled and curtained, with brass peacocks
+upon the pole and red cloth hangings. I will send two orderlies for
+guard, and--’
+
+‘Peace! Thou art the babe in speaking thus. What use are those toys to
+me? HE would have patted the bullocks and played with the housings. For
+his sake, perhaps,--thou hast made me very English--I might have gone.
+Now, I will not. Let the mem-log run.’
+
+‘Their husbands are sending them, beloved.’
+
+‘Very good talk. Since when hast thou been my husband to tell me what to
+do? I have but borne thee a son. Thou art only all the desire of my soul
+to me. How shall I depart when I know that if evil befall thee by the
+breadth of so much as my littlest finger-nail--is that not small?--I
+should be aware of it though I were in paradise. And here, this summer
+thou mayest die--ai, janee, die! and in dying they might call to tend
+thee a white woman, and she would rob me in the last of thy love!’
+
+‘But love is not born in a moment or on a death-bed!’
+
+‘What dost thou know of love, stoneheart? She would take thy thanks at
+least and, by God and the Prophet and Beebee Miriam the mother of thy
+Prophet, that I will never endure. My lord and my love, let there be no
+more foolish talk of going away. Where thou art, I am. It is enough.’
+She put an arm round his neck and a hand on his mouth.
+
+There are not many happinesses so complete as those that are snatched
+under the shadow of the sword. They sat together and laughed, calling
+each other openly by every pet name that could move the wrath of the
+gods. The city below them was locked up in its own torments. Sulphur
+fires blazed in the streets; the conches in the Hindu temples screamed
+and bellowed, for the gods were inattentive in those days. There was a
+service in the great Mahomedan shrine, and the call to prayer from the
+minarets was almost unceasing. They heard the wailing in the houses of
+the dead, and once the shriek of a mother who had lost a child and was
+calling for its return. In the gray dawn they saw the dead borne
+out through the city gates, each litter with its own little knot of
+mourners. Wherefore they kissed each other and shivered.
+
+It was a red and heavy audit, for the land was very sick and needed a
+little breathing-space ere the torrent of cheap life should flood it
+anew. The children of immature fathers and undeveloped mothers made no
+resistance. They were cowed and sat still, waiting till the sword should
+be sheathed in November if it were so willed. There were gaps among
+the English, but the gaps were filled. The work of superintending
+famine-relief, cholera-sheds, medicine-distribution, and what little
+sanitation was possible, went forward because it was so ordered.
+
+Holden had been told to keep himself in readiness to move to replace the
+next man who should fall. There were twelve hours in each day when he
+could not see Ameera, and she might die in three. He was considering
+what his pain would be if he could not see her for three months, or
+if she died out of his sight. He was absolutely certain that her death
+would be demanded--so certain that when he looked up from the telegram
+and saw Pir Khan breathless in the doorway, he laughed aloud. ‘And?’
+said he,--
+
+‘When there is a cry in the night and the spirit flutters into the
+throat, who has a charm that will restore? Come swiftly, Heaven-born! It
+is the black cholera.’
+
+Holden galloped to his home. The sky was heavy with clouds, for the
+long-deferred rains were near and the heat was stifling. Ameera’s mother
+met him in the courtyard, whimpering, ‘She is dying. She is nursing
+herself into death. She is all but dead. What shall I do, sahib?’
+
+Ameera was lying in the room in which Tota had been born. She made no
+sign when Holden entered, because the human soul is a very lonely
+thing and, when it is getting ready to go away, hides itself in a misty
+borderland where the living may not follow. The black cholera does its
+work quietly and without explanation. Ameera was being thrust out of
+life as though the Angel of Death had himself put his hand upon her. The
+quick breathing seemed to show that she was either afraid or in pain,
+but neither eyes nor mouth gave any answer to Holden’s kisses. There was
+nothing to be said or done. Holden could only wait and suffer. The first
+drops of the rain began to fall on the roof, and he could hear shouts of
+joy in the parched city.
+
+The soul came back a little and the lips moved. Holden bent down to
+listen. ‘Keep nothing of mine,’ said Ameera. ‘Take no hair from my head.
+SHE would make thee burn it later on. That flame I should feel. Lower!
+Stoop lower! Remember only that I was thine and bore thee a son. Though
+thou wed a white woman to-morrow, the pleasure of receiving in thy arms
+thy first son is taken from thee for ever. Remember me when thy son is
+born--the one that shall carry thy name before all men. His misfortunes
+be on my head. I bear witness--I bear witness’--the lips were forming
+the words on his ear--‘that there is no God but--thee, beloved!’
+
+Then she died. Holden sat still, and all thought was taken from
+him,--till he heard Ameera’s mother lift the curtain.
+
+‘Is she dead, sahib?’
+
+‘She is dead.’
+
+‘Then I will mourn, and afterwards take an inventory of the furniture in
+this house. For that will be mine. The sahib does not mean to resume it?
+It is so little, so very little, sahib, and I am an old woman. I would
+like to lie softly.’
+
+‘For the mercy of God be silent a while. Go out and mourn where I cannot
+hear.’
+
+‘Sahib, she will be buried in four hours.’
+
+‘I know the custom. I shall go ere she is taken away. That matter is in
+thy hands. Look to it, that the bed on which--on which she lies--’
+
+‘Aha! That beautiful red-lacquered bed. I have long desired--’
+
+‘That the bed is left here untouched for my disposal. All else in the
+house is thine. Hire a cart, take everything, go hence, and before
+sunrise let there be nothing in this house but that which I have ordered
+thee to respect.’
+
+‘I am an old woman. I would stay at least for the days of mourning, and
+the rains have just broken. Whither shall I go?’
+
+‘What is that to me? My order is that there is a going. The house-gear
+is worth a thousand rupees and my orderly shall bring thee a hundred
+rupees to-night.’
+
+‘That is very little. Think of the cart-hire.’
+
+‘It shall be nothing unless thou goest, and with speed. O woman, get
+hence and leave me with my dead!’
+
+The mother shuffled down the staircase, and in her anxiety to take stock
+of the house-fittings forgot to mourn. Holden stayed by Ameera’s side
+and the rain roared on the roof. He could not think connectedly by
+reason of the noise, though he made many attempts to do so. Then four
+sheeted ghosts glided dripping into the room and stared at him through
+their veils. They were the washers of the dead. Holden left the room
+and went out to his horse. He had come in a dead, stifling calm through
+ankle-deep dust. He found the courtyard a rain-lashed pond alive with
+frogs; a torrent of yellow water ran under the gate, and a roaring wind
+drove the bolts of the rain like buckshot against the mud-walls. Pir
+Khan was shivering in his little hut by the gate, and the horse was
+stamping uneasily in the water.
+
+‘I have been told the sahib’s order,’ said Pir Khan. ‘It is well. This
+house is now desolate. I go also, for my monkey-face would be a reminder
+of that which has been. Concerning the bed, I will bring that to thy
+house yonder in the morning; but remember, sahib, it will be to thee a
+knife turning in a green wound. I go upon a pilgrimage, and I will
+take no money. I have grown fat in the protection of the Presence whose
+sorrow is my sorrow. For the last time I hold his stirrup.’
+
+He touched Holden’s foot with both hands and the horse sprang out into
+the road, where the creaking bamboos were whipping the sky and all the
+frogs were chuckling. Holden could not see for the rain in his face. He
+put his hands before his eyes and muttered--
+
+‘Oh you brute! You utter brute!’
+
+The news of his trouble was already in his bungalow. He read the
+knowledge in his butler’s eyes when Ahmed Khan brought in food, and
+for the first and last time in his life laid a hand upon his master’s
+shoulder, saying, ‘Eat, sahib, eat. Meat is good against sorrow. I also
+have known. Moreover the shadows come and go, sahib; the shadows come
+and go. These be curried eggs.’
+
+Holden could neither eat nor sleep. The heavens sent down eight inches
+of rain in that night and washed the earth clean. The waters tore down
+walls, broke roads, and scoured open the shallow graves on the Mahomedan
+burying-ground. All next day it rained, and Holden sat still in his
+house considering his sorrow. On the morning of the third day he
+received a telegram which said only, ‘Ricketts, Myndonie. Dying. Holden
+relieve. Immediate.’ Then he thought that before he departed he would
+look at the house wherein he had been master and lord. There was a break
+in the weather, and the rank earth steamed with vapour.
+
+He found that the rains had torn down the mud pillars of the gateway,
+and the heavy wooden gate that had guarded his life hung lazily from one
+hinge. There was grass three inches high in the courtyard; Pir Khan’s
+lodge was empty, and the sodden thatch sagged between the beams. A gray
+squirrel was in possession of the verandah, as if the house had been
+untenanted for thirty years instead of three days. Ameera’s mother had
+removed everything except some mildewed matting. The tick-tick of the
+little scorpions as they hurried across the floor was the only sound
+in the house. Ameera’s room and the other one where Tota had lived were
+heavy with mildew; and the narrow staircase leading to the roof was
+streaked and stained with rain-borne mud. Holden saw all these
+things, and came out again to meet in the road Durga Dass, his
+landlord,--portly, affable, clothed in white muslin, and driving a
+Cee-spring buggy. He was overlooking his property to see how the roofs
+stood the stress of the first rains.
+
+‘I have heard,’ said he, ‘you will not take this place any more, sahib?’
+
+‘What are you going to do with it?’
+
+‘Perhaps I shall let it again.’
+
+‘Then I will keep it on while I am away.’
+
+Durga Dass was silent for some time. ‘You shall not take it on, sahib,’
+he said. ‘When I was a young man I also--, but to-day I am a member of
+the Municipality. Ho! Ho! No. When the birds have gone what need to keep
+the nest? I will have it pulled down--the timber will sell for something
+always. It shall be pulled down, and the Municipality shall make a road
+across, as they desire, from the burning-ghat to the city wall, so that
+no man may say where this house stood.’
+
+
+
+
+AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE
+
+
+ The sky is lead and our faces are red,
+ And the gates of Hell are opened and riven,
+ And the winds of Hell are loosened and driven,
+ And the dust flies up in the face of Heaven,
+ And the clouds come down in a fiery sheet,
+ Heavy to raise and hard to be borne.
+ And the soul of man is turned from his meat,
+ Turned from the trifles for which he has striven
+ Sick in his body, and heavy hearted,
+ And his soul flies up like the dust in the sheet
+ Breaks from his flesh and is gone and departed,
+ As the blasts they blow on the cholera-horn.
+                            HIMALAYAN.
+
+Four men, each entitled to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of
+happiness,’ sat at a table playing whist. The thermometer marked--for
+them--one hundred and one degrees of heat. The room was darkened till it
+was only just possible to distinguish the pips of the cards and the very
+white faces of the players. A tattered, rotten punkah of whitewashed
+calico was puddling the hot air and whining dolefully at each stroke.
+Outside lay gloom of a November day in London. There was neither sky,
+sun, nor horizon,--nothing but a brown purple haze of heat. It was as
+though the earth were dying of apoplexy.
+
+From time to time clouds of tawny dust rose from the ground without
+wind or warning, flung themselves tablecloth-wise among the tops of the
+parched trees, and came down again. Then a whirling dust-devil would
+scutter across the plain for a couple of miles, break, and fall outward,
+though there was nothing to check its flight save a long low line of
+piled railway-sleepers white with the dust, a cluster of huts made of
+mud, condemned rails, and canvas, and the one squat four-roomed bungalow
+that belonged to the assistant engineer in charge of a section of the
+Gaudhari State line then under construction.
+
+The four, stripped to the thinnest of sleeping-suits, played whist
+crossly, with wranglings as to leads and returns. It was not the best
+kind of whist, but they had taken some trouble to arrive at it. Mottram
+of the Indian Survey had ridden thirty and railed one hundred miles from
+his lonely post in the desert since the night before; Lowndes of the
+Civil Service, on special duty in the political department, had come as
+far to escape for an instant the miserable intrigues of an impoverished
+native State whose king alternately fawned and blustered for more
+money from the pitiful revenues contributed by hard-wrung peasants and
+despairing camel-breeders; Spurstow, the doctor of the line, had left
+a cholera-stricken camp of coolies to look after itself for forty-eight
+hours while he associated with white men once more. Hummil, the
+assistant engineer, was the host. He stood fast and received his friends
+thus every Sunday if they could come in. When one of them failed to
+appear, he would send a telegram to his last address, in order that he
+might know whether the defaulter were dead or alive. There are very
+many places in the East where it is not good or kind to let your
+acquaintances drop out of sight even for one short week.
+
+The players were not conscious of any special regard for each other.
+They squabbled whenever they met; but they ardently desired to meet, as
+men without water desire to drink. They were lonely folk who understood
+the dread meaning of loneliness. They were all under thirty years of
+age,--which is too soon for any man to possess that knowledge.
+
+‘Pilsener?’ said Spurstow, after the second rubber, mopping his
+forehead.
+
+‘Beer’s out, I’m sorry to say, and there’s hardly enough soda-water for
+to-night,’ said Hummil.
+
+‘What filthy bad management!’ Spurstow snarled.
+
+‘Can’t help it. I’ve written and wired; but the trains don’t come
+through regularly yet. Last week the ice ran out,--as Lowndes knows.’
+
+‘Glad I didn’t come. I could ha’ sent you some if I had known, though.
+Phew! it’s too hot to go on playing bumblepuppy.’ This with a savage
+scowl at Lowndes, who only laughed. He was a hardened offender.
+
+Mottram rose from the table and looked out of a chink in the shutters.
+
+‘What a sweet day!’ said he.
+
+The company yawned all together and betook themselves to an aimless
+investigation of all Hummil’s possessions,--guns, tattered novels,
+saddlery, spurs, and the like. They had fingered them a score of times
+before, but there was really nothing else to do.
+
+‘Got anything fresh?’ said Lowndes.
+
+‘Last week’s Gazette of India, and a cutting from a home paper. My
+father sent it out. It’s rather amusing.’
+
+‘One of those vestrymen that call ‘emselves M.P.’s again, is it?’ said
+Spurstow, who read his newspapers when he could get them.
+
+‘Yes. Listen to this. It’s to your address, Lowndes. The man was making
+a speech to his constituents, and he piled it on. Here’s a sample:
+“And I assert unhesitatingly that the Civil Service in India is the
+preserve--the pet preserve--of the aristocracy of England. What does the
+democracy--what do the masses--get from that country, which we have step
+by step fraudulently annexed? I answer, nothing whatever. It is
+farmed with a single eye to their own interests by the scions of the
+aristocracy. They take good care to maintain their lavish scale of
+incomes, to avoid or stifle any inquiries into the nature and conduct of
+their administration, while they themselves force the unhappy peasant
+to pay with the sweat of his brow for all the luxuries in which they are
+lapped.”’ Hummil waved the cutting above his head. ‘’Ear! ‘ear!’ said
+his audience.
+
+Then Lowndes, meditatively: ‘I’d give--I’d give three months’ pay to
+have that gentleman spend one month with me and see how the free and
+independent native prince works things. Old Timbersides’--this was his
+flippant title for an honoured and decorated feudatory prince--‘has
+been wearing my life out this week past for money. By Jove, his latest
+performance was to send me one of his women as a bribe!’
+
+‘Good for you! Did you accept it?’ said Mottram.
+
+‘No. I rather wish I had, now. She was a pretty little person, and
+she yarned away to me about the horrible destitution among the king’s
+women-folk. The darlings haven’t had any new clothes for nearly a month,
+and the old man wants to buy a new drag from Calcutta,--solid silver
+railings and silver lamps, and trifles of that kind. I’ve tried to make
+him understand that he has played the deuce with the revenues for the
+last twenty years and must go slow. He can’t see it.’
+
+‘But he has the ancestral treasure-vaults to draw on. There must be
+three millions at least in jewels and coin under his palace,’ said
+Hummil.
+
+‘Catch a native king disturbing the family treasure! The priests forbid
+it except as the last resort. Old Timbersides has added something like a
+quarter of a million to the deposit in his reign.’
+
+‘Where the mischief does it all come from?’ said Mottram.
+
+‘The country. The state of the people is enough to make you sick. I’ve
+known the tax-men wait by a milch-camel till the foal was born and then
+hurry off the mother for arrears. And what can I do? I can’t get the
+court clerks to give me any accounts; I can’t raise anything more than
+a fat smile from the commander-in-chief when I find out the troops are
+three months in arrears; and old Timbersides begins to weep when I speak
+to him. He has taken to the King’s Peg heavily,--liqueur brandy for
+whisky, and Heidsieck for soda-water.’
+
+‘That’s what the Rao of Jubela took to. Even a native can’t last long at
+that,’ said Spurstow. ‘He’ll go out.’
+
+‘And a good thing, too. Then I suppose we’ll have a council of regency,
+and a tutor for the young prince, and hand him back his kingdom with ten
+years’ accumulations.’
+
+‘Whereupon that young prince, having been taught all the vices of the
+English, will play ducks and drakes with the money and undo ten years’
+work in eighteen months. I’ve seen that business before,’ said Spurstow.
+‘I should tackle the king with a light hand, if I were you, Lowndes.
+They’ll hate you quite enough under any circumstances.’
+
+‘That’s all very well. The man who looks on can talk about the light
+hand; but you can’t clean a pig-stye with a pen dipped in rose-water. I
+know my risks; but nothing has happened yet. My servant’s an old Pathan,
+and he cooks for me. They are hardly likely to bribe him, and I don’t
+accept food from my true friends, as they call themselves. Oh, but it’s
+weary work! I’d sooner be with you, Spurstow. There’s shooting near your
+camp.’
+
+‘Would you? I don’t think it. About fifteen deaths a day don’t incite a
+man to shoot anything but himself. And the worst of it is that the poor
+devils look at you as though you ought to save them. Lord knows, I’ve
+tried everything. My last attempt was empirical, but it pulled an old
+man through. He was brought to me apparently past hope, and I gave
+him gin and Worcester sauce with cayenne. It cured him; but I don’t
+recommend it.’
+
+‘How do the cases run generally?’ said Hummil.
+
+‘Very simply indeed. Chlorodyne, opium pill, chlorodyne, collapse,
+nitre, bricks to the feet, and then--the burning-ghat. The last seems to
+be the only thing that stops the trouble. It’s black cholera, you know.
+Poor devils! But, I will say, little Bunsee Lal, my apothecary, works
+like a demon. I’ve recommended him for promotion if he comes through it
+all alive.’
+
+‘And what are your chances, old man?’ said Mottram.
+
+‘Don’t know; don’t care much; but I’ve sent the letter in. What are you
+doing with yourself generally?’
+
+‘Sitting under a table in the tent and spitting on the sextant to
+keep it cool,’ said the man of the survey. ‘Washing my eyes to
+avoid ophthalmia, which I shall certainly get, and trying to make a
+sub-surveyor understand that an error of five degrees in an angle isn’t
+quite so small as it looks. I’m altogether alone, y’ know, and shall be
+till the end of the hot weather.’
+
+‘Hummil’s the lucky man,’ said Lowndes, flinging himself into a long
+chair. ‘He has an actual roof--torn as to the ceiling-cloth, but still
+a roof--over his head. He sees one train daily. He can get beer and
+soda-water and ice ‘em when God is good. He has books, pictures,---they
+were torn from the Graphic,--‘and the society of the excellent
+sub-contractor Jevins, besides the pleasure of receiving us weekly.’
+
+Hummil smiled grimly. ‘Yes, I’m the lucky man, I suppose. Jevins is
+luckier.’
+
+‘How? Not----’
+
+‘Yes. Went out. Last Monday.’
+
+‘By his own hand?’ said Spurstow quickly, hinting the suspicion that was
+in everybody’s mind. There was no cholera near Hummil’s section. Even
+fever gives a man at least a week’s grace, and sudden death generally
+implied self-slaughter.
+
+‘I judge no man this weather,’ said Hummil. ‘He had a touch of the sun,
+I fancy; for last week, after you fellows had left, he came into the
+verandah and told me that he was going home to see his wife, in Market
+Street, Liverpool, that evening.
+
+‘I got the apothecary in to look at him, and we tried to make him lie
+down. After an hour or two he rubbed his eyes and said he believed he
+had had a fit,--hoped he hadn’t said anything rude. Jevins had a great
+idea of bettering himself socially. He was very like Chucks in his
+language.’
+
+‘Well?’
+
+‘Then he went to his own bungalow and began cleaning a rifle. He told
+the servant that he was going to shoot buck in the morning. Naturally
+he fumbled with the trigger, and shot himself through the
+head--accidentally. The apothecary sent in a report to my chief, and
+Jevins is buried somewhere out there. I’d have wired to you, Spurstow,
+if you could have done anything.’
+
+‘You’re a queer chap,’ said Mottram. ‘If you’d killed the man yourself
+you couldn’t have been more quiet about the business.’
+
+‘Good Lord! what does it matter?’ said Hummil calmly. ‘I’ve got to do
+a lot of his overseeing work in addition to my own. I’m the only person
+that suffers. Jevins is out of it,--by pure accident, of course, but out
+of it. The apothecary was going to write a long screed on suicide. Trust
+a babu to drivel when he gets the chance.’
+
+‘Why didn’t you let it go in as suicide?’ said Lowndes.
+
+‘No direct proof. A man hasn’t many privileges in this country, but he
+might at least be allowed to mishandle his own rifle. Besides, some day
+I may need a man to smother up an accident to myself. Live and let live.
+Die and let die.’
+
+‘You take a pill,’ said Spurstow, who had been watching Hummil’s white
+face narrowly. ‘Take a pill, and don’t be an ass. That sort of talk is
+skittles. Anyhow, suicide is shirking your work. If I were Job ten times
+over, I should be so interested in what was going to happen next that
+I’d stay on and watch.’
+
+‘Ah! I’ve lost that curiosity,’ said Hummil.
+
+‘Liver out of order?’ said Lowndes feelingly.
+
+‘No. Can’t sleep. That’s worse.’
+
+‘By Jove, it is!’ said Mottram. ‘I’m that way every now and then, and
+the fit has to wear itself out. What do you take for it?’
+
+‘Nothing. What’s the use? I haven’t had ten minutes’ sleep since Friday
+morning.’
+
+‘Poor chap! Spurstow, you ought to attend to this,’ said Mottram. ‘Now
+you mention it, your eyes are rather gummy and swollen.’
+
+Spurstow, still watching Hummil, laughed lightly. ‘I’ll patch him up,
+later on. Is it too hot, do you think, to go for a ride?’
+
+‘Where to?’ said Lowndes wearily. ‘We shall have to go away at eight,
+and there’ll be riding enough for us then. I hate a horse, when I have
+to use him as a necessity. Oh, heavens! what is there to do?’
+
+‘Begin whist again, at chick points [‘a chick’ is supposed to be eight
+shillings] and a gold mohur on the rub,’ said Spurstow promptly.
+
+‘Poker. A month’s pay all round for the pool,--no limit,--and
+fifty-rupee raises. Somebody would be broken before we got up,’ said
+Lowndes.
+
+‘Can’t say that it would give me any pleasure to break any man in this
+company,’ said Mottram. ‘There isn’t enough excitement in it, and
+it’s foolish.’ He crossed over to the worn and battered little
+camp-piano,--wreckage of a married household that had once held the
+bungalow,--and opened the case.
+
+‘It’s used up long ago,’ said Hummil. ‘The servants have picked it to
+pieces.’
+
+The piano was indeed hopelessly out of order, but Mottram managed to
+bring the rebellious notes into a sort of agreement, and there rose from
+the ragged keyboard something that might once have been the ghost of a
+popular music-hall song. The men in the long chairs turned with evident
+interest as Mottram banged the more lustily.
+
+‘That’s good!’ said Lowndes. ‘By Jove! the last time I heard that song
+was in ‘79, or thereabouts, just before I came out.’
+
+‘Ah!’ said Spurstow with pride,’ I was home in ‘80.’ And he mentioned a
+song of the streets popular at that date.
+
+Mottram executed it roughly. Lowndes criticised and volunteered
+emendations. Mottram dashed into another ditty, not of the music-hall
+character, and made as if to rise.
+
+‘Sit down,’ said Hummil. ‘I didn’t know that you had any music in your
+composition. Go on playing until you can’t think of anything more. I’ll
+have that piano tuned up before you come again. Play something festive.’
+
+Very simple indeed were the tunes to which Mottram’s art and the
+limitations of the piano could give effect, but the men listened with
+pleasure, and in the pauses talked all together of what they had seen or
+heard when they were last at home. A dense dust-storm sprung up outside,
+and swept roaring over the house, enveloping it in the choking darkness
+of midnight, but Mottram continued unheeding, and the crazy tinkle
+reached the ears of the listeners above the flapping of the tattered
+ceiling-cloth.
+
+In the silence after the storm he glided from the more directly personal
+songs of Scotland, half humming them as he played, into the Evening
+Hymn.
+
+‘Sunday,’ said he, nodding his head.
+
+‘Go on. Don’t apologise for it,’ said Spurstow.
+
+Hummil laughed long and riotously. ‘Play it, by all means. You’re full
+of surprises to-day. I didn’t know you had such a gift of finished
+sarcasm. How does that thing go?’
+
+Mottram took up the tune.
+
+‘Too slow by half. You miss the note of gratitude,’ said Hummil. ‘It
+ought to go to the “Grasshopper’s Polka,”--this way.’ And he chanted,
+prestissimo,--
+
+‘Glory to thee, my God, this night. For all the blessings of the light.
+
+That shows we really feel our blessings. How does it go on?--
+
+‘If in the night I sleepless lie, My soul with sacred thoughts supply;
+May no ill dreams disturb my rest.’--
+
+Quicker, Mottram!--
+
+‘Or powers of darkness me molest!’
+
+‘Bah! what an old hypocrite you are!’
+
+‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Lowndes. ‘You are at full liberty to make fun of
+anything else you like, but leave that hymn alone. It’s associated in my
+mind with the most sacred recollections----’
+
+‘Summer evenings in the country,--stained-glass window,--light going
+out, and you and she jamming your heads together over one hymn-book,’
+said Mottram.
+
+‘Yes, and a fat old cockchafer hitting you in the eye when you walked
+home. Smell of hay, and a moon as big as a bandbox sitting on the top of
+a haycock; bats,--roses,--milk and midges,’ said Lowndes.
+
+‘Also mothers. I can just recollect my mother singing me to sleep with
+that when I was a little chap,’ said Spurstow.
+
+The darkness had fallen on the room. They could hear Hummil squirming in
+his chair.
+
+‘Consequently,’ said he testily, ‘you sing it when you are seven fathom
+deep in Hell! It’s an insult to the intelligence of the Deity to pretend
+we’re anything but tortured rebels.’
+
+‘Take TWO pills,’ said Spurstow; ‘that’s tortured liver.’
+
+‘The usually placid Hummil is in a vile bad temper. I’m sorry for his
+coolies to-morrow,’ said Lowndes, as the servants brought in the lights
+and prepared the table for dinner.
+
+As they were settling into their places about the miserable goat-chops,
+and the smoked tapioca pudding, Spurstow took occasion to whisper to
+Mottram, ‘Well done, David!’
+
+‘Look after Saul, then,’ was the reply.
+
+‘What are you two whispering about?’ said Hummil suspiciously.
+
+‘Only saying that you are a damned poor host. This fowl can’t be cut,’
+returned Spurstow with a sweet smile. ‘Call this a dinner?’
+
+‘I can’t help it. You don’t expect a banquet, do you?’
+
+Throughout that meal Hummil contrived laboriously to insult directly
+and pointedly all his guests in succession, and at each insult Spurstow
+kicked the aggrieved persons under the table; but he dared not exchange
+a glance of intelligence with either of them. Hummil’s face was white
+and pinched, while his eyes were unnaturally large. No man dreamed for
+a moment of resenting his savage personalities, but as soon as the meal
+was over they made haste to get away. ‘Don’t go. You’re just getting
+amusing, you fellows. I hope I haven’t said anything that annoyed you.
+You’re such touchy devils.’ Then, changing the note into one of almost
+abject entreaty, Hummil added, ‘I say, you surely aren’t going?’
+
+‘In the language of the blessed Jorrocks, where I dines I sleeps,’ said
+Spurstow. ‘I want to have a look at your coolies to-morrow, if you don’t
+mind. You can give me a place to lie down in, I suppose?’
+
+The others pleaded the urgency of their several duties next day, and,
+saddling up, departed together, Hummil begging them to come next Sunday.
+As they jogged off, Lowndes unbosomed himself to Mottram--
+
+‘... And I never felt so like kicking a man at his own table in my life.
+He said I cheated at whist, and reminded me I was in debt! ‘Told you you
+were as good as a liar to your face! You aren’t half indignant enough
+over it.’
+
+‘Not I,’ said Mottram. ‘Poor devil! Did you ever know old Hummy behave
+like that before or within a hundred miles of it?’
+
+‘That’s no excuse. Spurstow was hacking my shin all the time, so I kept
+a hand on myself. Else I should have--’
+
+‘No, you wouldn’t. You’d have done as Hummy did about Jevins; judge no
+man this weather. By Jove! the buckle of my bridle is hot in my hand!
+Trot out a bit, and ‘ware rat-holes.’
+
+Ten minutes’ trotting jerked out of Lowndes one very sage remark when he
+pulled up, sweating from every pore--
+
+‘’Good thing Spurstow’s with him to-night.’
+
+‘Ye-es. Good man, Spurstow. Our roads turn here. See you again next
+Sunday, if the sun doesn’t bowl me over.’
+
+‘S’pose so, unless old Timbersides’ finance minister manages to dress
+some of my food. Good-night, and--God bless you!’
+
+‘What’s wrong now?’
+
+‘Oh, nothing.’ Lowndes gathered up his whip, and, as he flicked
+Mottram’s mare on the flank, added, ‘You’re not a bad little
+chap,--that’s all.’ And the mare bolted half a mile across the sand, on
+the word.
+
+In the assistant engineer’s bungalow Spurstow and Hummil smoked the pipe
+of silence together, each narrowly watching the other. The capacity of a
+bachelor’s establishment is as elastic as its arrangements are simple. A
+servant cleared away the dining-room table, brought in a couple of rude
+native bedsteads made of tape strung on a light wood frame, flung a
+square of cool Calcutta matting over each, set them side by side, pinned
+two towels to the punkah so that their fringes should just sweep clear
+of the sleepers’ nose and mouth, and announced that the couches were
+ready.
+
+The men flung themselves down, ordering the punkah-coolies by all the
+powers of Hell to pull. Every door and window was shut, for the outside
+air was that of an oven. The atmosphere within was only 104 degrees,
+as the thermometer bore witness, and heavy with the foul smell of
+badly-trimmed kerosene lamps; and this stench, combined with that of
+native tobacco, baked brick, and dried earth, sends the heart of many
+a strong man down to his boots, for it is the smell of the Great Indian
+Empire when she turns herself for six months into a house of torment.
+Spurstow packed his pillows craftily so that he reclined rather than
+lay, his head at a safe elevation above his feet. It is not good
+to sleep on a low pillow in the hot weather if you happen to be of
+thick-necked build, for you may pass with lively snores and gugglings
+from natural sleep into the deep slumber of heat-apoplexy.
+
+‘Pack your pillows,’ said the doctor sharply, as he saw Hummil preparing
+to lie down at full length.
+
+The night-light was trimmed; the shadow of the punkah wavered across the
+room, and the ‘flick’ of the punkah-towel and the soft whine of the
+rope through the wall-hole followed it. Then the punkah flagged, almost
+ceased. The sweat poured from Spurstow’s brow. Should he go out and
+harangue the coolie? It started forward again with a savage jerk, and
+a pin came out of the towels. When this was replaced, a tomtom in the
+coolie-lines began to beat with the steady throb of a swollen artery
+inside some brain-fevered skull. Spurstow turned on his side and swore
+gently. There was no movement on Hummil’s part. The man had composed
+himself as rigidly as a corpse, his hands clinched at his sides. The
+respiration was too hurried for any suspicion of sleep. Spurstow looked
+at the set face. The jaws were clinched, and there was a pucker round
+the quivering eyelids.
+
+‘He’s holding himself as tightly as ever he can,’ thought Spurstow.
+‘What in the world is the matter with him?--Hummil!’
+
+‘Yes,’ in a thick constrained voice.
+
+‘Can’t you get to sleep?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Head hot? ‘Throat feeling bulgy? or how?’
+
+‘Neither, thanks. I don’t sleep much, you know.’
+
+‘Feel pretty bad?’
+
+‘Pretty bad, thanks. There is a tomtom outside, isn’t there? I thought
+it was my head at first.... Oh, Spurstow, for pity’s sake give me
+something that will put me asleep,--sound asleep,--if it’s only for six
+hours!’ He sprang up, trembling from head to foot. ‘I haven’t been able
+to sleep naturally for days, and I can’t stand it!--I can’t stand it!’
+
+‘Poor old chap!’
+
+‘That’s no use. Give me something to make me sleep. I tell you I’m
+nearly mad. I don’t know what I say half my time. For three weeks I’ve
+had to think and spell out every word that has come through my lips
+before I dared say it. Isn’t that enough to drive a man mad? I can’t see
+things correctly now, and I’ve lost my sense of touch. My skin aches--my
+skin aches! Make me sleep. Oh, Spurstow, for the love of God make me
+sleep sound. It isn’t enough merely to let me dream. Let me sleep!’
+
+‘All right, old man, all right. Go slow; you aren’t half as bad as you
+think.’
+
+The flood-gates of reserve once broken, Hummil was clinging to him like
+a frightened child. ‘You’re pinching my arm to pieces.’
+
+‘I’ll break your neck if you don’t do something for me. No, I didn’t
+mean that. Don’t be angry, old fellow.’ He wiped the sweat off himself
+as he fought to regain composure. ‘I’m a bit restless and off my oats,
+and perhaps you could recommend some sort of sleeping mixture,--bromide
+of potassium.’
+
+‘Bromide of skittles! Why didn’t you tell me this before? Let go of my
+arm, and I’ll see if there’s anything in my cigarette-case to suit your
+complaint.’ Spurstow hunted among his day-clothes, turned up the lamp,
+opened a little silver cigarette-case, and advanced on the expectant
+Hummil with the daintiest of fairy squirts.
+
+‘The last appeal of civilisation,’ said he, ‘and a thing I hate to use.
+Hold out your arm. Well, your sleeplessness hasn’t ruined your
+muscle; and what a thick hide it is! Might as well inject a buffalo
+subcutaneously. Now in a few minutes the morphia will begin working. Lie
+down and wait.’
+
+A smile of unalloyed and idiotic delight began to creep over Hummil’s
+face. ‘I think,’ he whispered,--‘I think I’m going off now. Gad! it’s
+positively heavenly! Spurstow, you must give me that case to keep;
+you--’ The voice ceased as the head fell back.
+
+‘Not for a good deal,’ said Spurstow to the unconscious form. ‘And now,
+my friend, sleeplessness of your kind being very apt to relax the moral
+fibre in little matters of life and death, I’ll just take the liberty of
+spiking your guns.’
+
+He paddled into Hummil’s saddle-room in his bare feet and uncased a
+twelve-bore rifle, an express, and a revolver. Of the first he unscrewed
+the nipples and hid them in the bottom of a saddlery-case; of the second
+he abstracted the lever, kicking it behind a big wardrobe. The third he
+merely opened, and knocked the doll-head bolt of the grip up with the
+heel of a riding-boot.
+
+‘That’s settled,’ he said, as he shook the sweat off his hands. ‘These
+little precautions will at least give you time to turn. You have too
+much sympathy with gun-room accidents.’
+
+And as he rose from his knees, the thick muffled voice of Hummil cried
+in the doorway, ‘You fool!’
+
+Such tones they use who speak in the lucid intervals of delirium to
+their friends a little before they die.
+
+Spurstow started, dropping the pistol. Hummil stood in the doorway,
+rocking with helpless laughter.
+
+‘That was awf’ly good of you, I’m sure,’ he said, very slowly, feeling
+for his words. ‘I don’t intend to go out by my own hand at present. I
+say, Spurstow, that stuff won’t work. What shall I do? What shall I do?’
+And panic terror stood in his eyes.
+
+‘Lie down and give it a chance. Lie down at once.’
+
+‘I daren’t. It will only take me half-way again, and I shan’t be able to
+get away this time. Do you know it was all I could do to come out just
+now? Generally I am as quick as lightning; but you had clogged my feet.
+I was nearly caught.’
+
+‘Oh yes, I understand. Go and lie down.’
+
+‘No, it isn’t delirium; but it was an awfully mean trick to play on me.
+Do you know I might have died?’
+
+As a sponge rubs a slate clean, so some power unknown to Spurstow had
+wiped out of Hummil’s face all that stamped it for the face of a man,
+and he stood at the doorway in the expression of his lost innocence. He
+had slept back into terrified childhood.
+
+‘Is he going to die on the spot?’ thought Spurstow. Then, aloud, ‘All
+right, my son. Come back to bed, and tell me all about it. You couldn’t
+sleep; but what was all the rest of the nonsense?’
+
+‘A place,--a place down there,’ said Hummil, with simple sincerity. The
+drug was acting on him by waves, and he was flung from the fear of a
+strong man to the fright of a child as his nerves gathered sense or were
+dulled.
+
+‘Good God! I’ve been afraid of it for months past, Spurstow. It has
+made every night hell to me; and yet I’m not conscious of having done
+anything wrong.’
+
+‘Be still, and I’ll give you another dose. We’ll stop your nightmares,
+you unutterable idiot!’
+
+‘Yes, but you must give me so much that I can’t get away. You must make
+me quite sleepy,--not just a little sleepy. It’s so hard to run then.’
+
+‘I know it; I know it. I’ve felt it myself. The symptoms are exactly as
+you describe.’
+
+‘Oh, don’t laugh at me, confound you! Before this awful sleeplessness
+came to me I’ve tried to rest on my elbow and put a spur in the bed to
+sting me when I fell back. Look!’
+
+‘By Jove! the man has been rowelled like a horse! Ridden by the
+nightmare with a vengeance! And we all thought him sensible enough.
+Heaven send us understanding! You like to talk, don’t you?’
+
+‘Yes, sometimes. Not when I’m frightened. THEN I want to run. Don’t
+you?’
+
+‘Always. Before I give you your second dose try to tell me exactly what
+your trouble is.’
+
+Hummil spoke in broken whispers for nearly ten minutes, whilst Spurstow
+looked into the pupils of his eyes and passed his hand before them once
+or twice.
+
+At the end of the narrative the silver cigarette-case was produced,
+and the last words that Hummil said as he fell back for the second time
+were, ‘Put me quite to sleep; for if I’m caught I die,--I die!’
+
+‘Yes, yes; we all do that sooner or later,--thank Heaven who has set a
+term to our miseries,’ said Spurstow, settling the cushions under the
+head. ‘It occurs to me that unless I drink something I shall go out
+before my time. I’ve stopped sweating, and--I wear a seventeen-inch
+collar.’ He brewed himself scalding hot tea, which is an excellent
+remedy against heat-apoplexy if you take three or four cups of it in
+time. Then he watched the sleeper.
+
+‘A blind face that cries and can’t wipe its eyes, a blind face that
+chases him down corridors! H’m! Decidedly, Hummil ought to go on leave
+as soon as possible; and, sane or otherwise, he undoubtedly did rowel
+himself most cruelly. Well, Heaven send us understanding!’
+
+At mid-day Hummil rose, with an evil taste in his mouth, but an
+unclouded eye and a joyful heart.
+
+‘I was pretty bad last night, wasn’t I?’ said he.
+
+‘I have seen healthier men. You must have had a touch of the sun. Look
+here: if I write you a swingeing medical certificate, will you apply for
+leave on the spot?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Why not? You want it.’
+
+‘Yes, but I can hold on till the weather’s a little cooler.’
+
+‘Why should you, if you can get relieved on the spot?’
+
+‘Burkett is the only man who could be sent; and he’s a born fool.’
+
+‘Oh, never mind about the line. You aren’t so important as all that.
+Wire for leave, if necessary.’
+
+Hummil looked very uncomfortable.
+
+‘I can hold on till the Rains,’ he said evasively.
+
+‘You can’t. Wire to headquarters for Burkett.’
+
+‘I won’t. If you want to know why, particularly, Burkett is married,
+and his wife’s just had a kid, and she’s up at Simla, in the cool, and
+Burkett has a very nice billet that takes him into Simla from Saturday
+to Monday. That little woman isn’t at all well. If Burkett was
+transferred she’d try to follow him. If she left the baby behind she’d
+fret herself to death. If she came,--and Burkett’s one of those selfish
+little beasts who are always talking about a wife’s place being with her
+husband,--she’d die. It’s murder to bring a woman here just now. Burkett
+hasn’t the physique of a rat. If he came here he’d go out; and I know
+she hasn’t any money, and I’m pretty sure she’d go out too. I’m salted
+in a sort of way, and I’m not married. Wait till the Rains, and then
+Burkett can get thin down here. It’ll do him heaps of good.’
+
+‘Do you mean to say that you intend to face--what you have faced, till
+the Rains break?’
+
+‘Oh, it won’t be so bad, now you’ve shown me a way out of it. I can
+always wire to you. Besides, now I’ve once got into the way of sleeping,
+it’ll be all right. Anyhow, I shan’t put in for leave. That’s the long
+and the short of it.’
+
+‘My great Scott! I thought all that sort of thing was dead and done
+with.’
+
+‘Bosh! You’d do the same yourself. I feel a new man, thanks to that
+cigarette-case. You’re going over to camp now, aren’t you?’
+
+‘Yes; but I’ll try to look you up every other day, if I can.’
+
+‘I’m not bad enough for that. I don’t want you to bother. Give the
+coolies gin and ketchup.’
+
+‘Then you feel all right?’
+
+‘Fit to fight for my life, but not to stand out in the sun talking to
+you. Go along, old man, and bless you!’
+
+Hummil turned on his heel to face the echoing desolation of his
+bungalow, and the first thing he saw standing in the verandah was the
+figure of himself. He had met a similar apparition once before, when he
+was suffering from overwork and the strain of the hot weather.
+
+‘This is bad,--already,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘If the thing slides
+away from me all in one piece, like a ghost, I shall know it is only my
+eyes and stomach that are out of order. If it walks--my head is going.’
+
+He approached the figure, which naturally kept at an unvarying distance
+from him, as is the use of all spectres that are born of overwork. It
+slid through the house and dissolved into swimming specks within the
+eyeball as soon as it reached the burning light of the garden. Hummil
+went about his business till even. When he came in to dinner he found
+himself sitting at the table. The vision rose and walked out hastily.
+Except that it cast no shadow it was in all respects real.
+
+No living man knows what that week held for Hummil. An increase of the
+epidemic kept Spurstow in camp among the coolies, and all he could do
+was to telegraph to Mottram, bidding him go to the bungalow and sleep
+there. But Mottram was forty miles away from the nearest telegraph, and
+knew nothing of anything save the needs of the survey till he met, early
+on Sunday morning, Lowndes and Spurstow heading towards Hummil’s for the
+weekly gathering.
+
+‘Hope the poor chap’s in a better temper,’ said the former, swinging
+himself off his horse at the door. ‘I suppose he isn’t up yet.’
+
+‘I’ll just have a look at him,’ said the doctor. ‘If he’s asleep there’s
+no need to wake him.’
+
+And an instant later, by the tone of Spurstow’s voice calling upon them
+to enter, the men knew what had happened. There was no need to wake him.
+
+The punkah was still being pulled over the bed, but Hummil had departed
+this life at least three hours.
+
+The body lay on its back, hands clinched by the side, as Spurstow had
+seen it lying seven nights previously. In the staring eyes was written
+terror beyond the expression of any pen.
+
+Mottram, who had entered behind Lowndes, bent over the dead and touched
+the forehead lightly with his lips. ‘Oh, you lucky, lucky devil!’ he
+whispered.
+
+But Lowndes had seen the eyes, and withdrew shuddering to the other side
+of the room.
+
+‘Poor chap! poor old chap! And the last time I met him I was angry.
+Spurstow, we should have watched him. Has he--?’
+
+Deftly Spurstow continued his investigations, ending by a search round
+the room.
+
+‘No, he hasn’t,’ he snapped. ‘There’s no trace of anything. Call the
+servants.’
+
+They came, eight or ten of them, whispering and peering over each
+other’s shoulders.
+
+‘When did your Sahib go to bed?’ said Spurstow.
+
+‘At eleven or ten, we think,’ said Hummil’s personal servant.
+
+‘He was well then? But how should you know?’
+
+‘He was not ill, as far as our comprehension extended. But he had slept
+very little for three nights. This I know, because I saw him walking
+much, and specially in the heart of the night.’
+
+As Spurstow was arranging the sheet, a big straight-necked hunting-spur
+tumbled on the ground. The doctor groaned. The personal servant peeped
+at the body.
+
+‘What do you think, Chuma?’ said Spurstow, catching the look on the dark
+face.
+
+‘Heaven-born, in my poor opinion, this that was my master has descended
+into the Dark Places, and there has been caught because he was not able
+to escape with sufficient speed. We have the spur for evidence that he
+fought with Fear. Thus have I seen men of my race do with thorns when
+a spell was laid upon them to overtake them in their sleeping hours and
+they dared not sleep.’
+
+‘Chuma, you’re a mud-head. Go out and prepare seals to be set on the
+Sahib’s property.’
+
+‘God has made the Heaven-born. God has made me. Who are we, to inquire
+into the dispensations of God? I will bid the other servants hold aloof
+while you are reckoning the tale of the Sahib’s property. They are all
+thieves, and would steal.’
+
+‘As far as I can make out, he died from--oh, anything; stoppage of the
+heart’s action, heat-apoplexy, or some other visitation,’ said Spurstow
+to his companions. ‘We must make an inventory of his effects, and so
+on.’
+
+‘He was scared to death,’ insisted Lowndes. ‘Look at those eyes! For
+pity’s sake don’t let him be buried with them open!’
+
+‘Whatever it was, he’s clear of all the trouble now,’ said Mottram
+softly.
+
+Spurstow was peering into the open eyes.
+
+‘Come here,’ said he. ‘Can you see anything there?’
+
+‘I can’t face it!’ whimpered Lowndes. ‘Cover up the face! Is there any
+fear on earth that can turn a man into that likeness? It’s ghastly. Oh,
+Spurstow, cover it up!’
+
+‘No fear--on earth,’ said Spurstow. Mottram leaned over his shoulder and
+looked intently.
+
+‘I see nothing except some gray blurs in the pupil. There can be nothing
+there, you know.’
+
+‘Even so. Well, let’s think. It’ll take half a day to knock up any sort
+of coffin; and he must have died at midnight. Lowndes, old man, go out
+and tell the coolies to break ground next to Jevins’s grave. Mottram,
+go round the house with Chuma and see that the seals are put on things.
+Send a couple of men to me here, and I’ll arrange.’
+
+The strong-armed servants when they returned to their own kind told a
+strange story of the doctor Sahib vainly trying to call their master
+back to life by magic arts,--to wit, the holding of a little green
+box that clicked to each of the dead man’s eyes, and of a bewildered
+muttering on the part of the doctor Sahib, who took the little green box
+away with him.
+
+The resonant hammering of a coffin-lid is no pleasant thing to hear, but
+those who have experience maintain that much more terrible is the soft
+swish of the bed-linen, the reeving and unreeving of the bed-tapes,
+when he who has fallen by the roadside is apparelled for burial, sinking
+gradually as the tapes are tied over, till the swaddled shape touches
+the floor and there is no protest against the indignity of hasty
+disposal.
+
+At the last moment Lowndes was seized with scruples of conscience.
+‘Ought you to read the service,--from beginning to end?’ said he to
+Spurstow.
+
+‘I intend to. You’re my senior as a civilian. You can take it if you
+like.’
+
+‘I didn’t mean that for a moment. I only thought if we could get a
+chaplain from somewhere,--I’m willing to ride anywhere,--and give poor
+Hummil a better chance. That’s all.’
+
+‘Bosh!’ said Spurstow, as he framed his lips to the tremendous words
+that stand at the head of the burial service.
+
+After breakfast they smoked a pipe in silence to the memory of the dead.
+Then Spurstow said absently--
+
+‘’Tisn’t in medical science.’
+
+‘What?’
+
+‘Things in a dead man’s eye.’
+
+‘For goodness’ sake leave that horror alone!’ said Lowndes. ‘I’ve seen
+a native die of pure fright when a tiger chivied him. I know what killed
+Hummil.’
+
+‘The deuce you do! I’m going to try to see.’ And the doctor retreated
+into the bath-room with a Kodak camera. After a few minutes there was
+the sound of something being hammered to pieces, and he emerged, very
+white indeed.
+
+‘Have you got a picture?’ said Mottram. ‘What does the thing look like?’
+
+‘It was impossible, of course. You needn’t look, Mottram. I’ve torn up
+the films. There was nothing there. It was impossible.’
+
+‘That,’ said Lowndes, very distinctly, watching the shaking hand
+striving to relight the pipe, ‘is a damned lie.’
+
+Mottram laughed uneasily. ‘Spurstow’s right,’ he said. ‘We’re all in
+such a state now that we’d believe anything. For pity’s sake let’s try
+to be rational.’
+
+There was no further speech for a long time. The hot wind whistled
+without, and the dry trees sobbed. Presently the daily train, winking
+brass, burnished steel, and spouting steam, pulled up panting in the
+intense glare. ‘We’d better go on on that,’ said Spurstow. ‘Go back to
+work. I’ve written my certificate. We can’t do any more good here, and
+work’ll keep our wits together. Come on.’
+
+No one moved. It is not pleasant to face railway journeys at mid-day
+in June. Spurstow gathered up his hat and whip, and, turning in the
+doorway, said--
+
+‘There may be Heaven,--there must be Hell. Meantime, there is our life
+here. We-ell?’
+
+Neither Mottram nor Lowndes had any answer to the question.
+
+
+
+
+THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS
+
+
+  Sec. 7.  { Cause       }              { in forces }   Regular forces,
+  (I)      { Consipiring }              { belonging }   Reserve forces,
+           { with other  }   a mutiny   { to Her    }   Auxiliary forces.
+           { persons to  }   sedition   { Majesty’s }   Navy.
+           { cause       }
+
+
+When three obscure gentlemen in San Francisco argued on insufficient
+premises they condemned a fellow-creature to a most unpleasant death in
+a far country, which had nothing whatever to do with the United States.
+They foregathered at the top of a tenement-house in Tehama Street, an
+unsavoury quarter of the city, and, there calling for certain drinks,
+they conspired because they were conspirators by trade, officially known
+as the Third Three of the I.A.A.--an institution for the propagation
+of pure light, not to be confounded with any others, though it is
+affiliated to many. The Second Three live in Montreal, and work among
+the poor there; the First Three have their home in New York, not far
+from Castle Garden, and write regularly once a week to a small house
+near one of the big hotels at Boulogne. What happens after that, a
+particular section of Scotland Yard knows too well, and laughs at. A
+conspirator detests ridicule. More men have been stabbed with Lucrezia
+Borgia daggers and dropped into the Thames for laughing at Head Centres
+and Triangles than for betraying secrets; for this is human nature.
+
+The Third Three conspired over whisky cocktails and a clean sheet of
+notepaper against the British Empire and all that lay therein. This work
+is very like what men without discernment call politics before a general
+election. You pick out and discuss, in the company of congenial friends,
+all the weak points in your opponents’ organisation, and unconsciously
+dwell upon and exaggerate all their mishaps, till it seems to you a
+miracle that the hated party holds together for an hour.
+
+‘Our principle is not so much active demonstration--that we leave to
+others--as passive embarrassment, to weaken and unnerve,’ said the first
+man. ‘Wherever an organisation is crippled, wherever a confusion is
+thrown into any branch of any department, we gain a step for those
+who take on the work; we are but the forerunners.’ He was a German
+enthusiast, and editor of a newspaper, from whose leading articles he
+quoted frequently.
+
+‘That cursed Empire makes so many blunders of her own that unless we
+doubled the year’s average I guess it wouldn’t strike her anything
+special had occurred,’ said the second man. ‘Are you prepared to
+say that all our resources are equal to blowing off the muzzle of a
+hundred-ton gun or spiking a ten-thousand-ton ship on a plain rock in
+clear daylight? They can beat us at our own game. ‘Better join hands
+with the practical branches; we’re in funds now. Try a direct scare in a
+crowded street. They value their greasy hides.’ He was the drag upon the
+wheel, and an Americanised Irishman of the second generation, despising
+his own race and hating the other. He had learned caution.
+
+The third man drank his cocktail and spoke no word. He was the
+strategist, but unfortunately his knowledge of life was limited. He
+picked a letter from his breast-pocket and threw it across the table.
+That epistle to the heathen contained some very concise directions from
+the First Three in New York. It said--
+
+‘The boom in black iron has already affected the eastern markets, where
+our agents have been forcing down the English-held stock among the
+smaller buyers who watch the turn of shares. Any immediate operations,
+such as western bears, would increase their willingness to unload.
+This, however, cannot be expected till they see clearly that foreign
+iron-masters are witting to co-operate. Mulcahy should be dispatched
+to feel the pulse of the market, and act accordingly. Mavericks are at
+present the best for our purpose.--P.D.Q.’
+
+As a message referring to an iron crisis in Pennsylvania, it was
+interesting, if not lucid. As a new departure in organised attack on an
+outlying English dependency, it was more than interesting.
+
+The second man read it through and murmured--
+
+‘Already? Surely they are in too great a hurry. All that Dhulip
+Singh could do in India he has done, down to the distribution of his
+photographs among the peasantry. Ho! Ho! The Paris firm arranged that,
+and he has no substantial money backing from the Other Power. Even our
+agents in India know he hasn’t. What is the use of our organisation
+wasting men on work that is already done? Of course the Irish regiments
+in India are half mutinous as they stand.’
+
+This shows how near a lie may come to the truth. An Irish regiment, for
+just so long as it stands still, is generally a hard handful to control,
+being reckless and rough. When, however, it is moved in the direction of
+musketry-firing, it becomes strangely and unpatriotically content with
+its lot. It has even been heard to cheer the Queen with enthusiasm on
+these occasions.
+
+But the notion of tampering with the army was, from the point of view of
+Tehama Street, an altogether sound one. There is no shadow of stability
+in the policy of an English Government, and the most sacred oaths of
+England would, even if engrossed on vellum, find very few buyers among
+colonies and dependencies that have suffered from vain beliefs. But
+there remains to England always her army. That cannot change except
+in the matter of uniform and equipment. The officers may write to the
+papers demanding the heads of the Horse Guards in default of cleaner
+redress for grievances; the men may break loose across a country town
+and seriously startle the publicans; but neither officers nor men have
+it in their composition to mutiny after the continental manner. The
+English people, when they trouble to think about the army at all, are,
+and with justice, absolutely assured that it is absolutely trustworthy.
+Imagine for a moment their emotions on realising that such and such
+a regiment was in open revolt from causes directly due to England’s
+management of Ireland. They would probably send the regiment to the
+polls forthwith and examine their own consciences as to their duty to
+Erin; but they would never be easy any more. And it was this vague,
+unhappy mistrust that the I. A. A. were labouring to produce.
+
+‘Sheer waste of breath,’ said the second man after a pause in the
+council, ‘I don’t see the use of tampering with their fool-army, but
+it has been tried before and we must try it again. It looks well in the
+reports. If we send one man from here you may bet your life that other
+men are going too. Order up Mulcahy.’
+
+They ordered him up--a slim, slight, dark-haired young man, devoured
+with that blind rancorous hatred of England that only reaches its full
+growth across the Atlantic. He had sucked it from his mother’s breast in
+the little cabin at the back of the northern avenues of New York; he had
+been taught his rights and his wrongs, in German and Irish, on the canal
+fronts of Chicago; and San Francisco held men who told him strange and
+awful things of the great blind power over the seas. Once, when business
+took him across the Atlantic, he had served in an English regiment, and
+being insubordinate had suffered extremely. He drew all his ideas of
+England that were not bred by the cheaper patriotic prints from one
+iron-fisted colonel and an unbending adjutant. He would go to the mines
+if need be to teach his gospel. And he went as his instructions advised
+p.d.q.--which means ‘with speed’--to introduce embarrassment into an
+Irish regiment, ‘already half-mutinous, quartered among Sikh peasantry,
+all wearing miniatures of His Highness Dhulip Singh, Maharaja of the
+Punjab, next their hearts, and all eagerly expecting his arrival.’ Other
+information equally valuable was given him by his masters. He was to be
+cautious, but never to grudge expense in winning the hearts of the men
+in the regiment. His mother in New York would supply funds, and he
+was to write to her once a month. Life is pleasant for a man who has a
+mother in New York to send him two hundred pounds a year over and above
+his regimental pay.
+
+In process of time, thanks to his intimate knowledge of drill and
+musketry exercise, the excellent Mulcahy, wearing the corporal’s stripe,
+went out in a troopship and joined Her Majesty’s Royal Loyal Musketeers,
+commonly known as the ‘Mavericks,’ because they were masterless and
+unbranded cattle-sons of small farmers in County Clare, shoeless
+vagabonds of Kerry, herders of Bally-vegan, much wanted ‘moonlighters’
+from the bare rainy headlands of the south coast, officered by O’Mores,
+Bradys, Hills, Kilreas, and the like. Never to outward seeming was there
+more promising material to work on. The First Three had chosen their
+regiment well. It feared nothing that moved or talked save the colonel
+and the regimental Roman Catholic chaplain, the fat Father Dennis, who
+held the keys of heaven and hell, and blared like an angry bull when
+he desired to be convincing. Him also it loved because on occasions of
+stress he was used to tuck up his cassock and charge with the rest into
+the merriest of the fray, where he always found, good man, that the
+saints sent him a revolver when there was a fallen private to be
+protected, or--but this came as an afterthought--his own gray head to be
+guarded.
+
+Cautiously as he had been instructed, tenderly and with much beer,
+Mulcahy opened his projects to such as he deemed fittest to listen.
+And these were, one and all, of that quaint, crooked, sweet, profoundly
+irresponsible and profoundly lovable race that fight like fiends, argue
+like children, reason like women, obey like men, and jest like their own
+goblins of the rath through rebellion, loyalty, want, woe, or war. The
+underground work of a conspiracy is always dull and very much the same
+the world over. At the end of six months--the seed always falling on
+good ground--Mulcahy spoke almost explicitly, hinting darkly in the
+approved fashion at dread powers behind him, and advising nothing more
+nor less than mutiny. Were they not dogs, evilly treated? had they not
+all their own and their national revenges to satisfy? Who in these days
+would do aught to nine hundred men in rebellion? Who, again, could stay
+them if they broke for the sea, licking up on their way other regiments
+only too anxious to join? And afterwards... here followed windy promises
+of gold and preferment, office, and honour, ever dear to a certain type
+of Irishman.
+
+As he finished his speech, in the dusk of a twilight, to his chosen
+associates, there was a sound of a rapidly unslung belt behind him. The
+arm of one Dan Grady flew out in the gloom and arrested something. Then
+said Dan---
+
+‘Mulcahy, you’re a great man, an’ you do credit to whoever sent you.
+Walk about a bit while we think of it.’ Mulcahy departed elate. He knew
+his words would sink deep.
+
+‘Why the triple-dashed asterisks did ye not let me belt him?’ grunted a
+voice.
+
+‘Because I’m not a fat-headed fool. Boys, ‘tis what he’s been driving at
+these six months--our superior corpril with his education and his copies
+of the Irish papers and his everlasting beer. He’s been sent for the
+purpose and that’s where the money comes from. Can ye not see? That
+man’s a gold-mine, which Horse Egan here would have destroyed with a
+belt-buckle. It would be throwing away the gifts of Providence not to
+fall in with his little plans. Of coorse we’ll mut’ny till all’s dry.
+Shoot the colonel on the parade-ground, massacree the company officers,
+ransack the arsenal, and then--Boys, did he tell you what next? He told
+me the other night when he was beginning to talk wild. Then we’re to
+join with the niggers, and look for help from Dhulip Singh and the
+Russians!’
+
+‘And spoil the best campaign that ever was this side of Hell! Danny, I’d
+have lost the beer to ha’ given him the belting he requires.’
+
+‘Oh, let him go this awhile, man! He’s got no--no constructiveness, but
+that’s the egg-meat of his plan, and you must understand that I’m
+in with it, an’ so are you. We’ll want oceans of beer to convince
+us--firmaments full. We’ll give him talk for his money, and one by one
+all the boys ‘ll come in and he’ll have a nest of nine hundred mutineers
+to squat in an’ give drink to.’
+
+‘What makes me killing-mad is his wanting us to do what the niggers
+did thirty years gone. That an’ his pig’s cheek in saying that other
+regiments would come along,’ said a Kerry man.
+
+‘That’s not so bad as hintin’ we should loose off on the colonel.’
+
+‘Colonel be sugared! I’d as soon as not put a shot through his helmet
+to see him jump and clutch his old horse’s head. But Mulcahy talks o’
+shootin’ our comp’ny orf’cers accidental.’
+
+‘He said that, did he?’ said Horse Egan.
+
+‘Somethin’ like that, anyways. Can’t ye fancy ould Barber Brady wid a
+bullet in his lungs, coughin’ like a sick monkey, an’ sayin’, “Bhoys,
+I do not mind your gettin’ dhrunk, but you must hould your liquor like
+men. The man that shot me is dhrunk. I’ll suspend investigations for six
+hours, while I get this bullet cut out, an’ then--“’
+
+‘An’ then,’ continued Horse Egan, for the peppery Major’s peculiarities
+of speech and manner were as well known as his tanned face; “‘an’ then,
+ye dissolute, half-baked, putty-faced scum o’ Connemara, if I find a
+man so much as lookin’ confused, begad, I’ll coort-martial the whole
+company. A man that can’t get over his liquor in six hours is not fit to
+belong to the Mavericks!”’
+
+A shout of laughter bore witness to the truth of the sketch.
+
+‘It’s pretty to think of,’ said the Kerry man slowly. ‘Mulcahy would
+have us do all the devilmint, and get clear himself, someways. He wudn’t
+be takin’ all this fool’s throuble in shpoilin’ the reputation of the
+regiment--’
+
+‘Reputation of your grandmother’s pig!’ said Dan.
+
+‘Well, an’ HE had a good reputation tu; so it’s all right. Mulcahy
+must see his way to clear out behind him, or he’d not ha’ come so far,
+talkin’ powers of darkness.’
+
+‘Did you hear anything of a regimental court-martial among the Black
+Boneens, these days? Half a company of ‘em took one of the new draft
+an’ hanged him by his arms with a tent-rope from a third story verandah.
+They gave no reason for so doin’, but he was half dead. I’m thinking
+that the Boneens are short-sighted. It was a friend of Mulcahy’s, or
+a man in the same trade. They’d a deal better ha’ taken his beer,’
+returned Dan reflectively.
+
+‘Better still ha’ handed him up to the Colonel,’ said Horse Egan,
+‘onless--but sure the news wud be all over the counthry an’ give the
+reg’ment a bad name.’
+
+‘An’ there’d be no reward for that man--he but went about talkin’,’ said
+the Kerry man artlessly.
+
+‘You speak by your breed,’ said Dan with a laugh. ‘There was never a
+Kerry man yet that wudn’t sell his brother for a pipe o’ tobacco an’ a
+pat on the back from a p’liceman.’
+
+‘Praise God I’m not a bloomin’ Orangeman,’ was the answer.
+
+‘No, nor never will be,’ said Dan. ‘They breed MEN in Ulster. Would you
+like to thry the taste of one?’
+
+The Kerry man looked and longed, but forbore. The odds of battle were
+too great.
+
+‘Then you’ll not even give Mulcahy a--a strike for his money,’ said the
+voice of Horse Egan, who regarded what he called ‘trouble’ of any kind
+as the pinnacle of felicity.
+
+Dan answered not at all, but crept on tip-toe, with large strides, to
+the mess-room, the men following. The room was empty. In a corner, cased
+like the King of Dahomey’s state umbrella, stood the regimental Colours.
+Dan lifted them tenderly and unrolled in the light of the candles the
+record of the Mavericks--tattered, worn, and hacked. The white satin
+was darkened everywhere with big brown stains, the gold threads on the
+crowned harp were frayed and discoloured, and the Red Bull, the totem
+of the Mavericks, was coffee-hued. The stiff, embroidered folds, whose
+price is human life, rustled down slowly. The Mavericks keep their
+colours long and guard them very sacredly.
+
+‘Vittoria, Salamanca, Toulouse, Waterloo, Moodkee, Ferozshah, an’
+Sobraon--that was fought close next door here, against the very beggars
+he wants us to join. Inkermann, The Alma, Sebastopol! What are those
+little businesses compared to the campaigns of General Mulcahy? The
+Mut’ny, think o’ that; the Mut’ny an’ some dirty little matters in
+Afghanistan; an’ for that an’ these an’ those’--Dan pointed to the names
+of glorious battles--‘that Yankee man with the partin’ in his hair comes
+an’ says as easy as “have a drink.”... Holy Moses, there’s the captain!’
+
+But it was the mess-sergeant who came in just as the men clattered out,
+and found the colours uncased.
+
+From that day dated the mutiny of the Mavericks, to the joy of Mulcahy
+and the pride of his mother in New York--the good lady who sent the
+money for the beer. Never, so far as words went, was such a mutiny. The
+conspirators, led by Dan Grady and Horse Egan, poured in daily. They
+were sound men, men to be trusted, and they all wanted blood; but first
+they must have beer. They cursed the Queen, they mourned over Ireland,
+they suggested hideous plunder of the Indian country side, and then,
+alas--some of the younger men would go forth and wallow on the ground in
+spasms of wicked laughter.
+
+The genius of the Irish for conspiracies is remarkable. None the less
+they would swear no oaths but those of their own making, which were rare
+and curious, and they were always at pains to impress Mulcahy with the
+risks they ran. Naturally the flood of beer wrought demoralisation. But
+Mulcahy confused the causes of things, and when a very muzzy Maverick
+smote a sergeant on the nose or called his commanding officer a
+bald-headed old lard-bladder and even worse names, he fancied that
+rebellion and not liquor was at the bottom of the outbreak. Other
+gentlemen who have concerned themselves in larger conspiracies have made
+the same error.
+
+The hot season, in which they protested no man could rebel, came to an
+end, and Mulcahy suggested a visible return for his teachings. As to the
+actual upshot of the mutiny he cared nothing. It would be enough if the
+English, infatuatedly trusting to the integrity of their army, should
+be startled with news of an Irish regiment revolting from political
+considerations. His persistent demands would have ended, at Dan’s
+instigation, in a regimental belting which in all probability would
+have killed him and cut off the supply of beer, had not he been sent on
+special duty some fifty miles away from the cantonment to cool his heels
+in a mud fort and dismount obsolete artillery. Then the colonel of
+the Mavericks, reading his newspaper diligently, and scenting Frontier
+trouble from afar, posted to the army headquarters and pled with the
+Commander-in-chief for certain privileges, to be granted under certain
+contingencies; which contingencies came about only a week later, when
+the annual little war on the border developed itself and the colonel
+returned to carry the good news to the Mavericks. He held the promise of
+the Chief for active service, and the men must get ready.
+
+On the evening of the same day, Mulcahy, an unconsidered corporal--yet
+great in conspiracy--returned to cantonments, and heard sounds of strife
+and howlings from afar off. The mutiny had broken out and the barracks
+of the Mavericks were one white-washed pandemonium. A private tearing
+through the barrack-square, gasped in his ear, ‘Service! Active service.
+It’s a burnin’ shame.’ Oh joy, the Mavericks had risen on the eve of
+battle! They would not--noble and loyal sons of Ireland--serve the
+Queen longer. The news would flash through the country side and over to
+England, and he--Mulcahy--the trusted of the Third Three, had brought
+about the crash. The private stood in the middle of the square and
+cursed colonel, regiment, officers, and doctor, particularly the doctor,
+by his gods. An orderly of the native cavalry regiment clattered through
+the mob of soldiers. He was half lifted, half dragged from his horse,
+beaten on the back with mighty hand-claps till his eyes watered, and
+called all manner of endearing names. Yes, the Mavericks had fraternised
+with the native troops. Who then was the agent among the latter that had
+blindly wrought with Mulcahy so well?
+
+An officer slunk, almost ran, from the mess to a barrack. He was mobbed
+by the infuriated soldiery, who closed round but did not kill him, for
+he fought his way to shelter, flying for the life. Mulcahy could
+have wept with pure joy and thankfulness. The very prisoners in the
+guard-room were shaking the bars of their cells and howling like wild
+beasts, and from every barrack poured the booming as of a big war-drum.
+
+Mulcahy hastened to his own barrack. He could hardly hear himself
+speak. Eighty men were pounding with fist and heel the tables and
+trestles--eighty men, flushed with mutiny, stripped to their shirt
+sleeves, their knapsacks half-packed for the march to the sea, made the
+two-inch boards thunder again as they chanted to a tune that Mulcahy
+knew well, the Sacred War Song of the Mavericks--
+
+     Listen in the north, my boys, there’s trouble on the wind;
+     Tramp o’ Cossack hooves in front, gray great-coats behind,
+     Trouble on the Frontier of a most amazin’ kind,
+       Trouble on the waters o’ the Oxus!
+
+Then, as a table broke under the furious accompaniment--
+
+     Hurrah! hurrah! it’s north by west we go;
+     Hurrah! hurrah! the chance we wanted so;
+     Let ‘em hear the chorus from Umballa to MosCOW,
+     As we go marchin’ to the Kremling.
+
+‘Mother of all the saints in bliss and all the devils in cinders,
+where’s my fine new sock widout the heel?’ howled Horse Egan, ransacking
+everybody’s valise but his own. He was engaged in making up deficiencies
+of kit preparatory to a campaign, and in that work he steals best who
+steals last. ‘Ah, Mulcahy, you’re in good time,’ he shouted. ‘We’ve got
+the route, and we’re off on Thursday for a pic-nic wid the Lancers next
+door.’
+
+An ambulance orderly appeared with a huge basket full of lint rolls,
+provided by the forethought of the Queen for such as might need
+them later on. Horse Egan unrolled his bandage, and flicked it under
+Mulcahy’s nose, chanting--
+
+    ‘Sheepskin an’ bees’ wax, thunder, pitch, and plaster,
+     The more you try to pull it off, the more it sticks the faster.
+     As I was goin’ to New Orleans--
+
+‘You know the rest of it, my Irish American-Jew boy. By gad, ye have to
+fight for the Queen in the inside av a fortnight, my darlin’.’
+
+A roar of laughter interrupted. Mulcahy looked vacantly down the room.
+Bid a boy defy his father when the pantomime-cab is at the door; or
+a girl develop a will of her own when her mother is putting the last
+touches to the first ball-dress; but do not ask an Irish regiment to
+embark upon mutiny on the eve of a campaign; when it has fraternised
+with the native regiment that accompanies it, and driven its officers
+into retirement with ten thousand clamorous questions, and the prisoners
+dance for joy, and the sick men stand in the open, calling down all
+known diseases on the head of the doctor, who has certified that they
+are “medically unfit for active service.” At even the Mavericks might
+have been mistaken for mutineers by one so unversed in their natures
+as Mulcahy. At dawn a girls’ school might have learned deportment from
+them. They knew that their colonel’s hand had closed, and that he who
+broke that iron discipline would not go to the front: nothing in the
+world will persuade one of our soldiers when he is ordered to the north
+on the smallest of affairs that he is not immediately going gloriously
+to slay Cossacks and cook his kettles in the palace of the Czar. A few
+of the younger men mourned for Mulcahy’s beer, because the campaign was
+to be conducted on strict temperance principles, but as Dan and Horse
+Egan said sternly, ‘We’ve got the beer-man with us. He shall drink now
+on his own hook.’
+
+Mulcahy had not taken into account the possibility of being sent on
+active service. He had made up his mind that he would not go under any
+circumstances, but fortune was against him.
+
+‘Sick--you?’ said the doctor, who had served an unholy apprenticeship
+to his trade in Tralee poorhouses. ‘You’re only home-sick, and what you
+call varicose veins come from over-eating. A little gentle exercise will
+cure that.’ And later, ‘Mulcahy, my man, everybody is allowed to apply
+for a sick-certificate ONCE. If he tries it twice we call him by an ugly
+name. Go back to your duty, and let’s hear no more of your diseases.’
+
+I am ashamed to say that Horse Egan enjoyed the study of Mulcahy’s
+soul in those days, and Dan took an equal interest. Together they would
+communicate to their corporal all the dark lore of death which is the
+portion of those who have seen men die. Egan had the larger experience,
+but Dan the finer imagination. Mulcahy shivered when the former spoke of
+the knife as an intimate acquaintance, or the latter dwelt with loving
+particularity on the fate of those who, wounded and helpless, had been
+overlooked by the ambulances, and had fallen into the hands of the
+Afghan women-folk.
+
+Mulcahy knew that the mutiny, for the present at least, was dead; knew,
+too, that a change had come over Dan’s usually respectful attitude
+towards him, and Horse Egan’s laughter and frequent allusions to
+abortive conspiracies emphasised all that the conspirator had guessed.
+The horrible fascination of the death-stories, however, made him seek
+the men’s society. He learnt much more than he had bargained for; and in
+this manner: It was on the last night before the regiment entrained to
+the front. The barracks were stripped of everything movable, and the
+men were too excited to sleep. The bare walls gave out a heavy hospital
+smell of chloride of lime.
+
+‘And what,’ said Mulcahy in an awe-stricken whisper, after some
+conversation on the eternal subject, ‘are you going to do to me, Dan?’
+This might have been the language of an able conspirator conciliating a
+weak spirit.
+
+‘You’ll see,’ said Dan grimly, turning over in his cot, ‘or I rather
+shud say you’ll not see.’
+
+This was hardly the language of a weak spirit. Mulcahy shook under the
+bed-clothes.
+
+‘Be easy with him,’ put in Egan from the next cot. ‘He has got his
+chanst o’ goin’ clean. Listen, Mulcahy; all we want is for the good sake
+of the regiment that you take your death standing up, as a man shud.
+There be heaps an’ heaps of enemy--plenshus heaps. Go there an’ do all
+you can and die decent. You’ll die with a good name THERE. ‘Tis not a
+hard thing considerin’.’
+
+Again Mulcahy shivered.
+
+‘An’ how could a man wish to die better than fightin’?’ added Dan
+consolingly.
+
+‘And if I won’t?’ said the corporal in a dry whisper.
+
+‘There’ll be a dale of smoke,’ returned Dan, sitting up and ticking off
+the situation on his fingers, ‘sure to be, an’ the noise of the firin’
+‘ll be tremenjus, an’ we’ll be running about up and down, the regiment
+will. But WE, Horse and I--we’ll stay by you, Mulcahy, and never let you
+go. Maybe there’ll be an accident.’
+
+‘It’s playing it low on me. Let me go. For pity’s sake let me go. I
+never did you harm, and--and I stood you as much beer as I could. Oh,
+don’t be hard on me, Dan! You are--you were in it too. You won’t kill me
+up there, will you?’
+
+‘I’m not thinkin’ of the treason; though you shud be glad any honest
+boys drank with you. It’s for the regiment. We can’t have the shame o’
+you bringin’ shame on us. You went to the doctor quiet as a sick cat
+to get and stay behind an’ live with the women at the depot--you that
+wanted us to run to the sea in wolf-packs like the rebels none of your
+black blood dared to be! But WE knew about your goin’ to the doctor, for
+he told in mess, and it’s all over the regiment. Bein’, as we are, your
+best friends, we didn’t allow any one to molest you YET. We will see to
+you ourselves. Fight which you will--us or the enemy--you’ll never lie
+in that cot again, and there’s more glory and maybe less kicks from
+fightin’ the enemy. That’s fair speakin’.’
+
+‘And he told us by word of mouth to go and join with the niggers--you’ve
+forgotten that, Dan,’ said Horse Egan, to justify sentence.
+
+‘What’s the use of plaguin’ the man? One shot pays for all. Sleep ye
+sound, Mulcahy. But you onderstand, do ye not?’
+
+Mulcahy for some weeks understood very little of anything at all save
+that ever at his elbow, in camp, or at parade, stood two big men with
+soft voices adjuring him to commit hari-kari lest a worse thing should
+happen--to die for the honour of the regiment in decency among the
+nearest knives. But Mulcahy dreaded death. He remembered certain things
+that priests had said in his infancy, and his mother--not the one at New
+York--starting from her sleep with shrieks to pray for a husband’s soul
+in torment. It is well to be of a cultured intelligence, but in time
+of trouble the weak human mind returns to the creed it sucked in at the
+breast, and if that creed be not a pretty one trouble follows. Also,
+the death he would have to face would be physically painful. Most
+conspirators have large imaginations. Mulcahy could see himself, as he
+lay on the earth in the night, dying by various causes. They were all
+horrible; the mother in New York was very far away, and the Regiment,
+the engine that, once you fall in its grip, moves you forward whether
+you will or won’t, was daily coming closer to the enemy!
+
+They were brought to the field of Marzun-Katai, and with the Black
+Boneens to aid, they fought a fight that has never been set down in the
+newspapers. In response, many believe, to the fervent prayers of Father
+Dennis, the enemy not only elected to fight in the open, but made a
+beautiful fight, as many weeping Irish mothers knew later. They gathered
+behind walls or flickered across the open in shouting masses, and were
+pot-valiant in artillery. It was expedient to hold a large reserve
+and wait for the psychological moment that was being prepared by the
+shrieking shrapnel. Therefore the Mavericks lay down in open order on
+the brow of a hill to watch the play till their call should come.
+Father Dennis, whose duty was in the rear, to smooth the trouble of the
+wounded, had naturally managed to make his way to the foremost of his
+boys and lay like a black porpoise, at length on the grass. To him
+crawled Mulcahy, ashen-gray, demanding absolution.
+
+‘Wait till you’re shot,’ said Father Dennis sweetly. ‘There’s a time for
+everything.’
+
+Dan Grady chuckled as he blew for the fiftieth time into the breech of
+his speckless rifle. Mulcahy groaned and buried his head in his arms
+till a stray shot spoke like a snipe immediately above his head, and a
+general heave and tremour rippled the line. Other shots followed and a
+few took effect, as a shriek or a grunt attested. The officers, who had
+been lying down with the men, rose and began to walk steadily up and
+down the front of their companies.
+
+This manoeuvre, executed, not for publication, but as a guarantee of
+good faith, to soothe men, demands nerve. You must not hurry, you must
+not look nervous, though you know that you are a mark for every rifle
+within extreme range, and above all if you are smitten you must make as
+little noise as possible and roll inwards through the files. It is at
+this hour, when the breeze brings the first salt whiff of the powder
+to noses rather cold at the tip, and the eye can quietly take in the
+appearance of each red casualty, that the strain on the nerves is
+strongest. Scotch regiments can endure for half a day and abate no
+whit of their zeal at the end; English regiments sometimes sulk under
+punishment, while the Irish, like the French, are apt to run forward
+by ones and twos, which is just as bad as running back. The truly wise
+commandant of highly strung troops allows them, in seasons of waiting,
+to hear the sound of their own voices uplifted in song. There is a
+legend of an English regiment that lay by its arms under fire chaunting
+‘Sam Hall,’ to the horror of its newly appointed and pious colonel. The
+Black Boneens, who were suffering more than the Mavericks, on a hill
+half a mile away, began presently to explain to all who cared to
+listen--
+
+
+We’ll sound the jubilee, from the centre to the sea, And Ireland shall
+be free, says the Shan-van Vogh.
+
+‘Sing, boys,’ said Father Dennis softly. ‘It looks as if we cared for
+their Afghan peas.’
+
+Dan Grady raised himself to his knees and opened his mouth in a song
+imparted to him, as to most of his comrades, in the strictest confidence
+by Mulcahy---the Mulcahy then lying limp and fainting on the grass, the
+chill fear of death upon him.
+
+Company after company caught up the words which, the I. A. A. say, are
+to herald the general rising of Erin, and to breathe which, except to
+those duly appointed to hear, is death. Wherefore they are printed in
+this place.
+
+     The Saxon in Heaven’s just balance is weighed,
+       His doom like Belshazzar’s in death has been cast,
+     And the hand of the venger shall never be stayed
+       Till his race, faith, and speech are a dream of the past.
+
+They were heart-filling lines and they ran with a swirl; the I. A. A.
+are better served by their pens than their petards. Dan clapped Mulcahy
+merrily on the back, asking him to sing up. The officers lay down again.
+There was no need to walk any more. Their men were soothing themselves
+thunderously, thus--
+
+     St. Mary in Heaven has written the vow
+       That the land shall not rest till the heretic blood,
+     From the babe at the breast to the hand at the plough,
+       Has rolled to the ocean like Shannon in flood!
+
+‘I’ll speak to you after all’s over,’ said Father Dennis authoritatively
+in Dan’s ear. ‘What’s the use of confessing to me when you do this
+foolishness? Dan, you’ve been playing with fire! I’ll lay you more
+penance in a week than--’
+
+‘Come along to Purgatory with us, Father dear. The Boneens are on the
+move; they’ll let us go now!’
+
+The regiment rose to the blast of the bugle as one man; but one man
+there was who rose more swiftly than all the others, for half an inch of
+bayonet was in the fleshy part of his leg.
+
+‘You’ve got to do it,’ said Dan grimly. ‘Do it decent, anyhow;’ and
+the roar of the rush drowned his words, for the rear companies thrust
+forward the first, still singing as they swung down the slope---
+
+From the child at the breast to the hand at the plough Shall roll to the
+ocean like Shannon in flood!
+
+They should have sung it in the face of England, not of the Afghans,
+whom, it impressed as much as did the wild Irish yell.
+
+‘They came down singing,’ said the unofficial report of the enemy, borne
+from village to village the next day. ‘They continued to sing, and it
+was written that our men could not abide when they came. It is believed
+that there was magic in the aforesaid song.’
+
+Dan and Horse Egan kept themselves in the neighbourhood of Mulcahy.
+Twice the man would have bolted back in the confusion. Twice he was
+heaved, kicked, and shouldered back again into the unpaintable inferno
+of a hotly contested charge.
+
+At the end, the panic excess of his fear drove him into madness beyond
+all human courage. His eyes staring at nothing, his mouth open and
+frothing, and breathing as one in a cold bath, he went forward demented,
+while Dan toiled after him. The charge checked at a high mud wall. It
+was Mulcahy who scrambled up tooth and nail and hurled down among the
+bayonets the amazed Afghan who barred his way. It was Mulcahy, keeping
+to the straight line of the rabid dog, who led a collection of ardent
+souls at a newly unmasked battery and flung himself on the muzzle of a
+gun as his companions danced among the gunners. It was Mulcahy who ran
+wildly on from that battery into the open plain, where the enemy were
+retiring in sullen groups. His hands were empty, he had lost helmet and
+belt, and he was bleeding from a wound in the neck. Dan and Horse Egan,
+panting and distressed, had thrown themselves down on the ground by the
+captured guns, when they noticed Mulcahy’s charge.
+
+‘Mad,’ said Horse Egan critically. ‘Mad with fear! He’s going straight
+to his death, an’ shouting’s no use.’
+
+‘Let him go. Watch now! If we fire we’ll hit him, maybe.’
+
+The last of a hurrying crowd of Afghans turned at the noise of shod feet
+behind him, and shifted his knife ready to hand. This, he saw, was no
+time to take prisoners. Mulcahy tore on, sobbing; the straight-held
+blade went home through the defenceless breast, and the body pitched
+forward almost before a shot from Dan’s rifle brought down the slayer
+and still further hurried the Afghan retreat. The two Irishmen went out
+to bring in their dead.
+
+‘He was given the point and that was an easy death,’ said Horse Egan,
+viewing the corpse. ‘But would you ha’ shot him, Danny, if he had
+lived?’
+
+‘He didn’t live, so there’s no sayin’. But I doubt I wud have bekase
+of the fun he gave us--let alone the beer. Hike up his legs, Horse, and
+we’ll bring him in. Perhaps ‘tis better this way.’
+
+They bore the poor limp body to the mass of the regiment, lolling
+open-mouthed on their rifles; and there was a general snigger when one
+of the younger subalterns said, ‘That was a good man!’
+
+‘Phew,’ said Horse Egan, when a burial-party had taken over the burden.
+‘I’m powerful dhry, and this reminds me there’ll be no more beer at
+all.’
+
+‘Fwhy not?’ said Dan, with a twinkle in his eye as he stretched himself
+for rest. ‘Are we not conspirin’ all we can, an’ while we conspire are
+we not entitled to free dhrinks? Sure his ould mother in New York would
+not let her son’s comrades perish of drouth--if she can be reached at
+the end of a letter.’
+
+‘You’re a janius,’ said Horse Egan. ‘O’ coorse she will not. I wish
+this crool war was over an’ we’d get back to canteen. Faith, the
+Commander-in-Chief ought to be hanged in his own little sword-belt for
+makin’ us work on wather.’
+
+The Mavericks were generally of Horse Egan’s opinion. So they made
+haste to get their work done as soon as possible, and their industry was
+rewarded by unexpected peace. ‘We can fight the sons of Adam,’ said the
+tribesmen, ‘but we cannot fight the sons of Eblis, and this regiment
+never stays still in one place. Let us therefore come in.’ They came
+in and ‘this regiment’ withdrew to conspire under the leadership of Dan
+Grady.
+
+Excellent as a subordinate Dan failed altogether as a
+chief-in-command--possibly because he was too much swayed by the advice
+of the only man in the regiment who could manufacture more than one kind
+of handwriting. The same mail that bore to Mulcahy’s mother in New York
+a letter from the colonel telling her how valiantly her son had fought
+for the Queen, and how assuredly he would have been recommended for the
+Victoria Cross had he survived, carried a communication signed, I grieve
+to say, by that same colonel and all the officers of the regiment,
+explaining their willingness to do ‘anything which is contrary to the
+regulations and all kinds of revolutions’ if only a little money could
+be forwarded to cover incidental expenses. Daniel Grady, Esquire, would
+receive funds, vice Mulcahy, who ‘was unwell at this present time of
+writing.’
+
+Both letters were forwarded from New York to Tehama Street, San
+Francisco, with marginal comments as brief as they were bitter.
+The Third Three read and looked at each other. Then the Second
+Conspirator-he who believed in ‘joining hands with the practical
+branches’---began to laugh, and on recovering his gravity said,
+‘Gentlemen, I consider this will be a lesson to us. We’re left again.
+Those cursed Irish have let us down. I knew they would, but’-here he
+laughed afresh-’I’d give considerable to know what was at the back of it
+all.’
+
+His curiosity would have been satisfied had he seen Dan Grady,
+discredited regimental conspirator, trying to explain to his thirsty
+comrades in India the non-arrival of funds from New York.
+
+
+
+
+THE MARK OF THE BEAST
+
+
+Your Gods and my Gods-do you or I know which are the stronger? Native
+Proverb.
+
+EAST of Suez, some hold, the direct control of Providence ceases; Man
+being there handed over to the power of the Gods and Devils of Asia,
+and the Church of England Providence only exercising an occasional and
+modified supervision in the case of Englishmen.
+
+This theory accounts for some of the more unnecessary horrors of life in
+India: it may be stretched to explain my story.
+
+My friend Strickland of the Police, who knows as much of natives of
+India as is good for any man, can bear witness to the facts of the case.
+Dumoise, our doctor, also saw what Strickland and I saw. The inference
+which he drew from the evidence was entirely incorrect. He is dead now;
+he died, in a rather curious manner, which has been elsewhere described.
+
+When Fleete came to India he owned a little money and some land in the
+Himalayas, near a place called Dharmsala. Both properties had been left
+him by an uncle, and he came out to finance them. He was a big, heavy,
+genial, and inoffensive man. His knowledge of natives was, of course,
+limited, and he complained of the difficulties of the language.
+
+He rode in from his place in the hills to spend New Year in the station,
+and he stayed with Strickland. On New Year’s Eve there was a big dinner
+at the club, and the night was excusably wet. When men foregather from
+the uttermost ends of the Empire, they have a right to be riotous. The
+Frontier had sent down a contingent o’ Catch-’em-Alive-O’s who had not
+seen twenty white faces for a year, and were used to ride fifteen miles
+to dinner at the next Fort at the risk of a Khyberee bullet where their
+drinks should lie. They profited by their new security, for they tried
+to play pool with a curled-up hedgehog found in the garden, and one
+of them carried the marker round the room in his teeth. Half a dozen
+planters had come in from the south and were talking ‘horse’ to the
+Biggest Liar in Asia, who was trying to cap all their stories at once.
+Everybody was there, and there was a general closing up of ranks and
+taking stock of our losses in dead or disabled that had fallen during
+the past year. It was a very wet night, and I remember that we sang
+‘Auld Lang Syne’ with our feet in the Polo Championship Cup, and our
+heads among the stars, and swore that we were all dear friends. Then
+some of us went away and annexed Burma, and some tried to open up the
+Soudan and were opened up by Fuzzies in that cruel scrub outside Suakim,
+and some found stars and medals, and some were married, which was bad,
+and some did other things which were worse, and the others of us stayed
+in our chains and strove to make money on insufficient experiences.
+
+Fleete began the night with sherry and bitters, drank champagne steadily
+up to dessert, then raw, rasping Capri with all the strength of whisky,
+took Benedictine with his coffee, four or five whiskies and sodas to
+improve his pool strokes, beer and bones at half-past two, winding up
+with old brandy. Consequently, when he came out, at half-past three in
+the morning, into fourteen degrees of frost, he was very angry with his
+horse for coughing, and tried to leapfrog into the saddle. The horse
+broke away and went to his stables; so Strickland and I formed a Guard
+of Dishonour to take Fleete home.
+
+Our road lay through the bazaar, close to a little temple of Hanuman,
+the Monkey-god, who is a leading divinity worthy of respect. All gods
+have good points, just as have all priests. Personally, I attach much
+importance to Hanuman, and am kind to his people--the great gray apes of
+the hills. One never knows when one may want a friend.
+
+There was a light in the temple, and as we passed, we could hear voices
+of men chanting hymns. In a native temple, the priests rise at all hours
+of the night to do honour to their god. Before we could stop him, Fleete
+dashed up the steps, patted two priests on the back, and was gravely
+grinding the ashes of his cigar-butt into the forehead of the red stone
+image of Hanuman. Strickland tried to drag him out, but he sat down and
+said solemnly:
+
+‘Shee that? ‘Mark of the B-beasht! _I_ made it. Ishn’t it fine?’
+
+In half a minute the temple was alive and noisy, and Strickland, who
+knew what came of polluting gods, said that things might occur. He,
+by virtue of his official position, long residence in the country, and
+weakness for going among the natives, was known to the priests and he
+felt unhappy. Fleete sat on the ground and refused to move. He said that
+‘good old Hanuman’ made a very soft pillow.
+
+Then, without any warning, a Silver Man came out of a recess behind the
+image of the god. He was perfectly naked in that bitter, bitter cold,
+and his body shone like frosted silver, for he was what the Bible calls
+‘a leper as white as snow.’ Also he had no face, because he was a leper
+of some years’ standing and his disease was heavy upon him. We two
+stooped to haul Fleete up, and the temple was filling and filling with
+folk who seemed to spring from the earth, when the Silver Man ran in
+under our arms, making a noise exactly like the mewing of an otter,
+caught Fleete round the body and dropped his head on Fleete’s breast
+before we could wrench him away. Then he retired to a corner and sat
+mewing while the crowd blocked all the doors.
+
+The priests were very angry until the Silver Man touched Fleete. That
+nuzzling seemed to sober them.
+
+At the end of a few minutes’ silence one of the priests came to
+Strickland and said, in perfect English, ‘Take your friend away. He has
+done with Hanuman, but Hanurnan has not done with him.’ The crowd gave
+room and we carried Fleete into the road.
+
+Strickland was very angry. He said that we might all three have been
+knifed, and that Fleete should thank his stars that he had escaped
+without injury.
+
+Fleete thanked no one. He said that he wanted to go to bed. He was
+gorgeously drunk.
+
+We moved on, Strickland silent and wrathful, until Fleete was taken
+with violent shivering fits and sweating. He said that the smells of
+the bazaar were overpowering, and he wondered why slaughter-houses were
+permitted so near English residences. ‘Can’t you smell the blood?’ said
+Fleete.
+
+We put him to bed at last, just as the dawn was breaking, and Strickland
+invited me to have another whisky and soda. While we were drinking he
+talked of the trouble in the temple, and admitted that it baffled him
+completely. Strickland hates being mystified by natives, because his
+business in life is to overmatch them with their own weapons. He has not
+yet succeeded in doing this, but in fifteen or twenty years he will have
+made some small progress.
+
+‘They should have mauled us,’ he said, ‘instead of mewing at us. I
+wonder what they meant. I don’t like it one little bit.’
+
+I said that the Managing Committee of the temple would in all
+probability bring a criminal action against us for insulting their
+religion. There was a section of the Indian Penal Code which exactly
+met Fleete’s offence. Strickland said he only hoped and prayed that they
+would do this. Before I left I looked into Fleete’s room, and saw him
+lying on his right side, scratching his left breast. Then. I went to bed
+cold, depressed, and unhappy, at seven o’clock in the morning.
+
+At one o’clock I rode over to Strickland’s house to inquire after
+Fleete’s head. I imagined that it would be a sore one. Fleete was
+breakfasting and seemed unwell. His temper was gone, for he was abusing
+the cook for not supplying him with an underdone chop. A man who can
+eat raw meat after a wet night is a curiosity. I told Fleete this and he
+laughed.
+
+‘You breed queer mosquitoes in these parts,’ he said. ‘I’ve been bitten
+to pieces, but only in one place.’
+
+‘Let’s have a look at the bite,’ said Strickland. ‘It may have gone down
+since this morning.’
+
+While the chops were being cooked, Fleete opened his shirt and showed
+us, just over his left breast, a mark, the perfect double of the black
+rosettes--the five or six irregular blotches arranged in a circle--on
+a leopard’s hide. Strickland looked and said, ‘It was only pink this
+morning. It’s grown black now.’
+
+Fleete ran to a glass.
+
+‘By Jove!’ he said,’ this is nasty. What is it?’
+
+We could not answer. Here the chops came in, all red and juicy, and
+Fleete bolted three in a most offensive manner. He ate on his right
+grinders only, and threw his head over his right shoulder as he snapped
+the meat. When he had finished, it struck him that he had been behaving
+strangely, for he said apologetically, ‘I don’t think I ever felt so
+hungry in my life. I’ve bolted like an ostrich.’
+
+After breakfast Strickland said to me, ‘Don’t go. Stay here, and stay
+for the night.’
+
+Seeing that my house was not three miles from Strickland’s, this request
+was absurd. But Strickland insisted, and was going to say something when
+Fleete interrupted by declaring in a shamefaced way that he felt hungry
+again. Strickland sent a man to my house to fetch over my bedding and a
+horse, and we three went down to Strickland’s stables to pass the hours
+until it was time to go out for a ride. The man who has a weakness for
+horses never wearies of inspecting them; and when two men are killing
+time in this way they gather knowledge and lies the one from the other.
+
+There were five horses in the stables, and I shall never forget the
+scene as we tried to look them over. They seemed to have gone mad. They
+reared and screamed and nearly tore up their pickets; they sweated and
+shivered and lathered and were distraught with fear. Strickland’s
+horses used to know him as well as his dogs; which made the matter more
+curious. We left the stable for fear of the brutes throwing themselves
+in their panic. Then Strickland turned back and called me. The horses
+were still frightened, but they let us ‘gentle’ and make much of them,
+and put their heads in our bosoms.
+
+‘They aren’t afraid of US,’ said Strickland. ‘D’you know, I’d give three
+months’ pay if OUTRAGE here could talk.’
+
+But Outrage was dumb, and could only cuddle up to his master and blow
+out his nostrils, as is the custom of horses when they wish to explain
+things but can’t. Fleete came up when we were in the stalls, and as soon
+as the horses saw him, their fright broke out afresh. It was all that we
+could do to escape from the place unkicked. Strickland said, ‘They don’t
+seem to love you, Fleete.’
+
+‘Nonsense,’ said Fleete; ‘my mare will follow me like a dog.’ He went
+to her; she was in a loose-box; but as he slipped the bars she plunged,
+knocked him down, and broke away into the garden. I laughed, but
+Strickland was not amused. He took his moustache in both fists and
+pulled at it till it nearly came out. Fleete, instead of going off to
+chase his property, yawned, saying that he felt sleepy. He went to the
+house to lie down, which was a foolish way of spending New Year’s Day.
+
+Strickland sat with me in the stables and asked if I had noticed
+anything peculiar in Fleete’s manner. I said that he ate his food like
+a beast; but that this might have been the result of living alone in the
+hills out of the reach of society as refined and elevating as ours for
+instance. Strickland was not amused. I do not think that he listened to
+me, for his next sentence referred to the mark on Fleete’s breast, and
+I said that it might have been caused by blister-flies, or that it was
+possibly a birth-mark newly born and now visible for the first time.
+We both agreed that it was unpleasant to look at, and Strickland found
+occasion to say that I was a fool.
+
+‘I can’t tell you what I think now,’ said he, ‘because you would call me
+a madman; but you must stay with me for the next few days, if you can.
+I want you to watch Fleete, but don’t tell me what you think till I have
+made up my mind.’
+
+‘But I am dining out to-night,’ I said. ‘So am I,’ said Strickland, ‘and
+so is Fleete. At least if he doesn’t change his mind.’
+
+We walked about the garden smoking, but saying nothing--because we were
+friends, and talking spoils good tobacco--till our pipes were out. Then
+we went to wake up Fleete. He was wide awake and fidgeting about his
+room.
+
+‘I say, I want some more chops,’ he said. ‘Can I get them?’
+
+We laughed and said, ‘Go and change. The ponies will be round in a
+minute.’
+
+‘All right,’ said Fleete. I’ll go when I get the chops--underdone ones,
+mind.’
+
+He seemed to be quite in earnest. It was four o’clock, and we had had
+breakfast at one; still, for a long time, he demanded those underdone
+chops. Then he changed into riding clothes and went out into the
+verandah. His pony--the mare had not been caught--would not let him come
+near. All three horses were unmanageable---mad with fear---and finally
+Fleete said that he would stay at home and get something to eat.
+Strickland and I rode out wondering. As we passed the temple of Hanuman,
+the Silver Man came out and mewed at us.
+
+‘He is not one of the regular priests of the temple,’ said Strickland.
+‘I think I should peculiarly like to lay my hands on him.’
+
+There was no spring in our gallop on the racecourse that evening. The
+horses were stale, and moved as though they had been ridden out.
+
+‘The fright after breakfast has been too much for them,’ said
+Strickland.
+
+That was the only remark he made through the remainder of the ride. Once
+or twice I think he swore to himself; but that did not count.
+
+We came back in the dark at seven o’clock, and saw that there were
+no lights in the bungalow. ‘Careless ruffians my servants are!’ said
+Strickland.
+
+My horse reared at something on the carriage drive, and Fleete stood up
+under its nose.
+
+‘What are you doing, grovelling about the garden?’ said Strickland.
+
+But both horses bolted and nearly threw us. We dismounted by the
+stables and returned to Fleete, who was on his hands and knees under the
+orange-bushes.
+
+‘What the devil’s wrong with you?’ said Strickland.
+
+‘Nothing, nothing in the world,’ said Fleete, speaking very quickly
+and thickly. ‘I’ve been gardening-botanising you know. The smell of
+the earth is delightful. I think I’m going for a walk-a long walk-all
+night.’
+
+Then I saw that there was something excessively out of order somewhere,
+and I said to Strickland, ‘I am not dining out.’
+
+‘Bless you!’ said Strickland. ‘Here, Fleete, get up. You’ll catch fever
+there. Come in to dinner and let’s have the lamps lit. We ‘ll all dine
+at home.’
+
+Fleete stood up unwillingly, and said, ‘No lamps-no lamps. It’s much
+nicer here. Let’s dine outside and have some more chops-lots of ‘em and
+underdone--bloody ones with gristle.’
+
+Now a December evening in Northern India is bitterly cold, and Fleete’s
+suggestion was that of a maniac.
+
+‘Come in,’ said Strickland sternly. ‘Come in at once.’
+
+Fleete came, and when the lamps were brought, we saw that he was
+literally plastered with dirt from head to foot. He must have been
+rolling in the garden. He shrank from the light and went to his room.
+His eyes were horrible to look at. There was a green light behind them,
+not in them, if you understand, and the man’s lower lip hung down.
+
+Strickland said, ‘There is going to be trouble-big trouble-to-night.
+Don’t you change your riding-things.’
+
+We waited and waited for Fleete’s reappearance, and ordered dinner in
+the meantime. We could hear him moving about his own room, but there was
+no light there. Presently from the room came the long-drawn howl of a
+wolf.
+
+People write and talk lightly of blood running cold and hair standing up
+and things of that kind. Both sensations are too horrible to be trifled
+with. My heart stopped as though a knife had been driven through it, and
+Strickland turned as white as the tablecloth.
+
+The howl was repeated, and was answered by another howl far across the
+fields.
+
+That set the gilded roof on the horror. Strickland dashed into Fleete’s
+room. I followed, and we saw Fleete getting out of the window. He made
+beast-noises in the back of his throat. He could not answer us when we
+shouted at him. He spat.
+
+I don’t quite remember what followed, but I think that Strickland must
+have stunned him with the long boot-jack or else I should never have
+been able to sit on his chest. Fleete could not speak, he could only
+snarl, and his snarls were those of a wolf, not of a man. The human
+spirit must have been giving way all day and have died out with the
+twilight. We were dealing with a beast that had once been Fleete.
+
+The affair was beyond any human and rational experience. I tried to say
+‘Hydrophobia,’ but the word wouldn’t come, because I knew that I was
+lying.
+
+We bound this beast with leather thongs of the punkah-rope, and tied
+its thumbs and big toes together, and gagged it with a shoe-horn,
+which makes a very efficient gag if you know how to arrange it. Then we
+carried it into the dining-room, and sent a man to Dumoise, the doctor,
+telling him to come over at once. After we had despatched the messenger
+and were drawing breath, Strickland said, ‘It’s no good. This isn’t any
+doctor’s work.’ I, also, knew that he spoke the truth.
+
+The beast’s head was free, and it threw it about from side to side. Any
+one entering the room would have believed that we were curing a wolf’s
+pelt. That was the most loathsome accessory of all.
+
+Strickland sat with his chin in the heel of his fist, watching the beast
+as it wriggled on the ground, but saying nothing. The shirt had been
+torn open in the scuffle and showed the black rosette mark on the left
+breast. It stood out like a blister.
+
+In the silence of the watching we heard something without mewing like
+a she-otter. We both rose to our feet, and, I answer for myself, not
+Strickland, felt sick--actually and physically sick. We told each other,
+as did the men in Pinafore, that it was the cat.
+
+Dumoise arrived, and I never saw a little man so unprofessionally
+shocked. He said that it was a heart-rending case of hydrophobia, and
+that nothing could be done. At least any palliative measures would only
+prolong the agony. The beast was foaming at the mouth. Fleete, as we
+told Dumoise, had been bitten by dogs once or twice. Any man who keeps
+half a dozen terriers must expect a nip now and again. Dumoise
+could offer no help. He could only certify that Fleete was dying of
+hydrophobia. The beast was then howling, for it had managed to spit out
+the shoe-horn. Dumoise said that he would be ready to certify to the
+cause of death, and that the end was certain. He was a good little man,
+and he offered to remain with us; but Strickland refused the kindness.
+He did not wish to poison Dumoise’s New Year. He would only ask him not
+to give the real cause of Fleete’s death to the public.
+
+So Dumoise left, deeply agitated; and as soon as the noise of the
+cart-wheels had died away, Strickland told me, in a whisper, his
+suspicions. They were so wildly improbable that he dared not say them
+out aloud; and I, who entertained all Strickland’s beliefs, was so
+ashamed of owning to them that I pretended to disbelieve.
+
+‘Even if the Silver Man had bewtiched Fleete for polluting the image of
+Hanuman, the punishment could not have fallen so quickly.’
+
+As I was whispering this the cry outside the house rose again, and the
+beast fell into a fresh paroxysm of struggling till we were afraid that
+the thongs that held it would give way.
+
+‘Watch!’ said Strickland. ‘If this happens six times I shall take the
+law into my own hands. I order you to help me.’
+
+He went into his room and came out in a few minutes with the barrels of
+an old shot-gun, a piece of fishing-line, some thick cord, and his heavy
+wooden bedstead. I reported that the convulsions had followed the cry by
+two seconds in each case, and the beast seemed perceptibly weaker.
+
+Strickland muttered, ‘But he can’t take away the life! He can’t take
+away the life!’
+
+I said, though I knew that I was arguing against myself, ‘It may be a
+cat. It must be a cat. If the Silver Man is responsible, why does he
+dare to come here?’
+
+Strickland arranged the wood on the hearth, put the gun-barrels into
+the glow of the fire, spread the twine on the table and broke a walking
+stick in two. There was one yard of fishing line, gut, lapped with wire,
+such as is used for mahseer-fishing, and he tied the two ends together
+in a loop.
+
+Then he said, ‘How can we catch him? He must be taken alive and unhurt.’
+
+I said that we must trust in Providence, and go out softly with
+polo-sticks into the shrubbery at the front of the house. The man
+or animal that made the cry was evidently moving round the house as
+regularly as a night-watchman. We could wait in the bushes till he came
+by and knock him over.
+
+Strickland accepted this suggestion, and we slipped out from a bath-room
+window into the front verandah and then across the carriage drive into
+the bushes.
+
+In the moonlight we could see the leper coming round the corner of
+the house. He was perfectly naked, and from time to time he mewed and
+stopped to dance with his shadow. It was an unattractive sight, and
+thinking of poor Fleete, brought to such degradation by so foul a
+creature, I put away all my doubts and resolved to help Strickland from
+the heated gun-barrels to the loop of twine-from the loins to the head
+and back again---with all tortures that might be needful.
+
+The leper halted in the front porch for a moment and we jumped out on
+him with the sticks. He was wonderfully strong, and we were afraid that
+he might escape or be fatally injured before we caught him. We had an
+idea that lepers were frail creatures, but this proved to be incorrect.
+Strickland knocked his legs from under him and I put my foot on his
+neck. He mewed hideously, and even through my riding-boots I could feel
+that his flesh was not the flesh of a clean man.
+
+He struck at us with his hand and feet-stumps. We looped the lash of a
+dog-whip round him, under the armpits, and dragged him backwards into
+the hall and so into the dining-room where the beast lay. There we tied
+him with trunk-straps. He made no attempt to escape, but mewed.
+
+When we confronted him with the beast the scene was beyond description.
+The beast doubled backwards into a bow as though he had been poisoned
+with strychnine, and moaned in the most pitiable fashion. Several other
+things happened also, but they cannot be put down here.
+
+‘I think I was right,’ said Strickland. ‘Now we will ask him to cure
+this case.’
+
+But the leper only mewed. Strickland wrapped a towel round his hand
+and took the gun-barrels out of the fire. I put the half of the broken
+walking stick through the loop of fishing-line and buckled the leper
+comfortably to Strickland’s bedstead. I understood then how men and
+women and little children can endure to see a witch burnt alive; for the
+beast was moaning on the floor, and though the Silver Man had no face,
+you could see horrible feelings passing through the slab that took its
+place, exactly as waves of heat play across red-hot iron--gun-barrels
+for instance.
+
+Strickland shaded his eyes with his hands for a moment and we got to
+work. This part is not to be printed.
+
+The dawn was beginning to break when the leper spoke. His mewings had
+not been satisfactory up to that point. The beast had fainted from
+exhaustion and the house was very still. We unstrapped the leper and
+told him to take away the evil spirit. He crawled to the beast and laid
+his hand upon the left breast. That was all. Then he fell face down and
+whined, drawing in his breath as he did so.
+
+We watched the face of the beast, and saw the soul of Fleete coming back
+into the eyes. Then a sweat broke out on the forehead and the eyes-they
+were human eyes---closed. We waited for an hour but Fleete still
+slept. We carried him to his room and bade the leper go, giving him
+the bedstead, and the sheet on the bedstead to cover his nakedness, the
+gloves and the towels with which we had touched him, and the whip that
+had been hooked round his body. He put the sheet about him and went out
+into the early morning without speaking or mewing.
+
+Strickland wiped his face and sat down. A night-gong, far away in the
+city, made seven o’clock.
+
+‘Exactly four-and-twenty hours!’ said Strickland. ‘And I’ve done enough
+to ensure my dismissal from the service, besides permanent quarters in a
+lunatic asylum. Do you believe that we are awake?’
+
+The red-hot gun-barrel had fallen on the floor and was singeing the
+carpet. The smell was entirely real.
+
+That morning at eleven we two together went to wake up Fleete. We looked
+and saw that the black leopard-rosette on his chest had disappeared.
+He was very drowsy and tired, but as soon as he saw us, he said, ‘Oh!
+Confound you fellows. Happy New Year to you. Never mix your liquors. I’m
+nearly dead.’
+
+‘Thanks for your kindness, but you’re over time,’ said Strickland.
+‘To-day is the morning of the second. You’ve slept the clock round with
+a vengeance.’
+
+The door opened, and little Dumoise put his head in. He had come on
+foot, and fancied that we were laving out Fleete.
+
+‘I’ve brought a nurse,’ said Dumoise. ‘I suppose that she can come in
+for... what is necessary.’
+
+‘By all means,’ said Fleete cheerily, sitting up in bed. ‘Bring on your
+nurses.’
+
+Dumoise was dumb. Strickland led him out and explained that there must
+have been a mistake in the diagnosis. Dumoise remained dumb and left the
+house hastily. He considered that his professional reputation had been
+injured, and was inclined to make a personal matter of the recovery.
+Strickland went out too. When he came back, he said that he had been to
+call on the Temple of Hanuman to offer redress for the pollution of the
+god, and had been solemnly assured that no white man had ever touched
+the idol and that he was an incarnation of all the virtues labouring
+under a delusion.
+
+‘What do you think?’ said Strickland.
+
+I said, ‘“There are more things . . .”’
+
+But Strickland hates that quotation. He says that I have worn it
+threadbare.
+
+One other curious thing happened which frightened me as much as anything
+in all the night’s work. When Fleete was dressed he came into the
+dining-room and sniffed. He had a quaint trick of moving his nose when
+he sniffed. ‘Horrid doggy smell, here,’ said he. ‘You should really keep
+those terriers of yours in better order. Try sulphur, Strick.’
+
+But Strickland did not answer. He caught hold of the back of a chair,
+and, without warning, went into an amazing fit of hysterics. It is
+terrible to see a strong man overtaken with hysteria. Then it struck me
+that we had fought for Fleete’s soul with the Silver Man in that room,
+and had disgraced ourselves as Englishmen for ever, and I laughed
+and gasped and gurgled just as shamefully as Strickland, while Fleete
+thought that we had both gone mad. We never told him what we had done.
+
+Some years later, when Strickland had married and was a church-going
+member of society for his wife’s sake, we reviewed the incident
+dispassionately, and Strickland suggested that I should put it before
+the public.
+
+I cannot myself see that this step is likely to clear up the mystery;
+because, in the first place, no one will believe a rather unpleasant
+story, and, in the second, it is well known to every right-minded man
+that the gods of the heathen are stone and brass, and any attempt to
+deal with them otherwise is justly condemned.
+
+
+
+
+THE RETURN OF IMRAY
+
+
+ The doors were wide, the story saith,
+ Out of the night came the patient wraith,
+ He might not speak, and he could not stir
+ A hair of the Baron’s minniver--
+ Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin,
+ He roved the castle to seek his kin.
+ And oh, ‘twas a piteous thing to see
+ The dumb ghost follow his enemy!
+                             THE BARON.
+
+Imray achieved the impossible. Without warning, for no conceivable
+motive, in his youth, at the threshold of his career he chose to
+disappear from the world---which is to say, the little Indian station
+where he lived.
+
+Upon a day he was alive, well, happy, and in great evidence among the
+billiard-tables at his Club. Upon a morning, he was not, and no manner
+of search could make sure where he might be. He had stepped out of his
+place; he had not appeared at his office at the proper time, and his
+dogcart was not upon the public roads. For these reasons, and because
+he was hampering, in a microscopical degree, the administration of the
+Indian Empire, that Empire paused for one microscopical moment to make
+inquiry into the fate of Imray. Ponds were dragged, wells were plumbed,
+telegrams were despatched down the lines of railways and to the nearest
+seaport town-twelve hundred miles away; but Imray was not at the end of
+the drag-ropes nor the telegraph wires. He was gone, and his place knew
+him no more.
+
+Then the work of the great Indian Empire swept forward, because it could
+not be delayed, and Imray from being a man became a mystery--such a
+thing as men talk over at their tables in the Club for a month, and then
+forget utterly. His guns, horses, and carts were sold to the highest
+bidder. His superior officer wrote an altogether absurd letter to
+his mother, saying that Imray had unaccountably disappeared, and his
+bungalow stood empty.
+
+After three or four months of the scorching hot weather had gone by, my
+friend Strickland, of the Police, saw fit to rent the bungalow from
+the native landlord. This was before he was engaged to Miss Youghal--an
+affair which has been described in another place--and while he
+was pursuing his investigations into native life. His own life was
+sufficiently peculiar, and men complained of his manners and customs.
+There was always food in his house, but there were no regular times for
+meals. He ate, standing up and walking about, whatever he might find
+at the sideboard, and this is not good for human beings. His domestic
+equipment was limited to six rifles, three shot-guns, five saddles, and
+a collection of stiff-jointed mahseer-rods, bigger and stronger than the
+largest salmon-rods. These occupied one-half of his bungalow, and the
+other half was given up to Strickland and his dog Tietjens--an enormous
+Rampur slut who devoured daily the rations of two men. She spoke to
+Strickland in a language of her own; and whenever, walking abroad,
+she saw things calculated to destroy the peace of Her Majesty the
+Queen-Empress, she returned to her master and laid information.
+Strickland would take steps at once, and the end of his labours was
+trouble and fine and imprisonment for other people. The natives believed
+that Tietjens was a familiar spirit, and treated her with the great
+reverence that is born of hate and fear. One room in the bungalow was
+set apart for her special use. She owned a bedstead, a blanket, and a
+drinking-trough, and if any one came into Strickland’s room at night her
+custom was to knock down the invader and give tongue till some one
+came with a light. Strickland owed his life to her, when he was on the
+Frontier, in search of a local murderer, who came in the gray dawn to
+send Strickland much farther than the Andaman Islands. Tietjens caught
+the man as he was crawling into Strickland’s tent with a dagger between
+his teeth; and after his record of iniquity was established in the eyes
+of the law he was hanged. From that date Tietjens wore a collar of rough
+silver, and employed a monogram on her night-blanket; and the blanket
+was of double woven Kashmir cloth, for she was a delicate dog.
+
+Under no circumstances would she be separated from Strickland; and once,
+when he was ill with fever, made great trouble for the doctors, because
+she did not know how to help her master and would not allow another
+creature to attempt aid. Macarnaght, of the Indian Medical Service, beat
+her over her head with a gun-butt before she could understand that she
+must give room for those who could give quinine.
+
+A short time after Strickland had taken Imray’s bungalow, my business
+took me through that Station, and naturally, the Club quarters being
+full, I quartered myself upon Strickland. It was a desirable bungalow,
+eight-roomed and heavily thatched against any chance of leakage from
+rain. Under the pitch of the roof ran a ceiling-cloth which looked just
+as neat as a white-washed ceiling. The landlord had repainted it when
+Strickland took the bungalow. Unless you knew how Indian bungalows were
+built you would never have suspected that above the cloth lay the dark
+three-cornered cavern of the roof, where the beams and the underside of
+the thatch harboured all manner of rats, bats, ants, and foul things.
+
+Tietjens met me in the verandah with a bay like the boom of the bell of
+St. Paul’s, putting her paws on my shoulder to show she was glad to see
+me. Strickland had contrived to claw together a sort of meal which he
+called lunch, and immediately after it was finished went out about his
+business. I was left alone with Tietjens and my own affairs. The heat of
+the summer had broken up and turned to the warm damp of the rains. There
+was no motion in the heated air, but the rain fell like ramrods on the
+earth, and flung up a blue mist when it splashed back. The bamboos, and
+the custard-apples, the poinsettias, and the mango-trees in the garden
+stood still while the warm water lashed through them, and the frogs
+began to sing among the aloe hedges. A little before the light failed,
+and when the rain was at its worst, I sat in the back verandah and
+heard the water roar from the eaves, and scratched myself because I was
+covered with the thing called prickly-heat. Tietjens came out with
+me and put her head in my lap and was very sorrowful; so I gave her
+biscuits when tea was ready, and I took tea in the back verandah on
+account of the little coolness found there. The rooms of the house were
+dark behind me. I could smell Strickland’s saddlery and the oil on his
+guns, and I had no desire to sit among these things. My own servant came
+to me in the twilight, the muslin of his clothes clinging tightly to his
+drenched body, and told me that a gentleman had called and wished to see
+some one. Very much against my will, but only because of the darkness of
+the rooms, I went into the naked drawing-room, telling my man to bring
+the lights. There might or might not have been a caller waiting---it
+seemed to me that I saw a figure by one of the windows---but when the
+lights came there was nothing save the spikes of the rain without,
+and the smell of the drinking earth in my nostrils. I explained to my
+servant that he was no wiser than he ought to be, and went back to the
+verandah to talk to Tietjens. She had gone out into the wet, and I
+could hardly coax her back to me; even with biscuits with sugar tops.
+Strickland came home, dripping wet, just before dinner, and the first
+thing he said was.
+
+‘Has any one called?’
+
+I explained, with apologies, that my servant had summoned me into the
+drawing-room on a false alarm; or that some loafer had tried to call on
+Strickland, and thinking better of it had fled after giving his name.
+Strickiand ordered dinner, without comment, and since it was a real
+dinner with a white tablecloth attached, we sat down.
+
+At nine o’clock Strickland wanted to go to bed, and I was tired too.
+Tietjens, who had been lying underneath the table, rose up, and swung
+into the least exposed verandah as soon as her master moved to his own
+room, which was next to the stately chamber set apart for Tietjens. If a
+mere wife had wished to sleep out of doors in that pelting rain it would
+not have mattered; but Tietjens was a dog, and therefore the better
+animal. I looked at Strickland, expecting to see him flay her with
+a whip. He smiled queerly, as a man would smile after telling some
+unpleasant domestic tragedy. ‘She has done this ever since I moved in
+here,’ said he. ‘Let her go.’
+
+The dog was Strickland’s dog, so I said nothing, but I felt all that
+Strickland felt In being thus made light of. Tietjens encamped outside
+my bedroom window, and storm after storm came up, thundered on the
+thatch, and died away. The lightning spattered the sky as a thrown egg
+spatters a barn-door, but the light was pale blue, not yellow; and,
+looking through my split bamboo blinds, I could see the great dog
+standing, not sleeping, in the verandah, the hackles alift on her back
+and her feet anchored as tensely as the drawn wire-rope of a suspension
+bridge. In the very short pauses of the thunder I tried to sleep, but
+it seemed that some one wanted me very urgently. He, whoever he was,
+was trying to call me by name, but his voice was no more than a husky
+whisper. The thunder ceased, and Tietjens went into the garden and
+howled at the low moon. Somebody tried to open my door, walked about and
+about through the house and stood breathing heavily in the verandahs,
+and just when I was falling asleep I fancied that I heard a wild
+hammering and clamouring above my head or on the door.
+
+I ran into Strickland’s room and asked him whether he was ill, and had
+been calling for me. He was lying on his bed half dressed, a pipe in his
+mouth. ‘I thought you’d come,’ he said. ‘Have I been walking round the
+house recently?’
+
+I explained that he had been tramping in the dining-room and the
+smoking-room and two or three other places, and he laughed and told me
+to go back to bed. I went back to bed and slept till the morning, but
+through all my mixed dreams I was sure I was doing some one an injustice
+in not attending to his wants. What those wants were I could not tell;
+but a fluttering, whispering, bolt-fumbling, lurking, loitering Someone
+was reproaching me for my slackness, and, half awake, I heard the
+howling of Tietjens in the garden and the threshing of the rain.
+
+I lived in that house for two days. Strickland went to his office
+daily, leaving me alone for eight or ten hours with Tietjens for my only
+companion. As long as the full light lasted I was comfortable, and so
+was Tietjens; but in the twilight she and I moved into the back verandah
+and cuddled each other for company. We were alone in the house, but none
+the less it was much too fully occupied by a tenant with whom I did not
+wish to interfere. I never saw him, but I could see the curtains between
+the rooms quivering where he had just passed through; I could hear
+the chairs creaking as the bamboos sprung under a weight that had
+just quitted them; and I could feel when I went to get a book from
+the dining-room that somebody was waiting in the shadows of the front
+verandah till I should have gone away. Tietjens made the twilight more
+interesting by glaring into the darkened rooms with every hair erect,
+and following the motions of something that I could not see. She never
+entered the rooms, but her eyes moved interestedly: that was quite
+sufficient. Only when my servant came to trim the lamps and make all
+light and habitable she would come in with me and spend her time sitting
+on her haunches, watching an invisible extra man as he moved about
+behind my shoulder. Dogs are cheerful companions.
+
+I explained to Strickland, gently as might be, that I would go over to
+the Club and find for myself quarters there. I admired his hospitality,
+was pleased with his guns and rods, but I did not much care for his
+house and its atmosphere. He heard me out to the end, and then smiled
+very wearily, but without contempt, for he is a man who understands
+things. ‘Stay on,’ he said, ‘and see what this thing means. All you have
+talked about I have known since I took the bungalow. Stay on and wait.
+Tietjens has left me. Are you going too?’
+
+I had seen him through one little affair, connected with a heathen
+idol, that had brought me to the doors of a lunatic asylum, and I had
+no desire to help him through further experiences. He was a man to whom
+unpleasantnesses arrived as do dinners to ordinary people.
+
+Therefore I explained more clearly than ever that I liked him immensely,
+and would be happy to see him in the daytime; but that I did not care to
+sleep under his roof. This was after dinner, when Tietjens had gone out
+to lie in the verandah.
+
+‘’Pon my soul, I don’t wonder,’ said Strickland, with his eyes on the
+ceiling-cloth. ‘Look at that!’
+
+The tails of two brown snakes were hanging between the cloth and the
+cornice of the wall. They threw long shadows in the lamplight.
+
+‘If you are afraid of snakes of course--’ said Strickland.
+
+I hate and fear snakes, because if you look into the eyes of any snake
+you will see that it knows all and more of the mystery of man’s fall,
+and that it feels all the contempt that the Devil felt when Adam was
+evicted from Eden. Besides which its bite is generally fatal, and it
+twists up trouser legs.
+
+‘You ought to get your thatch overhauled,’ I said.
+
+‘Give me a mahseer-rod, and we’ll poke ‘em down.’
+
+‘They’ll hide among the roof-beams,’ said Strickland. ‘I can’t stand
+snakes overhead. I’m going up into the roof. If I shake ‘em down, stand
+by with a cleaning-rod and break their backs.’
+
+I was not anxious to assist Strickland in his work, but I took the
+cleaning-rod and waited in the dining-room, while Strickland brought a
+gardener’s ladder from the verandah, and set it against the side of the
+room.
+
+The snake-tails drew themselves up and disappeared. We could hear the
+dry rushing scuttle of long bodies running over the baggy ceiling-cloth.
+Strickland took a lamp with him, while I tried to make clear to him
+the danger of hunting roof-snakes between a ceiling-cloth and a
+thatch, apart from the deterioration of property caused by ripping out
+ceiling-cloths.
+
+‘Nonsense!’ said Strickland. ‘They’re sure to hide near the walls by the
+cloth. The bricks are too cold for ‘em, and the heat of the room is just
+what they like.’ He put his hand to the corner of the stuff and
+ripped it from the cornice. It gave with a great sound of tearing, and
+Strickland put his head through the opening into the dark of the angle
+of the roof-beams. I set my teeth and lifted the rod, for I had not the
+least knowledge of what might descend.
+
+‘H’m!’ said Strickland, and his voice rolled and rumbled in the roof.
+‘There’s room for another set of rooms up here, and, by Jove, some one
+is occupying ‘em!’
+
+‘Snakes?’ I said from below.
+
+‘No. It’s a buffalo. Hand me up the two last joints of a mahseer-rod,
+and I’ll prod it. It’s lying on the main roof-beam.’
+
+I handed up the rod.
+
+‘What a nest for owls and serpents! No wonder the snakes live here,’
+said Strickland, climbing farther into the roof. I could see his elbow
+thrusting with the rod. ‘Come out of that, whoever you are! Heads below
+there! It’s falling.’
+
+I saw the ceiling-cloth nearly in the centre of the room bag with a
+shape that was pressing it downwards and downwards towards the lighted
+lamp on the table. I snatched the lamp out of danger and stood back.
+Then the cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split, swayed, and shot
+down upon the table something that I dared not look at, till Strickland
+had slid down the ladder and was standing by my side.
+
+He did not say much, being a man of few words; but he picked up the
+loose end of the tablecloth and threw it over the remnants on the table.
+
+‘It strikes me,’ said he, putting down the lamp, ‘our friend Imray has
+come back. Oh! you would, would you?’
+
+There was a movement under the cloth, and a little snake wriggled out,
+to be back-broken by the butt of the mahseer-rod. I was sufficiently
+sick to make no remarks worth recording.
+
+Strickland meditated, and helped himself to drinks. The arrangement
+under the cloth made no more signs of life.
+
+‘Is it Imray?’ I said.
+
+Strickland turned back the cloth for a moment, and looked.
+
+‘It is Imray,’ he said; ‘and his throat is cut from ear to ear.’
+
+Then we spoke, both together and to ourselves: ‘That’s why he whispered
+about the house.’
+
+Tietjens, in the garden, began to bay furiously. A little later her
+great nose heaved open the dining-room door.
+
+She sniffed and was still. The tattered ceiling-cloth hung down almost
+to the level of the table, and there was hardly room to move away from
+the discovery.
+
+Tietjens came in and sat down; her teeth bared under her lip and her
+forepaws planted. She looked at Strickland.
+
+‘It’s a bad business, old lady,’ said he. ‘Men don’t climb up into the
+roofs of their bungalows to die, and they don’t fasten up the ceiling
+cloth behind ‘em. Let’s think it out.’
+
+‘Let’s think it out somewhere else,’ I said.
+
+‘Excellent idea! Turn the lamps out. We’ll get into my room.’
+
+I did not turn the lamps out. I went into Strickland’s room first,
+and allowed him to make the darkness. Then he followed me, and we lit
+tobacco and thought. Strickland thought. I smoked furiously, because I
+was afraid.
+
+‘Imray is back,’ said Strickland. ‘The question is---who killed Imray?
+Don’t talk, I’ve a notion of my own. When I took this bungalow I took
+over most of Imray’s servants. Imray was guileless and inoffensive,
+wasn’t he?’
+
+I agreed; though the heap under the cloth had looked neither one thing
+nor the other.
+
+‘If I call in all the servants they will stand fast in a crowd and lie
+like Aryans. What do you suggest?’
+
+‘Call ‘em in one by one,’ I said.
+
+‘They’ll run away and give the news to all their fellows,’ said
+Strickland. ‘We must segregate ‘em. Do you suppose your servant knows
+anything about it?’
+
+‘He may, for aught I know; but I don’t think it’s likely. He has only
+been here two or three days,’ I answered. ‘What’s your notion?’
+
+‘I can’t quite tell. How the dickens did the man get the wrong side of
+the ceiling-cloth?’
+
+There was a heavy coughing outside Strickland’s bedroom door. This
+showed that Bahadur Khan, his body-servant, had waked from sleep and
+wished to put Strickland to bed.
+
+‘Come in,’ said Strickland. ‘It’s a very warm night, isn’t it?’
+
+Bahadur Khan, a great, green-turbaned, six-foot Mahomedan, said that it
+was a very warm night; but that there was more rain pending, which, by
+his Honour’s favour, would bring relief to the country.
+
+‘It will be so, if God pleases,’ said Strickland, tugging off his boots.
+‘It is in my mind, Bahadur Khan, that I have worked thee remorselessly
+for many days---ever since that time when thou first earnest into my
+service. What time was that?’
+
+‘Has the Heaven-born forgotten? It was when Imray Sahib went secretly
+to Europe without warning given; and I-even I-came into the honoured
+service of the protector of the poor.’
+
+‘And Imray Sahib went to Europe?’
+
+‘It is so said among those who were his servants.’
+
+‘And thou wilt take service with him when he returns?’
+
+‘Assuredly, Sahib. He was a good master, and cherished his dependants.’
+
+‘That is true. I am very tired, but I go buck-shooting to-morrow. Give
+me the little sharp rifle that I use for black-buck; it is in the case
+yonder.’
+
+The man stooped over the case; handed barrels, stock, and fore-end to
+Strickland, who fitted all together, yawning dolefully. Then he reached
+down to the gun-case, took a solid-drawn cartridge, and slipped it into
+the breech of the ‘360 Express.
+
+‘And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe secretly! That is very strange,
+Bahadur Khan, is it not?’
+
+‘What do I know of the ways of the white man. Heaven-born?’
+
+‘Very little, truly. But thou shalt know more anon. It has reached me
+that Imray Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and that
+even now he lies in the next room, waiting his servant.’
+
+‘Sahib!’
+
+The lamplight slid along the barrels of the rifle as they levelled
+themselves at Bahadur Khan’s broad breast.
+
+‘Go and look!’ said Strickland. ‘Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and he
+waits thee. Go!’
+
+The man picked up a lamp, and went into the dining-room, Strickland
+following, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of the rifle. He
+looked for a moment at the black depths behind the ceiling-cloth; at the
+writhing snake under foot; and last, a gray glaze settling on his face,
+at the thing under the tablecloth.
+
+‘Hast thou seen?’ said Strickland after a pause.
+
+‘I have seen. I am clay in the white man’s hands. What does the Presence
+do?’
+
+‘Hang thee within the month. What else?’
+
+‘For killing him? Nay, Sahib, consider. Walking among us, his servants,
+he cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old. Him he
+bewitched, and in ten days he died of the fever--my child!’
+
+‘What said Imray Sahib?’
+
+‘He said he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head; wherefore
+my child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when he
+had come back from office, and was sleeping. Wherefore I dragged him up
+into the roof-beams and made all fast behind him. The Heaven-born knows
+all things. I am the servant of the Heaven-born.’
+
+Strickland looked at me above the rifle, and said, in the vernacular,
+‘Thou art witness to this saying? He has killed.’
+
+Bahadur Khan stood ashen gray in the light of the one lamp. The need for
+justification came upon him very swiftly. ‘I am trapped,’ he said, ‘but
+the offence was that man’s. He cast an evil eye upon my child, and I
+killed and hid him. Only such as are served by devils,’ he glared at
+Tietjens, couched stolidly before him, ‘only such could know what I
+did.’
+
+‘It was clever. But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam with a
+rope. Now, thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. Orderly!’
+
+A drowsy policeman answered Strickland’s call. He was followed by
+another, and Tietjens sat wondrous still.
+
+‘Take him to the police-station,’ said Strickland. ‘There is a case
+toward.’
+
+‘Do I hang, then?’ said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to escape, and
+keeping his eyes on the ground.
+
+‘If the sun shines or the water runs--yes!’ said Strickland.
+
+Bahadur Khan stepped back one long pace, quivered, and stood still. The
+two policemen waited further orders.
+
+‘Go!’ said Strickland.
+
+‘Nay; but I go very swiftly,’ said Bahadur Khan. ‘Look! I am even now a
+dead man.’
+
+He lifted his foot, and to the little toe there clung the head of the
+half-killed snake, firm fixed in the agony of death.
+
+‘I come of land-holding stock,’ said Bahadur Khan, rocking where he
+stood. ‘It were a disgrace to me to go to the public scaffold: therefore
+I take this way. Be it remembered that the Sahib’s shirts are correctly
+enumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in his washbasin.
+My child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard. Why should you seek to
+slay me with the rope? My honour is saved, and--and--I die.’
+
+At the end of an hour he died, as they die who are bitten by the
+little brown karait, and the policemen bore him and the thing under the
+tablecloth to their appointed places. All were needed to make clear the
+disappearance of Imray.
+
+‘This,’ said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed, ‘is called
+the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said?’
+
+‘I heard,’ I answered. ‘Imray made a mistake.’
+
+‘Simply and solely through not knowing the nature of the Oriental, and
+the coincidence of a little seasonal fever. Bahadur Khan had been with
+him for four years.’
+
+I shuddered. My own servant had been with me for exactly that length of
+time. When I went over to my own room I found my man waiting, impassive
+as the copper head on a penny, to pull off my boots.
+
+‘What has befallen Bahadur Khan?’ said I.
+
+‘He was bitten by a snake and died. The rest the Sahib knows,’ was the
+answer.
+
+‘And how much of this matter hast thou known?’
+
+‘As much as might be gathered from One coming in in the twilight to seek
+satisfaction. Gently, Sahib. Let me pull off those boots.’
+
+I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland
+shouting from his side of the house--
+
+‘Tietjens has come back to her place!’
+
+And so she had. The great deerhound was couched statelily on her own
+bedstead on her own blanket, while, in the next room, the idle, empty,
+ceiling-cloth waggled as it trailed on the table.
+
+
+
+
+NAMGAY DOOLA
+
+
+ There came to the beach a poor exile of Erin,
+ The dew on his wet robe hung heavy and chill;
+ Ere the steamer that brought him had passed out of hearin’,
+ He was Alderman Mike inthrojuicin’ a bill!
+                       AMERICAN SONG.
+
+Once upon a time there was a King who lived on the road to Thibet, very
+many miles in the Himalayas. His Kingdom was eleven thousand feet above
+the sea and exactly four miles square; but most of the miles stood on
+end owing to the nature of the country. His revenues were rather
+less than four hundred pounds yearly, and they were expended in the
+maintenance of one elephant and a standing army of five men. He was
+tributary to the Indian Government, who allowed him certain sums for
+keeping a section of the Himalaya-Thibet road in repair. He further
+increased his revenues by selling timber to the railway-companies; for
+he would cut the great deodar trees in his one forest, and they fell
+thundering into the Sutlej river and were swept down to the plains three
+hundred miles away and became railway-ties. Now and again this King,
+whose name does not matter, would mount a ringstraked horse and ride
+scores of miles to Simla-town to confer with the Lieutenant-Governor
+on matters of state, or to assure the Viceroy that his sword was at the
+service of the Queen-Empress. Then the Viceroy would cause a ruffle of
+drums to be sounded, and the ringstraked horse and the cavalry of the
+State---two men in tatters--and the herald who bore the silver stick
+before the King would trot back to their own place, which lay between
+the tail of a heaven-climbing glacier and a dark birch-forest.
+
+Now, from such a King, always remembering that he possessed one
+veritable elephant, and could count his descent for twelve hundred
+years, I expected, when it was my fate to wander through his dominions,
+no more than mere license to live.
+
+The night had closed in rain, and rolling clouds blotted out the lights
+of the villages in the valley. Forty miles away, untouched by cloud or
+storm, the white shoulder of Donga Pa--the Mountain of the Council of
+the Gods--upheld the Evening Star. The monkeys sang sorrowfully to each
+other as they hunted for dry roosts in the fern-wreathed trees, and the
+last puff of the day-wind brought from the unseen villages the scent
+of damp wood-smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting
+pine-cones. That is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if once it
+creeps into the blood of a man, that man will at the last, forgetting
+all else, return to the hills to die. The clouds closed and the smell
+went away, and there remained nothing in all the world except chilling
+white mist and the boom of the Sutlej river racing through the valley
+below. A fat-tailed sheep, who did not want to die, bleated piteously
+at my tent door. He was scuffling with the Prime Minister and the
+Director-General of Public Education, and he was a royal gift to me and
+my camp servants. I expressed my thanks suitably, and asked if I might
+have audience of the King. The Prime Minister readjusted his turban,
+which had fallen off in the struggle, and assured me that the King
+would be very pleased to see me. Therefore I despatched two bottles as a
+foretaste, and when the sheep had entered upon another incarnation went
+to the King’s Palace through the wet. He had sent his army to escort me,
+but the army stayed to talk with my cook. Soldiers are very much alike
+all the world over.
+
+The Palace was a four-roomed and whitewashed mud and timber house, the
+finest in all the hills for a day’s journey. The King was dressed in a
+purple velvet jacket, white muslin trousers, and a saffron-yellow turban
+of price. He gave me audience in a little carpeted room opening off the
+palace courtyard which was occupied by the Elephant of State. The great
+beast was sheeted and anchored from trunk to tail, and the curve of his
+back stood out grandly against the mist.
+
+The Prime Minister and the Director-General of Public Education were
+present to introduce me, but all the court had been dismissed, lest
+the two bottles aforesaid should corrupt their morals. The King cast a
+wreath of heavy-scented flowers round my neck as I bowed, and inquired
+how my honoured presence had the felicity to be. I said that through
+seeing his auspicious countenance the mists of the night had turned
+into sunshine, and that by reason of his beneficent sheep his good
+deeds would be remembered by the Gods. He said that since I had set my
+magnificent foot in his Kingdom the crops would probably yield seventy
+per cent more than the average. I said that the fame of the King had
+reached to the four corners of the earth, and that the nations gnashed
+their teeth when they heard daily of the glories of his realm and the
+wisdom of his moon-like Prime Minister and lotus-like Director-General
+of Public Education.
+
+Then we sat down on clean white cushions, and I was at the King’s right
+hand. Three minutes later he was telling me that the state of the maize
+crop was something disgraceful, and that the railway-companies would
+not pay him enough for his timber. The talk shifted to and fro with the
+bottles, and we discussed very many stately things, and the King became
+confidential on the subject of Government generally. Most of all he
+dwelt on the shortcomings of one of his subjects, who, from all I could
+gather, had been paralyzing the executive.
+
+‘In the old days,’ said the King, ‘I could have ordered the Elephant
+yonder to trample him to death. Now I must e’en send him seventy miles
+across the hills to be tried, and his keep would be upon the State. The
+Elephant eats everything.’
+
+‘What be the man’s crimes, Rajah Sahib?’ said I.
+
+‘Firstly, he is an outlander and no man of mine own people. Secondly,
+since of my favour I gave him land upon his first coming, he refuses to
+pay revenue. Am I not the lord of the earth, above and below, entitled
+by right and custom to one-eighth of the crop? Yet this devil,
+establishing himself, refuses to pay a single tax; and he brings a
+poisonous spawn of babes.’
+
+‘Cast him into jail,’ I said.
+
+‘Sahib,’ the King answered, shifting a little on the cushions, ‘once and
+only once in these forty years sickness came upon me so that I was not
+able to go abroad. In that hour I made a vow to my God that I would
+never again cut man or woman from the light of the sun and the air of
+God; for I perceived the nature of the punishment. How can I break my
+vow? Were it only the lopping of a hand or a foot I should not delay.
+But even that is impossible now that the English have rule. One or
+another of my people’--he looked obliquely at the Director-General of
+Public Education--‘would at once write a letter to the Viceroy, and
+perhaps I should be deprived of my ruffle of drums.’
+
+He unscrewed the mouthpiece of his silver water-pipe, fitted a plain
+amber mouthpiece, and passed his pipe to me. ‘Not content with refusing
+revenue,’ he continued, ‘this outlander refuses also the begar’ (this was
+the corvee or forced labour on the roads) ‘and stirs my people up to the
+like treason. Yet he is, when he wills, an expert log-snatcher. There is
+none better or bolder among my people to clear a block of the river when
+the logs stick fast.’
+
+‘But he worships strange Gods,’ said the Prime Minister deferentially.
+
+‘For that I have no concern,’ said the King, who was as tolerant as
+Akbar in matters of belief. ‘To each man his own God and the fire or
+Mother Earth for us all at last. It is the rebellion that offends me.’
+
+‘The King has an army,’ I suggested. ‘Has not the King burned the man’s
+house and left him naked to the night dews?’
+
+‘Nay, a hut is a hut, and it holds the life of a man. But once, I sent
+my army against him when his excuses became wearisome: of their heads
+he brake three across the top with a stick. The other two men ran away.
+Also the guns would not shoot.’
+
+I had seen the equipment of the infantry. One-third of it was an old
+muzzle-loading fowling-piece, with a ragged rust-hole where the nipples
+should have been, one-third a wire-bound matchlock with a worm-eaten
+stock, and one-third a four-bore flint duck-gun without a flint.
+
+‘But it is to be remembered,’ said the King, reaching out for the
+bottle, ‘that he is a very expert log-snatcher and a man of a merry
+face. What shall I do to him, Sahib?’
+
+This was interesting. The timid hill-folk would as soon have refused
+taxes to their king as revenues to their Gods.
+
+‘If it be the King’s permission,’ I said, ‘I will not strike my tents
+till the third day and I will see this man. The mercy of the King is
+God-like, and rebellion is like unto the sin of witchcraft. Moreover,
+both the bottles and another be empty.’
+
+‘You have my leave to go,’ said the King.
+
+Next morning a crier went through the state proclaiming that there was
+a log-jam on the river and that it behoved all loyal subjects to remove
+it. The people poured down from their villages to the moist warm valley
+of poppy-fields; and the King and I went with them. Hundreds of dressed
+deodar-logs had caught on a snag of rock, and the river was bringing
+down more logs every minute to complete the blockade. The water snarled
+and wrenched and worried at the timber, and the population of the state
+began prodding the nearest logs with a pole in the hope of starting a
+general movement. Then there went up a shout of ‘Namgay Doola! Namgay
+Doola!’ and a large red-haired villager hurried up, stripping off his
+clothes as he ran.
+
+‘That is he. That is the rebel,’ said the King. ‘Now will the dam be
+cleared.’
+
+‘But why has he red hair?’ I asked, since red hair among hill-folks is
+as common as blue or green.
+
+‘He is an outlander,’ said the King. ‘Well done! Oh well done!’
+
+Namgay Doola had scrambled out on the jam and was clawing out the butt
+of a log with a rude sort of boat-hook. It slid forward slowly as an
+alligator moves, three or four others followed it, and the green water
+spouted through the gaps they had made. Then the villagers howled and
+shouted and scrambled across the logs, pulling and pushing the obstinate
+timber, and the red head of Namgay Doola was chief among them all. The
+logs swayed and chafed and groaned as fresh consignments from upstream
+battered the now weakening dam. All gave way at last in a smother of
+foam, racing logs, bobbing black heads and confusion indescribable. The
+river tossed everything before it. I saw the red head go down with
+the last remnants of the jam and disappear between the great grinding
+tree-trunks. It rose close to the bank and blowing like a grampus.
+Namgay Doola wrung the water out of his eyes and made obeisance to the
+King. I had time to observe him closely. The virulent redness of his
+shock head and beard was most startling; and in the thicket of hair
+wrinkled above high cheek bones shone two very merry blue eyes. He was
+indeed an outlander, but yet a Thibetan in language, habit, and attire.
+He spoke the Lepcha dialect with an indescribable softening of the
+gutturals. It was not so much a lisp as an accent.
+
+‘Whence comest thou?’ I asked.
+
+‘From Thibet.’ He pointed across the hills and grinned. That grin went
+straight to my heart. Mechanically I held out my hand and Namgay Doola
+shook it. No pure Thibetan would have understood the meaning of the
+gesture. He went away to look for his clothes, and as he climbed back to
+his village, I heard a joyous yell that seemed unaccountably familiar.
+It was the whooping of Namgay Doola.
+
+‘You see now,’ said the King, ‘why I would not kill him. He is a bold
+man among my logs, but,’ and he shook his head like a schoolmaster, ‘I
+know that before long there will be complaints of him in the court. Let
+us return to the Palace and do justice.’ It was that King’s custom to
+judge his subjects every day between eleven and three o’clock. I saw him
+decide equitably in weighty matters of trespass, slander, and a little
+wife-stealing. Then his brow clouded and he summoned me.
+
+‘Again it is Namgay Doola,’ he said despairingly. ‘Not content with
+refusing revenue on his own part, he has bound half his village by an
+oath to the like treason. Never before has such a thing befallen me! Nor
+are my taxes heavy.’
+
+A rabbit-faced villager, with a blush-rose stuck behind his ear,
+advanced trembling. He had been in the conspiracy, but had told
+everything and hoped for the King’s favour.
+
+‘O King,’ said I, ‘if it be the King’s will let this matter stand over
+till the morning. Only the Gods can do right swiftly, and it may be that
+yonder villager has lied.’
+
+‘Nay, for I know the nature of Namgay Doola; but since a guest asks let
+the matter remain. Wilt thou speak harshly to this red-headed outlander?
+He may listen to thee.’
+
+I made an attempt that very evening, but for the life of me I could not
+keep my countenance. Namgay Doola grinned persuasively, and began to
+tell me about a big brown bear in a poppy-field by the river. Would I
+care to shoot it? I spoke austerely on the sin of conspiracy, and the
+certainty of punishment. Namgay Doola’s face clouded for a moment.
+Shortly afterwards he withdrew from my tent, and I heard him singing to
+himself softly among the pines. The words were unintelligible to me,
+but the tune, like his liquid insinuating speech, seemed the ghost of
+something strangely familiar.
+
+‘Dir hane mard-i-yemen dir To weeree ala gee.’
+
+sang Namgay Doola again and again, and I racked my brain for that lost
+tune. It was not till after dinner that I discovered some one had cut a
+square foot of velvet from the centre of my best camera-cloth. This made
+me so angry that I wandered down the valley in the hope of meeting the
+big brown bear. I could hear him grunting like a discontented pig in the
+poppy-field, and I waited shoulder deep in the dew-dripping Indian corn
+to catch him after his meal. The moon was at full and drew out the rich
+scent of the tasselled crop. Then I heard the anguished bellow of
+a Himalayan cow, one of the little black crummies no bigger than
+Newfoundland dogs. Two shadows that looked like a bear and her cub
+hurried past me. I was in act to fire when I saw that they had each a
+brilliant red head. The lesser animal was trailing some rope behind it
+that left a dark track on the path. They passed within six feet of
+me, and the shadow of the moonlight lay velvet-black on their faces.
+Velvet-black was exactly the word, for by all the powers of moonlight
+they were masked in the velvet of my camera-cloth! I marvelled and went
+to bed.
+
+Next morning the Kingdom was in uproar. Namgay Doola, men said, had gone
+forth in the night and with a sharp knife had cut off the tail of a
+cow belonging to the rabbit-faced villager who had betrayed him. It was
+sacrilege unspeakable against the Holy Cow. The State desired his blood,
+but he had retreated into his hut, barricaded the doors and windows with
+big stones, and defied the world.
+
+The King and I and the populace approached the hut cautiously. There was
+no hope of capturing the man without loss of life, for from a hole in
+the wall projected the muzzle of an extremely well-cared-for gun--the
+only gun in the State that could shoot. Namgay Doola had narrowly missed
+a villager just before we came up. The Standing Army stood. It could
+do no more, for when it advanced pieces of sharp shale flew from the
+windows. To these were added from time to time showers of scalding
+water. We saw red heads bobbing up and down in the hut. The family
+of Namgay Doola were aiding their sire, and blood-curdling yells of
+defiance were the only answers to our prayers.
+
+‘Never,’ said the King, puffing, ‘has such a thing befallen my State.
+Next year I will certainly buy a little cannon.’ He looked at me
+imploringly.
+
+‘Is there any priest in the Kingdom to whom he will listen?’ said I, for
+a light was beginning to break upon me.
+
+‘He worships his own God,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘We can starve him
+out.’
+
+‘Let the white man approach,’ said Namgay Doola from within. ‘All others
+I will kill. Send me the white man.’
+
+The door was thrown open and I entered the smoky interior of a Thibetan
+hut crammed with children. And every child had flaming red hair. A
+raw cow’s-tail lay on the floor, and by its side two pieces of black
+velvet--my black velvet--rudely hacked into the semblance of masks.
+
+‘And what is this shame, Namgay Doola?’ said I.
+
+He grinned more winningly than ever. ‘There is no shame,’ said he. ‘I
+did but cut off the tail of that man’s cow. He betrayed me. I was minded
+to shoot him, Sahib. But not to death. Indeed not to death. Only in the
+legs.’
+
+‘And why at all, since it is the custom to pay revenue to the King? Why
+at all?’
+
+‘By the God of my father I cannot tell,’ said Namgay Doola.
+
+‘And who was thy father?’
+
+‘The same that had this gun.’ He showed me his weapon--a Tower musket
+bearing date 1832 and the stamp of the Honourable East India Company.
+
+‘And thy father’s name?’ said I.
+
+‘Timlay Doola,’ said he. ‘At the first, I being then a little child, it
+is in my mind that he wore a red coat.’
+
+‘Of that I have no doubt. But repeat the name of thy father thrice or
+four times.’
+
+He obeyed, and I understood whence the puzzling accent in his speech
+came. ‘Thimla Dhula,’ said he excitedly. ‘To this hour I worship his
+God.’
+
+‘May I see that God?’
+
+‘In a little while--at twilight time.’
+
+‘Rememberest thou aught of thy father’s speech?’
+
+‘It is long ago. But there is one word which he said often. Thus “Shun.”
+ Then I and my brethren stood upon our feet, our hands to our sides.
+Thus.’
+
+‘Even so. And what was thy mother?’
+
+‘A woman of the hills. We be Lepchas of Darjeeling, but me they call an
+outlander because my hair is as thou seest.’
+
+The Thibetan woman, his wife, touched him on the arm gently. The long
+parley outside the fort had lasted far into the day. It was now close
+upon twilight--the hour of the Angelus. Very solemnly, the red-headed
+brats rose from the floor and formed a semicircle. Namgay Doola laid
+his gun against the wall, lighted a little oil lamp, and set it before a
+recess in the wall. Pulling aside a curtain of dirty cloth, he revealed
+a worn brass crucifix leaning against the helmet-badge of a long
+forgotten East India regiment. ‘Thus did my father,’ he said, crossing
+himself clumsily. The wife and children followed suit. Then all together
+they struck up the wailing chant that I heard on the hillside--
+
+ Dir bane mard-i-yemen dir
+ To weeree ala gee.
+
+I was puzzled no longer. Again and again they crooned, as if their
+hearts would break, their version of the chorus of the Wearing of the
+Green--
+
+They’re hanging men and women too, For the wearing of the green.
+
+A diabolical inspiration came to me. One of the brats, a boy about eight
+years old, was watching me as he sang. I pulled out a rupee, held
+the coin between finger and thumb and looked--only looked--at the
+gun against the wall. A grin of brilliant and perfect comprehension
+overspread the face of the child. Never for an instant stopping the
+song, he held out his hand for the money, and then slid the gun to my
+hand. I might have shot Namgay Doola as he chanted. But I was satisfied.
+The blood-instinct of the race held true. Namgay Doola drew the curtain
+across the recess. Angelus was over.
+
+‘Thus my father sang. There was much more, but I have forgotten, and I
+do not know the purport of these words, but it may be that the God will
+understand. I am not of this people, and I will not pay revenue.’
+
+‘And why?’
+
+Again that soul-compelling grin. ‘What occupation would be to me between
+crop and crop? It is better than scaring bears. But these people do not
+understand.’ He picked the masks from the floor, and looked in my face
+as simply as a child.
+
+‘By what road didst thou attain knowledge to make these devilries?’ I
+said, pointing.
+
+‘I cannot tell. I am but a Lepcha of Darjeeling, and yet the stuff--’
+
+‘Which thou hast stolen.’
+
+‘Nay, surely. Did I steal? I desired it so. The stuff--the stuff--what
+else should I have done with the stuff?’ He twisted the velvet between
+his fingers.
+
+‘But the sin of maiming the cow--consider that.’
+
+‘That is true; but oh, Sahib, that man betrayed me and I had no
+thought--but the heifer’s tail waved in the moonlight and I had my
+knife. What else should I have done? The tail came off ere I was aware.
+Sahib, thou knowest more than I.’
+
+‘That is true,’ said I. ‘Stay within the door. I go to speak to the
+King.’
+
+The population of the State were ranged on the hillsides. I went forth
+and spoke to the King.
+
+‘O King,’ said I. ‘Touching this man there be two courses open to thy
+wisdom. Thou canst either hang him from a tree, he and his brood, till
+there remains no hair that is red within the land.’
+
+‘Nay’ said the King. ‘Why should I hurt the little children?’
+
+They had poured out of the hut door and were making plump obeisance to
+everybody. Namgay Doola waited with his gun across his arm.
+
+‘Or thou canst, discarding the impiety of the cow-maiming, raise him to
+honour in thy Army. He comes of a race that will not pay revenue. A red
+flame is in his blood which comes out at the top of his head in that
+glowing hair. Make him chief of the Army. Give him honour as may befall,
+and full allowance of work, but look to it, O King, that neither he nor
+his hold a foot of earth from thee henceforward. Feed him with words and
+favour, and also liquor from certain bottles that thou knowest of, and
+he will be a bulwark of defence. But deny him even a tuft of grass for
+his own. This is the nature that God has given him. Moreover he has
+brethren--’
+
+The State groaned unanimously.
+
+‘But if his brethren come, they will surely fight with each other till
+they die; or else the one will always give information concerning the
+other. Shall he be of thy Army, O King? Choose.’
+
+The King bowed his head, and I said, ‘Come forth, Namgay Doola, and
+command the King’s Army. Thy name shall no more be Namgay in the mouths
+of men, but Patsay Doola, for as thou hast said, I know.’
+
+Then Namgay Doola, new christened Patsay Doola, son of Timlay Doola,
+which is Tim Doolan gone very wrong indeed, clasped the King’s feet,
+cuffed the Standing Army, and hurried in an agony of contrition from
+temple to temple, making offerings for the sin of cattle-maiming.
+
+And the King was so pleased with my perspicacity, that he offered to
+sell me a village for twenty pounds sterling. But I buy no villages in
+the Himalayas so long as one red head flares between the tail of the
+heaven-climbing glacier and the dark birch-forest.
+
+I know that breed.
+
+
+
+
+BURTRAN AND BIMI
+
+
+The orang-outang in the big iron cage lashed to the sheep-pen began the
+discussion. The night was stiflingly hot, and as I and Hans Breitmann,
+the big-beamed German, passed him, dragging our bedding to the fore-peak
+of the steamer, he roused himself and chattered obscenely. He had been
+caught somewhere in the Malayan Archipelago, and was going to England
+to be exhibited at a shilling a head. For four days he had struggled,
+yelled, and wrenched at the heavy bars of his prison without ceasing,
+and had nearly slain a lascar, incautious enough to come within reach of
+the great hairy paw.
+
+‘It would be well for you, mine friend, if you was a liddle seasick,’
+said Hans Breitmann, pausing by the cage.’ You haf too much Ego in your
+Cosmos.’
+
+The orang-outang’s arm slid out negligently from between the bars. No
+one would have believed that it would make a sudden snakelike rush at
+the German’s breast. The thin silk of the sleeping-suit tore out; Hans
+stepped back unconcernedly to pluck a banana from a bunch hanging close
+to one of the boats.
+
+‘Too much Ego,’ said he, peeling the fruit and offering it to the caged
+devil, who was rending the silk to tatters.
+
+Then we laid out our bedding in the bows among the sleeping Lascars, to
+catch any breeze that the pace of the ship might give us. The sea was
+like smoky oil, except where it turned to fire under our forefoot
+and whirled back into the dark in smears of dull flame. There was a
+thunderstorm some miles away; we could see the glimmer of the lightning.
+The ship’s cow, distressed by the heat and the smell of the ape-beast in
+the cage, lowed unhappily from time to time in exactly the same key as
+that in which the look-out man answered the hourly call from the bridge.
+The trampling tune of the engines was very distinct, and the jarring
+of the ash-lift, as it was tipped into the sea, hurt the procession of
+hushed noise. Hans lay down by my side and lighted a good-night cigar.
+This was naturally the beginning of conversation. He owned a voice as
+soothing as the wash of the sea, and stores of experiences as vast as
+the sea itself; for his business in life was to wander up and down the
+world, collecting orchids and wild beasts and ethnological specimens for
+German and American dealers. I watched the glowing end of his cigar wax
+and wane in the gloom, as the sentences rose and fell, till I was nearly
+asleep. The orang-outang, troubled by some dream of the forests of his
+freedom, began to yell like a soul in purgatory, and to pluck madly at
+the bars of the cage.
+
+‘If he was out now dere would not be much of us left hereabout,’ said
+Hans lazily. ‘He screams goot. See, now, how I shall tame him when he
+stops himself.’
+
+There was a pause in the outcry, and from Hans’ mouth came an imitation
+of a snake’s hiss, so perfect that I almost sprang to my feet. The
+sustained murderous sound ran along the deck, and the wrenching at the
+bars ceased. The orang-outang was quaking in an ecstasy of pure terror.
+
+‘Dot stopped him,’ said Hans. ‘I learned dot trick in Mogoung Tanjong
+when I was collecting liddle monkeys for some peoples in Berlin. Efery
+one in der world is afraid of der monkeys--except der snake. So I blay
+snake against monkey, and he keep quite still. Dere was too much Ego in
+his Cosmos. Dot is der soul-custom of monkeys. Are you asleep, or will
+you listen, and I will tell a dale dot you shall not pelief?’
+
+‘There’s no tale in the wide world that I can’t believe,’ I said.
+
+‘If you haf learned pelief you haf learned somedings. Now I shall try
+your pelief. Goot! When I was collecting dose liddle monkeys--it was in
+‘79 or ‘80, und I was in der islands of der Archipelago--over dere in
+der dark’--he pointed southward to New Guinea generally--‘Mein Gott! I
+would sooner collect life red devils than liddle monkeys. When dey
+do not bite off your thumbs dey are always dying from
+nostalgia--home-sick--for dey haf der imperfect soul, which is midway
+arrested in defelopment--und too much Ego. I was dere for nearly a year,
+und dere I found a man dot was called Bertran. He was a Frenchman, und
+he was goot man--naturalist to his bone. Dey said he was an escaped
+convict, but he was naturalist, und dot was enough for me. He would call
+all der life beasts from der forest, und dey would come. I said he was
+St. Francis of Assizi in a new dransmigration produced, und he
+laughed und said he haf never preach to der fishes. He sold dem for
+tripang--beche-de-mer.
+
+‘Und dot man, who was king of beasts-tamer men, he had in der house
+shust such anoder as dot devil-animal in der cage--a great orang-outang
+dot thought he was a man. He haf found him when he was a child--der
+orang-outang--und he was child und brother und opera comique all round
+to Betran. He had his room in dot house--not a cage, but a room--mit
+a bed und sheets, und he would go to bed und get up in der morning und
+smoke his cigar und eat his dinner mit Bertran, und walk mit him hand
+in hand, which was most horrible. Herr Gott! I haf seen dot beast throw
+himself back in his chair und laugh when Bertran haf made fun of me.
+He was NOT a beast; he was a man, und he talked to Bertran, und Bertran
+comprehend, for I have seen dem. Und he was always politeful to me
+except when I talk too long to Bertran und say nodings at all to him.
+Den he would pull me away--dis great, dark devil, mit his enormous
+paws--shust as if I was a child. He was not a beast; he was a man. Dis I
+saw pefore I know him three months, und Bertran he haf saw the same; and
+Bimi, der orang-outang, haf understood us both, mit his cigar between
+his big dog-teeth und der blue gum.
+
+‘I was dere a year, dere und at dere oder islands--somedimes for monkeys
+und somedimes for butterflies und orchits. One time Bertran says to me
+dot he will be married, because he haf found a girl dot was goot, und he
+enquire if this marrying idee was right. I would not say, pecause it was
+not me dot was going to be married. Den he go off courting der girl--she
+was a half-caste French girl--very pretty. Haf you got a new light for
+my cigar? Ouf! Very pretty. Only I say, “Haf you thought of Bimi? If he
+pull me away when I talk to you, what will he do to your wife? He will
+pull her in pieces. If I was you, Bertran, I would gif my wife for
+wedding-present der stuff figure of Bimi.” By dot time I had learned
+some dings about der monkey peoples. “Shoot him?” says Bertran. “He is
+your beast,” I said; “if he was mine he would be shot now!”
+
+‘Den I felt at der back of my neck der fingers of Bimi. Mein Gott! I
+tell you dot he talked through dose fingers. It was der deaf-and-dumb
+alphabet all gomplete. He slide his hairy arm round my neck, und he tilt
+up my chin und looked into my face, shust to see if I understood his
+talk so well as he understood mine.
+
+‘“See now dere!” says Bertran, “und you would shoot him while he is
+cuddlin’ you? Dot is der Teuton ingrate!”
+
+‘But I knew dot I had made Bimi a life’s-enemy, pecause his fingers haf
+talk murder through the back of my neck. Next dime I see Bimi dere was a
+pistol in my belt, und he touched it once, und I open der breech to show
+him it was loaded. He haf seen der liddle monkeys killed in der woods:
+he understood.
+
+‘So Bertran he was married, and he forgot clean about Bimi dot was
+skippin’ alone on der beach mit der half of a human soul in his belly.
+I was see him skip, und he took a big bough und thrash der sand till
+he haf made a great hole like a grave. So I says to Bertran, “For any
+sakes, kill Bimi. He is mad mit der jealousy.”
+
+‘Bertran haf said “He is not mad at all. He haf obey und lofe my wife,
+und if she speak he will get her slippers,” und he looked at his wife
+agross der room. She was a very pretty girl.
+
+‘Den I said to him, “Dost dou pretend to know monkeys und dis beast dot
+is lashing himself mad upon der sands, pecause you do not talk to him?
+Shoot him when he comes to der house, for he haf der light in his eye
+dot means killing--und killing.” Bimi come to der house, but dere was no
+light in his eye. It was all put away, cunning--so cunning--und he fetch
+der girl her slippers, und Bertran turn to me und say, “Dost dou know
+him in nine months more dan I haf known him in twelve years? Shall a
+child stab his fader? I haf fed him, und he was my child. Do not speak
+this nonsense to my wife or to me any more.”
+
+‘Dot next day Bertran came to my house to help me make some wood cases
+for der specimens, und he tell me dot he haf left his wife a liddle
+while mit Bimi in der garden. Den I finish my cases quick, und I say,
+“Let us go to your houses und get a trink.” He laugh and say, “Come
+along, dry mans.”
+
+‘His wife was not in der garden, und Bimi did not come when Bertran
+called. Und his wife did not come when he called, und he knocked at her
+bedroom door und dot was shut tight--locked. Den he look at me, und his
+face was white. I broke down der door mit my shoulder, und der thatch of
+der roof was torn into a great hole, und der sun came in upon der floor.
+Haf you ever seen paper in der waste-basket, or cards at whist on der
+table scattered? Dere was no wife dot could be seen. I tell you dere was
+nodings in dot room dot might be a woman. Dere was stuff on der floor
+und dot was all. I looked at dese things und I was very sick; but
+Bertran looked a liddle longer at what was upon the floor und der walls,
+und der hole in der thatch. Den he pegan to laugh, soft und low, und I
+knew und thank Gott dot he was mad. He nefer cried, he nefer prayed. He
+stood all still in der doorway und laugh to himself. Den he said, “She
+haf locked herself in dis room, and he haf torn up der thatch. Fi donc!
+Dot is so. We will mend der thatch und wait for Bimi. He will surely
+come.”
+
+‘I tell you we waited ten days in dot house, after der room was made
+into a room again, und once or twice we saw Bimi comin’ a liddle way
+from der woods. He was afraid pecause he haf done wrong. Bertran called
+him when he was come to look on the tenth day, und Bimi come skipping
+along der beach und making noises, mit a long piece of black hair in his
+hands. Den Bertran laugh and say, “Fi donc!” shust as if it was a glass
+broken upon der table; und Bimi come nearer, und Bertran was honey-sweet
+in his voice und laughed to himself. For three days he made love to
+Bimi, pecause Bimi would not let himself be touched. Den Bimi come to
+dinner at der same table mit us, und the hair on his hands was all black
+und thick mit-mit what had dried on der hands. Bertran gave him sangaree
+till Bimi was drunk and stupid, und den----’
+
+Hans paused to puff at his cigar.
+
+‘And then?’ said I.
+
+‘Und den Bertran he kill him mit his hands, und I go for a walk upon der
+beach. It was Bertran’s own piziness. When I come back der ape he was
+dead, und Bertran he was dying abofe him; but still he laughed liddle
+und low und he was quite content. Now you know der formula of der
+strength of der orang-outang--it is more as seven to one in relation to
+man. But Bertran, he haf killed Bimi mit sooch dings as Gott gif him.
+Dot was der miracle.’
+
+The infernal clamour in the cage recommenced. ‘Aha! Dot friend of ours
+haf still too much Ego in his Cosmos. Be quiet, dou!’
+
+Hans hissed long and venomously. We could hear the great beast quaking
+in his cage.
+
+‘But why in the world didn’t you help Bertran instead of letting him be
+killed?’ I asked.
+
+‘My friend,’ said Hans, composedly stretching himself to slumber, ‘it
+was not nice even to mineself dot I should live after I haf seen dot
+room mit der hole in der thatch. Und Bertran, he was her husband.
+Goot-night, und--sleep well.’
+
+
+
+
+MOTI GUJ--MUTINEER
+
+
+Once upon a time there was a coffee-planter in India who wished to clear
+some forest land for coffee-planting. When he had cut down all the
+trees and burned the under-wood the stumps still remained. Dynamite is
+expensive and slow-fire slow. The happy medium for stump-clearing is the
+lord of all beats, who is the elephant. He will either push the stump
+out of the ground with his tusks, if he has any, or drag it out with
+ropes. The planter, therefore, hired elephants by ones and twos and
+threes, and fell to work. The very best of all the elephants belonged to
+the very worst of all the drivers or mahouts; and the superior beast’s
+name was Moti Guj. He was the absolute property of his mahout, which
+would never have been the case under native rule, for Moti Guj was a
+creature to be desired by kings; and his name, being translated, meant
+the Pearl Elephant. Because the British Government was in the land,
+Deesa, the mahout, enjoyed his property undisturbed. He was dissipated.
+When he had made much money through the strength of his elephant, he
+would get extremely drunk and give Moti Guj a beating with a tent-peg
+over the tender nails of the forefeet. Moti Guj never trampled the life
+out of Deesa on these occasions, for he knew that after the beating was
+over Deesa would embrace his trunk and weep and call him his love and
+his life and the liver of his soul, and give him some liquor. Moti
+Guj was very fond of liquor--arrack for choice, though he would drink
+palm-tree toddy if nothing better offered. Then Deesa would go to sleep
+between Moti Guj’s forefeet, and as Deesa generally chose the middle of
+the public road, and as Moti Guj mounted guard over him and would not
+permit horse, foot, or cart to pass by, traffic was congested till Deesa
+saw fit to wake up.
+
+There was no sleeping in the daytime on the planter’s clearing: the
+wages were too high to risk. Deesa sat on Moti Guj’s neck and gave him
+orders, while Moti Guj rooted up the stumps--for he owned a magnificent
+pair of tusks; or pulled at the end of a rope--for he had a magnificent
+pair of shoulders, while Deesa kicked him behind the ears and said he
+was the king of elephants. At evening time Moti Guj would wash down his
+three hundred pounds’ weight of green food with a quart of arrack, and
+Deesa would take a share and sing songs between Moti Guj’s legs till it
+was time to go to bed. Once a week Deesa led Moti Guj down to the river,
+and Moti Guj lay on his side luxuriously in the shallows, while Deesa
+went over him with a coir-swab and a brick. Moti Guj never mistook the
+pounding blow of the latter for the smack of the former that warned him
+to get up and turn over on the other side. Then Deesa would look at his
+feet, and examine his eyes, and turn up the fringes of his mighty ears
+in case of sores or budding ophthalmia. After inspection, the two would
+‘come up with a song from the sea,’ Moti Guj all black and shining,
+waving a torn tree branch twelve feet long in his trunk, and Deesa
+knotting up his own long wet hair.
+
+It was a peaceful, well-paid life till Deesa felt the return of the
+desire to drink deep. He wished for an orgie. The little draughts that
+led nowhere were taking the manhood out of him.
+
+He went to the planter, and ‘My mother’s dead,’ said he, weeping.
+
+‘She died on the last plantation two months ago; and she died once
+before that when you were working for me last year,’ said the planter,
+who knew something of the ways of nativedom.
+
+‘Then it’s my aunt, and she was just the same as a mother to me,’ said
+Deesa, weeping more than ever. ‘She has left eighteen small children
+entirely without bread, and it is I who must fill their little
+stomachs,’ said Deesa, beating his head on the floor.
+
+‘Who brought you the news?’ said the planter.
+
+‘The post’ said Deesa.
+
+‘There hasn’t been a post here for the past week. Get back to your
+lines!’
+
+‘A devastating sickness has fallen on my village, and all my wives are
+dying,’ yelled Deesa, really in tears this time.
+
+‘Call Chihun, who comes from Deesa’s village,’ said the planter.’
+Chihun, has this man a wife?’
+
+‘He!’ said Chihun. ‘No. Not a woman of our village would look at him.
+They’d sooner marry the elephant.’ Chihun snorted. Deesa wept and
+bellowed.
+
+‘You will get into a difficulty in a minute,’ said the planter.’ Go back
+to your work!’
+
+‘Now I will speak Heaven’s truth’ gulped Deesa, with an inspiration. ‘I
+haven’t been drunk for two months. I desire to depart in order to get
+properly drunk afar off and distant from this heavenly plantation. Thus
+I shall cause no trouble.’
+
+A flickering smile crossed the planter’s face. ‘Deesa,’ said he, ‘you’ve
+spoken the truth, and I’d give you leave on the spot if anything could
+be done with Moti Guj while you’re away. You know that he will only obey
+your orders.’
+
+‘May the Light of the Heavens live forty thousand years. I shall be
+absent but ten little days. After that, upon my faith and honour and
+soul, I return. As to the inconsiderable interval, have I the gracious
+permission of the Heaven-born to call up Moti Guj?’
+
+Permission was granted, and, in answer to Deesa’s shrill yell, the
+lordly tusker swung out of the shade of a clump of trees where he had
+been squirting dust over himself till his master should return.
+
+‘Light of my heart, Protector of the Drunken, Mountain of Might, give
+ear,’ said Deesa, standing in front of him.
+
+Moti Guj gave ear, and saluted with his trunk. ‘I am going away,’ said
+Deesa.
+
+Moti Guj’s eyes twinkled. He liked jaunts as well as his master. One
+could snatch all manner of nice things from the roadside then.
+
+‘But you, you fubsy old pig, must stay behind and work.’
+
+The twinkle died out as Moti Guj tried to look delighted. He hated
+stump-hauling on the plantation. It hurt his teeth.
+
+‘I shall be gone for ten days, O Delectable One. Hold up your near
+forefoot and I’ll impress the fact upon it, warty toad of a dried
+mud-puddle.’ Deesa took a tent-peg and banged Moti Guj ten times on the
+nails. Moti Guj grunted and shuffled from foot to foot.
+
+‘Ten days,’ said Deesa, ‘you must work and haul and root trees as Chihun
+here shall order you. Take up Chihun and set him on your neck!’ Moti Guj
+curled the tip of his trunk, Chihun put his foot there and was swung
+on to the neck. Deesa handed Chihun the heavy ankus, the iron
+elephant-goad.
+
+Chihun thumped Moti Guj’s bald head as a paviour thumps a kerbstone.
+
+Moti Guj trumpeted.
+
+‘Be still, hog of the backwoods. Chihun’s your mahout for ten days. And
+now bid me good-bye, beast after mine own heart. Oh, my lord, my king!
+Jewel of all created elephants, lily of the herd, preserve your honoured
+health; be virtuous. Adieu!’
+
+Moti Guj lapped his trunk round Deesa and swung him into the air twice.
+That was his way of bidding the man good-bye.
+
+‘He’ll work now,’ said Dessa to the planter. ‘Have I leave to go?’
+
+The planter nodded, and Deesa dived into the woods. Moti Guj went back
+to haul stumps.
+
+Chihun was very kind to him, but he felt unhappy and forlorn
+notwithstanding. Chihun gave him balls of spices, and tickled him under
+the chin, and Chihun’s little baby cooed to him after work was over,
+and Chihun’s wife called him a darling; but Moti Guj was a bachelor by
+instinct, as Deesa was. He did not understand the domestic emotions. He
+wanted the light of his universe back again--the drink and the drunken
+slumber, the savage beatings and the savage caresses.
+
+None the less he worked well, and the planter wondered. Deesa had
+vagabonded along the roads till he met a marriage procession of his
+own caste and, drinking, dancing, and tippling, had drifted past all
+knowledge of the lapse of time.
+
+The morning of the eleventh day dawned, and there returned no Deesa.
+Moti Guj was loosed from his ropes for the daily stint. He swung clear,
+looked round, shrugged his shoulders, and began to walk away, as one
+having business elsewhere.
+
+‘Hi! ho! Come back, you,’ shouted Chihun. ‘Come back, and put me on your
+neck, Misborn Mountain. Return, Splendour of the Hillsides. Adornment of
+all India, heave to, or I’ll bang every toe off your fat fore-foot!’
+
+Moti Guj gurgled gently, but did not obey. Chihun ran after him with a
+rope and caught him up. Moti Guj put his ears forward, and Chihun knew
+what that meant, though he tried to carry it off with high words.
+
+‘None of your nonsense with me,’ said he. ‘To your pickets, Devil-son.’
+
+‘Hrrump!’ said Moti Guj, and that was all--that and the forebent ears.
+
+Moti Guj put his hands in his pockets, chewed a branch for a toothpick,
+and strolled about the clearing, making jest of the other elephants, who
+had just set to work.
+
+Chihun reported the state of affairs to the planter, who came out with
+a dog-whip and cracked it furiously. Moti Guj paid the white man
+the compliment of charging him nearly a quarter of a mile across the
+clearing and ‘Hrrumping’ him into the verandah. Then he stood outside
+the house chuckling to himself, and shaking all over with the fun of it,
+as an elephant will.
+
+‘We’ll thrash him,’ said the planter. ‘He shall have the finest
+thrashing that ever elephant received. Give Kala Nag and Nazim twelve
+foot of chain apiece, and tell them to lay on twenty blows.’
+
+Kala Nag--which means Black Snake--and Nazim were two of the biggest
+elephants in the lines, and one of their duties was to administer the
+graver punishments, since no man can beat an elephant properly.
+
+They took the whipping-chains and rattled them in their trunks as they
+sidled up to Moti Guj, meaning to hustle him between them. Moti Guj had
+never, in all his life of thirty-nine years, been whipped, and he did
+not intend to open new experiences. So he waited, weaving his head from
+right to left, and measuring the precise spot in Kala Nag’s fat side
+where a blunt tusk would sink deepest. Kala Nag had no tusks; the chain
+was his badge of authority; but he judged it good to swing wide of Moti
+Guj at the last minute, and seem to appear as if he had brought out the
+chain for amusement. Nazim turned round and went home early. He did not
+feel fighting-fit that morning, and so Moti Guj was left standing alone
+with his ears cocked.
+
+That decided the planter to argue no more, and Moti Guj rolled back to
+his inspection of the clearing. An elephant who will not work, and is
+not tied up, is not quite so manageable as an eighty-one ton gun loose
+in a heavy sea-way. He slapped old friends on the back and asked them if
+the stumps were coming away easily; he talked nonsense concerning
+labour and the inalienable rights of elephants to a long ‘nooning’; and,
+wandering to and fro, thoroughly demoralized the garden till sundown,
+when he returned to his pickets for food.
+
+‘If you won’t work you shan’t eat,’ said Chihun angrily. ‘You’re a wild
+elephant, and no educated animal at all. Go back to your jungle.’
+
+Chihun’s little brown baby, rolling on the floor of the hut, stretched
+its fat arms to the huge shadow in the doorway. Moti Guj knew well that
+it was the dearest thing on earth to Chihun. He swung out his trunk with
+a fascinating crook at the end, and the brown baby threw itself shouting
+upon it. Moti Guj made fast and pulled up till the brown baby was
+crowing in the air twelve feet above his father’s head.
+
+‘Great Chief!’ said Chihun. ‘Flour cakes of the best, twelve in number,
+two feet across, and soaked in rum shall be yours on the instant, and
+two hundred pounds’ weight of fresh-cut young sugar-cane therewith.
+Deign only to put down safely that insignificant brat who is my heart
+and my life to me.’
+
+Moti Guj tucked the brown baby comfortably between his forefeet, that
+could have knocked into toothpicks all Chihun’s hut, and waited for his
+food. He ate it, and the brown baby crawled away. Moti Guj dozed, and
+thought of Deesa. One of many mysteries connected with the elephant is
+that his huge body needs less sleep than anything else that lives. Four
+or five hours in the night suffice--two just before midnight, lying down
+on one side; two just after one o’clock, lying down on the other. The
+rest of the silent hours are filled with eating and fidgeting and long
+grumbling soliloquies.
+
+At midnight, therefore, Moti Guj strode out of his pickets, for a
+thought had come to him that Deesa might be lying drunk somewhere in
+the dark forest with none to look after him. So all that night he chased
+through the undergrowth, blowing and trumpeting and shaking his ears. He
+went down to the river and blared across the shallows where Deesa used
+to wash him, but there was no answer. He could not find Deesa, but he
+disturbed all the elephants in the lines, and nearly frightened to death
+some gypsies in the woods.
+
+At dawn Deesa returned to the plantation. He had been very drunk indeed,
+and he expected to fall into trouble for outstaying his leave. He drew a
+long breath when he saw that the bungalow and the plantation were still
+uninjured; for he knew something of Moti Guj’s temper; and reported
+himself with many lies and salaams. Moti Guj had gone to his pickets for
+breakfast. His night exercise had made him hungry.
+
+‘Call up your beast,’ said the planter, and Deesa shouted in the
+mysterious elephant-language, that some mahouts believe came from China
+at the birth of the world, when elephants and not men were masters. Moti
+Guj heard and came. Elephants do not gallop. They move from spots at
+varying rates of speed. If an elephant wished to catch an express train
+he could not gallop, but he could catch the train. Thus Moti Guj was
+at the planter’s door almost before Chihun noticed that he had left his
+pickets. He fell into Deesa’s arms trumpeting with joy, and the man and
+beast wept and slobbered over each other, and handled each other from
+head to heel to see that no harm had befallen.
+
+‘Now we will get to work,’ said Deesa. ‘Lift me up, my son and my joy.’
+
+Moti Guj swung him up and the two went to the coffee-clearing to look
+for irksome stumps.
+
+The planter was too astonished to be very angry.
+
+
+
+
+L’ENVOI
+
+
+   My new-cut ashlar takes the light
+     Where crimson-blank the windows flare;
+   By my own work, before the night,
+    Great Overseer, I make my prayer.
+
+   If there be good in that I wrought,
+     Thy hand compelled it, Master, Thine;
+   Where I have failed to meet Thy thought
+     I know, through Thee, the blame is mine.
+
+   One instant’s toil to Thee denied
+     Stands all Eternity’s offence,
+   Of that I did with Thee to guide
+     To Thee, through Thee, be excellence.
+
+   Who, lest all thought of Eden fade,
+     Bring’st Eden to the craftsman’s brain,
+   Godlike to muse o’er his own trade
+     And Manlike stand with God again.
+
+   The depth and dream of my desire,
+     The bitter paths wherein I stray,
+   Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire,
+     Thou knowest Who hast made the Clay.
+
+   One stone the more swings to her place
+     In that dread Temple of Thy Worth
+   --It is enough that through Thy grace
+     I saw naught common on Thy earth.
+
+   Take not that vision from my ken;
+     Oh whatso’er may spoil or speed,
+   Help me to need no aid from men
+     That I may help such men as need!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life’s Handicap, by Rudyard Kipling
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+
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+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      Life's Handicap, by Rudyard Kipling
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
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+  </head>
+  <body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life's Handicap, by Rudyard Kipling
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Life's Handicap
+
+Author: Rudyard Kipling
+
+
+Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5777]
+This file was first posted on September 1, 2002
+Last Updated: October 7, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE'S HANDICAP ***
+
+
+
+
+Text file produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      LIFE&rsquo;S HANDICAP
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      BEING STORIES OF MINE OWN PEOPLE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Rudyard Kipling
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      1915
+    </h4>
+    <h3>
+      TO<br /> E.K.R.<br /> FROM<br /> R.K.<br /> 1887-89<br /> C.M.G.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> THE LANG MEN O&rsquo; LARUT </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> REINGELDER AND THE GERMAN FLAG </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> THE WANDERING JEW </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> THROUGH THE FIRE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> THE FINANCES OF THE GODS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> THE AMIR&rsquo;S HOMILY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> JEWS IN SHUSHAN </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> THE LIMITATIONS OF PAMBE SERANG </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> LITTLE TOBRAH </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> BUBBLING WELL ROAD </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> &lsquo;THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT&rsquo; </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> GEORGIE PORGIE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> NABOTH </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> THE DREAM OF DUNCAN PARRENNESS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> THE INCARNATION OF KRISHNA MULVANEY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> ON GREENHOW HILL </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> THE MAN WHO WAS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> THE MARK OF THE BEAST </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> THE RETURN OF IMRAY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> NAMGAY DOOLA </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> BURTRAN AND BIMI </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> MOTI GUJ&mdash;MUTINEER </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> L&rsquo;ENVOI </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In Northern India stood a monastery called The Chubara of Dhunni Bhagat.
+      No one remembered who or what Dhunni Bhagat had been. He had lived his
+      life, made a little money and spent it all, as every good Hindu should do,
+      on a work of piety&mdash;the Chubara. That was full of brick cells, gaily
+      painted with the figures of Gods and kings and elephants, where worn-out
+      priests could sit and meditate on the latter end of things; the paths were
+      brick paved, and the naked feet of thousands had worn them into gutters.
+      Clumps of mangoes sprouted from between the bricks; great pipal trees
+      overhung the well-windlass that whined all day; and hosts of parrots tore
+      through the trees. Crows and squirrels were tame in that place, for they
+      knew that never a priest would touch them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wandering mendicants, charm-sellers, and holy vagabonds for a hundred
+      miles round used to make the Chubara their place of call and rest.
+      Mahomedan, Sikh, and Hindu mixed equally under the trees. They were old
+      men, and when man has come to the turnstiles of Night all the creeds in
+      the world seem to him wonderfully alike and colourless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gobind the one-eyed told me this. He was a holy man who lived on an island
+      in the middle of a river and fed the fishes with little bread pellets
+      twice a day. In flood-time, when swollen corpses stranded themselves at
+      the foot of the island, Gobind would cause them to be piously burned, for
+      the sake of the honour of mankind, and having regard to his own account
+      with God hereafter. But when two-thirds of the island was torn away in a
+      spate, Gobind came across the river to Dhunni Bhagat&rsquo;s Chubara, he and his
+      brass drinking vessel with the well-cord round the neck, his short
+      arm-rest crutch studded with brass nails, his roll of bedding, his big
+      pipe, his umbrella, and his tall sugar-loaf hat with the nodding peacock
+      feathers in it. He wrapped himself up in his patched quilt made of every
+      colour and material in the world, sat down in a sunny corner of the very
+      quiet Chubara, and, resting his arm on his short-handled crutch, waited
+      for death. The people brought him food and little clumps of marigold
+      flowers, and he gave his blessing in return. He was nearly blind, and his
+      face was seamed and lined and wrinkled beyond belief, for he had lived in
+      his time which was before the English came within five hundred miles of
+      Dhunni Bhagat&rsquo;s Chubara.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we grew to know each other well, Gobind would tell me tales in a
+      voice most like the rumbling of heavy guns over a wooden bridge. His tales
+      were true, but not one in twenty could be printed in an English book,
+      because the English do not think as natives do. They brood over matters
+      that a native would dismiss till a fitting occasion; and what they would
+      not think twice about a native will brood over till a fitting occasion:
+      then native and English stare at each other hopelessly across great gulfs
+      of miscomprehension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And what,&rsquo; said Gobind one Sunday evening, &lsquo;is your honoured craft, and
+      by what manner of means earn you your daily bread?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;a kerani&mdash;one who writes with a pen upon paper, not
+      being in the service of the Government.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then what do you write?&rsquo; said Gobind. &lsquo;Come nearer, for I cannot see your
+      countenance, and the light fails.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I write of all matters that lie within my understanding, and of many that
+      do not. But chiefly I write of Life and Death, and men and women, and Love
+      and Fate according to the measure of my ability, telling the tale through
+      the mouths of one, two, or more people. Then by the favour of God the
+      tales are sold and money accrues to me that I may keep alive.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Even so,&rsquo; said Gobind. &lsquo;That is the work of the bazar story-teller; but
+      he speaks straight to men and women and does not write anything at all.
+      Only when the tale has aroused expectation, and calamities are about to
+      befall the virtuous, he stops suddenly and demands payment ere he
+      continues the narration. Is it so in your craft, my son?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have heard of such things when a tale is of great length, and is sold
+      as a cucumber, in small pieces.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay, I was once a famed teller of stories when I was begging on the road
+      between Koshin and Etra; before the last pilgrimage that ever I took to
+      Orissa. I told many tales and heard many more at the rest-houses in the
+      evening when we were merry at the end of the march. It is in my heart that
+      grown men are but as little children in the matter of tales, and the
+      oldest tale is the most beloved.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;With your people that is truth,&rsquo; said I. &lsquo;But in regard to our people
+      they desire new tales, and when all is written they rise up and declare
+      that the tale were better told in such and such a manner, and doubt either
+      the truth or the invention thereof.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But what folly is theirs!&rsquo; said Gobind, throwing out his knotted hand. &lsquo;A
+      tale that is told is a true tale as long as the telling lasts. And of
+      their talk upon it&mdash;you know how Bilas Khan, that was the prince of
+      tale-tellers, said to one who mocked him in the great rest-house on the
+      Jhelum road: &ldquo;Go on, my brother, and finish that I have begun,&rdquo; and he who
+      mocked took up the tale, but having neither voice nor manner for the task
+      came to a standstill, and the pilgrims at supper made him eat abuse and
+      stick half that night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, but with our people, money having passed, it is their right; as we
+      should turn against a shoeseller in regard to shoes if those wore out. If
+      ever I make a book you shall see and judge.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And the parrot said to the falling tree, Wait, brother, till I fetch a
+      prop!&rsquo; said Gobind with a grim chuckle. &lsquo;God has given me eighty years,
+      and it may be some over. I cannot look for more than day granted by day
+      and as a favour at this tide. Be swift.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;In what manner is it best to set about the task.&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;O chiefest of
+      those who string pearls with their tongue?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How do I know? Yet&rsquo;&mdash;he thought for a little&mdash;&lsquo;how should I not
+      know? God has made very many heads, but there is only one heart in all the
+      world among your people or my people. They are children in the matter of
+      tales.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But none are so terrible as the little ones, if a man misplace a word, or
+      in a second telling vary events by so much as one small devil.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay, I also have told tales to the little ones, but do thou this&mdash;&rsquo; 
+      His old eyes fell on the gaudy paintings of the wall, the blue and red
+      dome, and the flames of the poinsettias beyond. &lsquo;Tell them first of those
+      things that thou hast seen and they have seen together. Thus their
+      knowledge will piece out thy imperfections. Tell them of what thou alone
+      hast seen, then what thou hast heard, and since they be children tell them
+      of battles and kings, horses, devils, elephants, and angels, but omit not
+      to tell them of love and suchlike. All the earth is full of tales to him
+      who listens and does not drive away the poor from his door. The poor are
+      the best of tale-tellers; for they must lay their ear to the ground every
+      night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After this conversation the idea grew in my head, and Gobind was pressing
+      in his inquiries as to the health of the book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Later, when we had been parted for months, it happened that I was to go
+      away and far off, and I came to bid Gobind good-bye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is farewell between us now, for I go a very long journey,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And I also. A longer one than thou. But what of the book?&rsquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It will be born in due season if it is so ordained.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I would I could see it,&rsquo; said the old man, huddling beneath his quilt.
+      &lsquo;But that will not be. I die three days hence, in the night, a little
+      before the dawn. The term of my years is accomplished.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In nine cases out of ten a native makes no miscalculation as to the day of
+      his death. He has the foreknowledge of the beasts in this respect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then thou wilt depart in peace, and it is good talk, for thou hast said
+      that life is no delight to thee.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But it is a pity that our book is not born. How shall I know that there
+      is any record of my name?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Because I promise, in the forepart of the book, preceding everything
+      else, that it shall be written, Gobind, sadhu, of the island in the river
+      and awaiting God in Dhunni Bhagat&rsquo;s Chubara, first spoke of the book,&rsquo; 
+      said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And gave counsel&mdash;an old man&rsquo;s counsel. Gobind, son of Gobind of the
+      Chumi village in the Karaon tehsil, in the district of Mooltan. Will that
+      be written also?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That will be written also.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And the book will go across the Black Water to the houses of your people,
+      and all the Sahibs will know of me who am eighty years old?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All who read the book shall know. I cannot promise for the rest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That is good talk. Call aloud to all who are in the monastery, and I will
+      tell them this thing.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They trooped up, faquirs, sadhus, sunnyasis, byragis, nihangs, and
+      mullahs, priests of all faiths and every degree of raggedness, and Gobind,
+      leaning upon his crutch, spoke so that they were visibly filled with envy,
+      and a white-haired senior bade Gobind think of his latter end instead of
+      transitory repute in the mouths of strangers. Then Gobind gave me his
+      blessing and I came away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These tales have been collected from all places, and all sorts of people,
+      from priests in the Chubara, from Ala Yar the carver, Jiwun Singh the
+      carpenter, nameless men on steamers and trains round the world, women
+      spinning outside their cottages in the twilight, officers and gentlemen
+      now dead and buried, and a few, but these are the very best, my father
+      gave me. The greater part of them have been published in magazines and
+      newspapers, to whose editors I am indebted; but some are new on this side
+      of the water, and some have not seen the light before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The most remarkable stories are, of course, those which do not appear&mdash;for
+      obvious reasons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE LANG MEN O&rsquo; LARUT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; CO.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Chief Engineer&rsquo;s sleeping suit was of yellow striped with blue, and
+      his speech was the speech of Aberdeen. They sluiced the deck under him,
+      and he hopped on to the ornamental capstan, a black pipe between his
+      teeth, though the hour was not seven of the morn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Did you ever hear o&rsquo; the Lang Men o&rsquo; Larut?&rsquo; he asked when the Man from
+      Orizava had finished a story of an aboriginal giant discovered in the
+      wilds of Brazil. There was never story yet passed the lips of teller, but
+      the Man from Orizava could cap it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, we never did,&rsquo; we responded with one voice. The Man from Orizava
+      watched the Chief keenly, as a possible rival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m not telling the story for the sake of talking merely,&rsquo; said the
+      Chief, &lsquo;but as a warning against betting, unless you bet on a perrfect
+      certainty. The Lang Men o&rsquo; Larut were just a certainty. I have had talk
+      wi&rsquo; them. Now Larut, you will understand, is a dependency, or it may be an
+      outlying possession, o&rsquo; the island o&rsquo; Penang, and there they will get you
+      tin and manganese, an&rsquo; it mayhap mica, and all manner o&rsquo; meenerals. Larut
+      is a great place.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But what about the population?&rsquo; said the Man from Orizava.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The population,&rsquo; said the Chief slowly, &lsquo;were few but enorrmous. You must
+      understand that, exceptin&rsquo; the tin-mines, there is no special inducement
+      to Europeans to reside in Larut. The climate is warm and remarkably like
+      the climate o&rsquo; Calcutta; and in regard to Calcutta, it cannot have escaped
+      your obsairvation that&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Calcutta isn&rsquo;t Larut; and we&rsquo;ve only just come from it,&rsquo; protested the
+      Man from Orizava. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s a meteorological department in Calcutta, too.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay, but there&rsquo;s no meteorological department in Larut. Each man is a law
+      to himself. Some drink whisky, and some drink brandipanee, and some drink
+      cocktails&mdash;vara bad for the coats o&rsquo; the stomach is a cocktail&mdash;and
+      some drink sangaree, so I have been credibly informed; but one and all
+      they sweat like the packing of piston-head on a fourrteen-days&rsquo; voyage
+      with the screw racing half her time. But, as I was saying, the population
+      o&rsquo; Larut was five all told of English&mdash;that is to say, Scotch&mdash;an&rsquo; 
+      I&rsquo;m Scotch, ye know,&rsquo; said the Chief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Man from Orizava lit another cigarette, and waited patiently. It was
+      hopeless to hurry the Chief Engineer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am not pretending to account for the population o&rsquo; Larut being laid
+      down according to such fabulous dimensions. O&rsquo; the five white men engaged
+      upon the extraction o&rsquo; tin ore and mercantile pursuits, there were three
+      o&rsquo; the sons o&rsquo; Anak. Wait while I remember. Lammitter was the first by two
+      inches&mdash;a giant in the land, an&rsquo; a terreefic man to cross in his
+      ways. From heel to head he was six feet nine inches, and proportionately
+      built across and through the thickness of his body. Six good feet nine
+      inches&mdash;an overbearin&rsquo; man. Next to him, and I have forgotten his
+      precise business, was Sandy Vowle. And he was six feet seven, but lean and
+      lathy, and it was more in the elasteecity of his neck that the height lay
+      than in any honesty o&rsquo; bone and sinew. Five feet and a few odd inches may
+      have been his real height. The remainder came out when he held up his
+      head, and six feet seven he was upon the door-sills. I took his measure in
+      chalk standin&rsquo; on a chair. And next to him, but a proportionately made
+      man, ruddy and of a fair countenance, was Jock Coan&mdash;that they called
+      the Fir Cone. He was but six feet five, and a child beside Lammitter and
+      Vowle. When the three walked out together, they made a scunner run through
+      the colony o&rsquo; Larut. The Malays ran round them as though they had been the
+      giant trees in the Yosemite Valley&mdash;these three Lang Men o&rsquo; Larut. It
+      was perfectly ridiculous&mdash;a lusus naturae&mdash;that one little place
+      should have contained maybe the three tallest ordinar&rsquo; men upon the face
+      o&rsquo; the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Obsairve now the order o&rsquo; things. For it led to the finest big drink in
+      Larut, and six sore heads the morn that endured for a week. I am against
+      immoderate liquor, but the event to follow was a justification. You must
+      understand that many coasting steamers call at Larut wi&rsquo; strangers o&rsquo; the
+      mercantile profession. In the spring time, when the young cocoanuts were
+      ripening, and the trees o&rsquo; the forests were putting forth their leaves,
+      there came an American man to Larut, and he was six foot three, or it may
+      have been four, in his stockings. He came on business from Sacramento, but
+      he stayed for pleasure wi&rsquo; the Lang Men o&rsquo; Larut. Less than, a half o&rsquo; the
+      population were ordinar&rsquo; in their girth and stature, ye will understand&mdash;Howson
+      and Nailor, merchants, five feet nine or thereabouts. He had business with
+      those two, and he stood above them from the six feet threedom o&rsquo; his
+      height till they went to drink. In the course o&rsquo; conversation he said, as
+      tall men will, things about his height, and the trouble of it to him. That
+      was his pride o&rsquo; the flesh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;As the longest man in the island&mdash;&rdquo; he said, but there they took
+      him up and asked if he were sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I say I am the longest man in the island,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and on that I&rsquo;ll
+      bet my substance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They laid down the bed-plates of a big drink then and there, and put it
+      aside while they called Jock Coan from his house, near by among the
+      fireflies&rsquo; winking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;How&rsquo;s a&rsquo; wi&rsquo; you?&rdquo; said Jock, and came in by the side o&rsquo; the Sacramento
+      profligate, two inches, or it may have been one, taller than he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;You&rsquo;re long,&rdquo; said the man, opening his eyes. &ldquo;But I am longer.&rdquo; An&rsquo; 
+      they sent a whistle through the night an&rsquo; howkit out Sandy Vowle from his
+      bit bungalow, and he came in an&rsquo; stood by the side o&rsquo; Jock, an&rsquo; the pair
+      just fillit the room to the ceiling-cloth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The Sacramento man was a euchre-player and a most profane sweerer. &ldquo;You
+      hold both Bowers,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but the Joker is with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Fair an&rsquo; softly,&rdquo; says Nailor. &ldquo;Jock, whaur&rsquo;s Lang Lammitter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Here,&rdquo; says that man, putting his leg through the window and coming in
+      like an anaconda o&rsquo; the desert furlong by furlong, one foot in Penang and
+      one in Batavia, and a hand in North Borneo it may be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Are you suited?&rdquo; said Nailor, when the hinder end o&rsquo; Lang Lammitter was
+      slidden through the sill an&rsquo; the head of Lammitter was lost in the smoke
+      away above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The American man took out his card and put it on the table. &ldquo;Esdras B.
+      Longer is my name, America is my nation, &lsquo;Frisco is my resting-place, but
+      this here beats Creation,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Boys, giants&mdash;side-show giants&mdash;I
+      minded to slide out of my bet if I had been overtopped, on the strength of
+      the riddle on this paste-board. I would have done it if you had topped me
+      even by three inches, but when it comes to feet&mdash;yards&mdash;miles, I
+      am not the man to shirk the biggest drink that ever made the
+      travellers&rsquo;-joy palm blush with virginal indignation, or the orang-outang
+      and the perambulating dyak howl with envy. Set them up and continue till
+      the final conclusion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O mon, I tell you &lsquo;twas an awful sight to see those four giants threshing
+      about the house and the island, and tearin&rsquo; down the pillars thereof an&rsquo; 
+      throwing palm-trees broadcast, and currling their long legs round the
+      hills o&rsquo; Larut. An awfu&rsquo; sight! I was there. I did not mean to tell you,
+      but it&rsquo;s out now. I was not overcome, for I e&rsquo;en sat me down under the
+      pieces o&rsquo; the table at four the morn an&rsquo; meditated upon the strangeness of
+      things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Losh, yon&rsquo;s the breakfast-bell!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      REINGELDER AND THE GERMAN FLAG
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; CO.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hans Breitmann paddled across the deck in his pink pyjamas, a cup of tea
+      in one hand and a cheroot in the other, when the steamer was sweltering
+      down the coast on her way to Singapur. He drank beer all day and all
+      night, and played a game called &lsquo;Scairt&rsquo; with three compatriots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I haf washed,&rsquo; said he in a voice of thunder, &lsquo;but dere is no use washing
+      on these hell-seas. Look at me&mdash;I am still all wet and schweatin&rsquo;. It
+      is der tea dot makes me so. Boy, bring me Bilsener on ice.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You will die if you drink beer before breakfast,&rsquo; said one man. &lsquo;Beer is
+      the worst thing in the world for&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ya, I know&mdash;der liver. I haf no liver, und I shall not die. At least
+      I will not die obon dese benny sdeamers dot haf no beer fit to trink. If I
+      should haf died, I will haf don so a hoondert dimes before now&mdash;in
+      Shermany, in New York, in Japon, in Assam, und all over der inside bans of
+      South Amerique. Also in Shamaica should I hat died or in Siam, but I am
+      here; und der are my orchits dot I have drafelled all the vorld round to
+      find.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He pointed towards the wheel, where, in two rough wooden boxes, lay a mass
+      of shrivelled vegetation, supposed by all the ship to represent Assam
+      orchids of fabulous value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, orchids do not grow in the main streets of towns, and Hans Breitmann
+      had gone far to get his. There was nothing that he had not collected that
+      year, from king-crabs to white kangaroos.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Lisden now,&rsquo; said he, after he had been speaking for not much more than
+      ten minutes without a pause; &lsquo;Lisden und I will dell you a sdory to show
+      how bad und worse it is to go gollectin&rsquo; und belief vot anoder fool haf
+      said. Dis was in Uraguay which was in Amerique&mdash;North or Sout&rsquo; you
+      would not know&mdash;und I was hoontin&rsquo; orchits und aferydings else dot I
+      could back in my kanasters&mdash;dot is drafelling sbecimen-gaces. Dere
+      vas den mit me anoder man&mdash;Reingelder, dot vas his name&mdash;und he
+      vas hoontin&rsquo; also but only coral-snakes&mdash;joost Uraguay coral-snakes&mdash;aferykind
+      you could imagine. I dell you a coral-snake is a peauty&mdash;all red und
+      white like coral dot has been gestrung in bands upon der neck of a girl.
+      Dere is one snake howefer dot we who gollect know ash der Sherman Flag,
+      pecause id is red und plack und white, joost like a sausage mit druffles.
+      Reingelder he was naturalist&mdash;goot man&mdash;goot trinker&mdash;better
+      as me! &ldquo;By Gott,&rdquo; said Reingelder, &ldquo;I will get a Sherman Flag snake or I
+      will die.&rdquo; Und we toorned all Uraguay upside-behint all pecause of dot
+      Sherman Flag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Von day when we was in none knows where&mdash;shwingin&rsquo; in our hummocks
+      among der woods, oop comes a natif woman mit a Sherman Flag in a
+      bickle-bottle&mdash;my bickle-bottle&mdash;und we both fell from our
+      hummocks flat ubon our pot&mdash;what you call stomach&mdash;mit shoy at
+      dis thing. Now I was gollectin&rsquo; orchits also, und I knowed dot der idee of
+      life to Reingelder vas dis Sherman Flag. Derefore I bicked myselfs oop und
+      I said, &ldquo;Reingelder, dot is YOUR find.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Heart&rsquo;s true friend, dou
+      art a goot man,&rdquo; said Reingelder, und mit dot he obens der bickle-bottle,
+      und der natif woman she shqueals: &ldquo;Herr Gott! It will bite.&rdquo; I said&mdash;pecause
+      in Uraguay a man must be careful of der insects&mdash;&ldquo;Reingelder,
+      shpifligate her in der alcohol und den she will be all right.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Nein,&rdquo;
+       said Reingelder, &ldquo;I will der shnake alife examine. Dere is no fear. Der
+      coral-shnakes are mitout shting-apparatus brofided.&rdquo; Boot I looked at her
+      het, und she vas der het of a boison-shnake&mdash;der true viper cranium,
+      narrow und contract. &ldquo;It is not goot,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;she may bite und den&mdash;we
+      are tree hoondert mile from aferywheres. Broduce der alcohol und bickle
+      him alife.&rdquo; Reingelder he had him in his hand&mdash;grawlin&rsquo; und grawlin&rsquo; 
+      as slow as a woorm und dwice as guiet. &ldquo;Nonsense,&rdquo; says Reingelder. &ldquo;Yates
+      haf said dot not von of der coral-shnakes haf der sack of boison.&rdquo; Yates
+      vas der crate authorite ubon der reptilia of Sout&rsquo; Amerique. He haf
+      written a book. You do not know, of course, but he vas a crate authorite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I gum my eye upon der Sherman Flag, grawlin&rsquo; und grawlin&rsquo; in Reingelder&rsquo;s
+      fist, und der het vas not der het of innocence. &ldquo;Mein Gott,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;It
+      is you dot will get der sack&mdash;der sack from dis life here pelow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Den you may haf der shnake,&rdquo; says Reingelder, pattin&rsquo; it ubon her het.
+      &ldquo;See now, I will show you vat Yates haf written!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Uud mit dot he went indo his dent, unt brung out his big book of Yates;
+      der Sherman Flag grawlin&rsquo; in his fist. &ldquo;Yates haf said,&rdquo; said Reingelder,
+      und he throwed oben der book in der fork of his fist und read der passage,
+      proofin&rsquo; conglusivement dot nefer coral-shnake bite vas boison. Den he
+      shut der book mit a bang, und dot shqueeze der Sherman Flag, und she nip
+      once und dwice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Der liddle fool he haf bit me,&rdquo; says Reingelder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dese things was before we know apout der permanganat-potash injection. I
+      was discomfordable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Die oop der arm, Reingelder,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;und trink whisky ontil you can no
+      more trink.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Trink ten tousand tevils! I will go to dinner,&rdquo; said Reingelder, und he
+      put her afay und it vas very red mit emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We lifed upon soup, horse-flesh, und beans for dinner, but before we vas
+      eaten der soup, Reingelder he haf hold of his arm und cry, &ldquo;It is genumben
+      to der clavicle. I am a dead man; und Yates he haf lied in brint!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I dell you it vas most sad, for der symbtoms dot came vas all dose of
+      strychnine. He vas doubled into big knots, und den undoubled, und den
+      redoubled mooch worse dan pefore, und he frothed. I vas mit him, saying,
+      &ldquo;Reingelder, dost dou know me?&rdquo; but he himself, der inward gonsciousness
+      part, was peyond knowledge, und so I know he vas not in bain. Den he wrop
+      himself oop in von dremendous knot und den he died&mdash;all alone mit me
+      in Uraguay. I was sorry, for I lofed Reingelder, und I puried him, und den
+      I took der coral-shnake&mdash;dot Sherman Flag&mdash;so bad und
+      dreacherous und I bickled him alife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So I got him: und so I lost Reingelder.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE WANDERING JEW
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by Macmillan &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If you go once round the world in an easterly direction, you gain one
+      day,&rsquo; said the men of science to John Hay. In after years John Hay went
+      east, west, north, and south, transacted business, made love, and begat a
+      family, as have done many men, and the scientific information above
+      recorded lay neglected in the deeps of his mind with a thousand other
+      matters of equal importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a rich relative died, he found himself wealthy beyond any reasonable
+      expectation that he had entertained in his previous career, which had been
+      a chequered and evil one. Indeed, long before the legacy came to him,
+      there existed in the brain of John Hay a little cloud-a momentary
+      obscuration of thought that came and went almost before he could realize
+      that there was any solution of continuity. So do the bats flit round the
+      eaves of a house to show that the darkness is falling. He entered upon
+      great possessions, in money, land, and houses; but behind his delight
+      stood a ghost that cried out that his enjoyment of these things should not
+      be of long duration. It was the ghost of the rich relative, who had been
+      permitted to return to earth to torture his nephew into the grave.
+      Wherefore, under the spur of this constant reminder, John Hay, always
+      preserving the air of heavy business-like stolidity that hid the shadow on
+      his mind, turned investments, houses, and lands into sovereigns&mdash;-rich,
+      round, red, English sovereigns, each one worth twenty shillings. Lands may
+      become valueless, and houses fly heavenward on the wings of red flame, but
+      till the Day of Judgment a sovereign will always be a sovereign&mdash;that
+      is to say, a king of pleasures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Possessed of his sovereigns, John Hay would fain have spent them one by
+      one on such coarse amusements as his soul loved; but he was haunted by the
+      instant fear of Death; for the ghost of his relative stood in the hall of
+      his house close to the hat-rack, shouting up the stairway that life was
+      short, that there was no hope of increase of days, and that the
+      undertakers were already roughing out his nephew&rsquo;s coffin. John Hay was
+      generally alone in the house, and even when he had company, his friends
+      could not hear the clamorous uncle. The shadow inside his brain grew
+      larger and blacker. His fear of death was driving John Hay mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, from the deeps of his mind, where he had stowed away all his
+      discarded information, rose to light the scientific fact of the Easterly
+      journey. On the next occasion that his uncle shouted up the stairway
+      urging him to make haste and live, a shriller voice cried, &lsquo;Who goes round
+      the world once easterly, gains one day.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His growing diffidence and distrust of mankind made John Hay unwilling to
+      give this precious message of hope to his friends. They might take it up
+      and analyse it. He was sure it was true, but it would pain him acutely
+      were rough hands to examine it too closely. To him alone of all the
+      toiling generations of mankind had the secret of immortality been
+      vouchsafed. It would be impious&mdash;against all the designs of the
+      Creator&mdash;to set mankind hurrying eastward. Besides, this would crowd
+      the steamers inconveniently, and John Hay wished of all things to be
+      alone. If he could get round the world in two months&mdash;some one of
+      whom he had read, he could not remember the name, had covered the passage
+      in eighty days&mdash;he would gain a clear day; and by steadily continuing
+      to do it for thirty years, would gain one hundred and eighty days, or
+      nearly the half of a year. It would not be much, but in course of time, as
+      civilisation advanced, and the Euphrates Valley Railway was opened, he
+      could improve the pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Armed with many sovereigns, John Hay, in the thirty-fifth year of his age,
+      set forth on his travels, two voices bearing him company from Dover as he
+      sailed to Calais. Fortune favoured him. The Euphrates Valley Railway was
+      newly opened, and he was the first man who took ticket direct from Calais
+      to Calcutta&mdash;thirteen days in the train. Thirteen days in the train
+      are not good for the nerves; but he covered the world and returned to
+      Calais from America in twelve days over the two months, and started afresh
+      with four and twenty hours of precious time to his credit. Three years
+      passed, and John Hay religiously went round this earth seeking for more
+      time wherein to enjoy the remainder of his sovereigns. He became known on
+      many lines as the man who wanted to go on; when people asked him what he
+      was and what he did, he answered&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m the person who intends to live, and I am trying to do it now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His days were divided between watching the white wake spinning behind the
+      stern of the swiftest steamers, or the brown earth flashing past the
+      windows of the fastest trains; and he noted in a pocket-book every minute
+      that he had railed or screwed out of remorseless eternity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;This is better than praying for long life,&rsquo; quoth John Hay as he turned
+      his face eastward for his twentieth trip. The years had done more for him
+      than he dared to hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the extension of the Brahmaputra Valley line to meet the
+      newly-developed China Midland, the Calais railway ticket held good via
+      Karachi and Calcutta to Hongkong. The round trip could be managed in a
+      fraction over forty-seven days, and, filled with fatal exultation, John
+      Hay told the secret of his longevity to his only friend, the house-keeper
+      of his rooms in London. He spoke and passed; but the woman was one of
+      resource, and immediately took counsel with the lawyers who had first
+      informed John Hay of his golden legacy. Very many sovereigns still
+      remained, and another Hay longed to spend them on things more sensible
+      than railway tickets and steamer accommodation.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+The chase was long, for when a man is journeying literally for the dear
+life, he does not tarry upon the road. Round the world Hay swept anew,
+and overtook the wearied Doctor, who had been sent out to look for him,
+in Madras. It was there that he found the reward of his toil and the
+assurance of a blessed immortality. In half an hour the Doctor, watching
+always the parched lips, the shaking hands, and the eye that turned
+eternally to the east, won John Hay to rest in a little house close to
+the Madras surf. All that Hay need do was to hang by ropes from the roof
+of the room and let the round earth swing free beneath him. This was
+better than steamer or train, for he gained a day in a day, and was
+thus the equal of the undying sun. The other Hay would pay his expenses
+throughout eternity.
+
+ It is true that we cannot yet take tickets from Calais to Hongkong,
+though that will come about in fifteen years; but men say that if you
+wander along the southern coast of India you shall find in a neatly
+whitewashed little bungalow, sitting in a chair swung from the
+roof, over a sheet of thin steel which he knows so well destroys the
+attraction of the earth, an old and worn man who for ever faces the
+rising sun, a stop-watch in his hand, racing against eternity. He cannot
+drink, he does not smoke, and his living expenses amount to perhaps
+twenty-five rupees a month, but he is John Hay, the Immortal. Without,
+he hears the thunder of the wheeling world with which he is careful to
+explain he has no connection whatever; but if you say that it is only
+the noise of the surf, he will cry bitterly, for the shadow on his brain
+is passing away as the brain ceases to work, and he doubts sometimes
+whether the doctor spoke the truth.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why does not the sun always remain over my head?&rsquo; asks John Hay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THROUGH THE FIRE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Policeman rode through the Himalayan forest, under the moss-draped
+      oaks, and his orderly trotted after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s an ugly business, Bhere Singh,&rsquo; said the Policeman. &lsquo;Where are
+      they?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is a very ugly business,&rsquo; said Bhere Singh; &lsquo;and as for THEM, they
+      are, doubtless, now frying in a hotter fire than was ever made of
+      spruce-branches.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let us hope not,&rsquo; said the Policeman, &lsquo;for, allowing for the difference
+      between race and race, it&rsquo;s the story of Francesca da Rimini, Bhere
+      Singh.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bhere Singh knew nothing about Francesca da Rimini, so he held his peace
+      until they came to the charcoal-burners&rsquo; clearing where the dying flames
+      said &lsquo;whit, whit, whit&rsquo; as they fluttered and whispered over the white
+      ashes. It must have been a great fire when at full height. Men had seen it
+      at Donga Pa across the valley winking and blazing through the night, and
+      said that the charcoal-burners of Kodru were getting drunk. But it was
+      only Suket Singh, Sepoy of the load Punjab Native Infantry, and Athira, a
+      woman, burning&mdash;burning&mdash;burning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was how things befell; and the Policeman&rsquo;s Diary will bear me out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Athira was the wife of Madu, who was a charcoal-burner, one-eyed and of a
+      malignant disposition. A week after their marriage, he beat Athira with a
+      heavy stick. A month later, Suket Singh, Sepoy, came that way to the cool
+      hills on leave from his regiment, and electrified the villagers of Kodru
+      with tales of service and glory under the Government, and the honour in
+      which he, Suket Singh, was held by the Colonel Sahib Bahadur. And
+      Desdemona listened to Othello as Desdemonas have done all the world over,
+      and, as she listened, she loved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve a wife of my own,&rsquo; said Suket Singh, &lsquo;though that is no matter when
+      you come to think of it. I am also due to return to my regiment after a
+      time, and I cannot be a deserter&mdash;I who intend to be Havildar.&rsquo; There
+      is no Himalayan version of &lsquo;I could not love thee, dear, as much, Loved I
+      not Honour more;&rsquo; but Suket Singh came near to making one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Never mind,&rsquo; said Athira, &lsquo;stay with me, and, if Madu tries to beat me,
+      you beat him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Very good,&rsquo; said Suket Singh; and he beat Madu severely, to the delight
+      of all the charcoal-burners of Kodru.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That is enough,&rsquo; said Suket Singh, as he rolled Madu down the hillside.
+      &lsquo;Now we shall have peace.&rsquo; But Madu crawled up the grass slope again, and
+      hovered round his hut with angry eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He&rsquo;ll kill me dead,&rsquo; said Athira to Suket Singh. &lsquo;You must take me away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;ll be a trouble in the Lines. My wife will pull out my beard; but
+      never mind,&rsquo; said Suket Singh, &lsquo;I will take you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was loud trouble in the Lines, and Suket Singh&rsquo;s beard was pulled,
+      and Suket Singh&rsquo;s wife went to live with her mother and took away the
+      children. &lsquo;That&rsquo;s all right,&rsquo; said Athira; and Suket Singh said, &lsquo;Yes,
+      that&rsquo;s all right.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So there was only Madu left in the hut that looks across the valley to
+      Donga Pa; and, since the beginning of time, no one has had any sympathy
+      for husbands so unfortunate as Madu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to Juseen Daze, the wizard-man who keeps the Talking Monkey&rsquo;s
+      Head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Get me back my wife,&rsquo; said Madu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t,&rsquo; said Juseen Daze, &lsquo;until you have made the Sutlej in the valley
+      run up the Donga Pa.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No riddles,&rsquo; said Madu, and he shook his hatchet above Juseen Daze&rsquo;s
+      white head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Give all your money to the headmen of the village,&rsquo; said Juseen Daze;
+      &lsquo;and they will hold a communal Council, and the Council will send a
+      message that your wife must come back.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Madu gave up all his worldly wealth, amounting to twenty-seven rupees,
+      eight annas, three pice, and a silver chain, to the Council of Kodru. And
+      it fell as Juseen Daze foretold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sent Athira&rsquo;s brother down into Suket Singh&rsquo;s regiment to call Athira
+      home. Suket Singh kicked him once round the Lines, and then handed him
+      over to the Havildar, who beat him with a belt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come back,&rsquo; yelled Athira&rsquo;s brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where to?&rsquo; said Athira.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;To Madu,&rsquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Never,&rsquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then Juseen Daze will send a curse, and you will wither away like a
+      barked tree in the springtime,&rsquo; said Athira&rsquo;s brother. Athira slept over
+      these things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning she had rheumatism. &lsquo;I am beginning to wither away like a
+      barked tree in the springtime,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;That is the curse of Juseen
+      Daze.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she really began to wither away because her heart was dried up with
+      fear, and those who believe in curses die from curses. Suket Singh, too,
+      was afraid because he loved Athira better than his very life. Two months
+      passed, and Athira&rsquo;s brother stood outside the regimental Lines again and
+      yelped, &lsquo;Aha! You are withering away. Come back.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I will come back,&rsquo; said Athira.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Say rather that WE will come back,&rsquo; said Suket Singh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ai; but when?&rsquo; said Athira&rsquo;s brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Upon a day very early in the morning,&rsquo; said Suket Singh; and he tramped
+      off to apply to the Colonel Sahib Bahadur for one week&rsquo;s leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am withering away like a barked tree in the spring,&rsquo; moaned Athira.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You will be better soon,&rsquo; said Suket Singh; and he told her what was in
+      his heart, and the two laughed together softly, for they loved each other.
+      But Athira grew better from that hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went away together, travelling third-class by train as the
+      regulations provided, and then in a cart to the low hills, and on foot to
+      the high ones. Athira sniffed the scent of the pines of her own hills, the
+      wet Himalayan hills. &lsquo;It is good to be alive,&rsquo; said Athira.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hah!&rsquo; said Suket Singh. &lsquo;Where is the Kodru road and where is the Forest
+      Ranger&rsquo;s house?&rsquo;...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It cost forty rupees twelve years ago,&rsquo; said the Forest Ranger, handing
+      the gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Here are twenty,&rsquo; said Suket Singh, &lsquo;and you must give me the best
+      bullets.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is very good to be alive,&rsquo; said Athira wistfully, sniffing the scent
+      of the pine-mould; and they waited till the night had fallen upon Kodru
+      and the Donga Pa. Madu had stacked the dry wood for the next day&rsquo;s
+      charcoal-burning on the spur above his house. &lsquo;It is courteous in Madu to
+      save us this trouble,&rsquo; said Suket Singh as he stumbled on the pile, which
+      was twelve foot square and four high. &lsquo;We must wait till the moon rises.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the moon rose, Athira knelt upon the pile. &lsquo;If it were only a
+      Government Snider,&rsquo; said Suket Singh ruefully, squinting down the
+      wire-bound barrel of the Forest Ranger&rsquo;s gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Be quick,&rsquo; said Athira; and Suket Singh was quick; but Athira was quick
+      no longer. Then he lit the pile at the four corners and climbed on to it,
+      re-loading the gun.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+The little flames began to peer up between the big logs atop of the
+brushwood. &lsquo;The Government should teach us to pull the triggers with
+our toes,&rsquo; said Suket Singh grimly to the moon. That was the last public
+observation of Sepoy Suket Singh.
+
+ Upon a day, early in the morning, Madu came to the pyre and shrieked
+very grievously, and ran away to catch the Policeman who was on tour in
+the district.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The base-born has ruined four rupees&rsquo; worth of charcoal wood,&rsquo; Madu
+      gasped. &lsquo;He has also killed my wife, and he has left a letter which I
+      cannot read, tied to a pine bough.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the stiff, formal hand taught in the regimental school, Sepoy Suket
+      Singh had written&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let us be burned together, if anything remain over, for we have made the
+      necessary prayers. We have also cursed Madu, and Malak the brother of
+      Athira&mdash;both evil men. Send my service to the Colonel Sahib Bahadur.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Policeman looked long and curiously at the marriage bed of red and
+      white ashes on which lay, dull black, the barrel of the Ranger&rsquo;s gun. He
+      drove his spurred heel absently into a half-charred log, and the
+      chattering sparks flew upwards. &lsquo;Most extraordinary people,&rsquo; said the
+      Policeman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;WHE-W, WHEW, OUIOU,&rsquo; said the little flames.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Policeman entered the dry bones of the case, for the Punjab Government
+      does not approve of romancing, in his Diary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But who will pay me those four rupees?&rsquo; said Madu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE FINANCES OF THE GODS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening meal was ended in Dhunni Bhagat&rsquo;s Chubara and the old priests
+      were smoking or counting their beads. A little naked child pattered in,
+      with its mouth wide open, a handful of marigold flowers in one hand, and a
+      lump of conserved tobacco in the other. It tried to kneel and make
+      obeisance to Gobind, but it was so fat that it fell forward on its shaven
+      head, and rolled on its side, kicking and gasping, while the marigolds
+      tumbled one way and the tobacco the other. Gobind laughed, set it up
+      again, and blessed the marigold flowers as he received the tobacco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;From my father,&rsquo; said the child. &lsquo;He has the fever, and cannot come. Wilt
+      thou pray for him, father?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Surely, littlest; but the smoke is on the ground, and the night-chill is
+      in the airs, and it is not good to go abroad naked in the autumn.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have no clothes,&rsquo; said the child, &lsquo;and all to-day I have been carrying
+      cow-dung cakes to the bazar. It was very hot, and I am very tired.&rsquo; It
+      shivered a little, for the twilight was cool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gobind lifted an arm under his vast tattered quilt of many colours, and
+      made an inviting little nest by his side. The child crept in, and Gobind
+      filled his brass-studded leather waterpipe with the new tobacco. When I
+      came to the Chubara the shaven head with the tuft atop, and the beady
+      black eyes looked out of the folds of the quilt as a squirrel looks out
+      from his nest, and Gobind was smiling while the child played with his
+      beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would have said something friendly, but remembered in time that if the
+      child fell ill afterwards I should be credited with the Evil Eye, and that
+      is a horrible possession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sit thou still, Thumbling,&rsquo; I said as it made to get up and run away.
+      &lsquo;Where is thy slate, and why has the teacher let such an evil character
+      loose on the streets when there are no police to protect us weaklings? In
+      which ward dost thou try to break thy neck with flying kites from the
+      house-tops?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, Sahib, nay,&rsquo; said the child, burrowing its face into Gobind&rsquo;s beard,
+      and twisting uneasily. &lsquo;There was a holiday to-day among the schools, and
+      I do not always fly kites. I play ker-li-kit like the rest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cricket is the national game among the schoolboys of the Punjab, from the
+      naked hedge-school children, who use an old kerosene-tin for wicket, to
+      the B.A.&lsquo;s of the University, who compete for the Championship belt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thou play kerlikit! Thou art half the height of the bat!&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child nodded resolutely. &lsquo;Yea, I DO play. PERLAYBALL OW-AT! RAN, RAN,
+      RAN! I know it all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But thou must not forget with all this to pray to the Gods according to
+      custom,&rsquo; said Gobind, who did not altogether approve of cricket and
+      western innovations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I do not forget,&rsquo; said the child in a hushed voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Also to give reverence to thy teacher, and&rsquo;&mdash;Gobind&rsquo;s voice softened&mdash;&rsquo; 
+      to abstain from pulling holy men by the beard, little badling. Eh, eh,
+      eh?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child&rsquo;s face was altogether hidden in the great white beard, and it
+      began to whimper till Gobind soothed it as children are soothed all the
+      world over, with the promise of a story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I did not think to frighten thee, senseless little one. Look up! Am I
+      angry? Are, are, are! Shall I weep too, and of our tears make a great pond
+      and drown us both, and then thy father will never get well, lacking thee
+      to pull his beard? Peace, peace, and I will tell thee of the Gods. Thou
+      hast heard many tales?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Very many, father.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now, this is a new one which thou hast not heard. Long and long ago when
+      the Gods walked with men as they do to-day, but that we have not faith to
+      see, Shiv, the greatest of Gods, and Parbati his wife, were walking in the
+      garden of a temple.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Which temple? That in the Nandgaon ward?&rsquo; said the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, very far away. Maybe at Trimbak or Hurdwar, whither thou must make
+      pilgrimage when thou art a man. Now, there was sitting in the garden under
+      the jujube trees, a mendicant that had worshipped Shiv for forty years,
+      and he lived on the offerings of the pious, and meditated holiness night
+      and day.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh father, was it thou?&rsquo; said the child, looking up with large eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, I have said it was long ago, and, moreover, this mendicant was
+      married.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Did they put him on a horse with flowers on his head, and forbid him to
+      go to sleep all night long? Thus they did to me when they made my
+      wedding,&rsquo; said the child, who had been married a few months before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And what didst thou do?&rsquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I wept, and they called me evil names, and then I smote HER, and we wept
+      together.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thus did not the mendicant,&rsquo; said Gobind; &lsquo;for he was a holy man, and
+      very poor. Parbati perceived him sitting naked by the temple steps where
+      all went up and down, and she said to Shiv, &ldquo;What shall men think of the
+      Gods when the Gods thus scorn their worshippers? For forty years yonder
+      man has prayed to us, and yet there be only a few grains of rice and some
+      broken cowries before him after all. Men&rsquo;s hearts will be hardened by this
+      thing.&rdquo; And Shiv said, &ldquo;It shall be looked to,&rdquo; and so he called to the
+      temple which was the temple of his son, Ganesh of the elephant head,
+      saying, &ldquo;Son, there is a mendicant without who is very poor. What wilt
+      thou do for him?&rdquo; Then that great elephant-headed One awoke in the dark
+      and answered, &ldquo;In three days, if it be thy will, he shall have one lakh of
+      rupees.&rdquo; Then Shiv and Parbati went away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But there was a money-lender in the garden hidden among the marigolds&rsquo;&mdash;the
+      child looked at the ball of crumpled blossoms in its hands&mdash;&lsquo;ay,
+      among the yellow marigolds, and he heard the Gods talking. He was a
+      covetous man, and of a black heart, and he desired that lakh of rupees for
+      himself. So he went to the mendicant and said, &ldquo;O brother, how much do the
+      pious give thee daily?&rdquo; The mendicant said, &ldquo;I cannot tell. Sometimes a
+      little rice, sometimes a little pulse, and a few cowries and, it has been,
+      pickled mangoes, and dried fish.&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That is good,&rsquo; said the child, smacking its lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then said the money-lender, &ldquo;Because I have long watched thee, and
+      learned to love thee and thy patience, I will give thee now five rupees
+      for all thy earnings of the three days to come. There is only a bond to
+      sign on the matter.&rdquo; But the mendicant said, &ldquo;Thou art mad. In two months
+      I do not receive the worth of five rupees,&rdquo; and he told the thing to his
+      wife that evening. She, being a woman, said, &ldquo;When did money-lender ever
+      make a bad bargain? The wolf runs through the corn for the sake of the fat
+      deer. Our fate is in the hands of the Gods. Pledge it not even for three
+      days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So the mendicant returned to the money-lender, and would not sell. Then
+      that wicked man sat all day before him offering more and more for those
+      three days&rsquo; earnings. First, ten, fifty, and a hundred rupees; and then,
+      for he did not know when the Gods would pour down their gifts, rupees by
+      the thousand, till he had offered half a lakh of rupees. Upon this sum the
+      mendicant&rsquo;s wife shifted her counsel, and the mendicant signed the bond,
+      and the money was paid in silver; great white bullocks bringing it by the
+      cartload. But saving only all that money, the mendicant received nothing
+      from the Gods at all, and the heart of the money-lender was uneasy on
+      account of expectation. Therefore at noon of the third day the
+      money-lender went into the temple to spy upon the councils of the Gods,
+      and to learn in what manner that gift might arrive. Even as he was making
+      his prayers, a crack between the stones of the floor gaped, and, closing,
+      caught him by the heel. Then he heard the Gods walking in the temple in
+      the darkness of the columns, and Shiv called to his son Ganesh, saying,
+      &ldquo;Son, what hast thou done in regard to the lakh of rupees for the
+      mendicant?&rdquo; And Ganesh woke, for the money-lender heard the dry rustle of
+      his trunk uncoiling, and he answered, &ldquo;Father, one half of the money has
+      been paid, and the debtor for the other half I hold here fast by the
+      heel.&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child bubbled with laughter. &lsquo;And the moneylender paid the mendicant?&rsquo; 
+      it said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Surely, for he whom the Gods hold by the heel must pay to the uttermost.
+      The money was paid at evening, all silver, in great carts, and thus Ganesh
+      did his work.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nathu! Ohe Nathu!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A woman was calling in the dusk by the door of the courtyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child began to wriggle. &lsquo;That is my mother,&rsquo; it said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go then, littlest,&rsquo; answered Gobind; &lsquo;but stay a moment.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He ripped a generous yard from his patchwork-quilt, put it over the
+      child&rsquo;s shoulders, and the child ran away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE AMIR&rsquo;S HOMILY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MacMillan &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His Royal Highness Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, G.C.S.I., and
+      trusted ally of Her Imperial Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of
+      India, is a gentleman for whom all right-thinking people should have a
+      profound regard. Like most other rulers, he governs not as he would but as
+      he can, and the mantle of his authority covers the most turbulent race
+      under the stars. To the Afghan neither life, property, law, nor kingship
+      are sacred when his own lusts prompt him to rebel. He is a thief by
+      instinct, a murderer by heredity and training, and frankly and bestially
+      immoral by all three. None the less he has his own crooked notions of
+      honour, and his character is fascinating to study. On occasion he will
+      fight without reason given till he is hacked in pieces; on other occasions
+      he will refuse to show fight till he is driven into a corner. Herein he is
+      as unaccountable as the gray wolf, who is his blood-brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And these men His Highness rules by the only weapon that they understand&mdash;the
+      fear of death, which among some Orientals is the beginning of wisdom. Some
+      say that the Amir&rsquo;s authority reaches no farther than a rifle bullet can
+      range; but as none are quite certain when their king may be in their
+      midst, and as he alone holds every one of the threads of Government, his
+      respect is increased among men. Gholam Hyder, the Commander-in-chief of
+      the Afghan army, is feared reasonably, for he can impale; all Kabul city
+      fears the Governor of Kabul, who has power of life and death through all
+      the wards; but the Amir of Afghanistan, though outlying tribes pretend
+      otherwise when his back is turned, is dreaded beyond chief and governor
+      together. His word is red law; by the gust of his passion falls the leaf
+      of man&rsquo;s life, and his favour is terrible. He has suffered many things,
+      and been a hunted fugitive before he came to the throne, and he
+      understands all the classes of his people. By the custom of the East any
+      man or woman having a complaint to make, or an enemy against whom to be
+      avenged, has the right of speaking face to face with the king at the daily
+      public audience. This is personal government, as it was in the days of
+      Harun al Raschid of blessed memory, whose times exist still and will exist
+      long after the English have passed away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The privilege of open speech is of course exercised at certain personal
+      risk. The king may be pleased, and raise the speaker to honour for that
+      very bluntness of speech which three minutes later brings a too imitative
+      petitioner to the edge of the ever ready blade. And the people love to
+      have it so, for it is their right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It happened upon a day in Kabul that the Amir chose to do his day&rsquo;s work
+      in the Baber Gardens, which lie a short distance from the city of Kabul. A
+      light table stood before him, and round the table in the open air were
+      grouped generals and finance ministers according to their degree. The
+      Court and the long tail of feudal chiefs&mdash;men of blood, fed and cowed
+      by blood&mdash;stood in an irregular semicircle round the table, and the
+      wind from the Kabul orchards blew among them. All day long sweating
+      couriers dashed in with letters from the outlying districts with rumours
+      of rebellion, intrigue, famine, failure of payments, or announcements of
+      treasure on the road; and all day long the Amir would read the dockets,
+      and pass such of these as were less private to the officials whom they
+      directly concerned, or call up a waiting chief for a word of explanation.
+      It is well to speak clearly to the ruler of Afghanistan. Then the grim
+      head, under the black astrachan cap with the diamond star in front, would
+      nod gravely, and that chief would return to his fellows. Once that
+      afternoon a woman clamoured for divorce against her husband, who was bald,
+      and the Amir, hearing both sides of the case, bade her pour curds over the
+      bare scalp, and lick them off, that the hair might grown again, and she be
+      contented. Here the Court laughed, and the woman withdrew, cursing her
+      king under her breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when twilight was falling, and the order of the Court was a little
+      relaxed, there came before the king, in custody, a trembling haggard
+      wretch, sore with much buffeting, but of stout enough build, who had
+      stolen three rupees&mdash;of such small matters does His Highness take
+      cognisance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why did you steal?&rsquo; said he; and when the king asks questions they do
+      themselves service who answer directly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I was poor, and no one gave. Hungry, and there was no food.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why did you not work?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I could find no work, Protector of the Poor, and I was starving.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You lie. You stole for drink, for lust, for idleness, for anything but
+      hunger, since any man who will may find work and daily bread.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prisoner dropped his eyes. He had attended the Court before, and he
+      knew the ring of the death-tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Any man may get work. Who knows this so well as I do? for I too have been
+      hungered&mdash;not like you, bastard scum, but as any honest man may be,
+      by the turn of Fate and the will of God.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Growing warm, the Amir turned to his nobles all arow and thrust the hilt
+      of his sabre aside with his elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You have heard this Son of Lies? Hear me tell a true tale. I also was
+      once starved, and tightened my belt on the sharp belly-pinch. Nor was I
+      alone, for with me was another, who did not fail me in my evil days, when
+      I was hunted, before ever I came to this throne. And wandering like a
+      houseless dog by Kandahar, my money melted, melted, melted till&mdash;&rsquo; He
+      flung out a bare palm before the audience. &lsquo;And day upon day, faint and
+      sick, I went back to that one who waited, and God knows how we lived, till
+      on a day I took our best lihaf&mdash;silk it was, fine work of Iran, such
+      as no needle now works, warm, and a coverlet for two, and all that we had.
+      I brought it to a money-lender in a bylane, and I asked for three rupees
+      upon it. He said to me, who am now the King, &ldquo;You are a thief. This is
+      worth three hundred.&rdquo; &ldquo;I am no thief,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;but a prince of good
+      blood, and I am hungry.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Prince of wandering beggars,&rdquo; said that
+      money-lender, &ldquo;I have no money with me, but go to my house with my clerk
+      and he will give you two rupees eight annas, for that is all I will lend.&rdquo;
+       So I went with the clerk to the house, and we talked on the way, and he
+      gave me the money. We lived on it till it was spent, and we fared hard.
+      And then that clerk said, being a young man of a good heart, &ldquo;Surely the
+      money-lender will lend yet more on that lihaf,&rdquo; and he offered me two
+      rupees. These I refused, saying, &ldquo;Nay; but get me some work.&rdquo; And he got
+      me work, and I, even I, Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, wrought day by
+      day as a coolie, bearing burdens, and labouring of my hands, receiving
+      four annas wage a day for my sweat and backache. But he, this bastard son
+      of naught, must steal! For a year and four months I worked, and none dare
+      say that I lie, for I have a witness, even that clerk who is now my
+      friend.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there rose in his place among the Sirdars and the nobles one clad in
+      silk, who folded his hands and said, &lsquo;This is the truth of God, for I,
+      who, by the favour of God and the Amir, am such as you know, was once
+      clerk to that money-lender.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause, and the Amir cried hoarsely to the prisoner, throwing
+      scorn upon him, till he ended with the dread &lsquo;Dar arid,&rsquo; which clinches
+      justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they led the thief away, and the whole of him was seen no more
+      together; and the Court rustled out of its silence, whispering, &lsquo;Before
+      God and the Prophet, but this is a man!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      JEWS IN SHUSHAN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1981, by Macmillan &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My newly purchased house furniture was, at the least, insecure; the legs
+      parted from the chairs, and the tops from the tables, on the slightest
+      provocation. But such as it was, it was to be paid for, and Ephraim, agent
+      and collector for the local auctioneer, waited in the verandah with the
+      receipt. He was announced by the Mahomedan servant as &lsquo;Ephraim, Yahudi&rsquo;&mdash;Ephraim
+      the Jew. He who believes in the Brotherhood of Man should hear my Elahi
+      Bukhsh grinding the second word through his white teeth with all the scorn
+      he dare show before his master. Ephraim was, personally, meek in manner&mdash;so
+      meek indeed that one could not understand how he had fallen into the
+      profession of bill-collecting. He resembled an over-fed sheep, and his
+      voice suited his figure. There was a fixed, unvarying mask of childish
+      wonder upon his face. If you paid him, he was as one marvelling at your
+      wealth; if you sent him away, he seemed puzzled at your hard-heartedness.
+      Never was Jew more unlike his dread breed. Ephraim wore list slippers and
+      coats of duster-cloth, so preposterously patterned that the most brazen of
+      British subalterns would have shied from them in fear. Very slow and
+      deliberate was his speech, and carefully guarded to give offence to no
+      one. After many weeks, Ephraim was induced to speak to me of his friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There be eight of us in Shushan, and we are waiting till there are ten.
+      Then we shall apply for a synagogue, and get leave from Calcutta. To-day
+      we have no synagogue; and I, only I, am Priest and Butcher to our people.
+      I am of the tribe of Judah&mdash;I think, but I am not sure. My father was
+      of the tribe of Judah, and we wish much to get our synagogue. I shall be a
+      priest of that synagogue.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shushan is a big city in the North of India, counting its dwellers by the
+      ten thousand; and these eight of the Chosen People were shut up in its
+      midst, waiting till time or chance sent them their full congregation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miriam the wife of Ephraim, two little children, an orphan boy of their
+      people, Epraim&rsquo;s uncle Jackrael Israel, a white-haired old man, his wife
+      Hester, a Jew from Cutch, one Hyem Benjamin, and Ephraim, Priest and
+      Butcher, made up the list of the Jews in Shushan. They lived in one house,
+      on the outskirts of the great city, amid heaps of saltpetre, rotten
+      bricks, herds of kine, and a fixed pillar of dust caused by the incessant
+      passing of the beasts to the river to drink. In the evening the children
+      of the City came to the waste place to fly their kites, and Ephraim&rsquo;s sons
+      held aloof, watching the sport from the roof, but never descending to take
+      part in them. At the back of the house stood a small brick enclosure, in
+      which Ephraim prepared the daily meat for his people after the custom of
+      the Jews. Once the rude door of the square was suddenly smashed open by a
+      struggle from inside, and showed the meek bill-collector at his work,
+      nostrils dilated, lips drawn back over his teeth, and his hands upon a
+      half-maddened sheep. He was attired in strange raiment, having no relation
+      whatever to duster coats or list slippers, and a knife was in his mouth.
+      As he struggled with the animal between the walls, the breath came from
+      him in thick sobs, and the nature of the man seemed changed. When the
+      ordained slaughter was ended, he saw that the door was open and shut it
+      hastily, his hand leaving a red mark on the timber, while his children
+      from the neighbouring house-top looked down awe-stricken and open-eyed. A
+      glimpse of Ephraim busied in one of his religious capacities was no thing
+      to be desired twice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Summer came upon Shushan, turning the trodden waste-ground to iron, and
+      bringing sickness to the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It will not touch us,&rsquo; said Ephraim confidently. &lsquo;Before the winter we
+      shall have our synagogue. My brother and his wife and children are coming
+      up from Calcutta, and THEN I shall be the priest of the synagogue.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jackrael Israel, the old man, would crawl out in the stifling evenings to
+      sit on the rubbish-heap and watch the corpses being borne down to the
+      river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It will not come near us,&rsquo; said Jackrael Israel feebly, &lsquo;for we are the
+      People of God, and my nephew will be priest of our synagogue. Let them
+      die.&rsquo; He crept back to his house again and barred the door to shut himself
+      off from the world of the Gentile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Miriam, the wife of Ephraim, looked out of the window at the dead as
+      the biers passed and said that she was afraid. Ephraim comforted her with
+      hopes of the synagogue to be, and collected bills as was his custom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In one night, the two children died and were buried early in the morning
+      by Ephraim. The deaths never appeared in the City returns. &lsquo;The sorrow is
+      my sorrow,&rsquo; said Ephraim; and this to him seemed a sufficient reason for
+      setting at naught the sanitary regulations of a large, flourishing, and
+      remarkably well-governed Empire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The orphan boy, dependent on the charity of Ephraim and his wife, could
+      have felt no gratitude, and must have been a ruffian. He begged for
+      whatever money his protectors would give him, and with that fled
+      down-country for his life. A week after the death of her children Miriam
+      left her bed at night and wandered over the country to find them. She
+      heard them crying behind every bush, or drowning in every pool of water in
+      the fields, and she begged the cartmen on the Grand Trunk Road not to
+      steal her little ones from her. In the morning the sun rose and beat upon
+      her bare head, and she turned into the cool wet crops to lie down and
+      never came back; though Hyem Benjamin and Ephraim sought her for two
+      nights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The look of patient wonder on Ephraim&rsquo;s face deepened, but he presently
+      found an explanation. &lsquo;There are so few of us here, and these people are
+      so many,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;that, it may be, our God has forgotten us.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the house on the outskirts of the city old Jackrael Israel and Hester
+      grumbled that there was no one to wait on them, and that Miriam had been
+      untrue to her race. Ephraim went out and collected bills, and in the
+      evenings smoked with Hyem Benjamin till, one dawning, Hyem Benjamin died,
+      having first paid all his debts to Ephraim. Jackrael Israel and Hester sat
+      alone in the empty house all day, and, when Ephraim returned, wept the
+      easy tears of age till they cried themselves asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A week later Ephraim, staggering under a huge bundle of clothes and
+      cooking-pots, led the old man and woman to the railway station, where the
+      bustle and confusion made them whimper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We are going back to Calcutta,&rsquo; said Ephraim, to whose sleeve Hester was
+      clinging. &lsquo;There are more of us there, and here my house is empty.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He helped Hester into the carriage and, turning back, said to me, &lsquo;I
+      should have been priest of the synagogue if there had been ten of us.
+      Surely we must have been forgotten by our God.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The remnant of the broken colony passed out of the station on their
+      journey south; while a subaltern, turning over the books on the bookstall,
+      was whistling to himself &lsquo;The Ten Little Nigger Boys.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the tune sounded as solemn as the Dead March.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the dirge of the Jews in Shushan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE LIMITATIONS OF PAMBE SERANG
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you consider the circumstances of the case, it was the only thing that
+      he could do. But Pambe Serang has been hanged by the neck till he is dead,
+      and Nurkeed is dead also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three years ago, when the Elsass-Lothringen steamer Saarbruck was coaling
+      at Aden and the weather was very hot indeed, Nurkeed, the big fat Zanzibar
+      stoker who fed the second right furnace thirty feet down in the hold, got
+      leave to go ashore. He departed a &lsquo;Seedee boy,&rsquo; as they call the stokers;
+      he returned the full-blooded Sultan of Zanzibar&mdash;His Highness Sayyid
+      Burgash, with a bottle in each hand. Then he sat on the fore-hatch
+      grating, eating salt fish and onions, and singing the songs of a far
+      country. The food belonged to Pambe, the Serang or head man of the lascar
+      sailors. He had just cooked it for himself, turned to borrow some salt,
+      and when he came back Nurkeed&rsquo;s dirty black fingers were spading into the
+      rice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A serang is a person of importance, far above a stoker, though the stoker
+      draws better pay. He sets the chorus of &lsquo;Hya! Hulla! Hee-ah! Heh!&rsquo; when
+      the captain&rsquo;s gig is pulled up to the davits; he heaves the lead too; and
+      sometimes, when all the ship is lazy, he puts on his whitest muslin and a
+      big red sash, and plays with the passengers&rsquo; children on the quarter-deck.
+      Then the passengers give him money, and he saves it all up for an orgie at
+      Bombay or Calcutta, or Pulu Penang. &lsquo;Ho! you fat black barrel, you&rsquo;re
+      eating my food!&rsquo; said Pambe, in the Other Lingua Franca that begins where
+      the Levant tongue stops, and runs from Port Said eastward till east is
+      west, and the sealing-brigs of the Kurile Islands gossip with the strayed
+      Hakodate junks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Son of Eblis, monkey-face, dried shark&rsquo;s liver, pigman, I am the Sultan
+      Sayyid Burgash, and the commander of all this ship. Take away your
+      garbage;&rsquo; and Nurkeed thrust the empty pewter rice-plate into Pambe&rsquo;s
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pambe beat it into a basin over Nurkeed&rsquo;s woolly head. Nurkeed drew HIS
+      sheath-knife and stabbed Pambe in the leg. Pambe drew his sheath-knife;
+      but Nurkeed dropped down into the darkness of the hold and spat through
+      the grating at Pambe, who was staining the clean fore-deck with his blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only the white moon saw these things; for the officers were looking after
+      the coaling, and the passengers were tossing in their close cabins. &lsquo;All
+      right,&rsquo; said Pambe&mdash;and went forward to tie up his leg&mdash;&lsquo;we will
+      settle the account later on.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a Malay born in India: married once in Burma, where his wife had a
+      cigar-shop on the Shwe Dagon road; once in Singapore, to a Chinese girl;
+      and once in Madras, to a Mahomedan woman who sold fowls. The English
+      sailor cannot, owing to postal and telegraph facilities, marry as
+      profusely as he used to do; but native sailors can, being uninfluenced by
+      the barbarous inventions of the Western savage. Pambe was a good husband
+      when he happened to remember the existence of a wife; but he was also a
+      very good Malay; and it is not wise to offend a Malay, because he does not
+      forget anything. Moreover, in Pambe&rsquo;s case blood had been drawn and food
+      spoiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning Nurkeed rose with a blank mind. He was no longer Sultan of
+      Zanzibar, but a very hot stoker. So he went on deck and opened his jacket
+      to the morning breeze, till a sheath-knife came like a flying-fish and
+      stuck into the woodwork of the cook&rsquo;s galley half an inch from his right
+      armpit. He ran down below before his time, trying to remember what he
+      could have said to the owner of the weapon. At noon, when all the ship&rsquo;s
+      lascars were feeding, Nurkeed advanced into their midst, and, being a
+      placid man with a large regard for his own skin, he opened negotiations,
+      saying, &lsquo;Men of the ship, last night I was drunk, and this morning I know
+      that I behaved unseemly to some one or another of you. Who was that man,
+      that I may meet him face to face and say that I was drunk?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pambe measured the distance to Nurkeed&rsquo;s naked breast. If he sprang at him
+      he might be tripped up, and a blind blow at the chest sometimes only means
+      a gash on the breast-bone. Ribs are difficult to thrust between unless the
+      subject be asleep. So he said nothing; nor did the other lascars. Their
+      faces immediately dropped all expression, as is the custom of the Oriental
+      when there is killing on the carpet or any chance of trouble. Nurkeed
+      looked long at the white eyeballs. He was only an African, and could not
+      read characters. A big sigh&mdash;almost a groan&mdash;broke from him, and
+      he went back to the furnaces. The lascars took up the conversation where
+      he had interrupted it. They talked of the best methods of cooking rice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nurkeed suffered considerably from lack of fresh air during the run to
+      Bombay. He only came on deck to breathe when all the world was about; and
+      even then a heavy block once dropped from a derrick within a foot of his
+      head, and an apparently firm-lashed grating on which he set his foot,
+      began to turn over with the intention of dropping him on the cased cargo
+      fifteen feet below; and one insupportable night the sheath-knife dropped
+      from the fo&rsquo;c&rsquo;s&rsquo;le, and this time it drew blood. So Nurkeed made
+      complaint; and, when the Saarbruck reached Bombay, fled and buried himself
+      among eight hundred thousand people, and did not sign articles till the
+      ship had been a month gone from the port. Pambe waited too; but his Bombay
+      wife grew clamorous, and he was forced to sign in the Spicheren to
+      Hongkong, because he realised that all play and no work gives Jack a
+      ragged shirt. In the foggy China seas he thought a great deal of Nurkeed,
+      and, when Elsass-Lothringen steamers lay in port with the Spicheren,
+      inquired after him and found he had gone to England via the Cape, on the
+      Gravelotte. Pambe came to England on the Worth. The Spicheren met her by
+      the Nore Light. Nurkeed was going out with the Spicheren to the Calicut
+      coast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Want to find a friend, my trap-mouthed coal-scuttle?&rsquo; said a gentleman in
+      the mercantile service. &lsquo;Nothing easier. Wait at the Nyanza Docks till he
+      comes. Every one comes to the Nyanza Docks. Wait, you poor heathen.&rsquo; The
+      gentleman spoke truth. There are three great doors in the world where, if
+      you stand long enough, you shall meet any one you wish. The head of the
+      Suez Canal is one, but there Death comes also; Charing Cross Station is
+      the second&mdash;for inland work; and the Nyanza Docks is the third. At
+      each of these places are men and women looking eternally for those who
+      will surely come. So Pambe waited at the docks. Time was no object to him;
+      and the wives could wait, as he did from day to day, week to week, and
+      month to month, by the Blue Diamond funnels, the Red Dot smoke-stacks, the
+      Yellow Streaks, and the nameless dingy gypsies of the sea that loaded and
+      unloaded, jostled, whistled, and roared in the everlasting fog. When money
+      failed, a kind gentleman told Pambe to become a Christian; and Pambe
+      became one with great speed, getting his religious teachings between ship
+      and ship&rsquo;s arrival, and six or seven shillings a week for distributing
+      tracts to mariners. What the faith was Pambe did not in the least care;
+      but he knew if he said &lsquo;Native Ki-lis-ti-an, Sar&rsquo; to men with long black
+      coats he might get a few coppers; and the tracts were vendible at a little
+      public-house that sold shag by the &lsquo;dottel,&rsquo; which is even smaller weight
+      than the &lsquo;half-screw,&rsquo; which is less than the half-ounce, and a most
+      profitable retail trade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But after eight months Pambe fell sick with pneumonia, contracted from
+      long standing still in slush; and much against his will he was forced to
+      lie down in his two-and-sixpenny room raging against Fate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The kind gentleman sat by his bedside, and grieved to find that Pambe
+      talked in strange tongues, instead of listening to good books, and almost
+      seemed to become a benighted heathen again&mdash;till one day he was
+      roused from semi-stupor by a voice in the street by the dock-head. &lsquo;My
+      friend&mdash;he,&rsquo; whispered Pambe. &lsquo;Call now&mdash;call Nurkeed. Quick!
+      God has sent him!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He wanted one of his own race,&rsquo; said the kind gentleman; and, going out,
+      he called &lsquo;Nurkeed!&rsquo; at the top of his voice. An excessively coloured man
+      in a rasping white shirt and brand-new slops, a shining hat, and a
+      breastpin, turned round. Many voyages had taught Nurkeed how to spend his
+      money and made him a citizen of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hi! Yes!&rsquo; said he, when the situation was explained. &lsquo;Command him&mdash;black
+      nigger&mdash;when I was in the Saarbruck. Ole Pambe, good ole Pambe. Dam
+      lascar. Show him up, Sar;&rsquo; and he followed into the room. One glance told
+      the stoker what the kind gentleman had overlooked. Pambe was desperately
+      poor. Nurkeed drove his hands deep into his pockets, then advanced with
+      clenched fists on the sick, shouting, &lsquo;Hya, Pambe. Hya! Hee-ah! Hulla!
+      Heh! Takilo! Takilo! Make fast aft, Pambe. You know, Pambe. You know me.
+      Dekho, jee! Look! Dam big fat lazy lascar!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pambe beckoned with his left hand. His right was under his pillow. Nurkeed
+      removed his gorgeous hat and stooped over Pambe till he could catch a
+      faint whisper. &lsquo;How beautiful!&rsquo; said the kind gentleman. &lsquo;How these
+      Orientals love like children!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Spit him out,&rsquo; said Nurkeed, leaning over Pambe yet more closely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Touching the matter of that fish and onions&mdash;&rsquo; said Pambe&mdash;and
+      sent the knife home under the edge of the rib-bone upwards and forwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a thick sick cough, and the body of the African slid slowly from
+      the bed, his clutching hands letting fall a shower of silver pieces that
+      ran across the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now I can die!&rsquo; said Pambe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he did not die. He was nursed back to life with all the skill that
+      money could buy, for the Law wanted him; and in the end he grew
+      sufficiently healthy to be hanged in due and proper form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pambe did not care particularly; but it was a sad blow to the kind
+      gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LITTLE TOBRAH
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Prisoner&rsquo;s head did not reach to the top of the dock,&rsquo; as the English
+      newspapers say. This case, however, was not reported because nobody cared
+      by so much as a hempen rope for the life or death of Little Tobrah. The
+      assessors in the red court-house sat upon him all through the long hot
+      afternoon, and whenever they asked him a question he salaamed and whined.
+      Their verdict was that the evidence was inconclusive, and the Judge
+      concurred. It was true that the dead body of Little Tobrah&rsquo;s sister had
+      been found at the bottom of the well, and Little Tobrah was the only human
+      being within a half mile radius at the time; but the child might have
+      fallen in by accident. Therefore Little Tobrah was acquitted, and told to
+      go where he pleased. This permission was not so generous as it sounds, for
+      he had nowhere to go to, nothing in particular to eat, and nothing
+      whatever to wear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He trotted into the court-compound, and sat upon the well-kerb, wondering
+      whether an unsuccessful dive into the black water below would end in a
+      forced voyage across the other Black Water. A groom put down an emptied
+      nose-bag on the bricks, and Little Tobrah, being hungry, set himself to
+      scrape out what wet grain the horse had overlooked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O Thief&mdash;and but newly set free from the terror of the Law! Come
+      along!&rsquo; said the groom, and Little Tobrah was led by the ear to a large
+      and fat Englishman, who heard the tale of the theft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hah!&rsquo; said the Englishman three times (only he said a stronger word).
+      &lsquo;Put him into the net and take him home.&rsquo; So Little Tobrah was thrown into
+      the net of the cart, and, nothing doubting that he should be stuck like a
+      pig, was driven to the Englishman&rsquo;s house. &lsquo;Hah!&rsquo; said the Englishman as
+      before. &lsquo;Wet grain, by Jove! Feed the little beggar, some of you, and
+      we&rsquo;ll make a riding-boy of him! See? Wet grain, good Lord!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Give an account of yourself,&rsquo; said the Head of the Grooms, to Little
+      Tobrah after the meal had been eaten, and the servants lay at ease in
+      their quarters behind the house. &lsquo;You are not of the groom caste, unless
+      it be for the stomach&rsquo;s sake. How came you into the court, and why?
+      Answer, little devil&rsquo;s spawn!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There was not enough to eat,&rsquo; said Little Tobrah calmly. &lsquo;This is a good
+      place.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Talk straight talk,&rsquo; said the Head Groom, &lsquo;or I will make you clean out
+      the stable of that large red stallion who bites like a camel.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We be Telis, oil-pressers,&rsquo; said Little Tobrah, scratching his toes in
+      the dust. &lsquo;We were Telis&mdash;my father, my mother, my brother, the elder
+      by four years, myself, and the sister.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She who was found dead in the well?&rsquo; said one who had heard something of
+      the trial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Even so,&rsquo; said Little Tobrah gravely. &lsquo;She who was found dead in the
+      well. It befel upon a time, which is not in my memory, that the sickness
+      came to the village where our oil-press stood, and first my sister was
+      smitten as to her eyes, and went without sight, for it was mata&mdash;the
+      smallpox. Thereafter, my father and my mother died of that same sickness,
+      so we were alone&mdash;my brother who had twelve years, I who had eight,
+      and the sister who could not see. Yet were there the bullock and the
+      oil-press remaining, and we made shift to press the oil as before. But
+      Surjun Dass, the grain-seller, cheated us in his dealings; and it was
+      always a stubborn bullock to drive. We put marigold flowers for the Gods
+      upon the neck of the bullock, and upon the great grinding-beam that rose
+      through the roof; but we gained nothing thereby, and Surjun Dass was a
+      hard man.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bapri-bap,&rsquo; muttered the grooms&rsquo; wives, &lsquo;to cheat a child so! But WE know
+      what the bunnia-folk are, sisters.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The press was an old press, and we were not strong men&mdash;my brother
+      and I; nor could we fix the neck of the beam firmly in the shackle.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, indeed,&rsquo; said the gorgeously-clad wife of the Head Groom, joining
+      the circle. &lsquo;That is a strong man&rsquo;s work. When I was a maid in my father&rsquo;s
+      house&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Peace, woman,&rsquo; said the Head Groom. &lsquo;Go on, boy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is nothing,&rsquo; said Little Tobrah. &lsquo;The big beam tore down the roof upon
+      a day which is not in my memory, and with the roof fell much of the hinder
+      wall, and both together upon our bullock, whose back was broken. Thus we
+      had neither home, nor press, nor bullock&mdash;my brother, myself, and the
+      sister who was blind. We went crying away from that place, hand-in-hand,
+      across the fields; and our money was seven annas and six pie. There was a
+      famine in the land. I do not know the name of the land. So, on a night
+      when we were sleeping, my brother took the five annas that remained to us
+      and ran away. I do not know whither he went. The curse of my father be
+      upon him. But I and the sister begged food in the villages, and there was
+      none to give. Only all men said&mdash;&ldquo;Go to the Englishmen and they will
+      give.&rdquo; I did not know what the Englishmen were; but they said that they
+      were white, living in tents. I went forward; but I cannot say whither I
+      went, and there was no more food for myself or the sister. And upon a hot
+      night, she weeping and calling for food, we came to a well, and I bade her
+      sit upon the kerb, and thrust her in, for, in truth, she could not see;
+      and it is better to die than to starve.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ai! Ahi!&rsquo; wailed the grooms&rsquo; wives in chorus; &lsquo;he thrust her in, for it
+      is better to die than to starve!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I would have thrown myself in also, but that she was not dead and called
+      to me from the bottom of the well, and I was afraid and ran. And one came
+      out of the crops saying that I had killed her and defiled the well, and
+      they took me before an Englishman, white and terrible, living in a tent,
+      and me he sent here. But there were no witnesses, and it is better to die
+      than to starve. She, furthermore, could not see with her eyes, and was but
+      a little child.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Was but a little child,&rsquo; echoed the Head Groom&rsquo;s wife. &lsquo;But who art thou,
+      weak as a fowl and small as a day-old colt, what art THOU?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I who was empty am now full,&rsquo; said Little Tobrah, stretching himself upon
+      the dust. &lsquo;And I would sleep.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The groom&rsquo;s wife spread a cloth over him while Little Tobrah slept the
+      sleep of the just.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BUBBLING WELL ROAD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Look out on a large scale map the place where the Chenab river falls into
+      the Indus fifteen miles or so above the hamlet of Chachuran. Five miles
+      west of Chachuran lies Bubbling Well Road, and the house of the gosain or
+      priest of Arti-goth. It was the priest who showed me the road, but it is
+      no thanks to him that I am able to tell this story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five miles west of Chachuran is a patch of the plumed jungle-grass, that
+      turns over in silver when the wind blows, from ten to twenty feet high and
+      from three to four miles square. In the heart of the patch hides the
+      gosain of Bubbling Well Road. The villagers stone him when he peers into
+      the daylight, although he is a priest, and he runs back again as a strayed
+      wolf turns into tall crops. He is a one-eyed man and carries, burnt
+      between his brows, the impress of two copper coins. Some say that he was
+      tortured by a native prince in the old days; for he is so old that he must
+      have been capable of mischief in the days of Runjit Singh. His most
+      pressing need at present is a halter, and the care of the British
+      Government.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These things happened when the jungle-grass was tall; and the villagers of
+      Chachuran told me that a sounder of pig had gone into the Arti-goth patch.
+      To enter jungle-grass is always an unwise proceeding, but I went, partly
+      because I knew nothing of pig-hunting, and partly because the villagers
+      said that the big boar of the sounder owned foot long tushes. Therefore I
+      wished to shoot him, in order to produce the tushes in after years, and
+      say that I had ridden him down in fair chase. I took a gun and went into
+      the hot, close patch, believing that it would be an easy thing to unearth
+      one pig in ten square miles of jungle. Mr. Wardle, the terrier, went with
+      me because he believed that I was incapable of existing for an hour
+      without his advice and countenance. He managed to slip in and out between
+      the grass clumps, but I had to force my way, and in twenty minutes was as
+      completely lost as though I had been in the heart of Central Africa. I did
+      not notice this at first till I had grown wearied of stumbling and pushing
+      through the grass, and Mr. Wardle was beginning to sit down very often and
+      hang out his tongue very far. There was nothing but grass everywhere, and
+      it was impossible to see two yards in any direction. The grass-stems held
+      the heat exactly as boiler-tubes do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In half-an-hour, when I was devoutly wishing that I had left the big boar
+      alone, I came to a narrow path which seemed to be a compromise between a
+      native foot-path and a pig-run. It was barely six inches wide, but I could
+      sidle along it in comfort. The grass was extremely thick here, and where
+      the path was ill defined it was necessary to crush into the tussocks
+      either with both hands before the face, or to back into it, leaving both
+      hands free to manage the rifle. None the less it was a path, and valuable
+      because it might lead to a place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of nearly fifty yards of fair way, just when I was preparing to
+      back into an unusually stiff tussock, I missed Mr. Wardle, who for his
+      girth is an unusually frivolous dog and never keeps to heel. I called him
+      three times and said aloud, &lsquo;Where has the little beast gone to?&rsquo; Then I
+      stepped backwards several paces, for almost under my feet a deep voice
+      repeated, &lsquo;Where has the little beast gone?&rsquo; To appreciate an unseen voice
+      thoroughly you should hear it when you are lost in stifling jungle-grass.
+      I called Mr. Wardle again and the underground echo assisted me. At that I
+      ceased calling and listened very attentively, because I thought I heard a
+      man laughing in a peculiarly offensive manner. The heat made me sweat, but
+      the laughter made me shake. There is no earthly need for laughter in high
+      grass. It is indecent, as well as impolite. The chuckling stopped, and I
+      took courage and continued to call till I thought that I had located the
+      echo somewhere behind and below the tussock into which I was preparing to
+      back just before I lost Mr. Wardle. I drove my rifle up to the triggers,
+      between the grass-stems in a downward and forward direction. Then I
+      waggled it to and fro, but it did not seem to touch ground on the far side
+      of the tussock as it should have done. Every time that I grunted with the
+      exertion of driving a heavy rifle through thick grass, the grunt was
+      faithfully repeated from below, and when I stopped to wipe my face the
+      sound of low laughter was distinct beyond doubting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went into the tussock, face first, an inch at a time, my mouth open and
+      my eyes fine, full, and prominent. When I had overcome the resistance of
+      the grass I found that I was looking straight across a black gap in the
+      ground&mdash;that I was actually lying on my chest leaning over the mouth
+      of a well so deep I could scarcely see the water in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were things in the water,&mdash;black things,&mdash;and the water
+      was as black as pitch with blue scum atop. The laughing sound came from
+      the noise of a little spring, spouting half-way down one side of the well.
+      Sometimes as the black things circled round, the trickle from the spring
+      fell upon their tightly-stretched skins, and then the laughter changed
+      into a sputter of mirth. One thing turned over on its back, as I watched,
+      and drifted round and round the circle of the mossy brickwork with a hand
+      and half an arm held clear of the water in a stiff and horrible flourish,
+      as though it were a very wearied guide paid to exhibit the beauties of the
+      place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not spend more than half-an-hour in creeping round that well and
+      finding the path on the other side. The remainder of the journey I
+      accomplished by feeling every foot of ground in front of me, and crawling
+      like a snail through every tussock. I carried Mr. Wardle in my arms and he
+      licked my nose. He was not frightened in the least, nor was I, but we
+      wished to reach open ground in order to enjoy the view. My knees were
+      loose, and the apple in my throat refused to slide up and down. The path
+      on the far side of the well was a very good one, though boxed in on all
+      sides by grass, and it led me in time to a priest&rsquo;s hut in the centre of a
+      little clearing. When that priest saw my very white face coming through
+      the grass he howled with terror and embraced my boots; but when I reached
+      the bedstead set outside his door I sat down quickly and Mr. Wardle
+      mounted guard over me. I was not in a condition to take care of myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I awoke I told the priest to lead me into the open, out of the
+      Arti-goth patch, and to walk slowly in front of me. Mr. Wardle hates
+      natives, and the priest was more afraid of Mr. Wardle than of me, though
+      we were both angry. He walked very slowly down a narrow little path from
+      his hut. That path crossed three paths, such as the one I had come by in
+      the first instance, and every one of the three headed towards the Bubbling
+      Well. Once when we stopped to draw breath, I heard the Well laughing to
+      itself alone in the thick grass, and only my need for his services
+      prevented my firing both barrels into the priest&rsquo;s back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we came to the open the priest crashed back into cover, and I went to
+      the village of Arti-goth for a drink. It was pleasant to be able to see
+      the horizon all round, as well as the ground underfoot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The villagers told me that the patch of grass was full of devils and
+      ghosts, all in the service of the priest, and that men and women and
+      children had entered it and had never returned. They said the priest used
+      their livers for purposes of witchcraft. When I asked why they had not
+      told me of this at the outset, they said that they were afraid they would
+      lose their reward for bringing news of the pig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before I left I did my best to set the patch alight, but the grass was too
+      green. Some fine summer day, however, if the wind is favourable, a file of
+      old newspapers and a box of matches will make clear the mystery of
+      Bubbling Well Road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      &lsquo;THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT&rsquo; 
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dense wet heat that hung over the face of land, like a blanket,
+      prevented all hope of sleep in the first instance. The cicalas helped the
+      heat; and the yelling jackals the cicalas. It was impossible to sit still
+      in the dark, empty, echoing house and watch the punkah beat the dead air.
+      So, at ten o&rsquo;clock of the night, I set my walking-stick on end in the
+      middle of the garden, and waited to see how it would fall. It pointed
+      directly down the moonlit road that leads to the City of Dreadful Night.
+      The sound of its fall disturbed a hare. She limped from her form and ran
+      across to a disused Mahomedan burial-ground, where the jawless skulls and
+      rough-butted shank-bones, heartlessly exposed by the July rains, glimmered
+      like mother o&rsquo; pearl on the rain-channelled soil. The heated air and the
+      heavy earth had driven the very dead upward for coolness&rsquo; sake. The hare
+      limped on; snuffed curiously at a fragment of a smoke-stained lamp-shard,
+      and died out, in the shadow of a clump of tamarisk trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mat-weaver&rsquo;s hut under the lee of the Hindu temple was full of
+      sleeping men who lay like sheeted corpses. Overhead blazed the unwinking
+      eye of the Moon. Darkness gives at least a false impression of coolness.
+      It was hard not to believe that the flood of light from above was warm.
+      Not so hot as the Sun, but still sickly warm, and heating the heavy air
+      beyond what was our due. Straight as a bar of polished steel ran the road
+      to the City of Dreadful Night; and on either side of the road lay corpses
+      disposed on beds in fantastic attitudes&mdash;one hundred and seventy
+      bodies of men. Some shrouded all in white with bound-up mouths; some naked
+      and black as ebony in the strong light; and one&mdash;that lay face
+      upwards with dropped jaw, far away from the others&mdash;silvery white and
+      ashen gray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A leper asleep; and the remainder wearied coolies, servants, small
+      shopkeepers, and drivers from the hackstand hard by. The scene&mdash;a
+      main approach to Lahore city, and the night a warm one in August.&rsquo; This
+      was all that there was to be seen; but by no means all that one could see.
+      The witchery of the moonlight was everywhere; and the world was horribly
+      changed. The long line of the naked dead, flanked by the rigid silver
+      statue, was not pleasant to look upon. It was made up of men alone. Were
+      the womenkind, then, forced to sleep in the shelter of the stifling
+      mud-huts as best they might? The fretful wail of a child from a low
+      mud-roof answered the question. Where the children are the mothers must be
+      also to look after them. They need care on these sweltering nights. A
+      black little bullet-head peeped over the coping, and a thin&mdash;a
+      painfully thin&mdash;brown leg was slid over on to the gutter pipe. There
+      was a sharp clink of glass bracelets; a woman&rsquo;s arm showed for an instant
+      above the parapet, twined itself round the lean little neck, and the child
+      was dragged back, protesting, to the shelter of the bedstead. His thin,
+      high-pitched shriek died out in the thick air almost as soon as it was
+      raised; for even the children of the soil found it too hot to weep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More corpses; more stretches of moonlit, white road, a string of sleeping
+      camels at rest by the wayside; a vision of scudding jackals; ekka-ponies
+      asleep&mdash;the harness still on their backs, and the brass-studded
+      country carts, winking in the moonlight&mdash;and again more corpses.
+      Wherever a grain cart atilt, a tree trunk, a sawn log, a couple of bamboos
+      and a few handfuls of thatch cast a shadow, the ground is covered with
+      them. They lie&mdash;some face downwards, arms folded, in the dust; some
+      with clasped hands flung up above their heads; some curled up dog-wise;
+      some thrown like limp gunny-bags over the side of the grain carts; and
+      some bowed with their brows on their knees in the full glare of the Moon.
+      It would be a comfort if they were only given to snoring; but they are
+      not, and the likeness to corpses is unbroken in all respects save one. The
+      lean dogs snuff at them and turn away. Here and there a tiny child lies on
+      his father&rsquo;s bedstead, and a protecting arm is thrown round it in every
+      instance. But, for the most part, the children sleep with their mothers on
+      the house-tops. Yellow-skinned white-toothed pariahs are not to be trusted
+      within reach of brown bodies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A stifling hot blast from the mouth of the Delhi Gate nearly ends my
+      resolution of entering the City of Dreadful Night at this hour. It is a
+      compound of all evil savours, animal and vegetable, that a walled city can
+      brew in a day and a night. The temperature within the motionless groves of
+      plantain and orange-trees outside the city walls seems chilly by
+      comparison. Heaven help all sick persons and young children within the
+      city to-night! The high house-walls are still radiating heat savagely, and
+      from obscure side gullies fetid breezes eddy that ought to poison a
+      buffalo. But the buffaloes do not heed. A drove of them are parading the
+      vacant main street; stopping now and then to lay their ponderous muzzles
+      against the closed shutters of a grain-dealer&rsquo;s shops and to blow thereon
+      like grampuses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then silence follows&mdash;the silence that is full of the night noises of
+      a great city. A stringed instrument of some kind is just, and only just,
+      audible. High overhead some one throws open a window, and the rattle of
+      the wood-work echoes down the empty street. On one of the roofs, a hookah
+      is in full blast; and the men are talking softly as the pipe gutters. A
+      little farther on, the noise of conversation is more distinct. A slit of
+      light shows itself between the sliding shutters of a shop. Inside, a
+      stubble-bearded, weary-eyed trader is balancing his account-books among
+      the bales of cotton prints that surround him. Three sheeted figures bear
+      him company, and throw in a remark from time to time. First he makes an
+      entry, then a remark; then passes the back of his hand across his
+      streaming forehead. The heat in the built-in street is fearful. Inside the
+      shops it must be almost unendurable. But the work goes on steadily; entry,
+      guttural growl, and uplifted hand-stroke succeeding each other with the
+      precision of clock-work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A policeman&mdash;turbanless and fast asleep&mdash;lies across the road on
+      the way to the Mosque of Wazir Khan. A bar of moonlight falls across the
+      forehead and eyes of the sleeper, but he never stirs. It is close upon
+      midnight, and the heat seems to be increasing. The open square in front of
+      the Mosque is crowded with corpses; and a man must pick his way carefully
+      for fear of treading on them. The moonlight stripes the Mosque&rsquo;s high
+      front of coloured enamel work in broad diagonal bands; and each separate
+      dreaming pigeon in the niches and corners of the masonry throws a squab
+      little shadow. Sheeted ghosts rise up wearily from their pallets, and flit
+      into the dark depths of the building. Is it possible to climb to the top
+      of the great Minars, and thence to look down on the city? At all events
+      the attempt is worth making, and the chances are that the door of the
+      staircase will be unlocked. Unlocked it is; but a deeply sleeping janitor
+      lies across the threshold, face turned to the Moon. A rat dashes out of
+      his turban at the sound of approaching footsteps. The man grunts, opens
+      his eyes for a minute, turns round, and goes to sleep again. All the heat
+      of a decade of fierce Indian summers is stored in the pitch-black,
+      polished walls of the corkscrew staircase. Half-way up, there is something
+      alive, warm, and feathery; and it snores. Driven from step to step as it
+      catches the sound of my advance, it flutters to the top and reveals itself
+      as a yellow-eyed, angry kite. Dozens of kites are asleep on this and the
+      other Minars, and on the domes below. There is the shadow of a cool, or at
+      least a less sultry breeze at this height; and, refreshed thereby, turn to
+      look on the City of Dreadful Night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dore might have drawn it! Zola could describe it&mdash;this spectacle of
+      sleeping thousands in the moonlight and in the shadow of the Moon. The
+      roof-tops are crammed with men, women, and children; and the air is full
+      of undistinguishable noises. They are restless in the City of Dreadful
+      Night; and small wonder. The marvel is that they can even breathe. If you
+      gaze intently at the multitude, you can see that they are almost as uneasy
+      as a daylight crowd; but the tumult is subdued. Everywhere, in the strong
+      light, you can watch the sleepers turning to and fro; shifting their beds
+      and again resettling them. In the pit-like court-yards of the houses there
+      is the same movement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pitiless Moon shows it all. Shows, too, the plains outside the city,
+      and here and there a hand&rsquo;s-breadth of the Ravee without the walls. Shows
+      lastly, a splash of glittering silver on a house-top almost directly below
+      the mosque Minar. Some poor soul has risen to throw a jar of water over
+      his fevered body; the tinkle of the falling water strikes faintly on the
+      ear. Two or three other men, in far-off corners of the City of Dreadful
+      Night, follow his example, and the water flashes like heliographic
+      signals. A small cloud passes over the face of the Moon, and the city and
+      its inhabitants&mdash;clear drawn in black and white before&mdash;fade
+      into masses of black and deeper black. Still the unrestful noise
+      continues, the sigh of a great city overwhelmed with the heat, and of a
+      people seeking in vain for rest. It is only the lower-class women who
+      sleep on the house-tops. What must the torment be in the latticed zenanas,
+      where a few lamps are still twinkling? There are footfalls in the court
+      below. It is the Muezzin&mdash;faithful minister; but he ought to have
+      been here an hour ago to tell the Faithful that prayer is better than
+      sleep&mdash;the sleep that will not come to the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Muezzin fumbles for a moment with the door of one of the Minars,
+      disappears awhile, and a bull-like roar&mdash;a magnificent bass thunder&mdash;tells
+      that he has reached the top of the Minar. They must hear the cry to the
+      banks of the shrunken Ravee itself! Even across the courtyard it is almost
+      overpowering. The cloud drifts by and shows him outlined in black against
+      the sky, hands laid upon his ears, and broad chest heaving with the play
+      of his lungs&mdash;&lsquo;Allah ho Akbar&rsquo;; then a pause while another Muezzin
+      somewhere in the direction of the Golden Temple takes up the call&mdash;&lsquo;Allah
+      ho Akbar.&rsquo; Again and again; four times in all; and from the bedsteads a
+      dozen men have risen up already.&mdash;&lsquo;I bear witness that there is no
+      God but God.&rsquo; What a splendid cry it is, the proclamation of the creed
+      that brings men out of their beds by scores at midnight! Once again he
+      thunders through the same phrase, shaking with the vehemence of his own
+      voice; and then, far and near, the night air rings with &lsquo;Mahomed is the
+      Prophet of God.&rsquo; It is as though he were flinging his defiance to the
+      far-off horizon, where the summer lightning plays and leaps like a bared
+      sword. Every Muezzin in the city is in full cry, and some men on the
+      roof-tops are beginning to kneel. A long pause precedes the last cry, &lsquo;La
+      ilaha Illallah,&rsquo; and the silence closes up on it, as the ram on the head
+      of a cotton-bale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Muezzin stumbles down the dark stairway grumbling in his beard. He
+      passes the arch of the entrance and disappears. Then the stifling silence
+      settles down over the City of Dreadful Night. The kites on the Minar sleep
+      again, snoring more loudly, the hot breeze comes up in puffs and lazy
+      eddies, and the Moon slides down towards the horizon. Seated with both
+      elbows on the parapet of the tower, one can watch and wonder over that
+      heat-tortured hive till the dawn. &lsquo;How do they live down there? What do
+      they think of? When will they awake?&rsquo; More tinkling of sluiced water-pots;
+      faint jarring of wooden bedsteads moved into or out of the shadows;
+      uncouth music of stringed instruments softened by distance into a
+      plaintive wail, and one low grumble of far-off thunder. In the courtyard
+      of the mosque the janitor, who lay across the threshold of the Minar when
+      I came up, starts wildly in his sleep, throws his hands above his head,
+      mutters something, and falls back again. Lulled by the snoring of the
+      kites&mdash;they snore like over-gorged humans&mdash;I drop off into an
+      uneasy doze, conscious that three o&rsquo;clock has struck, and that there is a
+      slight&mdash;a very slight&mdash;coolness in the atmosphere. The city is
+      absolutely quiet now, but for some vagrant dog&rsquo;s love-song. Nothing save
+      dead heavy sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several weeks of darkness pass after this. For the Moon has gone out. The
+      very dogs are still, and I watch for the first light of the dawn before
+      making my way homeward. Again the noise of shuffling feet. The morning
+      call is about to begin, and my night watch is over. &lsquo;Allah ho Akbar! Allah
+      ho Akbar!&rsquo; The east grows gray, and presently saffron; the dawn wind comes
+      up as though the Muezzin had summoned it; and, as one man, the City of
+      Dreadful Night rises from its bed and turns its face towards the dawning
+      day. With return of life comes return of sound. First a low whisper, then
+      a deep bass hum; for it must be remembered that the entire city is on the
+      house-tops. My eyelids weighed down with the arrears of long deferred
+      sleep, I escape from the Minar through the courtyard and out into the
+      square beyond, where the sleepers have risen, stowed away the bedsteads,
+      and are discussing the morning hookah. The minute&rsquo;s freshness of the air
+      has gone, and it is as hot as at first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Will the Sahib, out of his kindness, make room?&rsquo; What is it? Something
+      borne on men&rsquo;s shoulders comes by in the half-light, and I stand back. A
+      woman&rsquo;s corpse going down to the burning-ghat, and a bystander says, &lsquo;She
+      died at midnight from the heat.&rsquo; So the city was of Death as well as Night
+      after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      GEORGIE PORGIE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie,
+     Kissed the girls and made them cry.
+     When the girls came out to play
+     Georgie Porgie ran away.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      If you will admit that a man has no right to enter his drawing-room early
+      in the morning, when the housemaid is setting things right and clearing
+      away the dust, you will concede that civilised people who eat out of china
+      and own card-cases have no right to apply their standard of right and
+      wrong to an unsettled land. When the place is made fit for their
+      reception, by those men who are told off to the work, they can come up,
+      bringing in their trunks their own society and the Decalogue, and all the
+      other apparatus. Where the Queen&rsquo;s Law does not carry, it is irrational to
+      expect an observance of other and weaker rules. The men who run ahead of
+      the cars of Decency and Propriety, and make the jungle ways straight,
+      cannot be judged in the same manner as the stay-at-home folk of the ranks
+      of the regular Tchin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not many months ago the Queen&rsquo;s Law stopped a few miles north of Thayetmyo
+      on the Irrawaddy. There was no very strong Public Opinion up to that
+      limit, but it existed to keep men in order. When the Government said that
+      the Queen&rsquo;s Law must carry up to Bhamo and the Chinese border the order
+      was given, and some men whose desire was to be ever a little in advance of
+      the rush of Respectability flocked forward with the troops. These were the
+      men who could never pass examinations, and would have been too pronounced
+      in their ideas for the administration of bureau-worked Provinces. The
+      Supreme Government stepped in as soon as might be, with codes and
+      regulations, and all but reduced New Burma to the dead Indian level; but
+      there was a short time during which strong men were necessary and ploughed
+      a field for themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the fore-runners of Civilisation was Georgie Porgie, reckoned by all
+      who knew him a strong man. He held an appointment in Lower Burma when the
+      order came to break the Frontier, and his friends called him Georgie
+      Porgie because of the singularly Burmese-like manner in which he sang a
+      song whose first line is something like the words &lsquo;Georgie Porgie.&rsquo; Most
+      men who have been in Burma will know the song. It means: &lsquo;Puff, puff,
+      puff, puff, great steamboat!&rsquo; Georgie sang it to his banjo, and his
+      friends shouted with delight, so that you could hear them far away in the
+      teak-forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he went to Upper Burma he had no special regard for God or Man, but
+      he knew how to make himself respected, and to carry out the mixed
+      Military-Civil duties that fell to most men&rsquo;s share in those months. He
+      did his office work and entertained, now and again, the detachments of
+      fever-shaken soldiers who blundered through his part of the world in
+      search of a flying party of dacoits. Sometimes he turned out and dressed
+      down dacoits on his own account; for the country was still smouldering and
+      would blaze when least expected. He enjoyed these charivaris, but the
+      dacoits were not so amused. All the officials who came in contact with him
+      departed with the idea that Georgie Porgie was a valuable person, well
+      able to take care of himself, and, on that belief, he was left to his own
+      devices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of a few months he wearied of his solitude, and cast about for
+      company and refinement. The Queen&rsquo;s Law had hardly begun to be felt in the
+      country, and Public Opinion, which is more powerful than the Queen&rsquo;s Law,
+      had yet to come. Also, there was a custom in the country which allowed a
+      white man to take to himself a wife of the Daughters of Heth upon due
+      payment. The marriage was not quite so binding as is the nikkah ceremony
+      among Mahomedans, but the wife was very pleasant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When all our troops are back from Burma there will be a proverb in their
+      mouths, &lsquo;As thrifty as a Burmese wife,&rsquo; and pretty English ladies will
+      wonder what in the world it means.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The headman of the village next to Georgie Porgie&rsquo;s post had a fair
+      daughter who had seen Georgie Porgie and loved him from afar. When news
+      went abroad that the Englishman with the heavy hand who lived in the
+      stockade was looking for a housekeeper, the headman came in and explained
+      that, for five hundred rupees down, he would entrust his daughter to
+      Georgie Porgie&rsquo;s keeping, to be maintained in all honour, respect, and
+      comfort, with pretty dresses, according to the custom of the country. This
+      thing was done, and Georgie Porgie never repented it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found his rough-and-tumble house put straight and made comfortable, his
+      hitherto unchecked expenses cut down by one half, and himself petted and
+      made much of by his new acquisition, who sat at the head of his table and
+      sang songs to him and ordered his Madrassee servants about, and was in
+      every way as sweet and merry and honest and winning a little woman as the
+      most exacting of bachelors could have desired. No race, men say who know,
+      produces such good wives and heads of households as the Burmese. When the
+      next detachment tramped by on the war-path the Subaltern in Command found
+      at Georgie Porgie&rsquo;s table a hostess to be deferential to, a woman to be
+      treated in every way as one occupying an assured position. When he
+      gathered his men together next dawn and replunged into the jungle he
+      thought regretfully of the nice little dinner and the pretty face, and
+      envied Georgie Porgie from the bottom of his heart. Yet HE was engaged to
+      a girl at Home, and that is how some men are constructed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Burmese girl&rsquo;s name was not a pretty one; but as she was promptly
+      christened Georgina by Georgie Porgie, the blemish did not matter. Georgie
+      Porgie thought well of the petting and the general comfort, and vowed that
+      he had never spent five hundred rupees to a better end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After three months of domestic life, a great idea struck him. Matrimony&mdash;English
+      matrimony&mdash;could not be such a bad thing after all. If he were so
+      thoroughly comfortable at the Back of Beyond with this Burmese girl who
+      smoked cheroots, how much more comfortable would he be with a sweet
+      English maiden who would not smoke cheroots, and would play upon a piano
+      instead of a banjo? Also he had a desire to return to his kind, to hear a
+      Band once more, and to feel how it felt to wear a dress-suit again.
+      Decidedly, Matrimony would be a very good thing. He thought the matter out
+      at length of evenings, while Georgina sang to him, or asked him why he was
+      so silent, and whether she had done anything to offend him. As he thought,
+      he smoked, and as he smoked he looked at Georgina, and in his fancy turned
+      her into a fair, thrifty, amusing, merry, little English girl, with hair
+      coming low down on her forehead, and perhaps a cigarette between her lips.
+      Certainly, not a big, thick, Burma cheroot, of the brand that Georgina
+      smoked. He would wed a girl with Georgina&rsquo;s eyes and most of her ways. But
+      not all. She could be improved upon. Then he blew thick smoke-wreaths
+      through his nostrils and stretched himself. He would taste marriage.
+      Georgina had helped him to save money, and there were six months&rsquo; leave
+      due to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;See here, little woman,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;we must put by more money for these
+      next three months. I want it.&rsquo; That was a direct slur on Georgina&rsquo;s
+      housekeeping; for she prided herself on her thrift; but since her God
+      wanted money she would do her best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You want money?&rsquo; she said with a little laugh. &lsquo;I HAVE money. Look!&rsquo; She
+      ran to her own room and fetched out a small bag of rupees. &lsquo;Of all that
+      you give me, I keep back some. See! One hundred and seven rupees. Can you
+      want more money than that? Take it. It is my pleasure if you use it.&rsquo; She
+      spread out the money on the table and pushed it towards him, with her
+      quick, little, pale yellow fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Georgie Porgie never referred to economy in the household again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three months later, after the dispatch and receipt of several mysterious
+      letters which Georgina could not understand, and hated for that reason,
+      Georgie Porgie said that he was going away and she must return to her
+      father&rsquo;s house and stay there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Georgina wept. She would go with her God from the world&rsquo;s end to the
+      world&rsquo;s end. Why should she leave him? She loved him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am only going to Rangoon,&rsquo; said Georgie Porgie. &lsquo;I shall be back in a
+      month, but it is safer to stay with your father. I will leave you two
+      hundred rupees.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If you go for a month, what need of two hundred? Fifty are more than
+      enough. There is some evil here. Do not go, or at least let me go with
+      you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Georgie Porgie does not like to remember that scene even at this date. In
+      the end he got rid of Georgina by a compromise of seventy-five rupees. She
+      would not take more. Then he went by steamer and rail to Rangoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mysterious letters had granted him six months&rsquo; leave. The actual
+      flight and an idea that he might have been treacherous hurt severely at
+      the time, but as soon as the big steamer was well out into the blue,
+      things were easier, and Georgina&rsquo;s face, and the queer little stockaded
+      house, and the memory of the rushes of shouting dacoits by night, the cry
+      and struggle of the first man that he had ever killed with his own hand,
+      and a hundred other more intimate things, faded and faded out of Georgie
+      Porgie&rsquo;s heart, and the vision of approaching England took its place. The
+      steamer was full of men on leave, all rampantly jovial souls who had
+      shaken off the dust and sweat of Upper Burma and were as merry as
+      schoolboys. They helped Georgie Porgie to forget.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came England with its luxuries and decencies and comforts, and
+      Georgie Porgie walked in a pleasant dream upon pavements of which he had
+      nearly forgotten the ring, wondering why men in their senses ever left
+      Town. He accepted his keen delight in his furlough as the reward of his
+      services. Providence further arranged for him another and greater delight&mdash;all
+      the pleasures of a quiet English wooing, quite different from the brazen
+      businesses of the East, when half the community stand back and bet on the
+      result, and the other half wonder what Mrs. So-and-So will say to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a pleasant girl and a perfect summer, and a big country-house near
+      Petworth where there are acres and acres of purple heather and
+      high-grassed water-meadows to wander through. Georgie Porgie felt that he
+      had at last found something worth the living for, and naturally assumed
+      that the next thing to do was to ask the girl to share his life in India.
+      She, in her ignorance, was willing to go. On this occasion there was no
+      bartering with a village headman. There was a fine middle-class wedding in
+      the country, with a stout Papa and a weeping Mamma, and a best-man in
+      purple and fine linen, and six snub-nosed girls from the Sunday School to
+      throw roses on the path between the tombstones up to the Church door. The
+      local paper described the affair at great length, even down to giving the
+      hymns in full. But that was because the Direction were starving for want
+      of material.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came a honeymoon at Arundel, and the Mamma wept copiously before she
+      allowed her one daughter to sail away to India under the care of Georgie
+      Porgie the Bridegroom. Beyond any question, Georgie Porgie was immensely
+      fond of his wife, and she was devoted to him as the best and greatest man
+      in the world. When he reported himself at Bombay he felt justified in
+      demanding a good station for his wife&rsquo;s sake; and, because he had made a
+      little mark in Burma and was beginning to be appreciated, they allowed him
+      nearly all that he asked for, and posted him to a station which we will
+      call Sutrain. It stood upon several hills, and was styled officially a
+      &lsquo;Sanitarium,&rsquo; for the good reason that the drainage was utterly neglected.
+      Here Georgie Porgie settled down, and found married life come very
+      naturally to him. He did not rave, as do many bridegrooms, over the
+      strangeness and delight of seeing his own true love sitting down to
+      breakfast with him every morning &lsquo;as though it were the most natural thing
+      in the world.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He had been there before,&rsquo; as the Americans say, and, checking the merits
+      of his own present Grace by those of Georgina, he was more and more
+      inclined to think that he had done well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was no peace or comfort across the Bay of Bengal, under the
+      teak-trees where Georgina lived with her father, waiting for Georgie
+      Porgie to return. The headman was old, and remembered the war of &lsquo;51. He
+      had been to Rangoon, and knew something of the ways of the Kullahs.
+      Sitting in front of his door in the evenings, he taught Georgina a dry
+      philosophy which did not console her in the least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trouble was that she loved Georgie Porgie just as much as the French
+      girl in the English History books loved the priest whose head was broken
+      by the king&rsquo;s bullies. One day she disappeared from the village with all
+      the rupees that Georgie Porgie had given her, and a very small smattering
+      of English&mdash;also gained from Georgie Porgie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The headman was angry at first, but lit a fresh cheroot and said something
+      uncomplimentary about the sex in general. Georgina had started on a search
+      for Georgie Porgie, who might be in Rangoon, or across the Black Water, or
+      dead, for aught that she knew. Chance favoured her. An old Sikh policeman
+      told her that Georgie Porgie had crossed the Black Water. She took a
+      steerage-passage from Rangoon and went to Calcutta; keeping the secret of
+      her search to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In India every trace of her was lost for six weeks, and no one knows what
+      trouble of heart she must have undergone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She reappeared, four hundred miles north of Calcutta, steadily heading
+      northwards, very worn and haggard, but very fixed in her determination to
+      find Georgie Porgie. She could not understand the language of the people;
+      but India is infinitely charitable, and the women-folk along the Grand
+      Trunk gave her food. Something made her believe that Georgie Porgie was to
+      be found at the end of that pitiless road. She may have seen a sepoy who
+      knew him in Burma, but of this no one can be certain. At last, she found a
+      regiment on the line of march, and met there one of the many subalterns
+      whom Georgie Porgie had invited to dinner in the far-off, old days of the
+      dacoit-hunting. There was a certain amount of amusement among the tents
+      when Georgina threw herself at the man&rsquo;s feet and began to cry. There was
+      no amusement when her story was told; but a collection was made, and that
+      was more to the point. One of the subalterns knew of Georgie Porgie&rsquo;s
+      whereabouts, but not of his marriage. So he told Georgina and she went her
+      way joyfully to the north, in a railway carriage where there was rest for
+      tired feet and shade for a dusty little head. The marches from the train
+      through the hills into Sutrain were trying, but Georgina had money, and
+      families journeying in bullock-carts gave her help. It was an almost
+      miraculous journey, and Georgina felt sure that the good spirits of Burma
+      were looking after her. The hill-road to Sutrain is a chilly stretch, and
+      Georgina caught a bad cold. Still there was Georgie Porgie at the end of
+      all the trouble to take her up in his arms and pet her, as he used to do
+      in the old days when the stockade was shut for the night and he had
+      approved of the evening meal. Georgina went forward as fast as she could;
+      and her good spirits did her one last favour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An Englishman stopped her, in the twilight, just at the turn of the road
+      into Sutrain, saying, &lsquo;Good Heavens! What are you doing here?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was Gillis, the man who had been Georgie Porgie&rsquo;s assistant in Upper
+      Burma, and who occupied the next post to Georgie Porgie&rsquo;s in the jungle.
+      Georgie Porgie had applied to have him to work with at Sutrain because he
+      liked him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have come,&rsquo; said Georgina simply. &lsquo;It was such a long way, and I have
+      been months in coming. Where is his house?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillis gasped. He had seen enough of Georgina in the old times to know
+      that explanations would be useless. You cannot explain things to the
+      Oriental. You must show.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll take you there,&rsquo; said Gillis, and he led Georgina off the road, up
+      the cliff, by a little pathway, to the back of a house set on a platform
+      cut into the hillside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lamps were just lit, but the curtains were not drawn. &lsquo;Now look,&rsquo; said
+      Gillis, stopping in front of the drawing-room window. Georgina looked and
+      saw Georgie Porgie and the Bride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She put her hand up to her hair, which had come out of its top-knot and
+      was straggling about her face. She tried to set her ragged dress in order,
+      but the dress was past pulling straight, and she coughed a queer little
+      cough, for she really had taken a very bad cold. Gillis looked, too, but
+      while Georgina only looked at the Bride once, turning her eyes always on
+      Georgie Porgie, Gillis looked at the Bride all the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What are you going to do?&rsquo; said Gillis, who held Georgina by the wrist,
+      in case of any unexpected rush into the lamplight. &lsquo;Will you go in and
+      tell that English woman that you lived with her husband?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; said Georgina faintly. &lsquo;Let me go. I am going away. I swear that I
+      am going away.&rsquo; She twisted herself free and ran off into the dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Poor little beast!&rsquo; said Gillis, dropping on to the main road. &lsquo;I&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; 
+      given her something to get back to Burma with. What a narrow shave though!
+      And that angel would never have forgiven it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This seems to prove that the devotion of Gillis was not entirely due to
+      his affection for Georgie Porgie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bride and the Bridegroom came out into the verandah after dinner, in
+      order that the smoke of Georgie Porgie&rsquo;s cheroots might not hang in the
+      new drawing-room curtains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is that noise down there?&rsquo; said the Bride. Both listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh,&rsquo; said Georgie Porgie, &lsquo;I suppose some brute of a hillman has been
+      beating his wife.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Beating&mdash;his&mdash;wife! How ghastly!&rsquo; said the Bride. &lsquo;Fancy YOUR
+      beating ME!&rsquo; She slipped an arm round her husband&rsquo;s waist, and, leaning
+      her head against his shoulder, looked out across the cloud-filled valley
+      in deep content and security.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was Georgina crying, all by herself, down the hillside, among the
+      stones of the water-course where the washermen wash the clothes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      NABOTH
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was how it happened; and the truth is also an allegory of Empire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I met him at the corner of my garden, an empty basket on his head, and an
+      unclean cloth round his loins. That was all the property to which Naboth
+      had the shadow of a claim when I first saw him. He opened our acquaintance
+      by begging. He was very thin and showed nearly as many ribs as his basket;
+      and he told me a long story about fever and a lawsuit, and an iron
+      cauldron that had been seized by the court in execution of a decree. I put
+      my hand into my pocket to help Naboth, as kings of the East have helped
+      alien adventurers to the loss of their kingdoms. A rupee had hidden in my
+      waistcoat lining. I never knew it was there, and gave the trove to Naboth
+      as a direct gift from Heaven. He replied that I was the only legitimate
+      Protector of the Poor he had ever known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning he reappeared, a little fatter in the round, and curled
+      himself into knots in the front verandah. He said I was his father and his
+      mother, and the direct descendant of all the gods in his Pantheon, besides
+      controlling the destinies of the universe. He himself was but a
+      sweetmeat-seller, and much less important than the dirt under my feet. I
+      had heard this sort of thing before, so I asked him what he wanted. My
+      rupee, quoth Naboth, had raised him to the ever-lasting heavens, and he
+      wished to prefer a request. He wished to establish a sweetmeat-pitch near
+      the house of his benefactor, to gaze on my revered countenance as I went
+      to and fro illumining the world. I was graciously pleased to give
+      permission, and he went away with his head between his knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now at the far end of my garden, the ground slopes toward the public road,
+      and the slope is crowned with a thick shrubbery. There is a short
+      carriage-road from the house to the Mall, which passes close to the
+      shrubbery. Next afternoon I saw that Naboth had seated himself at the
+      bottom of the slope, down in the dust of the public road, and in the full
+      glare of the sun, with a starved basket of greasy sweets in front of him.
+      He had gone into trade once more on the strength of my munificent
+      donation, and the ground was as Paradise by my honoured favour. Remember,
+      there was only Naboth, his basket, the sunshine, and the gray dust when
+      the sap of my Empire first began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day he had moved himself up the slope nearer to my shrubbery, and
+      waved a palm-leaf fan to keep the flies off the sweets. So I judged that
+      he must have done a fair trade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four days later I noticed that he had backed himself and his basket under
+      the shadow of the shrubbery, and had tied an Isabella-coloured rag between
+      two branches in order to make more shade. There were plenty of sweets in
+      his basket. I thought that trade must certainly be looking up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seven weeks later the Government took up a plot of ground for a Chief
+      Court close to the end of my compound, and employed nearly four hundred
+      coolies on the foundations. Naboth bought a blue and white striped
+      blanket, a brass lamp-stand, and a small boy, to cope with the rush of
+      trade, which was tremendous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five days later he bought a huge, fat, red-backed account-book, and a
+      glass inkstand. Thus I saw that the coolies had been getting into his
+      debt, and that commerce was increasing on legitimate lines of credit. Also
+      I saw that the one basket had grown into three, and that Naboth had backed
+      and hacked into the shrubbery, and made himself a nice little clearing for
+      the proper display of the basket, the blanket, the books, and the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One week and five days later he had built a mud fire-place in the
+      clearing, and the fat account-book was overflowing. He said that God
+      created few Englishmen of my kind, and that I was the incarnation of all
+      human virtues. He offered me some of his sweets as tribute, and by
+      accepting these I acknowledged him as my feudatory under the skirt of my
+      protection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three weeks later I noticed that the boy was in the habit of cooking
+      Naboth&rsquo;s mid-day meal for him, and Naboth was beginning to grow a stomach.
+      He had hacked away more of my shrubbery and owned another and a fatter
+      account-book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eleven weeks later Naboth had eaten his way nearly through that shrubbery,
+      and there was a reed hut with a bedstead outside it, standing in the
+      little glade that he had eroded. Two dogs and a baby slept on the
+      bedstead. So I fancied Naboth had taken a wife. He said that he had, by my
+      favour, done this thing, and that I was several times finer than Krishna.
+      Six weeks and two days later a mud wall had grown up at the back of the
+      hut. There were fowls in front and it smelt a little. The Municipal
+      Secretary said that a cess-pool was forming in the public road from the
+      drainage of my compound, and that I must take steps to clear it away. I
+      spoke to Naboth. He said I was Lord Paramount of his earthly concerns, and
+      the garden was all my own property, and sent me some more sweets in a
+      second-hand duster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two months later a coolie bricklayer was killed in a scuffle that took
+      place opposite Naboth&rsquo;s Vineyard. The Inspector of Police said it was a
+      serious case; went into my servants&rsquo; quarters; insulted my butler&rsquo;s wife,
+      and wanted to arrest my butler. The curious thing about the murder was
+      that most of the coolies were drunk at the time. Naboth pointed out that
+      my name was a strong shield between him and his enemies, and he expected
+      that another baby would be born to him shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four months later the hut was ALL mud walls, very solidly built, and
+      Naboth had used most of my shrubbery for his five goats. A silver watch
+      and an aluminium chain shone upon his very round stomach. My servants were
+      alarmingly drunk several times, and used to waste the day with Naboth when
+      they got the chance. I spoke to Naboth. He said, by my favour and the
+      glory of my countenance, he would make all his women-folk ladies, and that
+      if any one hinted that he was running an illicit still under the shadow of
+      the tamarisks, why, I, his Suzerain, was to prosecute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A week later he hired a man to make several dozen square yards of
+      trellis-work to put around the back of his hut, that his women-folk might
+      be screened from the public gaze. The man went away in the evening, and
+      left his day&rsquo;s work to pave the short cut from the public road to my
+      house. I was driving home in the dusk, and turned the corner by Naboth&rsquo;s
+      Vineyard quickly. The next thing I knew was that the horses of the phaeton
+      were stamping and plunging in the strongest sort of bamboo net-work. Both
+      beasts came down. One rose with nothing more than chipped knees. The other
+      was so badly kicked that I was forced to shoot him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naboth is gone now, and his hut is ploughed into its native mud with
+      sweetmeats instead of salt for a sign that the place is accursed. I have
+      built a summer-house to overlook the end of the garden, and it is as a
+      fort on my frontier whence I guard my Empire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know exactly how Ahab felt. He has been shamefully misrepresented in the
+      Scriptures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DREAM OF DUNCAN PARRENNESS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like Mr. Bunyan of old, I, Duncan Parrenness, Writer to the Most
+      Honourable the East India Company, in this God-forgotten city of Calcutta,
+      have dreamed a dream, and never since that Kitty my mare fell lame have I
+      been so troubled. Therefore, lest I should forget my dream, I have made
+      shift to set it down here. Though Heaven knows how unhandy the pen is to
+      me who was always readier with sword than ink-horn when I left London two
+      long years since.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Governor-General&rsquo;s great dance (that he gives yearly at the
+      latter end of November) was finisht, I had gone to mine own room which
+      looks over that sullen, un-English stream, the Hoogly, scarce so sober as
+      I might have been. Now, roaring drunk in the West is but fuddled in the
+      East, and I was drunk Nor&rsquo;-Nor&rsquo; Easterly as Mr. Shakespeare might have
+      said. Yet, in spite of my liquor, the cool night winds (though I have
+      heard that they breed chills and fluxes innumerable) sobered me somewhat;
+      and I remembered that I had been but a little wrung and wasted by all the
+      sicknesses of the past four months, whereas those young bloods that came
+      eastward with me in the same ship had been all, a month back, planted to
+      Eternity in the foul soil north of Writers&rsquo; Buildings. So then, I thanked
+      God mistily (though, to my shame, I never kneeled down to do so) for
+      license to live, at least till March should be upon us again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, we that were alive (and our number was less by far than those who
+      had gone to their last account in the hot weather late past) had made very
+      merry that evening, by the ramparts of the Fort, over this kindness of
+      Providence; though our jests were neither witty nor such as I should have
+      liked my Mother to hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I had lain down (or rather thrown me on my bed) and the fumes of my
+      drink had a little cleared away, I found that I could get no sleep for
+      thinking of a thousand things that were better left alone. First, and it
+      was a long time since I had thought of her, the sweet face of Kitty
+      Somerset, drifted, as it might have been drawn in a picture, across the
+      foot of my bed, so plainly, that I almost thought she had been present in
+      the body. Then I remembered how she drove me to this accursed country to
+      get rich, that I might the more quickly marry her, our parents on both
+      sides giving their consent; and then how she thought better (or worse may
+      be) of her troth, and wed Tom Sanderson but a short three months after I
+      had sailed. From Kitty I fell a-musing on Mrs. Vansuythen, a tall pale
+      woman with violet eyes that had come to Calcutta from the Dutch Factory at
+      Chinsura, and had set all our young men, and not a few of the factors, by
+      the ears. Some of our ladies, it is true, said that she had never a
+      husband or marriage-lines at all; but women, and specially those who have
+      led only indifferent good lives themselves, are cruel hard one on another.
+      Besides, Mrs. Vansuythen was far prettier than them all. She had been most
+      gracious to me at the Governor-General&rsquo;s rout, and indeed I was looked
+      upon by all as her preux chevalier&mdash;which is French for a much worse
+      word. Now, whether I cared so much as the scratch of a pin for this same
+      Mrs. Vansuythen (albeit I had vowed eternal love three days after we met)
+      I knew not then nor did till later on; but mine own pride, and a skill in
+      the small sword that no man in Calcutta could equal, kept me in her
+      affections. So that I believed I worshipt her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I had dismist her violet eyes from my thoughts, my reason reproacht
+      me for ever having followed her at all; and I saw how the one year that I
+      had lived in this land had so burnt and seared my mind with the flames of
+      a thousand bad passions and desires, that I had aged ten months for each
+      one in the Devil&rsquo;s school. Whereat I thought of my Mother for a while, and
+      was very penitent: making in my sinful tipsy mood a thousand vows of
+      reformation&mdash;all since broken, I fear me, again and again. To-morrow,
+      says I to myself, I will live cleanly for ever. And I smiled dizzily (the
+      liquor being still strong in me) to think of the dangers I had escaped;
+      and built all manner of fine Castles in Spain, whereof a shadowy Kitty
+      Somerset that had the violet eyes and the sweet slow speech of Mrs.
+      Vansuythen, was always Queen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lastly, a very fine and magnificent courage (that doubtless had its birth
+      in Mr. Hastings&rsquo; Madeira) grew upon me, till it seemed that I could become
+      Governor-General, Nawab, Prince, ay, even the Great Mogul himself, by the
+      mere wishing of it. Wherefore, taking my first steps, random and unstable
+      enough, towards my new kingdom, I kickt my servants sleeping without till
+      they howled and ran from me, and called Heaven and Earth to witness that
+      I, Duncan Parrenness, was a Writer in the service of the Company and
+      afraid of no man. Then, seeing that neither the Moon nor the Great Bear
+      were minded to accept my challenge, I lay down again and must have fallen
+      asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was waked presently by my last words repeated two or three times, and I
+      saw that there had come into the room a drunken man, as I thought, from
+      Mr. Hastings&rsquo; rout. He sate down at the foot of my bed in all the world as
+      it belonged to him, and I took note, as well as I could, that his face was
+      somewhat like mine own grown older, save when it changed to the face of
+      the Governor-General or my father, dead these six months. But this seemed
+      to me only natural, and the due result of too much wine; and I was so
+      angered at his entry all unannounced, that I told him, not over civilly,
+      to go. To all my words he made no answer whatever, only saying slowly, as
+      though it were some sweet morsel: &lsquo;Writer in the Company&rsquo;s service and
+      afraid of no man.&rsquo; Then he stops short, and turning round sharp upon me,
+      says that one of my kidney need fear neither man nor devil; that I was a
+      brave young man, and like enough, should I live so long, to be
+      Governor-General. But for all these things (and I suppose that he meant
+      thereby the changes and chances of our shifty life in these parts) I must
+      pay my price. By this time I had sobered somewhat, and being well waked
+      out of my first sleep, was disposed to look upon the matter as a tipsy
+      man&rsquo;s jest. So, says I merrily: &lsquo;And what price shall I pay for this
+      palace of mine, which is but twelve feet square, and my five poor pagodas
+      a month? The Devil take you and your jesting: I have paid my price twice
+      over in sickness.&rsquo; At that moment my man turns full towards me: so that by
+      the moonlight I could see every line and wrinkle of his face. Then my
+      drunken mirth died out of me, as I have seen the waters of our great
+      rivers die away in one night; and I, Duncan Parrenness, who was afraid of
+      no man, was taken with a more deadly terror than I hold it has ever been
+      the lot of mortal man to know. For I saw that his face was my very own,
+      but marked and lined and scarred with the furrows of disease and much evil
+      living&mdash;as I once, when I was (Lord help me) very drunk indeed, have
+      seen mine own face, all white and drawn and grown old, in a mirror. I take
+      it that any man would have been even more greatly feared than I. For I am
+      in no way wanting in courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After I had lain still for a little, sweating in my agony and waiting
+      until I should awake from this terrible dream (for dream I knew it to be)
+      he says again, that I must pay my price, and a little after, as though it
+      were to be given in pagodas and sicca rupees: &lsquo;What price will you pay?&rsquo; 
+      Says I, very softly: &lsquo;For God&rsquo;s sake let me be, whoever you are, and I
+      will mend my ways from to-night.&rsquo; Says he, laughing a little at my words,
+      but otherwise making no motion of having heard them: &lsquo;Nay, I would only
+      rid so brave a young ruffler as yourself of much that will be a great
+      hindrance to you on your way through life in the Indies; for believe me,&rsquo; 
+      and here he looks full on me once more, &lsquo;there is no return.&rsquo; At all this
+      rigmarole, which I could not then understand, I was a good deal put aback
+      and waited for what should come next. Says he very calmly, &lsquo;Give me your
+      trust in man.&rsquo; At that I saw how heavy would be my price, for I never
+      doubted but that he could take from me all that he asked, and my head was,
+      through terror and wakefulness, altogether cleared of the wine I had
+      drunk. So I takes him up very short, crying that I was not so wholly bad
+      as he would make believe, and that I trusted my fellows to the full as
+      much as they were worthy of it. &lsquo;It was none of my fault,&rsquo; says I, &lsquo;if one
+      half of them were liars and the other half deserved to be burnt in the
+      hand, and I would once more ask him to have done with his questions.&rsquo; Then
+      I stopped, a little afraid, it is true, to have let my tongue so run away
+      with me, but he took no notice of this, and only laid his hand lightly on
+      my left breast and I felt very cold there for a while. Then he says,
+      laughing more: &lsquo;Give me your faith in women.&rsquo; At that I started in my bed
+      as though I had been stung, for I thought of my sweet mother in England,
+      and for a while fancied that my faith in God&rsquo;s best creatures could
+      neither be shaken nor stolen from me. But later, Myself&rsquo;s hard eyes being
+      upon me, I fell to thinking, for the second time that night, of Kitty (she
+      that jilted me and married Tom Sanderson) and of Mistress Vansuythen, whom
+      only my devilish pride made me follow, and how she was even worse than
+      Kitty, and I worst of them all&mdash;seeing that with my life&rsquo;s work to be
+      done, I must needs go dancing down the Devil&rsquo;s swept and garnished
+      causeway, because, forsooth, there was a light woman&rsquo;s smile at the end of
+      it. And I thought that all women in the world were either like Kitty or
+      Mistress Vansuythen (as indeed they have ever since been to me) and this
+      put me to such an extremity of rage and sorrow, that I was beyond word
+      glad when Myself&rsquo;s hand fell again on my left breast, and I was no more
+      troubled by these follies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After this he was silent for a little, and I made sure that he must go or
+      I awake ere long: but presently he speaks again (and very softly) that I
+      was a fool to care for such follies as those he had taken from me, and
+      that ere he went he would only ask me for a few other trifles such as no
+      man, or for matter of that boy either, would keep about him in this
+      country. And so it happened that he took from out of my very heart as it
+      were, looking all the time into my face with my own eyes, as much as
+      remained to me of my boy&rsquo;s soul and conscience. This was to me a far more
+      terrible loss than the two that I had suffered before. For though, Lord
+      help me, I had travelled far enough from all paths of decent or godly
+      living, yet there was in me, though I myself write it, a certain goodness
+      of heart which, when I was sober (or sick) made me very sorry of all that
+      I had done before the fit came on me. And this I lost wholly: having in
+      place thereof another deadly coldness at the heart. I am not, as I have
+      before said, ready with my pen, so I fear that what I have just written
+      may not be readily understood. Yet there be certain times in a young man&rsquo;s
+      life, when, through great sorrow or sin, all the boy in him is burnt and
+      seared away so that he passes at one step to the more sorrowful state of
+      manhood: as our staring Indian day changes into night with never so much
+      as the gray of twilight to temper the two extremes. This shall perhaps
+      make my state more clear, if it be remembered that my torment was ten
+      times as great as comes in the natural course of nature to any man. At
+      that time I dared not think of the change that had come over me, and all
+      in one night: though I have often thought of it since. &lsquo;I have paid the
+      price,&rsquo; says I, my teeth chattering, for I was deadly cold, &lsquo;and what is
+      my return?&rsquo; At this time it was nearly dawn, and Myself had begun to grow
+      pale and thin against the white light in the east, as my mother used to
+      tell me is the custom of ghosts and devils and the like. He made as if he
+      would go, but my words stopt him and he laughed&mdash;as I remember that I
+      laughed when I ran Angus Macalister through the sword-arm last August,
+      because he said that Mrs. Vansuythen was no better than she should be.
+      &lsquo;What return?&rsquo;&mdash;says he, catching up my last words&mdash;&lsquo;Why,
+      strength to live as long as God or the Devil pleases, and so long as you
+      live my young master, my gift.&rsquo; With that he puts something into my hand,
+      though it was still too dark to see what it was, and when next I lookt up
+      he was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the light came I made shift to behold his gift, and saw that it was a
+      little piece of dry bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE INCARNATION OF KRISHNA MULVANEY
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ Wohl auf, my bully cavaliers,
+   We ride to church to-day,
+ The man that hasn&rsquo;t got a horse
+   Must steal one straight away.
+
+ Be reverent, men, remember
+   This is a Gottes haus.
+ Du, Conrad, cut along der aisle
+   And schenck der whiskey aus.
+                  HANS BREITMANN&rsquo;S RIDE TO CHURCH.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Once upon a time, very far from England, there lived three men who loved
+      each other so greatly that neither man nor woman could come between them.
+      They were in no sense refined, nor to be admitted to the outer-door mats
+      of decent folk, because they happened to be private soldiers in Her
+      Majesty&rsquo;s Army; and private soldiers of our service have small time for
+      self-culture. Their duty is to keep themselves and their accoutrements
+      specklessly clean, to refrain from getting drunk more often than is
+      necessary, to obey their superiors, and to pray for a war. All these
+      things my friends accomplished; and of their own motion threw in some
+      fighting-work for which the Army Regulations did not call. Their fate sent
+      them to serve in India, which is not a golden country, though poets have
+      sung otherwise. There men die with great swiftness, and those who live
+      suffer many and curious things. I do not think that my friends concerned
+      themselves much with the social or political aspects of the East. They
+      attended a not unimportant war on the northern frontier, another one on
+      our western boundary, and a third in Upper Burma. Then their regiment sat
+      still to recruit, and the boundless monotony of cantonment life was their
+      portion. They were drilled morning and evening on the same dusty
+      parade-ground. They wandered up and down the same stretch of dusty white
+      road, attended the same church and the same grog-shop, and slept in the
+      same lime-washed barn of a barrack for two long years. There was Mulvaney,
+      the father in the craft, who had served with various regiments from
+      Bermuda to Halifax, old in war, scarred, reckless, resourceful, and in his
+      pious hours an unequalled soldier. To him turned for help and comfort six
+      and a half feet of slow-moving, heavy-footed Yorkshireman, born on the
+      wolds, bred in the dales, and educated chiefly among the carriers&rsquo; carts
+      at the back of York railway-station. His name was Learoyd, and his chief
+      virtue an unmitigated patience which helped him to win fights. How
+      Ortheris, a fox-terrier of a Cockney, ever came to be one of the trio, is
+      a mystery which even to-day I cannot explain. &lsquo;There was always three av
+      us,&rsquo; Mulvaney used to say. &lsquo;An&rsquo; by the grace av God, so long as our
+      service lasts, three av us they&rsquo;ll always be. &lsquo;Tis betther so.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They desired no companionship beyond their own, and it was evil for any
+      man of the regiment who attempted dispute with them. Physical argument was
+      out of the question as regarded Mulvaney and the Yorkshireman; and assault
+      on Ortheris meant a combined attack from these twain&mdash;a business
+      which no five men were anxious to have on their hands. Therefore they
+      flourished, sharing their drinks, their tobacco, and their money; good
+      luck and evil; battle and the chances of death; life and the chances of
+      happiness from Calicut in southern, to Peshawur in northern India.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through no merit of my own it was my good fortune to be in a measure
+      admitted to their friendship&mdash;frankly by Mulvaney from the beginning,
+      sullenly and with reluctance by Learoyd, and suspiciously by Ortheris, who
+      held to it that no man not in the Army could fraternise with a red-coat.
+      &lsquo;Like to like,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m a bloomin&rsquo; sodger&mdash;he&rsquo;s a bloomin&rsquo; 
+      civilian. &lsquo;Tain&rsquo;t natural&mdash;that&rsquo;s all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that was not all. They thawed progressively, and in the thawing told
+      me more of their lives and adventures than I am ever likely to write.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Omitting all else, this tale begins with the Lamentable Thirst that was at
+      the beginning of First Causes. Never was such a thirst&mdash;Mulvaney told
+      me so. They kicked against their compulsory virtue, but the attempt was
+      only successful in the case of Ortheris. He, whose talents were many, went
+      forth into the highways and stole a dog from a &lsquo;civilian&rsquo;&mdash;videlicet,
+      some one, he knew not who, not in the Army. Now that civilian was but
+      newly connected by marriage with the colonel of the regiment, and outcry
+      was made from quarters least anticipated by Ortheris, and, in the end, he
+      was forced, lest a worse thing should happen, to dispose at ridiculously
+      unremunerative rates of as promising a small terrier as ever graced one
+      end of a leading string. The purchase-money was barely sufficient for one
+      small outbreak which led him to the guard-room. He escaped, however, with
+      nothing worse than a severe reprimand, and a few hours of punishment
+      drill. Not for nothing had he acquired the reputation of being &lsquo;the best
+      soldier of his inches&rsquo; in the regiment. Mulvaney had taught personal
+      cleanliness and efficiency as the first articles of his companions&rsquo; creed.
+      &lsquo;A dhirty man,&rsquo; he was used to say, in the speech of his kind, &lsquo;goes to
+      Clink for a weakness in the knees, an&rsquo; is coort-martialled for a pair av
+      socks missin&rsquo;; but a clane man, such as is an ornament to his service&mdash;a
+      man whose buttons are gold, whose coat is wax upon him, an&rsquo; whose
+      &lsquo;coutrements are widout a speck&mdash;THAT man may, spakin&rsquo; in reason, do
+      fwhat he likes an&rsquo; dhrink from day to divil. That&rsquo;s the pride av bein&rsquo; 
+      dacint.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We sat together, upon a day, in the shade of a ravine far from the
+      barracks, where a watercourse used to run in rainy weather. Behind us was
+      the scrub jungle, in which jackals, peacocks, the gray wolves of the
+      North-Western Provinces, and occasionally a tiger estrayed from Central
+      India, were supposed to dwell. In front lay the cantonment, glaring white
+      under a glaring sun; and on either side ran the broad road that led to
+      Delhi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the scrub that suggested to my mind the wisdom of Mulvaney taking a
+      day&rsquo;s leave and going upon a shooting-tour. The peacock is a holy bird
+      throughout India, and he who slays one is in danger of being mobbed by the
+      nearest villagers; but on the last occasion that Mulvaney had gone forth,
+      he had contrived, without in the least offending local religious
+      susceptibilities, to return with six beautiful peacock skins which he sold
+      to profit. It seemed just possible then&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But fwhat manner av use is ut to me goin&rsquo; out widout a dhrink? The
+      ground&rsquo;s powdher-dhry underfoot, an&rsquo; ut gets unto the throat fit to kill,&rsquo; 
+      wailed Mulvaney, looking at me reproachfully. &lsquo;An&rsquo; a peacock is not a bird
+      you can catch the tail av onless ye run. Can a man run on wather&mdash;an&rsquo; 
+      jungle-wather too?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris had considered the question in all its bearings. He spoke,
+      chewing his pipe-stem meditatively the while:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+‘Go forth, return in glory, To Clusium&rsquo;s royal &lsquo;ome:
+ An&rsquo; round these bloomin&rsquo; temples &lsquo;ang
+ The bloomin&rsquo; shields o&rsquo; Rome.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      You better go. You ain&rsquo;t like to shoot yourself&mdash;not while there&rsquo;s a
+      chanst of liquor. Me an&rsquo; Learoyd&rsquo;ll stay at &lsquo;ome an&rsquo; keep shop&mdash;&lsquo;case
+      o&rsquo; anythin&rsquo; turnin&rsquo; up. But you go out with a gas-pipe gun an&rsquo; ketch the
+      little peacockses or somethin&rsquo;. You kin get one day&rsquo;s leave easy as
+      winkin&rsquo;. Go along an&rsquo; get it, an&rsquo; get peacockses or somethin&rsquo;.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Jock,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, turning to Learoyd, who was half asleep under the
+      shadow of the bank. He roused slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sitha, Mulvaaney, go,&rsquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mulvaney went; cursing his allies with Irish fluency and barrack-room
+      point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Take note,&rsquo; said he, when he had won his holiday, and appeared dressed in
+      his roughest clothes with the only other regimental fowling-piece in his
+      hand. &lsquo;Take note, Jock, an&rsquo; you Orth&rsquo;ris, I am goin&rsquo; in the face av my own
+      will&mdash;all for to please you. I misdoubt anythin&rsquo; will come av
+      permiscuous huntin&rsquo; afther peacockses in a desolit lan&rsquo;; an&rsquo; I know that I
+      will lie down an&rsquo; die wid thirrrst. Me catch peacockses for you, ye lazy
+      scutts&mdash;an&rsquo; be sacrificed by the peasanthry&mdash;Ugh!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He waved a huge paw and went away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At twilight, long before the appointed hour, he returned empty-handed,
+      much begrimed with dirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Peacockses?&rsquo; queried Ortheris from the safe rest of a barrack-room table
+      whereon he was smoking cross-legged, Learoyd fast asleep on a bench.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Jock,&rsquo; said Mulvaney without answering, as he stirred up the sleeper.
+      &lsquo;Jock, can ye fight? Will ye fight?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very slowly the meaning of the words communicated itself to the
+      half-roused man. He understood&mdash;and again&mdash;what might these
+      things mean? Mulvaney was shaking him savagely. Meantime the men in the
+      room howled with delight. There was war in the confederacy at last&mdash;war
+      and the breaking of bonds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barrack-room etiquette is stringent. On the direct challenge must follow
+      the direct reply. This is more binding than the ties of tried friendship.
+      Once again Mulvaney repeated the question. Learoyd answered by the only
+      means in his power, and so swiftly that the Irishman had barely time to
+      avoid the blow. The laughter around increased. Learoyd looked bewilderedly
+      at his friend&mdash;himself as greatly bewildered. Ortheris dropped from
+      the table because his world was falling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come outside,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, and as the occupants of the barrack-room
+      prepared joyously to follow, he turned and said furiously, &lsquo;There will be
+      no fight this night&mdash;onless any wan av you is wishful to assist. The
+      man that does, follows on.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No man moved. The three passed out into the moonlight, Learoyd fumbling
+      with the buttons of his coat. The parade-ground was deserted except for
+      the scurrying jackals. Mulvaney&rsquo;s impetuous rush carried his companions
+      far into the open ere Learoyd attempted to turn round and continue the
+      discussion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Be still now. &lsquo;Twas my fault for beginnin&rsquo; things in the middle av an
+      end, Jock. I should ha&rsquo; comminst wid an explanation; but Jock, dear, on
+      your sowl are ye fit, think you, for the finest fight that iver was&mdash;betther
+      than fightin&rsquo; me? Considher before ye answer.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More than ever puzzled, Learoyd turned round two or three times, felt an
+      arm, kicked tentatively, and answered, &lsquo;Ah&rsquo;m fit.&rsquo; He was accustomed to
+      fight blindly at the bidding of the superior mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat them down, the men looking on from afar, and Mulvaney untangled
+      himself in mighty words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Followin&rsquo; your fools&rsquo; scheme I wint out into the thrackless desert beyond
+      the barricks. An&rsquo; there I met a pious Hindu dhriving a bullock-kyart. I
+      tuk ut for granted he wud be delighted for to convoy me a piece, an&rsquo; I
+      jumped in&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You long, lazy, black-haired swine,&rsquo; drawled Ortheris, who would have
+      done the same thing under similar circumstances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Twas the height av policy. That naygur-man dhruv miles an&rsquo; miles&mdash;as
+      far as the new railway line they&rsquo;re buildin&rsquo; now back av the Tavi river.
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Tis a kyart for dhirt only,&rdquo; says he now an&rsquo; again timoreously, to get
+      me out av ut. &ldquo;Dhirt I am,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;an&rsquo; the dhryest that you iver kyarted.
+      Dhrive on, me son, an glory be wid you.&rdquo; At that I wint to slape, an&rsquo; took
+      no heed till he pulled up on the embankmint av the line where the coolies
+      were pilin&rsquo; mud. There was a matther av two thousand coolies on that line&mdash;you
+      remimber that. Prisintly a bell rang, an&rsquo; they throops off to a big
+      pay-shed. &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the white man in charge?&rdquo; sez I to my kyart-dhriver.
+      &ldquo;In the shed,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;engaged on a riffle.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;A fwhat?&rdquo; sez I.
+      &ldquo;Riffle,&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;You take ticket. He take money. You get nothin&rsquo;.&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oho!&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s fwhat the shuperior an&rsquo; cultivated man calls a
+      raffle, me misbeguided child av darkness an&rsquo; sin. Lead on to that raffle,
+      though fwhat the mischief &lsquo;tis doin&rsquo; so far away from uts home&mdash;which
+      is the charity-bazaar at Christmas, an&rsquo; the colonel&rsquo;s wife grinnin&rsquo; behind
+      the tea-table&mdash;is more than I know.&rdquo; Wid that I wint to the shed an&rsquo; 
+      found &lsquo;twas pay-day among the coolies. Their wages was on a table forninst
+      a big, fine, red buck av a man&mdash;sivun fut high, four fut wide, an&rsquo; 
+      three fut thick, wid a fist on him like a corn-sack. He was payin&rsquo; the
+      coolies fair an&rsquo; easy, but he wud ask each man if he wud raffle that
+      month, an&rsquo; each man sez? &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; av course. Thin he wud deduct from their
+      wages accordin&rsquo;. Whin all was paid, he filled an ould cigar-box full av
+      gun-wads an&rsquo; scatthered ut among the coolies. They did not take much joy
+      av that performince, an&rsquo; small wondher. A man close to me picks up a black
+      gun-wad an&rsquo; sings out, &ldquo;I have ut.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Good may ut do you,&rdquo; sez I. The
+      coolie wint forward to this big, fine, red man, who threw a cloth off av
+      the most sumpshus, jooled, enamelled an&rsquo; variously bedivilled sedan-chair
+      I iver saw.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sedan-chair! Put your &lsquo;ead in a bag. That was a palanquin. Don&rsquo;t yer know
+      a palanquin when you see it?&rsquo; said Ortheris with great scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I chuse to call ut sedan-chair, an&rsquo; chair ut shall be, little man,&rsquo; 
+      continued the Irishman. &lsquo;&rsquo;Twas a most amazin&rsquo; chair&mdash;all lined wid
+      pink silk an&rsquo; fitted wid red silk curtains. &ldquo;Here ut is,&rdquo; sez the red man.
+      &ldquo;Here ut is,&rdquo; sez the coolie, an&rsquo; he grinned weakly-ways. &ldquo;Is ut any use
+      to you?&rdquo; sez the red man. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; sez the coolie; &ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to make a
+      presint av ut to you.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;I am graciously pleased to accept that
+      same,&rdquo; sez the red man; an&rsquo; at that all the coolies cried aloud in fwhat
+      was mint for cheerful notes, an&rsquo; wint back to their diggin&rsquo;, lavin&rsquo; me
+      alone in the shed. The red man saw me, an&rsquo; his face grew blue on his big,
+      fat neck. &ldquo;Fwhat d&rsquo;you want here?&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;Standin&rsquo;-room an&rsquo; no more,&rdquo;
+       sez I, &ldquo;onless it may be fwhat ye niver had, an&rsquo; that&rsquo;s manners, ye
+      rafflin&rsquo; ruffian,&rdquo; for I was not goin&rsquo; to have the Service throd upon.
+      &ldquo;Out of this,&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m in charge av this section av construction.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+      in charge av mesilf,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;an&rsquo; it&rsquo;s like I will stay a while. D&rsquo;ye
+      raffle much in these parts?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Fwhat&rsquo;s that to you?&rdquo; sez he.
+      &ldquo;Nothin&rsquo;,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;but a great dale to you, for begad I&rsquo;m thinkin&rsquo; you get
+      the full half av your revenue from that sedan-chair. Is ut always raffled
+      so?&rdquo; I sez, an&rsquo; wid that I wint to a coolie to ask questions. Bhoys, that
+      man&rsquo;s name is Dearsley, an&rsquo; he&rsquo;s been rafflin&rsquo; that ould sedan-chair
+      monthly this matther av nine months. Ivry coolie on the section takes a
+      ticket&mdash;or he gives &lsquo;em the go&mdash;wanst a month on pay-day. Ivry
+      coolie that wins ut gives ut back to him, for &lsquo;tis too big to carry away,
+      an&rsquo; he&rsquo;d sack the man that thried to sell ut. That Dearsley has been
+      makin&rsquo; the rowlin&rsquo; wealth av Roshus by nefarious rafflin&rsquo;. Think av the
+      burnin&rsquo; shame to the sufferin&rsquo; coolie-man that the army in Injia are bound
+      to protect an&rsquo; nourish in their bosoms! Two thousand coolies defrauded
+      wanst a month!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dom t&rsquo; coolies. Has&rsquo;t gotten t&rsquo; cheer, man?&rsquo; said Learoyd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hould on. Havin&rsquo; onearthed this amazin&rsquo; an&rsquo; stupenjus fraud committed by
+      the man Dearsley, I hild a council av war; he thryin&rsquo; all the time to
+      sejuce me into a fight with opprobrious language. That sedan-chair niver
+      belonged by right to any foreman av coolies. &lsquo;Tis a king&rsquo;s chair or a
+      quane&rsquo;s. There&rsquo;s gold on ut an&rsquo; silk an&rsquo; all manner av trapesemints.
+      Bhoys, &lsquo;tis not for me to countenance any sort av wrong-doin&rsquo;&mdash;me
+      bein&rsquo; the ould man&mdash;but&mdash;anyway he has had ut nine months, an&rsquo; 
+      he dare not make throuble av ut was taken from him. Five miles away, or ut
+      may be six&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long pause, and the jackals howled merrily. Learoyd bared one
+      arm, and contemplated it in the moonlight. Then he nodded partly to
+      himself and partly to his friends. Ortheris wriggled with suppressed
+      emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I thought ye wud see the reasonableness av ut,&rsquo; said Mulvaney. &lsquo;I made
+      bould to say as much to the man before. He was for a direct front attack&mdash;fut,
+      horse, an&rsquo; guns&mdash;an&rsquo; all for nothin&rsquo;, seein&rsquo; that I had no thransport
+      to convey the machine away. &ldquo;I will not argue wid you,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;this day,
+      but subsequently, Mister Dearsley, me rafflin&rsquo; jool, we talk ut out
+      lengthways. &lsquo;Tis no good policy to swindle the naygur av his hard-earned
+      emolumints, an&rsquo; by presint informashin&rsquo;&rdquo;&mdash;&lsquo;twas the kyart man that
+      tould me&mdash;&ldquo;ye&rsquo;ve been perpethrating that same for nine months. But
+      I&rsquo;m a just man,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;an&rsquo; overlookin&rsquo; the presumpshin that yondher
+      settee wid the gilt top was not come by honust&rdquo;&mdash;at that he turned
+      sky-green, so I knew things was more thrue than tellable&mdash;&ldquo;not come
+      by honust, I&rsquo;m willin&rsquo; to compound the felony for this month&rsquo;s winnin&rsquo;s.&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! Ho!&rsquo; from Learoyd and Ortheris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That man Dearsley&rsquo;s rushin&rsquo; on his fate,&rsquo; continued Mulvaney, solemnly
+      wagging his head. &lsquo;All Hell had no name bad enough for me that tide.
+      Faith, he called me a robber! Me! that was savin&rsquo; him from continuin&rsquo; in
+      his evil ways widout a remonstrince&mdash;an&rsquo; to a man av conscience a
+      remonstrince may change the chune av his life. &ldquo;&lsquo;Tis not for me to argue,&rdquo;
+       sez I, &ldquo;fwhatever ye are, Mister Dearsley, but, by my hand, I&rsquo;ll take away
+      the temptation for you that lies in that sedan-chair.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;You will
+      have to fight me for ut,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;for well I know you will never dare
+      make report to any one.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Fight I will,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;but not this day,
+      for I&rsquo;m rejuced for want av nourishment.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Ye&rsquo;re an ould bould
+      hand,&rdquo; sez he, sizin&rsquo; me up an&rsquo; down; &ldquo;an&rsquo; a jool av a fight we will have.
+      Eat now an&rsquo; dhrink, an&rsquo; go your way.&rdquo; Wid that he gave me some hump an&rsquo; 
+      whisky&mdash;good whisky&mdash;an&rsquo; we talked av this an&rsquo; that the while.
+      &ldquo;It goes hard on me now,&rdquo; sez I, wipin&rsquo; my mouth, &ldquo;to confiscate that
+      piece av furniture, but justice is justice.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Ye&rsquo;ve not got ut yet,&rdquo;
+       sez he; &ldquo;there&rsquo;s the fight between.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;There is,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;an&rsquo; a good
+      fight. Ye shall have the pick av the best quality in my rigimint for the
+      dinner you have given this day.&rdquo; Thin I came hot-foot to you two. Hould
+      your tongue, the both. &lsquo;Tis this way. To-morrow we three will go there an&rsquo; 
+      he shall have his pick betune me an&rsquo; Jock. Jock&rsquo;s a deceivin&rsquo; fighter, for
+      he is all fat to the eye, an&rsquo; he moves slow. Now, I&rsquo;m all beef to the
+      look, an&rsquo; I move quick. By my reckonin&rsquo; the Dearsley man won&rsquo;t take me; so
+      me an&rsquo; Orth&rsquo;ris &lsquo;ll see fair play. Jock, I tell you, &rsquo;twill be big fightin&rsquo;&mdash;whipped,
+      wid the cream above the jam. Afther the business &lsquo;twill take a good three
+      av us&mdash;Jock &lsquo;ll be very hurt&mdash;to haul away that sedan-chair.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Palanquin.&rsquo; This from Ortheris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Fwhatever ut is, we must have ut. &lsquo;Tis the only sellin&rsquo; piece av property
+      widin reach that we can get so cheap. An&rsquo; fwhat&rsquo;s a fight afther all? He
+      has robbed the naygur-man, dishonust. We rob him honust for the sake av
+      the whisky he gave me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But wot&rsquo;ll we do with the bloomin&rsquo; article when we&rsquo;ve got it? Them
+      palanquins are as big as &lsquo;ouses, an&rsquo; uncommon &lsquo;ard to sell, as McCleary
+      said when ye stole the sentry-box from the Curragh.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Who&rsquo;s goin&rsquo; to do t&rsquo; fightin&rsquo;?&rsquo; said Learoyd, and Ortheris subsided. The
+      three returned to barracks without a word. Mulvaney&rsquo;s last argument
+      clinched the matter. This palanquin was property, vendible, and to be
+      attained in the simplest and least embarrassing fashion. It would
+      eventually become beer. Great was Mulvaney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next afternoon a procession of three formed itself and disappeared into
+      the scrub in the direction of the new railway line. Learoyd alone was
+      without care, for Mulvaney dived darkly into the future, and little
+      Ortheris feared the unknown. What befell at that interview in the lonely
+      pay-shed by the side of the half-built embankment, only a few hundred
+      coolies know, and their tale is confusing one, running thus&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We were at work. Three men in red coats came. They saw the Sahib&mdash;Dearsley
+      Sahib. They made oration; and noticeably the small man among the
+      red-coats. Dearsley Sahib also made oration, and used many very strong
+      words. Upon this talk they departed together to an open space, and there
+      the fat man in the red coat fought with Dearsley Sahib after the custom of
+      white men&mdash;with his hands, making no noise, and never at all pulling
+      Dearsley Sahib&rsquo;s hair. Such of us as were not afraid beheld these things
+      for just so long a time as a man needs to cook the mid-day meal. The small
+      man in the red coat had possessed himself of Dearsley Sahib&rsquo;s watch. No,
+      he did not steal that watch. He held it in his hand, and at certain
+      seasons made outcry, and the twain ceased their combat, which was like the
+      combat of young bulls in spring. Both men were soon all red, but Dearsley
+      Sahib was much more red than the other. Seeing this, and fearing for his
+      life&mdash;because we greatly loved him&mdash;some fifty of us made shift
+      to rush upon the red-coats. But a certain man&mdash;very black as to the
+      hair, and in no way to be confused with the small man, or the fat man who
+      fought&mdash;that man, we affirm, ran upon us, and of us he embraced some
+      ten or fifty in both arms, and beat our heads together, so that our livers
+      turned to water, and we ran away. It is not good to interfere in the
+      fightings of white men. After that Dearsley Sahib fell and did not rise,
+      these men jumped upon his stomach and despoiled him of all his money, and
+      attempted to fire the pay-shed, and departed. Is it true that Dearsley
+      Sahib makes no complaint of these latter things having been done? We were
+      senseless with fear, and do not at all remember. There was no palanquin
+      near the pay-shed. What do we know about palanquins? Is it true that
+      Dearsley Sahib does not return to this place, on account of his sickness,
+      for ten days? This is the fault of those bad men in the red coats, who
+      should be severely punished; for Dearsley Sahib is both our father and
+      mother, and we love him much. Yet, if Dearsley Sahib does not return to
+      this place at all, we will speak the truth. There was a palanquin, for the
+      up-keep of which we were forced to pay nine-tenths of our monthly wage. On
+      such mulctings Dearsley Sahib allowed us to make obeisance to him before
+      the palanquin. What could we do? We were poor men. He took a full half of
+      our wages. Will the Government repay us those moneys? Those three men in
+      red coats bore the palanquin upon their shoulders and departed. All the
+      money that Dearsley Sahib had taken from us was in the cushions of that
+      palanquin. Therefore they stole it. Thousands of rupees were there&mdash;all
+      our money. It was our bank-box, to fill which we cheerfully contributed to
+      Dearsley Sahib three-sevenths of our monthly wage. Why does the white man
+      look upon us with the eye of disfavour? Before God, there was a palanquin,
+      and now there is no palanquin; and if they send the police here to make
+      inquisition, we can only say that there never has been any palanquin. Why
+      should a palanquin be near these works? We are poor men, and we know
+      nothing.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such is the simplest version of the simplest story connected with the
+      descent upon Dearsley. From the lips of the coolies I received it.
+      Dearsley himself was in no condition to say anything, and Mulvaney
+      preserved a massive silence, broken only by the occasional licking of the
+      lips. He had seen a fight so gorgeous that even his power of speech was
+      taken from him. I respected that reserve until, three days after the
+      affair, I discovered in a disused stable in my quarters a palanquin of
+      unchastened splendour&mdash;evidently in past days the litter of a queen.
+      The pole whereby it swung between the shoulders of the bearers was rich
+      with the painted papier-mache of Cashmere. The shoulder-pads were of
+      yellow silk. The panels of the litter itself were ablaze with the loves of
+      all the gods and goddesses of the Hindu Pantheon&mdash;lacquer on cedar.
+      The cedar sliding doors were fitted with hasps of translucent Jaipur
+      enamel and ran in grooves shod with silver. The cushions were of brocaded
+      Delhi silk, and the curtains which once hid any glimpse of the beauty of
+      the king&rsquo;s palace were stiff with gold. Closer investigation showed that
+      the entire fabric was everywhere rubbed and discoloured by time and wear;
+      but even thus it was sufficiently gorgeous to deserve housing on the
+      threshold of a royal zenana. I found no fault with it, except that it was
+      in my stable. Then, trying to lift it by the silver-shod shoulder-pole, I
+      laughed. The road from Dearsley&rsquo;s pay-shed to the cantonment was a narrow
+      and uneven one, and, traversed by three very inexperienced
+      palanquin-bearers, one of whom was sorely battered about the head, must
+      have been a path of torment. Still I did not quite recognise the right of
+      the three musketeers to turn me into a &lsquo;fence&rsquo; for stolen property.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m askin&rsquo; you to warehouse ut,&rsquo; said Mulvaney when he was brought to
+      consider the question. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s no steal in ut. Dearsley tould us we cud
+      have ut if we fought. Jock fought&mdash;an&rsquo;, oh, sorr, when the throuble
+      was at uts finest an&rsquo; Jock was bleedin&rsquo; like a stuck pig, an&rsquo; little
+      Orth&rsquo;ris was shquealin&rsquo; on one leg chewin&rsquo; big bites out av Dearsley&rsquo;s
+      watch, I wud ha&rsquo; given my place at the fight to have had you see wan
+      round. He tuk Jock, as I suspicioned he would, an&rsquo; Jock was deceptive.
+      Nine roun&rsquo;s they were even matched, an&rsquo; at the tenth&mdash;About that
+      palanquin now. There&rsquo;s not the least throuble in the world, or we wud not
+      ha&rsquo; brought ut here. You will ondherstand that the Queen&mdash;God bless
+      her!&mdash;does not reckon for a privit soldier to kape elephints an&rsquo; 
+      palanquins an&rsquo; sich in barricks. Afther we had dhragged ut down from
+      Dearsley&rsquo;s through that cruel scrub that near broke Orth&rsquo;ris&rsquo;s heart, we
+      set ut in the ravine for a night; an&rsquo; a thief av a porcupine an&rsquo; a
+      civet-cat av a jackal roosted in ut, as well we knew in the mornin&rsquo;. I put
+      ut to you, sorr, is an elegint palanquin, fit for the princess, the
+      natural abidin&rsquo; place av all the vermin in cantonmints? We brought ut to
+      you, afther dhark, and put ut in your shtable. Do not let your conscience
+      prick. Think av the rejoicin&rsquo; men in the pay-shed yonder&mdash;lookin&rsquo; at
+      Dearsley wid his head tied up in a towel&mdash;an&rsquo; well knowin&rsquo; that they
+      can dhraw their pay ivry month widout stoppages for riffles. Indirectly,
+      sorr, you have rescued from an onprincipled son av a night-hawk the
+      peasanthry av a numerous village. An&rsquo; besides, will I let that sedan-chair
+      rot on our hands? Not I. &lsquo;Tis not every day a piece av pure joolry comes
+      into the market. There&rsquo;s not a king widin these forty miles&rsquo;&mdash;he
+      waved his hand round the dusty horizon&mdash;&lsquo;not a king wud not be glad
+      to buy ut. Some day meself, whin I have leisure, I&rsquo;ll take ut up along the
+      road an&rsquo; dishpose av ut.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How?&rsquo; said I, for I knew the man was capable of anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Get into ut, av coorse, and keep wan eye open through the curtains. Whin
+      I see a likely man av the native persuasion, I will descind blushin&rsquo; from
+      my canopy and say, &ldquo;Buy a palanquin, ye black scutt?&rdquo; I will have to hire
+      four men to carry me first, though; and that&rsquo;s impossible till next
+      pay-day.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Curiously enough, Learoyd, who had fought for the prize, and in the
+      winning secured the highest pleasure life had to offer him, was altogether
+      disposed to undervalue it, while Ortheris openly said it would be better
+      to break the thing up. Dearsley, he argued, might be a many-sided man,
+      capable, despite his magnificent fighting qualities, of setting in motion
+      the machinery of the civil law&mdash;a thing much abhorred by the soldier.
+      Under any circumstances their fun had come and passed; the next pay-day
+      was close at hand, when there would be beer for all. Wherefore longer
+      conserve the painted palanquin?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A first-class rifle-shot an&rsquo; a good little man av your inches you are,&rsquo; 
+      said Mulvaney. &lsquo;But you niver had a head worth a soft-boiled egg. &lsquo;Tis me
+      has to lie awake av nights schamin&rsquo; an&rsquo; plottin&rsquo; for the three av us.
+      Orth&rsquo;ris, me son, &lsquo;tis no matther av a few gallons av beer&mdash;no, nor
+      twenty gallons&mdash;but tubs an&rsquo; vats an&rsquo; firkins in that sedan-chair.
+      Who ut was, an&rsquo; what ut was, an&rsquo; how ut got there, we do not know; but I
+      know in my bones that you an&rsquo; me an&rsquo; Jock wid his sprained thumb will get
+      a fortune thereby. Lave me alone, an&rsquo; let me think.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime the palanquin stayed in my stall, the key of which was in
+      Mulvaney&rsquo;s hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pay-day came, and with it beer. It was not in experience to hope that
+      Mulvaney, dried by four weeks&rsquo; drought, would avoid excess. Next morning
+      he and the palanquin had disappeared. He had taken the precaution of
+      getting three days&rsquo; leave &lsquo;to see a friend on the railway,&rsquo; and the
+      colonel, well knowing that the seasonal outburst was near, and hoping it
+      would spend its force beyond the limits of his jurisdiction, cheerfully
+      gave him all he demanded. At this point Mulvaney&rsquo;s history, as recorded in
+      the mess-room, stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris carried it not much further. &lsquo;No, &lsquo;e wasn&rsquo;t drunk,&rsquo; said the
+      little man loyally, &lsquo;the liquor was no more than feelin&rsquo; its way round
+      inside of &lsquo;im; but &lsquo;e went an&rsquo; filled that &lsquo;ole bloomin&rsquo; palanquin with
+      bottles &lsquo;fore &lsquo;e went off. &lsquo;E&rsquo;s gone an&rsquo; &lsquo;ired six men to carry &lsquo;im, an&rsquo; I
+      &lsquo;ad to &lsquo;elp &lsquo;im into &lsquo;is nupshal couch, &lsquo;cause &lsquo;e wouldn&rsquo;t &lsquo;ear reason.
+      &lsquo;E&rsquo;s gone off in &lsquo;is shirt an&rsquo; trousies, swearin&rsquo; tremenjus&mdash;gone
+      down the road in the palanquin, wavin&rsquo; &lsquo;is legs out o&rsquo; windy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;but where?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now you arx me a question. &lsquo;E said &lsquo;e was goin&rsquo; to sell that palanquin,
+      but from observations what happened when I was stuffin&rsquo; &lsquo;im through the
+      door, I fancy &lsquo;e&rsquo;s gone to the new embankment to mock at Dearsley. &lsquo;Soon
+      as Jock&rsquo;s off duty I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; there to see if &lsquo;e&rsquo;s safe&mdash;not Mulvaney,
+      but t&rsquo;other man. My saints, but I pity &lsquo;im as &lsquo;elps Terence out o&rsquo; the
+      palanquin when &lsquo;e&rsquo;s once fair drunk!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He&rsquo;ll come back without harm,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Corse &lsquo;e will. On&rsquo;y question is, what &lsquo;ll &lsquo;e be doin&rsquo; on the road?
+      Killing Dearsley, like as not. &lsquo;E shouldn&rsquo;t &lsquo;a gone without Jock or me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reinforced by Learoyd, Ortheris sought the foreman of the coolie-gang.
+      Dearsley&rsquo;s head was still embellished with towels. Mulvaney, drunk or
+      sober, would have struck no man in that condition, and Dearsley
+      indignantly denied that he would have taken advantage of the intoxicated
+      brave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I had my pick o&rsquo; you two,&rsquo; he explained to Learoyd, &lsquo;and you got my
+      palanquin&mdash;not before I&rsquo;d made my profit on it. Why&rsquo;d I do harm when
+      everything&rsquo;s settled? Your man DID come here&mdash;drunk as Davy&rsquo;s sow on
+      a frosty night&mdash;came a-purpose to mock me&mdash;stuck his head out of
+      the door an&rsquo; called me a crucified hodman. I made him drunker, an&rsquo; sent
+      him along. But I never touched him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To these things, Learoyd, slow to perceive the evidences of sincerity,
+      answered only, &lsquo;If owt comes to Mulvaaney &lsquo;long o&rsquo; you, I&rsquo;ll gripple you,
+      clouts or no clouts on your ugly head, an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll draw t&rsquo; throat twistyways,
+      man. See there now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The embassy removed itself, and Dearsley, the battered, laughed alone over
+      his supper that evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three days passed&mdash;a fourth and a fifth. The week drew to a close and
+      Mulvaney did not return. He, his royal palanquin, and his six attendants,
+      had vanished into air. A very large and very tipsy soldier, his feet
+      sticking out of the litter of a reigning princess, is not a thing to
+      travel along the ways without comment. Yet no man of all the country round
+      had seen any such wonder. He was, and he was not; and Learoyd suggested
+      the immediate smashment of Dearsley as a sacrifice to his ghost. Ortheris
+      insisted that all was well, and in the light of past experience his hopes
+      seemed reasonable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;When Mulvaney goes up the road,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;&rsquo;e&rsquo;s like to go a very long
+      ways up, specially when &lsquo;e&rsquo;s so blue drunk as &lsquo;e is now. But what gits me
+      is &lsquo;is not bein&rsquo; &lsquo;eard of pullin&rsquo; wool off the niggers somewheres about.
+      That don&rsquo;t look good. The drink must ha&rsquo; died out in &lsquo;im by this, unless
+      &lsquo;e&rsquo;s broke a bank, an&rsquo; then&mdash;Why don&rsquo;t &lsquo;e come back? &lsquo;E didn&rsquo;t ought
+      to ha&rsquo; gone off without us.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even Ortheris&rsquo;s heart sank at the end of the seventh day, for half the
+      regiment were out scouring the country-side, and Learoyd had been forced
+      to fight two men who hinted openly that Mulvaney had deserted. To do him
+      justice, the colonel laughed at the notion, even when it was put forward
+      by his much-trusted adjutant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mulvaney would as soon think of deserting as you would,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;No;
+      he&rsquo;s either fallen into a mischief among the villagers&mdash;and yet that
+      isn&rsquo;t likely, for he&rsquo;d blarney himself out of the Pit; or else he is
+      engaged on urgent private affairs&mdash;some stupendous devilment that we
+      shall hear of at mess after it has been the round of the barrack-rooms.
+      The worst of it is that I shall have to give him twenty-eight days&rsquo; 
+      confinement at least for being absent without leave, just when I most want
+      him to lick the new batch of recruits into shape. I never knew a man who
+      could put a polish on young soldiers as quickly as Mulvaney can. How does
+      he do it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;With blarney and the buckle-end of a belt, sir,&rsquo; said the adjutant. &lsquo;He
+      is worth a couple of non-commissioned officers when we are dealing with an
+      Irish draft, and the London lads seem to adore him. The worst of it is
+      that if he goes to the cells the other two are neither to hold nor to bind
+      till he comes out again. I believe Ortheris preaches mutiny on those
+      occasions, and I know that the mere presence of Learoyd mourning for
+      Mulvaney kills all the cheerfulness of his room. The sergeants tell me
+      that he allows no man to laugh when he feels unhappy. They are a queer
+      gang.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For all that, I wish we had a few more of them. I like a well-conducted
+      regiment, but these pasty-faced, shifty-eyed, mealy-mouthed young
+      slouchers from the depot worry me sometimes with their offensive virtue.
+      They don&rsquo;t seem to have backbone enough to do anything but play cards and
+      prowl round the married quarters. I believe I&rsquo;d forgive that old villain
+      on the spot if he turned up with any sort of explanation that I could in
+      decency accept.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Not likely to be much difficulty about that, sir,&rsquo; said the adjutant.
+      &lsquo;Mulvaney&rsquo;s explanations are only one degree less wonderful than his
+      performances. They say that when he was in the Black Tyrone, before he
+      came to us, he was discovered on the banks of the Liffey trying to sell
+      his colonel&rsquo;s charger to a Donegal dealer as a perfect lady&rsquo;s hack.
+      Shackbolt commanded the Tyrone then.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Shackbolt must have had apoplexy at the thought of his ramping war-horses
+      answering to that description. He used to buy unbacked devils, and tame
+      them on some pet theory of starvation. What did Mulvaney say?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That he was a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
+      Animals, anxious to &ldquo;sell the poor baste where he would get something to
+      fill out his dimples.&rdquo; Shackbolt laughed, but I fancy that was why
+      Mulvaney exchanged to ours.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I wish he were back,&rsquo; said the colonel; &lsquo;for I like him and believe he
+      likes me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening, to cheer our souls, Learoyd, Ortheris, and I went into the
+      waste to smoke out a porcupine. All the dogs attended, but even their
+      clamour&mdash;and they began to discuss the shortcomings of porcupines
+      before they left cantonments&mdash;could not take us out of ourselves. A
+      large, low moon turned the tops of the plume-grass to silver, and the
+      stunted camelthorn bushes and sour tamarisks into the likenesses of
+      trooping devils. The smell of the sun had not left the earth, and little
+      aimless winds blowing across the rose-gardens to the southward brought the
+      scent of dried roses and water. Our fire once started, and the dogs
+      craftily disposed to wait the dash of the porcupine, we climbed to the top
+      of a rain-scarred hillock of earth, and looked across the scrub seamed
+      with cattle paths, white with the long grass, and dotted with spots of
+      level pond-bottom, where the snipe would gather in winter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;This,&rsquo; said Ortheris, with a sigh, as he took in the unkempt desolation
+      of it all, &lsquo;this is sanguinary. This is unusually sanguinary. Sort o&rsquo; mad
+      country. Like a grate when the fire&rsquo;s put out by the sun.&rsquo; He shaded his
+      eyes against the moonlight. &lsquo;An&rsquo; there&rsquo;s a loony dancin&rsquo; in the middle of
+      it all. Quite right. I&rsquo;d dance too if I wasn&rsquo;t so downheart.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There pranced a Portent in the face of the moon&mdash;a huge and ragged
+      spirit of the waste, that flapped its wings from afar. It had risen out of
+      the earth; it was coming towards us, and its outline was never twice the
+      same. The toga, table-cloth, or dressing-gown, whatever the creature wore,
+      took a hundred shapes. Once it stopped on a neighbouring mound and flung
+      all its legs and arms to the winds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;My, but that scarecrow &lsquo;as got &lsquo;em bad!&rsquo; said Ortheris. &lsquo;Seems like if &lsquo;e
+      comes any furder we&rsquo;ll &lsquo;ave to argify with &lsquo;im.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Learoyd raised himself from the dirt as a bull clears his flanks of the
+      wallow. And as a bull bellows, so he, after a short minute at gaze, gave
+      tongue to the stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;MULVAANEY! MULVAANEY! A-hoo!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh then it was that we yelled, and the figure dipped into the hollow,
+      till, with a crash of rending grass, the lost one strode up to the light
+      of the fire and disappeared to the waist in a wave of joyous dogs! Then
+      Learoyd and Ortheris gave greeting, bass and falsetto together, both
+      swallowing a lump in the throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You damned fool!&rsquo; said they, and severally pounded him with their fists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go easy!&rsquo; he answered; wrapping a huge arm round each. &lsquo;I would have you
+      to know that I am a god, to be treated as such&mdash;tho&rsquo;, by my faith, I
+      fancy I&rsquo;ve got to go to the guard-room just like a privit soldier.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter part of the sentence destroyed the suspicions raised by the
+      former. Any one would have been justified in regarding Mulvaney as mad. He
+      was hatless and shoeless, and his shirt and trousers were dropping off
+      him. But he wore one wondrous garment&mdash;a gigantic cloak that fell
+      from collar-bone to heel&mdash;of pale pink silk, wrought all over in
+      cunningest needlework of hands long since dead, with the loves of the
+      Hindu gods. The monstrous figures leaped in and out of the light of the
+      fire as he settled the folds round him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris handled the stuff respectfully for a moment while I was trying to
+      remember where I had seen it before. Then he screamed, &lsquo;What &lsquo;AVE you done
+      with the palanquin? You&rsquo;re wearin&rsquo; the linin&rsquo;.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am,&rsquo; said the Irishman, &lsquo;an&rsquo; by the same token the &lsquo;broidery is
+      scrapin&rsquo; my hide off. I&rsquo;ve lived in this sumpshus counterpane for four
+      days. Me son, I begin to ondherstand why the naygur is no use. Widout me
+      boots, an&rsquo; me trousies like an openwork stocking on a gyurl&rsquo;s leg at a
+      dance, I begin to feel like a naygur-man&mdash;all fearful an&rsquo; timoreous.
+      Give me a pipe an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll tell on.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lit a pipe, resumed his grip of his two friends, and rocked to and fro
+      in a gale of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mulvaney,&rsquo; said Ortheris sternly, &lsquo;&rsquo;tain&rsquo;t no time for laughin&rsquo;. You&rsquo;ve
+      given Jock an&rsquo; me more trouble than you&rsquo;re worth. You &lsquo;ave been absent
+      without leave an&rsquo; you&rsquo;ll go into cells for that; an&rsquo; you &lsquo;ave come back
+      disgustin&rsquo;ly dressed an&rsquo; most improper in the linin&rsquo; o&rsquo; that bloomin&rsquo; 
+      palanquin. Instid of which you laugh. An&rsquo; WE thought you was dead all the
+      time.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bhoys,&rsquo; said the culprit, still shaking gently, &lsquo;whin I&rsquo;ve done my tale
+      you may cry if you like, an&rsquo; little Orth&rsquo;ris here can thrample my inside
+      out. Ha&rsquo; done an&rsquo; listen. My performances have been stupenjus: my luck has
+      been the blessed luck av the British Army&mdash;an&rsquo; there&rsquo;s no betther
+      than that. I went out dhrunk an&rsquo; dhrinkin&rsquo; in the palanquin, and I have
+      come back a pink god. Did any of you go to Dearsley afther my time was up?
+      He was at the bottom of ut all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah said so,&rsquo; murmured Learoyd. &lsquo;To-morrow ah&rsquo;ll smash t&rsquo; face in upon his
+      heead.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ye will not. Dearsley&rsquo;s a jool av a man. Afther Ortheris had put me into
+      the palanquin an&rsquo; the six bearer-men were gruntin&rsquo; down the road, I tuk
+      thought to mock Dearsley for that fight. So I tould thim, &ldquo;Go to the
+      embankmint,&rdquo; and there, bein&rsquo; most amazin&rsquo; full, I shtuck my head out av
+      the concern an&rsquo; passed compliments wid Dearsley. I must ha&rsquo; miscalled him
+      outrageous, for whin I am that way the power av the tongue comes on me. I
+      can bare remimber tellin&rsquo; him that his mouth opened endways like the mouth
+      av a skate, which was thrue afther Learoyd had handled ut; an&rsquo; I clear
+      remimber his takin&rsquo; no manner nor matter av offence, but givin&rsquo; me a big
+      dhrink of beer. &lsquo;Twas the beer did the thrick, for I crawled back into the
+      palanquin, steppin&rsquo; on me right ear wid me left foot, an&rsquo; thin I slept
+      like the dead. Wanst I half-roused, an&rsquo; begad the noise in my head was
+      tremenjus&mdash;roarin&rsquo; and rattlin&rsquo; an&rsquo; poundin&rsquo; such as was quite new to
+      me. &ldquo;Mother av Mercy,&rdquo; thinks I, &ldquo;phwat a concertina I will have on my
+      shoulders whin I wake!&rdquo; An&rsquo; wid that I curls mysilf up to sleep before ut
+      should get hould on me. Bhoys, that noise was not dhrink, &lsquo;twas the rattle
+      av a thrain!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There followed an impressive pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, he had put me on a thrain&mdash;put me, palanquin an&rsquo; all, an&rsquo; six
+      black assassins av his own coolies that was in his nefarious confidence,
+      on the flat av a ballast-thruck, and we were rowlin&rsquo; an&rsquo; bowlin&rsquo; along to
+      Benares. Glory be that I did not wake up thin an&rsquo; introjuce mysilf to the
+      coolies. As I was sayin&rsquo;, I slept for the betther part av a day an&rsquo; a
+      night. But remimber you, that that man Dearsley had packed me off on wan
+      av his material-thrains to Benares, all for to make me overstay my leave
+      an&rsquo; get me into the cells.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The explanation was an eminently rational one. Benares lay at least ten
+      hours by rail from the cantonments, and nothing in the world could have
+      saved Mulvaney from arrest as a deserter had he appeared there in the
+      apparel of his orgies. Dearsley had not forgotten to take revenge.
+      Learoyd, drawing back a little, began to place soft blows over selected
+      portions of Mulvaney&rsquo;s body. His thoughts were away on the embankment, and
+      they meditated evil for Dearsley. Mulvaney continued&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Whin I was full awake the palanquin was set down in a street, I
+      suspicioned, for I cud hear people passin&rsquo; an&rsquo; talkin&rsquo;. But I knew well I
+      was far from home. There is a queer smell upon our cantonments&mdash;a
+      smell av dried earth and brick-kilns wid whiffs av cavalry stable-litter.
+      This place smelt marigold flowers an&rsquo; bad water, an&rsquo; wanst somethin&rsquo; alive
+      came an&rsquo; blew heavy with his muzzle at the chink av the shutter. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s in
+      a village I am,&rdquo; thinks I to mysilf, &ldquo;an&rsquo; the parochial buffalo is
+      investigatin&rsquo; the palanquin.&rdquo; But anyways I had no desire to move. Only
+      lie still whin you&rsquo;re in foreign parts an&rsquo; the standin&rsquo; luck av the
+      British Army will carry ye through. That is an epigram. I made ut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thin a lot av whishperin&rsquo; divils surrounded the palanquin. &ldquo;Take ut up,&rdquo;
+       sez wan man. &ldquo;But who&rsquo;ll pay us?&rdquo; sez another. &ldquo;The Maharanee&rsquo;s minister,
+      av coorse,&rdquo; sez the man. &ldquo;Oho!&rdquo; sez I to mysilf, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a quane in me own
+      right, wid a minister to pay me expenses. I&rsquo;ll be an emperor if I lie
+      still long enough; but this is no village I&rsquo;ve found.&rdquo; I lay quiet, but I
+      gummed me right eye to a crack av the shutters, an&rsquo; I saw that the whole
+      street was crammed wid palanquins an&rsquo; horses, an&rsquo; a sprinklin&rsquo; av naked
+      priests all yellow powder an&rsquo; tigers&rsquo; tails. But I may tell you, Orth&rsquo;ris,
+      an&rsquo; you, Learoyd, that av all the palanquins ours was the most imperial
+      an&rsquo; magnificent. Now a palanquin means a native lady all the world over,
+      except whin a soldier av the Quane happens to be takin&rsquo; a ride. &ldquo;Women an&rsquo; 
+      priests!&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Your father&rsquo;s son is in the right pew this time,
+      Terence. There will be proceedin&rsquo;s.&rdquo; Six black divils in pink muslin tuk
+      up the palanquin, an&rsquo; oh! but the rowlin&rsquo; an&rsquo; the rockin&rsquo; made me sick.
+      Thin we got fair jammed among the palanquins&mdash;not more than fifty av
+      them&mdash;an&rsquo; we grated an&rsquo; bumped like Queenstown potato-smacks in a
+      runnin&rsquo; tide. I cud hear the women gigglin&rsquo; and squirkin&rsquo; in their
+      palanquins, but mine was the royal equipage. They made way for ut, an&rsquo;,
+      begad, the pink muslin men o&rsquo; mine were howlin&rsquo;, &ldquo;Room for the Maharanee
+      av Gokral-Seetarun.&rdquo; Do you know aught av the lady, sorr?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said I. &lsquo;She is a very estimable old queen of the Central Indian
+      States, and they say she is fat. How on earth could she go to Benares
+      without all the city knowing her palanquin?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Twas the eternal foolishness av the naygur-man. They saw the palanquin
+      lying loneful an&rsquo; forlornsome, an&rsquo; the beauty av ut, after Dearsley&rsquo;s men
+      had dhropped ut and gone away, an&rsquo; they gave ut the best name that
+      occurred to thim. Quite right too. For aught we know the ould lady was
+      thravellin&rsquo; incog&mdash;like me. I&rsquo;m glad to hear she&rsquo;s fat. I was no
+      light weight mysilf, an&rsquo; my men were mortial anxious to dhrop me under a
+      great big archway promiscuously ornamented wid the most improper carvin&rsquo;s
+      an&rsquo; cuttin&rsquo;s I iver saw. Begad! they made me blush&mdash;like a&mdash;like
+      a Maharanee.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The temple of Prithi-Devi,&rsquo; I murmured, remembering the monstrous horrors
+      of that sculptured archway at Benares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Pretty Devilskins, savin&rsquo; your presence, sorr! There was nothin&rsquo; pretty
+      about ut, except me. &lsquo;Twas all half dhark, an&rsquo; whin the coolies left they
+      shut a big black gate behind av us, an&rsquo; half a company av fat yellow
+      priests began pully-haulin&rsquo; the palanquins into a dharker place yet&mdash;a
+      big stone hall full av pillars, an&rsquo; gods, an&rsquo; incense, an&rsquo; all manner av
+      similar thruck. The gate disconcerted me, for I perceived I wud have to go
+      forward to get out, my retreat bein&rsquo; cut off. By the same token a good
+      priest makes a bad palanquin-coolie. Begad! they nearly turned me inside
+      out draggin&rsquo; the palanquin to the temple. Now the disposishin av the
+      forces inside was this way. The Maharanee av Gokral-Seetarun&mdash;that
+      was me&mdash;lay by the favour av Providence on the far left flank behind
+      the dhark av a pillar carved with elephints&rsquo; heads. The remainder av the
+      palanquins was in a big half circle facing in to the biggest, fattest, an&rsquo; 
+      most amazin&rsquo; she-god that iver I dreamed av. Her head ran up into the
+      black above us, an&rsquo; her feet stuck out in the light av a little fire av
+      melted butter that a priest was feedin&rsquo; out av a butter-dish. Thin a man
+      began to sing an&rsquo; play on somethin&rsquo; back in the dhark, an &lsquo;twas a queer
+      song. Ut made my hair lift on the back av my neck. Thin the doors av all
+      the palanquins slid back, an&rsquo; the women bundled out. I saw what I&rsquo;ll niver
+      see again. &lsquo;Twas more glorious than thransformations at a pantomime, for
+      they was in pink an&rsquo; blue an&rsquo; silver an&rsquo; red an&rsquo; grass green, wid di&rsquo;monds
+      an&rsquo; im&rsquo;ralds an&rsquo; great red rubies all over thim. But that was the least
+      part av the glory. O bhoys, they were more lovely than the like av any
+      loveliness in hiven; ay, their little bare feet were betther than the
+      white hands av a lord&rsquo;s lady, an&rsquo; their mouths were like puckered roses,
+      an&rsquo; their eyes were bigger an&rsquo; dharker than the eyes av any livin&rsquo; women
+      I&rsquo;ve seen. Ye may laugh, but I&rsquo;m speakin&rsquo; truth. I niver saw the like, an&rsquo; 
+      niver I will again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Seeing that in all probability you were watching the wives and daughters
+      of most of the Kings of India, the chances are that you won&rsquo;t,&rsquo; I said,
+      for it was dawning on me that Mulvaney had stumbled upon a big Queens&rsquo; 
+      Praying at Benares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I niver will,&rsquo; he said mournfully. &lsquo;That sight doesn&rsquo;t come twist to any
+      man. It made me ashamed to watch. A fat priest knocked at my door. I
+      didn&rsquo;t think he&rsquo;d have the insolince to disturb the Maharanee av
+      Gokral-Seetarun, so I lay still. &ldquo;The old cow&rsquo;s asleep,&rdquo; sez he to
+      another. &ldquo;Let her be,&rdquo; sez that. &ldquo;&lsquo;Twill be long before she has a calf!&rdquo; I
+      might ha&rsquo; known before he spoke that all a woman prays for in Injia&mdash;an&rsquo; 
+      for matter o&rsquo; that in England too&mdash;is childher. That made me more
+      sorry I&rsquo;d come, me bein&rsquo;, as you well know, a childless man.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent for a moment, thinking of his little son, dead many years
+      ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They prayed, an&rsquo; the butter-fires blazed up an&rsquo; the incense turned
+      everything blue, an&rsquo; between that an&rsquo; the fires the women looked as tho&rsquo; 
+      they were all ablaze an&rsquo; twinklin&rsquo;. They took hold av the she-god&rsquo;s knees,
+      they cried out an&rsquo; they threw themselves about, an&rsquo; that
+      world-without-end-amen music was dhrivin&rsquo; thim mad. Mother av Hiven! how
+      they cried, an&rsquo; the ould she-god grinnin&rsquo; above thim all so scornful! The
+      dhrink was dyin&rsquo; out in me fast, an&rsquo; I was thinkin&rsquo; harder than the
+      thoughts wud go through my head&mdash;thinkin&rsquo; how to get out, an&rsquo; all
+      manner of nonsense as well. The women were rockin&rsquo; in rows, their di&rsquo;mond
+      belts clickin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; the tears runnin&rsquo; out betune their hands, an&rsquo; the
+      lights were goin&rsquo; lower an&rsquo; dharker. Thin there was a blaze like lightnin&rsquo; 
+      from the roof, an&rsquo; that showed me the inside av the palanquin, an&rsquo; at the
+      end where my foot was, stood the livin&rsquo; spit an&rsquo; image o&rsquo; mysilf worked on
+      the linin&rsquo;. This man here, ut was.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hunted in the folds of his pink cloak, ran a hand under one, and thrust
+      into the firelight a foot-long embroidered presentment of the great god
+      Krishna, playing on a flute. The heavy jowl, the staring eye, and the
+      blue-black moustache of the god made up a far-off resemblance to Mulvaney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The blaze was gone in a wink, but the whole schame came to me thin. I
+      believe I was mad too. I slid the off-shutter open an&rsquo; rowled out into the
+      dhark behind the elephint-head pillar, tucked up my trousies to my knees,
+      slipped off my boots an&rsquo; tuk a general hould av all the pink linin&rsquo; av the
+      palanquin. Glory be, ut ripped out like a woman&rsquo;s dhriss whin you tread on
+      ut at a sergeants&rsquo; ball, an&rsquo; a bottle came with ut. I tuk the bottle an&rsquo; 
+      the next minut I was out av the dhark av the pillar, the pink linin&rsquo; 
+      wrapped round me most graceful, the music thunderin&rsquo; like kettledrums, an&rsquo; 
+      a could draft blowin&rsquo; round my bare legs. By this hand that did ut, I was
+      Khrishna tootlin&rsquo; on the flute&mdash;the god that the rig&rsquo;mental chaplain
+      talks about. A sweet sight I must ha&rsquo; looked. I knew my eyes were big, and
+      my face was wax-white, an&rsquo; at the worst I must ha&rsquo; looked like a ghost.
+      But they took me for the livin&rsquo; god. The music stopped, and the women were
+      dead dumb an&rsquo; I crooked my legs like a shepherd on a china basin, an&rsquo; I
+      did the ghost-waggle with my feet as I had done ut at the rig&rsquo;mental
+      theatre many times, an&rsquo; I slid acrost the width av that temple in front av
+      the she-god tootlin&rsquo; on the beer bottle.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wot did you toot?&rsquo; demanded Ortheris the practical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Me? Oh!&rsquo; Mulvaney sprang up, suiting the action to the word, and sliding
+      gravely in front of us, a dilapidated but imposing deity in the half
+      light. &lsquo;I sang&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &lsquo;Only say
+     You&rsquo;ll be Mrs. Brallaghan.
+     Don&rsquo;t say nay,
+     Charmin&rsquo; Judy Callaghan.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I didn&rsquo;t know me own voice when I sang. An&rsquo; oh! &lsquo;twas pitiful to see the
+      women. The darlin&rsquo;s were down on their faces. Whin I passed the last wan I
+      cud see her poor little fingers workin&rsquo; one in another as if she wanted to
+      touch my feet. So I dhrew the tail av this pink overcoat over her head for
+      the greater honour, an&rsquo; I slid into the dhark on the other side av the
+      temple, and fetched up in the arms av a big fat priest. All I wanted was
+      to get away clear. So I tuk him by his greasy throat an&rsquo; shut the speech
+      out av him. &ldquo;Out!&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Which way, ye fat heathen?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; sez he.
+      &ldquo;Man,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;White man, soldier man, common soldier man. Where in the
+      name av confusion is the back door?&rdquo; The women in the temple were still on
+      their faces, an&rsquo; a young priest was holdin&rsquo; out his arms above their
+      heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;This way,&rdquo; sez my fat friend, duckin&rsquo; behind a big bull-god an&rsquo; divin&rsquo; 
+      into a passage. Thin I remimbered that I must ha&rsquo; made the miraculous
+      reputation av that temple for the next fifty years. &ldquo;Not so fast,&rdquo; I sez,
+      an&rsquo; I held out both my hands wid a wink. That ould thief smiled like a
+      father. I tuk him by the back av the neck in case he should be wishful to
+      put a knife into me unbeknownst, an&rsquo; I ran him up an&rsquo; down the passage
+      twice to collect his sensibilities! &ldquo;Be quiet,&rdquo; sez he, in English. &ldquo;Now
+      you talk sense,&rdquo; I sez. &ldquo;Fwhat &lsquo;ll you give me for the use av that most
+      iligant palanquin I have no time to take away?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t tell,&rdquo; sez
+      he. &ldquo;Is ut like?&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;But ye might give me my railway fare. I&rsquo;m far
+      from my home an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve done you a service.&rdquo; Bhoys, &lsquo;tis a good thing to be
+      a priest. The ould man niver throubled himself to dhraw from a bank. As I
+      will prove to you subsequint, he philandered all round the slack av his
+      clothes an&rsquo; began dribblin&rsquo; ten-rupee notes, old gold mohurs, and rupees
+      into my hand till I could hould no more.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You lie!&rsquo; said Ortheris. &lsquo;You&rsquo;re mad or sunstrook. A native don&rsquo;t give
+      coin unless you cut it out o&rsquo; &lsquo;im. &lsquo;Tain&rsquo;t nature.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then my lie an&rsquo; my sunstroke is concealed under that lump av sod yonder,&rsquo; 
+      retorted Mulvaney unruffled, nodding across the scrub. &lsquo;An&rsquo; there&rsquo;s a dale
+      more in nature than your squidgy little legs have iver taken you to,
+      Orth&rsquo;ris, me son. Four hundred an&rsquo; thirty-four rupees by my reckonin&rsquo;, AN&rsquo; 
+      a big fat gold necklace that I took from him as a remimbrancer, was our
+      share in that business.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; &lsquo;e give it you for love?&rsquo; said Ortheris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We were alone in that passage. Maybe I was a trifle too pressin&rsquo;, but
+      considher fwhat I had done for the good av the temple and the iverlastin&rsquo; 
+      joy av those women. &lsquo;Twas cheap at the price. I wud ha&rsquo; taken more if I
+      cud ha&rsquo; found ut. I turned the ould man upside down at the last, but he
+      was milked dhry. Thin he opened a door in another passage an&rsquo; I found
+      mysilf up to my knees in Benares river-water, an&rsquo; bad smellin&rsquo; ut is. More
+      by token I had come out on the river-line close to the burnin&rsquo; ghat and
+      contagious to a cracklin&rsquo; corpse. This was in the heart av the night, for
+      I had been four hours in the temple. There was a crowd av boats tied up,
+      so I tuk wan an&rsquo; wint across the river. Thin I came home acrost country,
+      lyin&rsquo; up by day.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How on earth did you manage?&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How did Sir Frederick Roberts get from Cabul to Candahar? He marched an&rsquo; 
+      he niver tould how near he was to breakin&rsquo; down. That&rsquo;s why he is fwhat he
+      is. An&rsquo; now&mdash;&rsquo; Mulvaney yawned portentously. &lsquo;Now I will go an&rsquo; give
+      myself up for absince widout leave. It&rsquo;s eight an&rsquo; twenty days an&rsquo; the
+      rough end of the colonel&rsquo;s tongue in orderly room, any way you look at ut.
+      But &lsquo;tis cheap at the price.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mulvaney,&rsquo; said I softly. &lsquo;If there happens to be any sort of excuse that
+      the colonel can in any way accept, I have a notion that you&rsquo;ll get nothing
+      more than the dressing-gown. The new recruits are in, and&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Not a word more, sorr. Is ut excuses the old man wants? &lsquo;Tis not my way,
+      but he shall have thim. I&rsquo;ll tell him I was engaged in financial
+      operations connected wid a church,&rsquo; and he flapped his way to cantonments
+      and the cells, singing lustily&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &lsquo;So they sent a corp&rsquo;ril&rsquo;s file,
+     And they put me in the gyard-room
+     For conduck unbecomin&rsquo; of a soldier.&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And when he was lost in the midst of the moonlight we could hear the
+      refrain&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Bang upon the big drum, bash upon the cymbals,
+     As we go marchin&rsquo; along, boys, oh!
+     For although in this campaign
+     There&rsquo;s no whisky nor champagne,
+     We&rsquo;ll keep our spirits goin&rsquo; with a song, boys!&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Therewith he surrendered himself to the joyful and almost weeping guard,
+      and was made much of by his fellows. But to the colonel he said that he
+      had been smitten with sunstroke and had lain insensible on a villager&rsquo;s
+      cot for untold hours; and between laughter and goodwill the affair was
+      smoothed over, so that he could, next day, teach the new recruits how to
+      &lsquo;Fear God, Honour the Queen, Shoot Straight, and Keep Clean.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     What did the colonel&rsquo;s lady think?
+       Nobody never knew.
+     Somebody asked the sergeant&rsquo;s wife
+       An&rsquo; she told &lsquo;em true.
+     When you git to a man in the case
+       They&rsquo;re like a row o&rsquo; pins,
+     For the colonel&rsquo;s lady an&rsquo; Judy O&rsquo;Grady
+       Are sisters under their skins.
+                          BARRACK-ROOM BALLAD.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Al day I had followed at the heels of a pursuing army engaged on one of
+      the finest battles that ever camp of exercise beheld. Thirty thousand
+      troops had by the wisdom of the Government of India been turned loose over
+      a few thousand square miles of country to practise in peace what they
+      would never attempt in war. Consequently cavalry charged unshaken infantry
+      at the trot. Infantry captured artillery by frontal attacks delivered in
+      line of quarter columns, and mounted infantry skirmished up to the wheels
+      of an armoured train which carried nothing more deadly than a twenty-five
+      pounder Armstrong, two Nordenfeldts, and a few score volunteers all cased
+      in three-eighths-inch boiler-plate. Yet it was a very lifelike camp.
+      Operations did not cease at sundown; nobody knew the country and nobody
+      spared man or horse. There was unending cavalry scouting and almost
+      unending forced work over broken ground. The Army of the South had finally
+      pierced the centre of the Army of the North, and was pouring through the
+      gap hot-foot to capture a city of strategic importance. Its front extended
+      fanwise, the sticks being represented by regiments strung out along the
+      line of route backwards to the divisional transport columns and all the
+      lumber that trails behind an army on the move. On its right the broken
+      left of the Army of the North was flying in mass, chased by the Southern
+      horse and hammered by the Southern guns till these had been pushed far
+      beyond the limits of their last support. Then the flying sat down to rest,
+      while the elated commandant of the pursuing force telegraphed that he held
+      all in check and observation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unluckily he did not observe that three miles to his right flank a flying
+      column of Northern horse with a detachment of Ghoorkhas and British troops
+      had been pushed round, as fast as the failing light allowed, to cut across
+      the entire rear of the Southern Army, to break, as it were, all the ribs
+      of the fan where they converged by striking at the transport, reserve
+      ammunition, and artillery supplies. Their instructions were to go in,
+      avoiding the few scouts who might not have been drawn off by the pursuit,
+      and create sufficient excitement to impress the Southern Army with the
+      wisdom of guarding their own flank and rear before they captured cities.
+      It was a pretty manoeuvre, neatly carried out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Speaking for the second division of the Southern Army, our first
+      intimation of the attack was at twilight, when the artillery were
+      labouring in deep sand, most of the escort were trying to help them out,
+      and the main body of the infantry had gone on. A Noah&rsquo;s Ark of elephants,
+      camels, and the mixed menagerie of an Indian transport-train bubbled and
+      squealed behind the guns when there appeared from nowhere in particular
+      British infantry to the extent of three companies, who sprang to the heads
+      of the gun-horses and brought all to a standstill amid oaths and cheers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How&rsquo;s that, umpire?&rsquo; said the major commanding the attack, and with one
+      voice the drivers and limber gunners answered &lsquo;Hout!&rsquo; while the colonel of
+      artillery sputtered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All your scouts are charging our main body,&rsquo; said the major. &lsquo;Your flanks
+      are unprotected for two miles. I think we&rsquo;ve broken the back of this
+      division. And listen,&mdash;there go the Ghoorkhas!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A weak fire broke from the rear-guard more than a mile away, and was
+      answered by cheerful howlings. The Ghoorkhas, who should have swung clear
+      of the second division, had stepped on its tail in the dark, but drawing
+      off hastened to reach the next line of attack, which lay almost parallel
+      to us five or six miles away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our column swayed and surged irresolutely,&mdash;three batteries, the
+      divisional ammunition reserve, the baggage, and a section of the hospital
+      and bearer corps. The commandant ruefully promised to report himself &lsquo;cut
+      up&rsquo; to the nearest umpire, and commending his cavalry and all other
+      cavalry to the special care of Eblis, toiled on to resume touch with the
+      rest of the division.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll bivouac here to-night,&rsquo; said the major, &lsquo;I have a notion that the
+      Ghoorkhas will get caught. They may want us to re-form on. Stand easy till
+      the transport gets away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A hand caught my beast&rsquo;s bridle and led him out of the choking dust; a
+      larger hand deftly canted me out of the saddle; and two of the hugest
+      hands in the world received me sliding. Pleasant is the lot of the special
+      correspondent who falls into such hands as those of Privates Mulvaney,
+      Ortheris, and Learoyd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; that&rsquo;s all right,&rsquo; said the Irishman calmly. &lsquo;We thought we&rsquo;d find
+      you somewheres here by. Is there anything av yours in the transport?
+      Orth&rsquo;ris &lsquo;ll fetch ut out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris did &lsquo;fetch ut out,&rsquo; from under the trunk of an elephant, in the
+      shape of a servant and an animal both laden with medical comforts. The
+      little man&rsquo;s eyes sparkled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If the brutil an&rsquo; licentious soldiery av these parts gets sight av the
+      thruck,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, making practised investigations, &lsquo;they&rsquo;ll loot
+      ev&rsquo;rything. They&rsquo;re bein&rsquo; fed on iron-filin&rsquo;s an&rsquo; dog-biscuit these days,
+      but glory&rsquo;s no compensation for a belly-ache. Praise be, we&rsquo;re here to
+      protect you, sorr. Beer, sausage, bread (soft an&rsquo; that&rsquo;s a cur&rsquo;osity),
+      soup in a tin, whisky by the smell av ut, an&rsquo; fowls! Mother av Moses, but
+      ye take the field like a confectioner! &lsquo;Tis scand&rsquo;lus.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ere&rsquo;s a orficer,&rsquo; said Ortheris significantly. &lsquo;When the sergent&rsquo;s done
+      lushin&rsquo; the privit may clean the pot.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I bundled several things into Mulvaney&rsquo;s haversack before the major&rsquo;s hand
+      fell on my shoulder and he said tenderly, &lsquo;Requisitioned for the Queen&rsquo;s
+      service. Wolseley was quite wrong about special correspondents: they are
+      the soldier&rsquo;s best friends. Come and take pot-luck with us to-night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it happened amid laughter and shoutings that my well-considered
+      commissariat melted away to reappear later at the mess-table, which was a
+      waterproof sheet spread on the ground. The flying column had taken three
+      days&rsquo; rations with it, and there be few things nastier than government
+      rations&mdash;especially when government is experimenting with German
+      toys. Erbsenwurst, tinned beef of surpassing tinniness, compressed
+      vegetables, and meat-biscuits may be nourishing, but what Thomas Atkins
+      needs is bulk in his inside. The major, assisted by his brother officers,
+      purchased goats for the camp and so made the experiment of no effect. Long
+      before the fatigue-party sent to collect brushwood had returned, the men
+      were settled down by their valises, kettles and pots had appeared from the
+      surrounding country and were dangling over fires as the kid and the
+      compressed vegetable bubbled together; there rose a cheerful clinking of
+      mess-tins; outrageous demands for &lsquo;a little more stuffin&rsquo; with that there
+      liver-wing;&rsquo; and gust on gust of chaff as pointed as a bayonet and as
+      delicate as a gun-butt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The boys are in a good temper,&rsquo; said the major. &lsquo;They&rsquo;ll be singing
+      presently. Well, a night like this is enough to keep them happy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Over our heads burned the wonderful Indian stars, which are not all
+      pricked in on one plane, but, preserving an orderly perspective, draw the
+      eye through the velvet darkness of the void up to the barred doors of
+      heaven itself. The earth was a gray shadow more unreal than the sky. We
+      could hear her breathing lightly in the pauses between the howling of the
+      jackals, the movement of the wind in the tamarisks, and the fitful mutter
+      of musketry-fire leagues away to the left. A native woman from some unseen
+      hut began to sing, the mail-train thundered past on its way to Delhi, and
+      a roosting crow cawed drowsily. Then there was a belt-loosening silence
+      about the fires, and the even breathing of the crowded earth took up the
+      story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men, full fed, turned to tobacco and song,&mdash;their officers with
+      them. The subaltern is happy who can win the approval of the musical
+      critics in his regiment, and is honoured among the more intricate
+      step-dancers. By him, as by him who plays cricket cleverly, Thomas Atkins
+      will stand in time of need, when he will let a better officer go on alone.
+      The ruined tombs of forgotten Mussulman saints heard the ballad of Agra
+      Town, The Buffalo Battery, Marching to Kabul, The long, long Indian Day,
+      The Place where the Punkah-coolie died, and that crashing chorus which
+      announces,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Youth&rsquo;s daring spirit, manhood&rsquo;s fire,
+       Firm hand and eagle eye,
+     Must he acquire who would aspire
+       To see the gray boar die.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      To-day, of all those jovial thieves who appropriated my commissariat and
+      lay and laughed round that water-proof sheet, not one remains. They went
+      to camps that were not of exercise and battles without umpires. Burmah,
+      the Soudan, and the frontier,&mdash;fever and fight,&mdash;took them in
+      their time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I drifted across to the men&rsquo;s fires in search of Mulvaney, whom I found
+      strategically greasing his feet by the blaze. There is nothing
+      particularly lovely in the sight of a private thus engaged after a long
+      day&rsquo;s march, but when you reflect on the exact proportion of the &lsquo;might,
+      majesty, dominion, and power&rsquo; of the British Empire which stands on those
+      feet you take an interest in the proceedings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;s a blister, bad luck to ut, on the heel,&rsquo; said Mulvaney. &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t
+      touch ut. Prick ut out, little man.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris took out his house-wife, eased the trouble with a needle, stabbed
+      Mulvaney in the calf with the same weapon, and was swiftly kicked into the
+      fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve bruk the best av my toes over you, ye grinnin&rsquo; child av disruption,&rsquo; 
+      said Mulvaney, sitting cross-legged and nursing his feet; then seeing me,
+      &lsquo;Oh, ut&rsquo;s you, sorr! Be welkim, an&rsquo; take that maraudin&rsquo; scutt&rsquo;s place.
+      Jock, hold him down on the cindhers for a bit.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ortheris escaped and went elsewhere, as I took possession of the
+      hollow he had scraped for himself and lined with his greatcoat. Learoyd on
+      the other side of the fire grinned affably and in a minute fell fast
+      asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;s the height av politeness for you,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, lighting his
+      pipe with a flaming branch. &lsquo;But Jock&rsquo;s eaten half a box av your sardines
+      at wan gulp, an&rsquo; I think the tin too. What&rsquo;s the best wid you, sorr, an&rsquo; 
+      how did you happen to be on the losin&rsquo; side this day whin we captured
+      you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The Army of the South is winning all along the line,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then that line&rsquo;s the hangman&rsquo;s rope, savin&rsquo; your presence. You&rsquo;ll learn
+      to-morrow how we rethreated to dhraw thim on before we made thim trouble,
+      an&rsquo; that&rsquo;s what a woman does. By the same tokin, we&rsquo;ll be attacked before
+      the dawnin&rsquo; an&rsquo; ut would be betther not to slip your boots. How do I know
+      that? By the light av pure reason. Here are three companies av us ever so
+      far inside av the enemy&rsquo;s flank an&rsquo; a crowd av roarin&rsquo;, tarin&rsquo;, squealin&rsquo; 
+      cavalry gone on just to turn out the whole hornet&rsquo;s nest av them. Av
+      course the enemy will pursue, by brigades like as not, an&rsquo; thin we&rsquo;ll have
+      to run for ut. Mark my words. I am av the opinion av Polonius whin he
+      said, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t fight wid ivry scutt for the pure joy av fightin&rsquo;, but if you
+      do, knock the nose av him first an&rsquo; frequint.&rdquo; We ought to ha&rsquo; gone on an&rsquo; 
+      helped the Ghoorkhas.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But what do you know about Polonius?&rsquo; I demanded. This was a new side of
+      Mulvaney&rsquo;s character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All that Shakespeare iver wrote an&rsquo; a dale more that the gallery
+      shouted,&rsquo; said the man of war, carefully lacing his boots. &lsquo;Did I not tell
+      you av Silver&rsquo;s theatre in Dublin, whin I was younger than I am now an&rsquo; a
+      patron av the drama? Ould Silver wud never pay actor-man or woman their
+      just dues, an&rsquo; by consequince his comp&rsquo;nies was collapsible at the last
+      minut. Thin the bhoys wud clamour to take a part, an&rsquo; oft as not ould
+      Silver made them pay for the fun. Faith, I&rsquo;ve seen Hamlut played wid a new
+      black eye an&rsquo; the queen as full as a cornucopia. I remimber wanst Hogin
+      that &lsquo;listed in the Black Tyrone an&rsquo; was shot in South Africa, he sejuced
+      ould Silver into givin&rsquo; him Hamlut&rsquo;s part instid av me that had a fine
+      fancy for rhetoric in those days. Av course I wint into the gallery an&rsquo; 
+      began to fill the pit wid other people&rsquo;s hats, an&rsquo; I passed the time av
+      day to Hogin walkin&rsquo; through Denmark like a hamstrung mule wid a pall on
+      his back. &ldquo;Hamlut,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s a hole in your heel. Pull up your
+      shtockin&rsquo;s, Hamlut,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;Hamlut, Hamlut, for the love av decincy dhrop
+      that skull an&rsquo; pull up your shtockin&rsquo;s.&rdquo; The whole house begun to tell him
+      that. He stopped his soliloquishms mid-between. &ldquo;My shtockin&rsquo;s may be
+      comin&rsquo; down or they may not,&rdquo; sez he, screwin&rsquo; his eye into the gallery,
+      for well he knew who I was. &ldquo;But afther this performince is over me an&rsquo; 
+      the Ghost &lsquo;ll trample the tripes out av you, Terence, wid your ass&rsquo;s
+      bray!&rdquo; An&rsquo; that&rsquo;s how I come to know about Hamlut. Eyah! Those days, those
+      days! Did you iver have onendin&rsquo; devilmint an&rsquo; nothin&rsquo; to pay for it in
+      your life, sorr?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Never, without having to pay,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s thrue! &lsquo;Tis mane whin you considher on ut; but ut&rsquo;s the same wid
+      horse or fut. A headache if you dhrink, an&rsquo; a belly-ache if you eat too
+      much, an&rsquo; a heart-ache to kape all down. Faith, the beast only gets the
+      colic, an&rsquo; he&rsquo;s the lucky man.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped his head and stared into the fire, fingering his moustache the
+      while. From the far side of the bivouac the voice of Corbet-Nolan, senior
+      subaltern of B company, uplifted itself in an ancient and much appreciated
+      song of sentiment, the men moaning melodiously behind him.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The north wind blew coldly, she drooped from that hour,
+     My own little Kathleen, my sweet little Kathleen,
+     Kathleen, my Kathleen, Kathleen O&rsquo;Moore!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      With forty-five O&rsquo;s in the last word: even at that distance you might have
+      cut the soft South Irish accent with a shovel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For all we take we must pay, but the price is cruel high,&rsquo; murmured
+      Mulvaney when the chorus had ceased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the trouble?&rsquo; I said gently, for I knew that he was a man of an
+      inextinguishable sorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hear now,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;Ye know what I am now. <i>I</i> know what I mint to
+      be at the beginnin&rsquo; av my service. I&rsquo;ve tould you time an&rsquo; again, an&rsquo; what
+      I have not Dinah Shadd has. An&rsquo; what am I? Oh, Mary Mother av Hiven, an
+      ould dhrunken, untrustable baste av a privit that has seen the reg&rsquo;ment
+      change out from colonel to drummer-boy, not wanst or twice, but scores av
+      times! Ay, scores! An&rsquo; me not so near gettin&rsquo; promotion as in the first!
+      An&rsquo; me livin&rsquo; on an&rsquo; kapin&rsquo; clear av clink, not by my own good conduck,
+      but the kindness av some orf&rsquo;cer-bhoy young enough to be son to me! Do I
+      not know ut? Can I not tell whin I&rsquo;m passed over at p&rsquo;rade, tho&rsquo; I&rsquo;m
+      rockin&rsquo; full av liquor an&rsquo; ready to fall all in wan piece, such as even a
+      suckin&rsquo; child might see, bekaze, &ldquo;Oh, &lsquo;tis only ould Mulvaney!&rdquo; An&rsquo; whin
+      I&rsquo;m let off in ord&rsquo;ly-room through some thrick of the tongue an&rsquo; a ready
+      answer an&rsquo; the ould man&rsquo;s mercy, is ut smilin&rsquo; I feel whin I fall away an&rsquo; 
+      go back to Dinah Shadd, thryin&rsquo; to carry ut all off as a joke? Not I! &lsquo;Tis
+      hell to me, dumb hell through ut all; an&rsquo; next time whin the fit comes I
+      will be as bad again. Good cause the reg&rsquo;ment has to know me for the best
+      soldier in ut. Better cause have I to know mesilf for the worst man. I&rsquo;m
+      only fit to tache the new drafts what I&rsquo;ll niver learn mesilf; an&rsquo; I am
+      sure, as tho&rsquo; I heard ut, that the minut wan av these pink-eyed recruities
+      gets away from my &ldquo;Mind ye now,&rdquo; an&rsquo; &ldquo;Listen to this, Jim, bhoy,&rdquo;&mdash;sure
+      I am that the sergint houlds me up to him for a warnin&rsquo;. So I tache, as
+      they say at musketry-instruction, by direct and ricochet fire. Lord be
+      good to me, for I have stud some throuble!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Lie down and go to sleep,&rsquo; said I, not being able to comfort or advise.
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;re the best man in the regiment, and, next to Ortheris, the biggest
+      fool. Lie down and wait till we&rsquo;re attacked. What force will they turn
+      out? Guns, think you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Try that wid your lorrds an&rsquo; ladies, twistin&rsquo; an&rsquo; turnin&rsquo; the talk, tho&rsquo; 
+      you mint ut well. Ye cud say nothin&rsquo; to help me, an&rsquo; yet ye niver knew
+      what cause I had to be what I am.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Begin at the beginning and go on to the end,&rsquo; I said royally. &lsquo;But rake
+      up the fire a bit first.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I passed Ortheris&rsquo;s bayonet for a poker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That shows how little we know what we do,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, putting it
+      aside. &lsquo;Fire takes all the heart out av the steel, an&rsquo; the next time, may
+      be, that our little man is fighting for his life his bradawl &lsquo;ll break,
+      an&rsquo; so you&rsquo;ll ha&rsquo; killed him, manin&rsquo; no more than to kape yourself warm.
+      &lsquo;Tis a recruity&rsquo;s thrick that. Pass the clanin&rsquo;-rod, sorr.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I snuggled down abased; and after an interval the voice of Mulvaney began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Did I iver tell you how Dinah Shadd came to be wife av mine?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I dissembled a burning anxiety that I had felt for some months&mdash;ever
+      since Dinah Shadd, the strong, the patient, and the infinitely tender, had
+      of her own good love and free will washed a shirt for me, moving in a
+      barren land where washing was not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t remember,&rsquo; I said casually. &lsquo;Was it before or after you made love
+      to Annie Bragin, and got no satisfaction?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story of Annie Bragin is written in another place. It is one of the
+      many less respectable episodes in Mulvaney&rsquo;s chequered career.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Before&mdash;before&mdash;long before, was that business av Annie Bragin
+      an&rsquo; the corp&rsquo;ril&rsquo;s ghost. Niver woman was the worse for me whin I had
+      married Dinah. There&rsquo;s a time for all things, an&rsquo; I know how to kape all
+      things in place&mdash;barrin&rsquo; the dhrink, that kapes me in my place wid no
+      hope av comin&rsquo; to be aught else.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Begin at the beginning,&rsquo; I insisted. &lsquo;Mrs. Mulvaney told me that you
+      married her when you were quartered in Krab Bokhar barracks.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; the same is a cess-pit,&rsquo; said Mulvaney piously. &lsquo;She spoke thrue, did
+      Dinah. &lsquo;Twas this way. Talkin&rsquo; av that, have ye iver fallen in love,
+      sorr?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I preserved the silence of the damned. Mulvaney continued&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thin I will assume that ye have not. <i>I</i> did. In the days av my
+      youth, as I have more than wanst tould you, I was a man that filled the
+      eye an&rsquo; delighted the sowl av women. Niver man was hated as I have bin.
+      Niver man was loved as I&mdash;no, not within half a day&rsquo;s march av ut!
+      For the first five years av my service, whin I was what I wud give my sowl
+      to be now, I tuk whatever was within my reach an&rsquo; digested ut&mdash;an
+      that&rsquo;s more than most men can say. Dhrink I tuk, an&rsquo; ut did me no harm. By
+      the Hollow av Hiven, I cud play wid four women at wanst, an&rsquo; kape them
+      from findin&rsquo; out anythin&rsquo; about the other three, an&rsquo; smile like a
+      full-blown marigold through ut all. Dick Coulhan, av the battery we&rsquo;ll
+      have down on us to-night, could drive his team no betther than I mine, an&rsquo; 
+      I hild the worser cattle! An&rsquo; so I lived, an&rsquo; so I was happy till afther
+      that business wid Annie Bragin&mdash;she that turned me off as cool as a
+      meat-safe, an&rsquo; taught me where I stud in the mind av an honest woman.
+      &lsquo;Twas no sweet dose to swallow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Afther that I sickened awhile an&rsquo; tuk thought to my reg&rsquo;mental work;
+      conceiting mesilf I wud study an&rsquo; be a sergint, an&rsquo; a major-gineral twinty
+      minutes afther that. But on top av my ambitiousness there was an empty
+      place in my sowl, an&rsquo; me own opinion av mesilf cud not fill ut. Sez I to
+      mesilf, &ldquo;Terence, you&rsquo;re a great man an&rsquo; the best set-up in the reg&rsquo;mint.
+      Go on an&rsquo; get promotion.&rdquo; Sez mesilf to me, &ldquo;What for?&rdquo; Sez I to mesilf,
+      &ldquo;For the glory av ut!&rdquo; Sez mesilf to me, &ldquo;Will that fill these two strong
+      arrums av yours, Terence?&rdquo; &ldquo;Go to the devil,&rdquo; sez I to mesilf. &ldquo;Go to the
+      married lines,&rdquo; sez mesilf to me. &ldquo;&lsquo;Tis the same thing,&rdquo; sez I to mesilf.
+      &ldquo;Av you&rsquo;re the same man, ut is,&rdquo; said mesilf to me; an&rsquo; wid that I
+      considhered on ut a long while. Did you iver feel that way, sorr?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I snored gently, knowing that if Mulvaney were uninterrupted he would go
+      on. The clamour from the bivouac fires beat up to the stars, as the rival
+      singers of the companies were pitted against each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So I felt that way an&rsquo; a bad time ut was. Wanst, bein&rsquo; a fool, I wint
+      into the married lines more for the sake av spakin&rsquo; to our ould
+      colour-sergint Shadd than for any thruck wid women-folk. I was a corp&rsquo;ril
+      then&mdash;rejuced aftherwards, but a corp&rsquo;ril then. I&rsquo;ve got a photograft
+      av mesilf to prove ut. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll take a cup av tay wid us?&rdquo; sez Shadd. &ldquo;I
+      will that,&rdquo; I sez, &ldquo;tho&rsquo; tay is not my divarsion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;&lsquo;Twud be better for you if ut were,&rdquo; sez ould Mother Shadd, an&rsquo; she had
+      ought to know, for Shadd, in the ind av his service, dhrank bung-full each
+      night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wid that I tuk off my gloves&mdash;there was pipe-clay in thim, so that
+      they stud alone&mdash;an&rsquo; pulled up my chair, lookin&rsquo; round at the china
+      ornaments an&rsquo; bits av things in the Shadds&rsquo; quarters. They were things
+      that belonged to a man, an&rsquo; no camp-kit, here to-day an&rsquo; dishipated next.
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re comfortable in this place, sergint,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;&lsquo;Tis the wife that
+      did ut, boy,&rdquo; sez he, pointin&rsquo; the stem av his pipe to ould Mother Shadd,
+      an&rsquo; she smacked the top av his bald head apon the compliment. &ldquo;That manes
+      you want money,&rdquo; sez she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; thin&mdash;an&rsquo; thin whin the kettle was to be filled, Dinah came in&mdash;my
+      Dinah&mdash;her sleeves rowled up to the elbow an&rsquo; her hair in a winkin&rsquo; 
+      glory over her forehead, the big blue eyes beneath twinklin&rsquo; like stars on
+      a frosty night, an&rsquo; the tread av her two feet lighter than waste-paper
+      from the colonel&rsquo;s basket in ord&rsquo;ly-room whin ut&rsquo;s emptied. Bein&rsquo; but a
+      shlip av a girl she went pink at seein&rsquo; me, an&rsquo; I twisted me moustache an&rsquo; 
+      looked at a picture forninst the wall. Niver show a woman that ye care the
+      snap av a finger for her, an&rsquo; begad she&rsquo;ll come bleatin&rsquo; to your
+      boot-heels!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I suppose that&rsquo;s why you followed Annie Bragin till everybody in the
+      married quarters laughed at you,&rsquo; said I, remembering that unhallowed
+      wooing and casting off the disguise of drowsiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m layin&rsquo; down the gin&rsquo;ral theory av the attack,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, driving
+      his boot into the dying fire. &lsquo;If you read the Soldier&rsquo;s Pocket Book,
+      which niver any soldier reads, you&rsquo;ll see that there are exceptions. Whin
+      Dinah was out av the door (an&rsquo; &lsquo;twas as tho&rsquo; the sunlight had shut too)&mdash;&ldquo;Mother
+      av Hiven, sergint,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;but is that your daughter?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+      believed that way these eighteen years,&rdquo; sez ould Shadd, his eyes
+      twinklin&rsquo;; &ldquo;but Mrs. Shadd has her own opinion, like iv&rsquo;ry woman,&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;&lsquo;Tis
+      wid yours this time, for a mericle,&rdquo; sez Mother Shadd. &ldquo;Thin why in the
+      name av fortune did I niver see her before?&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Bekaze you&rsquo;ve been
+      thrapesin&rsquo; round wid the married women these three years past. She was a
+      bit av a child till last year, an&rsquo; she shot up wid the spring,&rdquo; sez ould
+      Mother Shadd. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll thrapese no more,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;D&rsquo;you mane that?&rdquo; sez ould
+      Mother Shadd, lookin&rsquo; at me side-ways like a hen looks at a hawk whin the
+      chickens are runnin&rsquo; free. &ldquo;Try me, an&rsquo; tell,&rdquo; sez I. Wid that I pulled on
+      my gloves, dhrank off the tay, an&rsquo; went out av the house as stiff as at
+      gin&rsquo;ral p&rsquo;rade, for well I knew that Dinah Shadd&rsquo;s eyes were in the small
+      av my back out av the scullery window. Faith! that was the only time I
+      mourned I was not a cav&rsquo;lry-man for the pride av the spurs to jingle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I wint out to think, an&rsquo; I did a powerful lot av thinkin&rsquo;, but ut all
+      came round to that shlip av a girl in the dotted blue dhress, wid the blue
+      eyes an&rsquo; the sparkil in them. Thin I kept off canteen, an&rsquo; I kept to the
+      married quarthers, or near by, on the chanst av meetin&rsquo; Dinah. Did I meet
+      her? Oh, my time past, did I not; wid a lump in my throat as big as my
+      valise an&rsquo; my heart goin&rsquo; like a farrier&rsquo;s forge on a Saturday morning?
+      &lsquo;Twas &ldquo;Good day to ye, Miss Dinah,&rdquo; an&rsquo; &ldquo;Good day t&rsquo;you, corp&rsquo;ril,&rdquo; for a
+      week or two, and divil a bit further could I get bekaze av the respect I
+      had to that girl that I cud ha&rsquo; broken betune finger an&rsquo; thumb.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here I giggled as I recalled the gigantic figure of Dinah Shadd when she
+      handed me my shirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ye may laugh,&rsquo; grunted Mulvaney. &lsquo;But I&rsquo;m speakin&rsquo; the trut&rsquo;, an &lsquo;tis you
+      that are in fault. Dinah was a girl that wud ha&rsquo; taken the imperiousness
+      out av the Duchess av Clonmel in those days. Flower hand, foot av shod
+      air, an&rsquo; the eyes av the livin&rsquo; mornin&rsquo; she had that is my wife to-day&mdash;ould
+      Dinah, and niver aught else than Dinah Shadd to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Twas after three weeks standin&rsquo; off an&rsquo; on, an&rsquo; niver makin&rsquo; headway
+      excipt through the eyes, that a little drummer-boy grinned in me face whin
+      I had admonished him wid the buckle av my belt for riotin&rsquo; all over the
+      place. &ldquo;An&rsquo; I&rsquo;m not the only wan that doesn&rsquo;t kape to barricks,&rdquo; sez he. I
+      tuk him by the scruff av his neck,&mdash;my heart was hung on a
+      hair-thrigger those days, you will onderstand&mdash;an&rsquo; &ldquo;Out wid ut,&rdquo; sez
+      I, &ldquo;or I&rsquo;ll lave no bone av you unbreakable.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Speak to Dempsey,&rdquo;
+       sez he howlin&rsquo;. &ldquo;Dempsey which?&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;ye unwashed limb av Satan.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Av
+      the Bob-tailed Dhragoons,&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s seen her home from her aunt&rsquo;s
+      house in the civil lines four times this fortnight.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Child!&rdquo; sez I,
+      dhroppin&rsquo; him, &ldquo;your tongue&rsquo;s stronger than your body. Go to your
+      quarters. I&rsquo;m sorry I dhressed you down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;At that I went four ways to wanst huntin&rsquo; Dempsey. I was mad to think
+      that wid all my airs among women I shud ha&rsquo; been chated by a basin-faced
+      fool av a cav&rsquo;lry-man not fit to trust on a trunk. Presintly I found him
+      in our lines&mdash;the Bobtails was quartered next us&mdash;an&rsquo; a tallowy,
+      topheavy son av a she-mule he was wid his big brass spurs an&rsquo; his
+      plastrons on his epigastrons an&rsquo; all. But he niver flinched a hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;A word wid you, Dempsey,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve walked wid Dinah Shadd four
+      times this fortnight gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that to you?&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll walk forty times more, an&rsquo; forty on
+      top av that, ye shovel-futted clod-breakin&rsquo; infantry lance-corp&rsquo;ril.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Before I cud gyard he had his gloved fist home on my cheek an&rsquo; down I
+      went full-sprawl. &ldquo;Will that content you?&rdquo; sez he, blowin&rsquo; on his knuckles
+      for all the world like a Scots Greys orf&rsquo;cer. &ldquo;Content!&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;For your
+      own sake, man, take off your spurs, peel your jackut, an&rsquo; onglove. &lsquo;Tis
+      the beginnin&rsquo; av the overture; stand up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He stud all he know, but he niver peeled his jackut, an&rsquo; his shoulders
+      had no fair play. I was fightin&rsquo; for Dinah Shadd an&rsquo; that cut on my cheek.
+      What hope had he forninst me? &ldquo;Stand up,&rdquo; sez I, time an&rsquo; again whin he
+      was beginnin&rsquo; to quarter the ground an&rsquo; gyard high an&rsquo; go large. &ldquo;This
+      isn&rsquo;t ridin&rsquo;-school,&rdquo; I sez. &ldquo;O man, stand up an&rsquo; let me get in at ye.&rdquo;
+       But whin I saw he wud be runnin&rsquo; about, I grup his shtock in my left an&rsquo; 
+      his waist-belt in my right an&rsquo; swung him clear to my right front, head
+      undher, he hammerin&rsquo; my nose till the wind was knocked out av him on the
+      bare ground. &ldquo;Stand up,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;or I&rsquo;ll kick your head into your chest!&rdquo;
+       and I wud ha&rsquo; done ut too, so ragin&rsquo; mad I was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;My collar-bone&rsquo;s bruk,&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;Help me back to lines. I&rsquo;ll walk wid
+      her no more.&rdquo; So I helped him back.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And was his collar-bone broken?&rsquo; I asked, for I fancied that only Learoyd
+      could neatly accomplish that terrible throw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He pitched on his left shoulder-point. Ut was. Next day the news was in
+      both barricks, an&rsquo; whin I met Dinah Shadd wid a cheek on me like all the
+      reg&rsquo;mintal tailor&rsquo;s samples there was no &ldquo;Good mornin&rsquo;, corp&rsquo;ril,&rdquo; or
+      aught else. &ldquo;An&rsquo; what have I done, Miss Shadd,&rdquo; sez I, very bould,
+      plantin&rsquo; mesilf forninst her, &ldquo;that ye should not pass the time of day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Ye&rsquo;ve half-killed rough-rider Dempsey,&rdquo; sez she, her dear blue eyes
+      fillin&rsquo; up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;May be,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Was he a friend av yours that saw ye home four times in
+      the fortnight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez she, but her mouth was down at the corners. &ldquo;An&rsquo;&mdash;an&rsquo; 
+      what&rsquo;s that to you?&rdquo; she sez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Ask Dempsey,&rdquo; sez I, purtendin&rsquo; to go away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Did you fight for me then, ye silly man?&rdquo; she sez, tho&rsquo; she knew ut all
+      along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Who else?&rdquo; sez I, an&rsquo; I tuk wan pace to the front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t worth ut,&rdquo; sez she, fingerin&rsquo; in her apron,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;That&rsquo;s for me to say,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Shall I say ut?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez she in a saint&rsquo;s whisper, an&rsquo; at that I explained mesilf; and
+      she tould me what ivry man that is a man, an&rsquo; many that is a woman, hears
+      wanst in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;But what made ye cry at startin&rsquo;, Dinah, darlin&rsquo;?&rsquo;&rdquo; sez I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Your&mdash;your bloody cheek,&rdquo; sez she, duckin&rsquo; her little head down on
+      my sash (I was on duty for the day) an&rsquo; whimperin&rsquo; like a sorrowful angil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now a man cud take that two ways. I tuk ut as pleased me best an&rsquo; my
+      first kiss wid ut. Mother av Innocence! but I kissed her on the tip av the
+      nose an&rsquo; undher the eye; an&rsquo; a girl that let&rsquo;s a kiss come tumble-ways
+      like that has never been kissed before. Take note av that, sorr. Thin we
+      wint hand in hand to ould Mother Shadd like two little childher, an&rsquo; she
+      said &lsquo;twas no bad thing, an&rsquo; ould Shadd nodded behind his pipe, an&rsquo; Dinah
+      ran away to her own room. That day I throd on rollin&rsquo; clouds. All earth
+      was too small to hould me. Begad, I cud ha&rsquo; hiked the sun out av the sky
+      for a live coal to my pipe, so magnificent I was. But I tuk recruities at
+      squad-drill instid, an&rsquo; began wid general battalion advance whin I shud
+      ha&rsquo; been balance-steppin&rsquo; them. Eyah! that day! that day!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very long pause. &lsquo;Well?&rsquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Twas all wrong,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, with an enormous sigh. &lsquo;An&rsquo; I know that
+      ev&rsquo;ry bit av ut was my own foolishness. That night I tuk maybe the half av
+      three pints&mdash;not enough to turn the hair of a man in his natural
+      senses. But I was more than half drunk wid pure joy, an&rsquo; that canteen beer
+      was so much whisky to me. I can&rsquo;t tell how it came about, but BEKAZE I had
+      no thought for anywan except Dinah, BEKAZE I hadn&rsquo;t slipped her little
+      white arms from my neck five minuts, BEKAZE the breath of her kiss was not
+      gone from my mouth, I must go through the married lines on my way to
+      quarters an&rsquo; I must stay talkin&rsquo; to a red-headed Mullingar heifer av a
+      girl, Judy Sheehy, that was daughter to Mother Sheehy, the wife of Nick
+      Sheehy, the canteen-sergint&mdash;the Black Curse av Shielygh be on the
+      whole brood that are above groun&rsquo; this day!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;An&rsquo; what are ye houldin&rsquo; your head that high for, corp&rsquo;ril?&rdquo; sez Judy.
+      &ldquo;Come in an&rsquo; thry a cup av tay,&rdquo; she sez, standin&rsquo; in the doorway. Bein&rsquo; 
+      an ontrustable fool, an&rsquo; thinkin&rsquo; av anything but tay, I wint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Mother&rsquo;s at canteen,&rdquo; sez Judy, smoothin&rsquo; the hair av hers that was like
+      red snakes, an&rsquo; lookin&rsquo; at me cornerways out av her green cats&rsquo; eyes. &ldquo;Ye
+      will not mind, corp&rsquo;ril?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I can endure,&rdquo; sez I; ould Mother Sheehy bein&rsquo; no divarsion av mine, nor
+      her daughter too. Judy fetched the tea things an&rsquo; put thim on the table,
+      leanin&rsquo; over me very close to get thim square. I dhrew back, thinkin&rsquo; av
+      Dinah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Is ut afraid you are av a girl alone?&rdquo; sez Judy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;No,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Why should I be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;That rests wid the girl,&rdquo; sez Judy, dhrawin&rsquo; her chair next to mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Thin there let ut rest,&rdquo; sez I; an&rsquo; thinkin&rsquo; I&rsquo;d been a trifle onpolite,
+      I sez, &ldquo;The tay&rsquo;s not quite sweet enough for my taste. Put your little
+      finger in the cup, Judy. &lsquo;Twill make ut necthar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;What&rsquo;s necthar?&rdquo; sez she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Somethin&rsquo; very sweet,&rdquo; sez I; an&rsquo; for the sinful life av me I cud not
+      help lookin&rsquo; at her out av the corner av my eye, as I was used to look at
+      a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Go on wid ye, corp&rsquo;ril,&rdquo; sez she. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a flirrt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;On me sowl I&rsquo;m not,&rdquo; sez I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Then you&rsquo;re a cruel handsome man, an&rsquo; that&rsquo;s worse,&rdquo; sez she, heaving
+      big sighs an&rsquo; lookin&rsquo; crossways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;You know your own mind,&rdquo; sez I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;&lsquo;Twud be better for me if I did not,&rdquo; she sez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a dale to be said on both sides av that,&rdquo; sez I, unthinkin&rsquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Say your own part av ut, then, Terence, darlin&rsquo;,&rdquo; sez she; &ldquo;for begad
+      I&rsquo;m thinkin&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve said too much or too little for an honest girl,&rdquo; an&rsquo; wid
+      that she put her arms round my neck an&rsquo; kissed me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no more to be said afther that,&rdquo; sez I, kissin&rsquo; her back again&mdash;Oh
+      the mane scutt that I was, my head ringin&rsquo; wid Dinah Shadd! How does ut
+      come about, sorr, that when a man has put the comether on wan woman, he&rsquo;s
+      sure bound to put it on another? &lsquo;Tis the same thing at musketry. Wan day
+      ivry shot goes wide or into the bank, an&rsquo; the next, lay high lay low,
+      sight or snap, ye can&rsquo;t get off the bull&rsquo;s-eye for ten shots runnin&rsquo;.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That only happens to a man who has had a good deal of experience. He does
+      it without thinking,&rsquo; I replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thankin&rsquo; you for the complimint, sorr, ut may be so. But I&rsquo;m doubtful
+      whether you mint ut for a complimint. Hear now; I sat there wid Judy on my
+      knee tellin&rsquo; me all manner av nonsinse an&rsquo; only sayin&rsquo; &ldquo;yes&rdquo; an&rsquo; &ldquo;no,&rdquo;
+       when I&rsquo;d much better ha&rsquo; kept tongue betune teeth. An&rsquo; that was not an
+      hour afther I had left Dinah! What I was thinkin&rsquo; av I cannot say.
+      Presintly, quiet as a cat, ould Mother Sheehy came in velvet-dhrunk. She
+      had her daughter&rsquo;s red hair, but &lsquo;twas bald in patches, an&rsquo; I cud see in
+      her wicked ould face, clear as lightnin&rsquo;, what Judy wud be twenty years to
+      come. I was for jumpin&rsquo; up, but Judy niver moved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Terence has promust, mother,&rdquo; sez she, an&rsquo; the could sweat bruk out all
+      over me. Ould Mother Sheehy sat down of a heap an&rsquo; began playin&rsquo; wid the
+      cups. &ldquo;Thin you&rsquo;re a well-matched pair,&rdquo; she sez very thick. &ldquo;For he&rsquo;s the
+      biggest rogue that iver spoiled the queen&rsquo;s shoe-leather&rdquo; an&rsquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m off, Judy,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Ye should not talk nonsinse to your mother. Get
+      her to bed, girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Nonsinse!&rdquo; sez the ould woman, prickin&rsquo; up her ears like a cat an&rsquo; 
+      grippin&rsquo; the table-edge. &ldquo;&lsquo;Twill be the most nonsinsical nonsinse for you,
+      ye grinnin&rsquo; badger, if nonsinse &lsquo;tis. Git clear, you. I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I ran out into the dhark, my head in a stew an&rsquo; my heart sick, but I had
+      sinse enough to see that I&rsquo;d brought ut all on mysilf. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s this to pass
+      the time av day to a panjandhrum av hell-cats,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;What I&rsquo;ve said,
+      an&rsquo; what I&rsquo;ve not said do not matther. Judy an&rsquo; her dam will hould me for
+      a promust man, an&rsquo; Dinah will give me the go, an&rsquo; I desarve ut. I will go
+      an&rsquo; get dhrunk,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;an&rsquo; forget about ut, for &lsquo;tis plain I&rsquo;m not a
+      marrin&rsquo; man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;On my way to canteen I ran against Lascelles, colour-sergint that was av
+      E Comp&rsquo;ny, a hard, hard man, wid a torment av a wife. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve the head av
+      a drowned man on your shoulders,&rdquo; sez he; &ldquo;an&rsquo; you&rsquo;re goin&rsquo; where you&rsquo;ll
+      get a worse wan. Come back,&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;Let me go,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve thrown my
+      luck over the wall wid my own hand!&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Then that&rsquo;s not the way to get
+      ut back again,&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;Have out wid your throuble, ye fool-bhoy.&rdquo; An&rsquo; I
+      tould him how the matther was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He sucked in his lower lip. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been thrapped,&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;Ju Sheehy
+      wud be the betther for a man&rsquo;s name to hers as soon as can. An&rsquo; we thought
+      ye&rsquo;d put the comether on her,&mdash;that&rsquo;s the natural vanity of the
+      baste, Terence, you&rsquo;re a big born fool, but you&rsquo;re not bad enough to marry
+      into that comp&rsquo;ny. If you said anythin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; for all your protestations
+      I&rsquo;m sure ye did&mdash;or did not, which is worse,&mdash;eat ut all&mdash;lie
+      like the father of all lies, but come out av ut free av Judy. Do I not
+      know what ut is to marry a woman that was the very spit an&rsquo; image av Judy
+      whin she was young? I&rsquo;m gettin&rsquo; old an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve larnt patience, but you,
+      Terence, you&rsquo;d raise hand on Judy an&rsquo; kill her in a year. Never mind if
+      Dinah gives you the go, you&rsquo;ve desarved ut; never mind if the whole
+      reg&rsquo;mint laughs you all day. Get shut av Judy an&rsquo; her mother. They can&rsquo;t
+      dhrag you to church, but if they do, they&rsquo;ll dhrag you to hell. Go back to
+      your quarters and lie down,&rdquo; sez he. Thin over his shoulder, &ldquo;You MUST ha&rsquo; 
+      done with thim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Next day I wint to see Dinah, but there was no tucker in me as I walked.
+      I knew the throuble wud come soon enough widout any handlin&rsquo; av mine, an&rsquo; 
+      I dreaded ut sore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I heard Judy callin&rsquo; me, but I hild straight on to the Shadds&rsquo; quarthers,
+      an&rsquo; Dinah wud ha&rsquo; kissed me but I put her back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Whin all&rsquo;s said, darlin&rsquo;,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;you can give ut me if ye will, tho&rsquo; I
+      misdoubt &lsquo;twill be so easy to come by then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I had scarce begun to put the explanation into shape before Judy an&rsquo; her
+      mother came to the door. I think there was a verandah, but I&rsquo;m forgettin&rsquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Will ye not step in?&rdquo; sez Dinah, pretty and polite, though the Shadds
+      had no dealin&rsquo;s with the Sheehys. Ould Mother Shadd looked up quick, an&rsquo; 
+      she was the fust to see the throuble; for Dinah was her daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m pressed for time to-day,&rdquo; sez Judy as bould as brass; &ldquo;an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve only
+      come for Terence,&mdash;my promust man. &lsquo;Tis strange to find him here the
+      day afther the day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dinah looked at me as though I had hit her, an&rsquo; I answered straight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;There was some nonsinse last night at the Sheehys&rsquo; quarthers, an&rsquo; Judy&rsquo;s
+      carryin&rsquo; on the joke, darlin&rsquo;,&rdquo; sez I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;At the Sheehys&rsquo; quarthers?&rdquo; sez Dinah very slow, an&rsquo; Judy cut in wid:
+      &ldquo;He was there from nine till ten, Dinah Shadd, an&rsquo; the betther half av
+      that time I was sittin&rsquo; on his knee, Dinah Shadd. Ye may look and ye may
+      look an&rsquo; ye may look me up an&rsquo; down, but ye won&rsquo;t look away that Terence
+      is my promust man. Terence, darlin&rsquo;, &lsquo;tis time for us to be comin&rsquo; home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dinah Shadd niver said word to Judy. &ldquo;Ye left me at half-past eight,&rdquo; she
+      sez to me, &ldquo;an I niver thought that ye&rsquo;d leave me for Judy,&mdash;promises
+      or no promises. Go back wid her, you that have to be fetched by a girl!
+      I&rsquo;m done with you,&rdquo; sez she, and she ran into her own room, her mother
+      followin&rsquo;. So I was alone wid those two women and at liberty to spake my
+      sentiments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Judy Sheehy,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;if you made a fool av me betune the lights you
+      shall not do ut in the day. I niver promised you words or lines.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;You lie,&rdquo; sez ould Mother Sheehy, &ldquo;an&rsquo; may ut choke you where you
+      stand!&rdquo; She was far gone in dhrink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;An&rsquo; tho&rsquo; ut choked me where I stud I&rsquo;d not change,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Go home,
+      Judy. I take shame for a decent girl like you dhraggin&rsquo; your mother out
+      bare-headed on this errand. Hear now, and have ut for an answer. I gave my
+      word to Dinah Shadd yesterday, an&rsquo;, more blame to me, I was wid you last
+      night talkin&rsquo; nonsinse but nothin&rsquo; more. You&rsquo;ve chosen to thry to hould me
+      on ut. I will not be held thereby for anythin&rsquo; in the world. Is that
+      enough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Judy wint pink all over. &ldquo;An&rsquo; I wish you joy av the perjury,&rdquo; sez she,
+      duckin&rsquo; a curtsey. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve lost a woman that would ha&rsquo; wore her hand to
+      the bone for your pleasure; an&rsquo; &lsquo;deed, Terence, ye were not thrapped...&rdquo;
+       Lascelles must ha&rsquo; spoken plain to her. &ldquo;I am such as Dinah is&mdash;&lsquo;deed
+      I am! Ye&rsquo;ve lost a fool av a girl that&rsquo;ll niver look at you again, an&rsquo; 
+      ye&rsquo;ve lost what he niver had,&mdash;your common honesty. If you manage
+      your men as you manage your love-makin&rsquo;, small wondher they call you the
+      worst corp&rsquo;ril in the comp&rsquo;ny. Come away, mother,&rdquo; sez she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But divil a fut would the ould woman budge! &ldquo;D&rsquo;you hould by that?&rdquo; sez
+      she, peerin&rsquo; up under her thick gray eyebrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Ay, an&rsquo; wud,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;tho&rsquo; Dinah give me the go twinty times. I&rsquo;ll have
+      no thruck with you or yours,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Take your child away, ye shameless
+      woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;An&rsquo; am I shameless?&rdquo; sez she, bringin&rsquo; her hands up above her head.
+      &ldquo;Thin what are you, ye lyin&rsquo;, schamin&rsquo;, weak-kneed, dhirty-souled son av a
+      sutler? Am <i>I</i> shameless? Who put the open shame on me an&rsquo; my child
+      that we shud go beggin&rsquo; through the lines in the broad daylight for the
+      broken word of a man? Double portion of my shame be on you, Terence
+      Mulvaney, that think yourself so strong! By Mary and the saints, by blood
+      and water an&rsquo; by ivry sorrow that came into the world since the beginnin&rsquo;,
+      the black blight fall on you and yours, so that you may niver be free from
+      pain for another when ut&rsquo;s not your own! May your heart bleed in your
+      breast drop by drop wid all your friends laughin&rsquo; at the bleedin&rsquo;! Strong
+      you think yourself? May your strength be a curse to you to dhrive you into
+      the divil&rsquo;s hands against your own will! Clear-eyed you are? May your eyes
+      see clear ivry step av the dark path you take till the hot cindhers av
+      hell put thim out! May the ragin&rsquo; dry thirst in my own ould bones go to
+      you that you shall niver pass bottle full nor glass empty. God preserve
+      the light av your onderstandin&rsquo; to you, my jewel av a bhoy, that ye may
+      niver forget what you mint to be an&rsquo; do, whin you&rsquo;re wallowin&rsquo; in the
+      muck! May ye see the betther and follow the worse as long as there&rsquo;s
+      breath in your body; an&rsquo; may ye die quick in a strange land, watchin&rsquo; your
+      death before ut takes you, an&rsquo; enable to stir hand or foot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I heard a scufflin&rsquo; in the room behind, and thin Dinah Shadd&rsquo;s hand
+      dhropped into mine like a rose-leaf into a muddy road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;The half av that I&rsquo;ll take,&rdquo; sez she, &ldquo;an&rsquo; more too if I can. Go home,
+      ye silly talkin&rsquo; woman,&mdash;go home an&rsquo; confess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Come away! Come away!&rdquo; sez Judy, pullin&rsquo; her mother by the shawl. &ldquo;&lsquo;Twas
+      none av Terence&rsquo;s fault. For the love av Mary stop the talkin&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;An&rsquo; you!&rdquo; said ould Mother Sheehy, spinnin&rsquo; round forninst Dinah. &ldquo;Will
+      ye take the half av that man&rsquo;s load? Stand off from him, Dinah Shadd,
+      before he takes you down too&mdash;you that look to be a
+      quarther-master-sergeant&rsquo;s wife in five years. You look too high, child.
+      You shall WASH for the quarther-master-sergeant, whin he plases to give
+      you the job out av charity; but a privit&rsquo;s wife you shall be to the end,
+      an&rsquo; ivry sorrow of a privit&rsquo;s wife you shall know and niver a joy but wan,
+      that shall go from you like the running tide from a rock. The pain av
+      bearin&rsquo; you shall know but niver the pleasure av giving the breast; an&rsquo; 
+      you shall put away a man-child into the common ground wid niver a priest
+      to say a prayer over him, an&rsquo; on that man-child ye shall think ivry day av
+      your life. Think long, Dinah Shadd, for you&rsquo;ll niver have another tho&rsquo; you
+      pray till your knees are bleedin&rsquo;. The mothers av childher shall mock you
+      behind your back when you&rsquo;re wringing over the wash-tub. You shall know
+      what ut is to help a dhrunken husband home an&rsquo; see him go to the
+      gyard-room. Will that plase you, Dinah Shadd, that won&rsquo;t be seen talkin&rsquo; 
+      to my daughter? You shall talk to worse than Judy before all&rsquo;s over. The
+      sergints&rsquo; wives shall look down on you contemptuous, daughter av a
+      sergint, an&rsquo; you shall cover ut all up wid a smiling face when your
+      heart&rsquo;s burstin&rsquo;. Stand off av him, Dinah Shadd, for I&rsquo;ve put the Black
+      Curse of Shielygh upon him an&rsquo; his own mouth shall make ut good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She pitched forward on her head an&rsquo; began foamin&rsquo; at the mouth. Dinah
+      Shadd ran out wid water, an&rsquo; Judy dhragged the ould woman into the
+      verandah till she sat up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m old an&rsquo; forlore,&rdquo; she sez, thremblin&rsquo; an&rsquo; cryin&rsquo;, &ldquo;and &lsquo;tis like I
+      say a dale more than I mane.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;When you&rsquo;re able to walk,&mdash;go,&rdquo; says ould Mother Shadd. &ldquo;This house
+      has no place for the likes av you that have cursed my daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Eyah!&rdquo; said the ould woman. &ldquo;Hard words break no bones, an&rsquo; Dinah
+      Shadd&rsquo;ll kape the love av her husband till my bones are green corn. Judy
+      darlin&rsquo;, I misremember what I came here for. Can you lend us the bottom av
+      a taycup av tay, Mrs. Shadd?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But Judy dhragged her off cryin&rsquo; as tho&rsquo; her heart wud break. An&rsquo; Dinah
+      Shadd an&rsquo; I, in ten minutes we had forgot ut all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then why do you remember it now?&rsquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is ut like I&rsquo;d forget? Ivry word that wicked ould woman spoke fell thrue
+      in my life aftherwards, an&rsquo; I cud ha&rsquo; stud ut all&mdash;stud ut all&mdash;excipt
+      when my little Shadd was born. That was on the line av march three months
+      afther the regiment was taken with cholera. We were betune Umballa an&rsquo; 
+      Kalka thin, an&rsquo; I was on picket. Whin I came off duty the women showed me
+      the child, an&rsquo; ut turned on uts side an&rsquo; died as I looked. We buried him
+      by the road, an&rsquo; Father Victor was a day&rsquo;s march behind wid the heavy
+      baggage, so the comp&rsquo;ny captain read a prayer. An&rsquo; since then I&rsquo;ve been a
+      childless man, an&rsquo; all else that ould Mother Sheehy put upon me an&rsquo; Dinah
+      Shadd. What do you think, sorr?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought a good deal, but it seemed better then to reach out for
+      Mulvaney&rsquo;s hand. The demonstration nearly cost me the use of three
+      fingers. Whatever he knows of his weaknesses, Mulvaney is entirely
+      ignorant of his strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But what do you think?&rsquo; he repeated, as I was straightening out the
+      crushed fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My reply was drowned in yells and outcries from the next fire, where ten
+      men were shouting for &lsquo;Orth&rsquo;ris,&rsquo; &lsquo;Privit Orth&rsquo;ris,&rsquo; &lsquo;Mistah Or&mdash;ther&mdash;ris!&rsquo; 
+      &lsquo;Deah boy,&rsquo; &lsquo;Cap&rsquo;n Orth&rsquo;ris,&rsquo; &lsquo;Field-Marshal Orth&rsquo;ris,&rsquo; &lsquo;Stanley, you
+      pen&rsquo;north o&rsquo; pop, come &lsquo;ere to your own comp&rsquo;ny!&rsquo; And the cockney, who had
+      been delighting another audience with recondite and Rabelaisian yarns, was
+      shot down among his admirers by the major force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;ve crumpled my dress-shirt &lsquo;orrid,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;an&rsquo; I shan&rsquo;t sing no
+      more to this &lsquo;ere bloomin&rsquo; drawin&rsquo;-room.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Learoyd, roused by the confusion, uncoiled himself, crept behind Ortheris,
+      and slung him aloft on his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sing, ye bloomin&rsquo; hummin&rsquo; bird!&rsquo; said he, and Ortheris, beating time on
+      Learoyd&rsquo;s skull, delivered himself, in the raucous voice of the Ratcliffe
+      Highway, of this song:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    My girl she give me the go onst,
+      When I was a London lad,
+    An&rsquo; I went on the drink for a fortnight,
+      An&rsquo; then I went to the bad.
+    The Queen she give me a shillin&rsquo; 
+      To fight for &lsquo;er over the seas;
+    But Guv&rsquo;ment built me a fever-trap,
+      An&rsquo; Injia give me disease.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Chorus.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    Ho! don&rsquo;t you &lsquo;eed what a girl says,
+      An&rsquo; don&rsquo;t you go for the beer;
+    But I was an ass when I was at grass,
+      An&rsquo; that is why I&rsquo;m &lsquo;ere.
+
+   I fired a shot at a Afghan,
+      The beggar &lsquo;e fired again,
+    An&rsquo; I lay on my bed with a &lsquo;ole in my &lsquo;ed;
+      An&rsquo; missed the next campaign!
+    I up with my gun at a Burman
+      Who carried a bloomin&rsquo; dah,
+    But the cartridge stuck and the bay&rsquo;nit bruk,
+      An&rsquo; all I got was the scar.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Chorus.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    Ho! don&rsquo;t you aim at a Afghan
+       When you stand on the sky-line clear;
+    An&rsquo; don&rsquo;t you go for a Burman
+      If none o&rsquo; your friends is near.
+
+    I served my time for a corp&rsquo;ral,
+      An&rsquo; wetted my stripes with pop,
+    For I went on the bend with a intimate friend,
+      An&rsquo; finished the night in the &lsquo;shop.&rsquo; 
+    I served my time for a sergeant;
+      The colonel &lsquo;e sez &lsquo;No!
+    The most you&rsquo;ll see is a full C. B.&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+[Footnote: Confined to barracks.]
+      An&rsquo;...very next night &lsquo;twas so.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Chorus.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    Ho! don&rsquo;t you go for a corp&rsquo;ral
+      Unless your &lsquo;ed is clear;
+    But I was an ass when I was at grass,
+      An&rsquo; that is why I&rsquo;m &lsquo;ere.
+
+    I&rsquo;ve tasted the luck o&rsquo; the army
+      In barrack an&rsquo; camp an&rsquo; clink,
+    An&rsquo; I lost my tip through the bloomin&rsquo; trip
+      Along o&rsquo; the women an&rsquo; drink.
+    I&rsquo;m down at the heel o&rsquo; my service
+      An&rsquo; when I am laid on the shelf,
+    My very wust friend from beginning to end
+      By the blood of a mouse was myself!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Chorus.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    Ho! don&rsquo;t you &lsquo;eed what a girl says,
+      An&rsquo; don&rsquo;t you go for the beer;
+    But I was an ass when I was at grass,
+      An&rsquo; that is why I&rsquo;m &lsquo;ere.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay, listen to our little man now, singin&rsquo; an&rsquo; shoutin&rsquo; as tho&rsquo; trouble
+      had niver touched him. D&rsquo;you remember when he went mad with the
+      home-sickness?&rsquo; said Mulvaney, recalling a never-to-be-forgotten season
+      when Ortheris waded through the deep waters of affliction and behaved
+      abominably. &lsquo;But he&rsquo;s talkin&rsquo; bitter truth, though. Eyah!
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &lsquo;My very worst frind from beginnin&rsquo; to ind
+    By the blood av a mouse was mesilf!&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      When I woke I saw Mulvaney, the night-dew gemming his moustache, leaning
+      on his rifle at picket, lonely as Prometheus on his rock, with I know not
+      what vultures tearing his liver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ON GREENHOW HILL
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ To Love&rsquo;s low voice she lent a careless ear;
+ Her hand within his rosy fingers lay,
+ A chilling weight. She would not turn or hear;
+ But with averted face went on her way.
+ But when pale Death, all featureless and grim,
+ Lifted his bony hand, and beckoning
+ Held out his cypress-wreath, she followed him,
+ And Love was left forlorn and wondering,
+ That she who for his bidding would not stay,
+ At Death&rsquo;s first whisper rose and went away.
+                                 RIVALS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ohe, Ahmed Din! Shafiz Ullah ahoo! Bahadur Khan, where are you? Come out
+      of the tents, as I have done, and fight against the English. Don&rsquo;t kill
+      your own kin! Come out to me!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deserter from a native corps was crawling round the outskirts of the
+      camp, firing at intervals, and shouting invitations to his old comrades.
+      Misled by the rain and the darkness, he came to the English wing of the
+      camp, and with his yelping and rifle-practice disturbed the men. They had
+      been making roads all day, and were tired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris was sleeping at Learoyd&rsquo;s feet. &lsquo;Wot&rsquo;s all that?&rsquo; he said
+      thickly. Learoyd snored, and a Snider bullet ripped its way through the
+      tent wall. The men swore. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s that bloomin&rsquo; deserter from the
+      Aurangabadis,&rsquo; said Ortheris. &lsquo;Git up, some one, an&rsquo; tell &lsquo;im &lsquo;e&rsquo;s come to
+      the wrong shop.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go to sleep, little man,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, who was steaming nearest the
+      door. &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t arise an&rsquo; expaytiate with him. &lsquo;Tis rainin&rsquo; entrenchin&rsquo; 
+      tools outside.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Tain&rsquo;t because you bloomin&rsquo; can&rsquo;t. It&rsquo;s &lsquo;cause you bloomin&rsquo; won&rsquo;t, ye
+      long, limp, lousy, lazy beggar, you. &lsquo;Ark to&rsquo;im &lsquo;owlin&rsquo;!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wot&rsquo;s the good of argifying? Put a bullet into the swine! &lsquo;E&rsquo;s keepin&rsquo; us
+      awake!&rsquo; said another voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A subaltern shouted angrily, and a dripping sentry whined from the
+      darkness&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Tain&rsquo;t no good, sir. I can&rsquo;t see &lsquo;im. &lsquo;E&rsquo;s &lsquo;idin&rsquo; somewhere down &lsquo;ill.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris tumbled out of his blanket. &lsquo;Shall I try to get &lsquo;im, sir?&rsquo; said
+      he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; was the answer. &lsquo;Lie down. I won&rsquo;t have the whole camp shooting all
+      round the clock. Tell him to go and pot his friends.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris considered for a moment. Then, putting his head under the tent
+      wall, he called, as a &lsquo;bus conductor calls in a block, &lsquo;&rsquo;Igher up, there!
+      &lsquo;Igher up!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men laughed, and the laughter was carried down wind to the deserter,
+      who, hearing that he had made a mistake, went off to worry his own
+      regiment half a mile away. He was received with shots; the Aurangabadis
+      were very angry with him for disgracing their colours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; that&rsquo;s all right,&rsquo; said Ortheris, withdrawing his head as he heard
+      the hiccough of the Sniders in the distance. &lsquo;S&rsquo;elp me Gawd, tho&rsquo;, that
+      man&rsquo;s not fit to live&mdash;messin&rsquo; with my beauty-sleep this way.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go out and shoot him in the morning, then,&rsquo; said the subaltern
+      incautiously. &lsquo;Silence in the tents now. Get your rest, men.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris lay down with a happy little sigh, and in two minutes there was
+      no sound except the rain on the canvas and the all-embracing and elemental
+      snoring of Learoyd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The camp lay on a bare ridge of the Himalayas, and for a week had been
+      waiting for a flying column to make connection. The nightly rounds of the
+      deserter and his friends had become a nuisance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning the men dried themselves in hot sunshine and cleaned their
+      grimy accoutrements. The native regiment was to take its turn of
+      road-making that day while the Old Regiment loafed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; to lay for a shot at that man,&rsquo; said Ortheris, when he had
+      finished washing out his rifle. &lsquo;&rsquo;E comes up the watercourse every evenin&rsquo; 
+      about five o&rsquo;clock. If we go and lie out on the north &lsquo;ill a bit this
+      afternoon we&rsquo;ll get &lsquo;im.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;re a bloodthirsty little mosquito,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, blowing blue
+      clouds into the air. &lsquo;But I suppose I will have to come wid you. Fwhere&rsquo;s
+      Jock?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Gone out with the Mixed Pickles, &lsquo;cause &lsquo;e thinks &lsquo;isself a bloomin&rsquo; 
+      marksman,&rsquo; said Ortheris with scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The &lsquo;Mixed Pickles&rsquo; were a detachment of picked shots, generally employed
+      in clearing spurs of hills when the enemy were too impertinent. This
+      taught the young officers how to handle men, and did not do the enemy much
+      harm. Mulvaney and Ortheris strolled out of camp, and passed the
+      Aurangabadis going to their road-making.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;ve got to sweat to-day,&rsquo; said Ortheris genially. &lsquo;We&rsquo;re going to get
+      your man. You didn&rsquo;t knock &lsquo;im out last night by any chance, any of you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No. The pig went away mocking us. I had one shot at him,&rsquo; said a private.
+      &lsquo;He&rsquo;s my cousin, and <i>I</i> ought to have cleared our dishonour. But
+      good luck to you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went cautiously to the north hill, Ortheris leading, because, as he
+      explained, &rsquo;this is a long-range show, an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve got to do it.&rsquo; His was an
+      almost passionate devotion to his rifle, which, by barrack-room report, he
+      was supposed to kiss every night before turning in. Charges and scuffles
+      he held in contempt, and, when they were inevitable, slipped between
+      Mulvaney and Learoyd, bidding them to fight for his skin as well as their
+      own. They never failed him. He trotted along, questing like a hound on a
+      broken trail, through the wood of the north hill. At last he was
+      satisfied, and threw himself down on the soft pine-needled slope that
+      commanded a clear view of the watercourse and a brown, bare hillside
+      beyond it. The trees made a scented darkness in which an army corps could
+      have hidden from the sun-glare without.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Ere&rsquo;s the tail o&rsquo; the wood,&rsquo; said Ortheris. &lsquo;&rsquo;E&rsquo;s got to come up the
+      watercourse, &lsquo;cause it gives &lsquo;im cover. We&rsquo;ll lay &lsquo;ere. &lsquo;Tain&rsquo;t not arf so
+      bloomin&rsquo; dusty neither.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He buried his nose in a clump of scentless white violets. No one had come
+      to tell the flowers that the season of their strength was long past, and
+      they had bloomed merrily in the twilight of the pines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;This is something like,&rsquo; he said luxuriously. &lsquo;Wot a &lsquo;evinly clear drop
+      for a bullet acrost! How much d&rsquo;you make it, Mulvaney?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Seven hunder. Maybe a trifle less, bekaze the air&rsquo;s so thin.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WOP! WOP! WOP! went a volley of musketry on the rear face of the north
+      hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Curse them Mixed Pickles firin&rsquo; at nothin&rsquo;! They&rsquo;ll scare arf the
+      country.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thry a sightin&rsquo; shot in the middle of the row,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, the man of
+      many wiles. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s a red rock yonder he&rsquo;ll be sure to pass. Quick!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris ran his sight up to six hundred yards and fired. The bullet threw
+      up a feather of dust by a clump of gentians at the base of the rock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good enough!&rsquo; said Ortheris, snapping the scale down. &lsquo;You snick your
+      sights to mine or a little lower. You&rsquo;re always firin&rsquo; high. But remember,
+      first shot to me. O Lordy! but it&rsquo;s a lovely afternoon.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The noise of the firing grew louder, and there was a tramping of men in
+      the wood. The two lay very quiet, for they knew that the British soldier
+      is desperately prone to fire at anything that moves or calls. Then Learoyd
+      appeared, his tunic ripped across the breast by a bullet, looking ashamed
+      of himself. He flung down on the pine-needles, breathing in snorts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;One o&rsquo; them damned gardeners o&rsquo; th&rsquo; Pickles,&rsquo; said he, fingering the
+      rent. &lsquo;Firin&rsquo; to th&rsquo; right flank, when he knowed I was there. If I knew
+      who he was I&rsquo;d &lsquo;a&rsquo; rippen the hide offan him. Look at ma tunic!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s the spishil trustability av a marksman. Train him to hit a fly wid
+      a stiddy rest at seven hunder, an&rsquo; he loose on anythin&rsquo; he sees or hears
+      up to th&rsquo; mile. You&rsquo;re well out av that fancy-firin&rsquo; gang, Jock. Stay
+      here.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bin firin&rsquo; at the bloomin&rsquo; wind in the bloomin&rsquo; tree-tops,&rsquo; said Ortheris
+      with a chuckle. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll show you some firin&rsquo; later on.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They wallowed in the pine-needles, and the sun warmed them where they lay.
+      The Mixed Pickles ceased firing, and returned to camp, and left the wood
+      to a few scared apes. The watercourse lifted up its voice in the silence,
+      and talked foolishly to the rocks. Now and again the dull thump of a
+      blasting charge three miles away told that the Aurangabadis were in
+      difficulties with their road-making. The men smiled as they listened and
+      lay still, soaking in the warm leisure. Presently Learoyd, between the
+      whiffs of his pipe&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Seems queer&mdash;about &lsquo;im yonder&mdash;desertin&rsquo; at all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;E&rsquo;ll be a bloomin&rsquo; side queerer when I&rsquo;ve done with &lsquo;im,&rsquo; said Ortheris.
+      They were talking in whispers, for the stillness of the wood and the
+      desire of slaughter lay heavy upon them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I make no doubt he had his reasons for desertin&rsquo;; but, my faith! I make
+      less doubt ivry man has good reason for killin&rsquo; him,&rsquo; said Mulvaney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Happen there was a lass tewed up wi&rsquo; it. Men do more than more for th&rsquo; 
+      sake of a lass.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They make most av us &lsquo;list. They&rsquo;ve no manner av right to make us
+      desert.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah; they make us &lsquo;list, or their fathers do,&rsquo; said Learoyd softly, his
+      helmet over his eyes. Ortheris&rsquo;s brows contracted savagely. He was
+      watching the valley. &lsquo;If it&rsquo;s a girl I&rsquo;ll shoot the beggar twice over, an&rsquo; 
+      second time for bein&rsquo; a fool. You&rsquo;re blasted sentimental all of a sudden.
+      Thinkin&rsquo; o&rsquo; your last near shave?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, lad; ah was but thinkin&rsquo; o&rsquo; what had happened.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; fwhat has happened, ye lumberin&rsquo; child av calamity, that you&rsquo;re
+      lowing like a cow-calf at the back av the pasture, an&rsquo; suggestin&rsquo; 
+      invidious excuses for the man Stanley&rsquo;s goin&rsquo; to kill. Ye&rsquo;ll have to wait
+      another hour yet, little man. Spit it out, Jock, an&rsquo; bellow melojus to the
+      moon. It takes an earthquake or a bullet graze to fetch aught out av you.
+      Discourse, Don Juan! The a-moors av Lotharius Learoyd! Stanley, kape a
+      rowlin&rsquo; rig&rsquo;mental eye on the valley.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s along o&rsquo; yon hill there,&rsquo; said Learoyd, watching the bare
+      sub-Himalayan spur that reminded him of his Yorkshire moors. He was
+      speaking more to himself than his fellows. &lsquo;Ay,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;Rumbolds Moor
+      stands up ower Skipton town, an&rsquo; Greenhow Hill stands up ower Pately Brig.
+      I reckon you&rsquo;ve never heeard tell o&rsquo; Greenhow Hill, but you bit o&rsquo; bare
+      stuff if there was nobbut a white road windin&rsquo; is like ut; strangely like.
+      Moors an&rsquo; moors an&rsquo; moors, wi&rsquo; never a tree for shelter, an&rsquo; gray houses
+      wi&rsquo; flagstone rooves, and pewits cryin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; a windhover goin&rsquo; to and fro
+      just like these kites. And cold! A wind that cuts you like a knife. You
+      could tell Greenhow Hill folk by the red-apple colour o&rsquo; their cheeks an&rsquo; 
+      nose tips, and their blue eyes, driven into pinpoints by the wind. Miners
+      mostly, burrowin&rsquo; for lead i&rsquo; th&rsquo; hillsides, followin&rsquo; the trail of th&rsquo; 
+      ore vein same as a field-rat. It was the roughest minin&rsquo; I ever seen. Yo&rsquo;d
+      come on a bit o&rsquo; creakin&rsquo; wood windlass like a well-head, an&rsquo; you was let
+      down i&rsquo; th&rsquo; bight of a rope, fendin&rsquo; yoursen off the side wi&rsquo; one hand,
+      carryin&rsquo; a candle stuck in a lump o&rsquo; clay with t&rsquo;other, an&rsquo; clickin&rsquo; hold
+      of a rope with t&rsquo;other hand.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; that&rsquo;s three of them,&rsquo; said Mulvaney. &lsquo;Must be a good climate in
+      those parts.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Learoyd took no heed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; then yo&rsquo; came to a level, where you crept on your hands and knees
+      through a mile o&rsquo; windin&rsquo; drift, an&rsquo; you come out into a cave-place as big
+      as Leeds Townhall, with a engine pumpin&rsquo; water from workin&rsquo;s &lsquo;at went
+      deeper still. It&rsquo;s a queer country, let alone minin&rsquo;, for the hill is full
+      of those natural caves, an&rsquo; the rivers an&rsquo; the becks drops into what they
+      call pot-holes, an&rsquo; come out again miles away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wot was you doin&rsquo; there?&rsquo; said Ortheris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I was a young chap then, an&rsquo; mostly went wi&rsquo; &lsquo;osses, leadin&rsquo; coal and
+      lead ore; but at th&rsquo; time I&rsquo;m tellin&rsquo; on I was drivin&rsquo; the waggon-team i&rsquo; 
+      th&rsquo; big sumph. I didn&rsquo;t belong to that country-side by rights. I went
+      there because of a little difference at home, an&rsquo; at fust I took up wi&rsquo; a
+      rough lot. One night we&rsquo;d been drinkin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; I must ha&rsquo; hed more than I
+      could stand, or happen th&rsquo; ale was none so good. Though i&rsquo; them days, By
+      for God, I never seed bad ale.&rsquo; He flung his arms over his head, and
+      gripped a vast handful of white violets. &lsquo;Nah,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;I never seed the
+      ale I could not drink, the bacca I could not smoke, nor the lass I could
+      not kiss. Well, we mun have a race home, the lot on us. I lost all th&rsquo; 
+      others, an&rsquo; when I was climbin&rsquo; ower one of them walls built o&rsquo; loose
+      stones, I comes down into the ditch, stones and all, an&rsquo; broke my arm. Not
+      as I knawed much about it, for I fell on th&rsquo; back of my head, an&rsquo; was
+      knocked stupid like. An&rsquo; when I come to mysen it were mornin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; I were
+      lyin&rsquo; on the settle i&rsquo; Jesse Roantree&rsquo;s houseplace, an&rsquo; &lsquo;Liza Roantree was
+      settin&rsquo; sewin&rsquo;, I ached all ovver, and my mouth were like a lime-kiln. She
+      gave me a drink out of a china mug wi&rsquo; gold letters&mdash;&ldquo;A Present from
+      Leeds&rdquo;&mdash;as I looked at many and many a time at after. &ldquo;Yo&rsquo;re to lie
+      still while Dr. Warbottom comes, because your arm&rsquo;s broken, and father has
+      sent a lad to fetch him. He found yo&rsquo; when he was goin&rsquo; to work, an&rsquo; 
+      carried you here on his back,&rdquo; sez she. &ldquo;Oa!&rdquo; sez I; an&rsquo; I shet my eyes,
+      for I felt ashamed o&rsquo; mysen. &ldquo;Father&rsquo;s gone to his work these three hours,
+      an&rsquo; he said he&rsquo;d tell &lsquo;em to get somebody to drive the tram.&rdquo; The clock
+      ticked, an&rsquo; a bee comed in the house, an&rsquo; they rung i&rsquo; my head like
+      mill-wheels. An&rsquo; she give me another drink an&rsquo; settled the pillow. &ldquo;Eh,
+      but yo&rsquo;re young to be getten drunk an&rsquo; such like, but yo&rsquo; won&rsquo;t do it
+      again, will yo&rsquo;?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Noa,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t if she&rsquo;d not but stop
+      they mill-wheels clatterin&rsquo;.&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Faith, it&rsquo;s a good thing to be nursed by a woman when you&rsquo;re sick!&rsquo; said
+      Mulvaney. &lsquo;Dir&rsquo; cheap at the price av twenty broken heads.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris turned to frown across the valley. He had not been nursed by many
+      women in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; then Dr. Warbottom comes ridin&rsquo; up, an&rsquo; Jesse Roantree along with
+      &lsquo;im. He was a high-larned doctor, but he talked wi&rsquo; poor folk same as
+      theirsens. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s ta big agaate on naa?&rdquo; he sings out. &ldquo;Brekkin&rsquo; tha
+      thick head?&rdquo; An&rsquo; he felt me all ovver. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s none broken. Tha&rsquo; nobbut
+      knocked a bit sillier than ordinary, an&rsquo; that&rsquo;s daaft eneaf.&rdquo; An&rsquo; soa he
+      went on, callin&rsquo; me all the names he could think on, but settin&rsquo; my arm,
+      wi&rsquo; Jesse&rsquo;s help, as careful as could be. &ldquo;Yo&rsquo; mun let the big oaf bide
+      here a bit, Jesse,&rdquo; he says, when he hed strapped me up an&rsquo; given me a
+      dose o&rsquo; physic; &ldquo;an&rsquo; you an&rsquo; Liza will tend him, though he&rsquo;s scarcelins
+      worth the trouble. An&rsquo; tha&rsquo;ll lose tha work,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;an&rsquo; tha&rsquo;ll be upon
+      th&rsquo; Sick Club for a couple o&rsquo; months an&rsquo; more. Doesn&rsquo;t tha think tha&rsquo;s a
+      fool?&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But whin was a young man, high or low, the other av a fool, I&rsquo;d like to
+      know?&rsquo; said Mulvaney. &lsquo;Sure, folly&rsquo;s the only safe way to wisdom, for I&rsquo;ve
+      thried it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wisdom!&rsquo; grinned Ortheris, scanning his comrades with uplifted chin.
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;re bloomin&rsquo; Solomons, you two, ain&rsquo;t you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Learoyd went calmly on, with a steady eye like an ox chewing the cud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And that was how I come to know &lsquo;Liza Roantree. There&rsquo;s some tunes as she
+      used to sing&mdash;aw, she were always singin&rsquo;&mdash;that fetches Greenhow
+      Hill before my eyes as fair as yon brow across there. And she would learn
+      me to sing bass, an&rsquo; I was to go to th&rsquo; chapel wi&rsquo; &lsquo;em where Jesse and she
+      led the singin&rsquo;, th&rsquo; old man playin&rsquo; the fiddle. He was a strange chap,
+      old Jesse, fair mad wi&rsquo; music, an&rsquo; he made me promise to learn the big
+      fiddle when my arm was better. It belonged to him, and it stood up in a
+      big case alongside o&rsquo; th&rsquo; eight-day clock, but Willie Satterthwaite, as
+      played it in the chapel, had getten deaf as a door-post, and it vexed
+      Jesse, as he had to rap him ower his head wi&rsquo; th&rsquo; fiddle-stick to make him
+      give ower sawin&rsquo; at th&rsquo; right time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But there was a black drop in it all, an&rsquo; it was a man in a black coat
+      that brought it. When th&rsquo; Primitive Methodist preacher came to Greenhow,
+      he would always stop wi&rsquo; Jesse Roantree, an&rsquo; he laid hold of me from th&rsquo; 
+      beginning. It seemed I wor a soul to be saved, and he meaned to do it. At
+      th&rsquo; same time I jealoused &lsquo;at he were keen o&rsquo; savin&rsquo; &lsquo;Liza Roantree&rsquo;s soul
+      as well, and I could ha&rsquo; killed him many a time. An&rsquo; this went on till one
+      day I broke out, an&rsquo; borrowed th&rsquo; brass for a drink from &lsquo;Liza. After
+      fower days I come back, wi&rsquo; my tail between my legs, just to see &lsquo;Liza
+      again. But Jesse were at home an&rsquo; th&rsquo; preacher&mdash;th&rsquo; Reverend Amos
+      Barraclough. &lsquo;Liza said naught, but a bit o&rsquo; red come into her face as
+      were white of a regular thing. Says Jesse, tryin&rsquo; his best to be civil,
+      &ldquo;Nay, lad, it&rsquo;s like this. You&rsquo;ve getten to choose which way it&rsquo;s goin&rsquo; to
+      be. I&rsquo;ll ha&rsquo; nobody across ma doorstep as goes a-drinkin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; borrows my
+      lass&rsquo;s money to spend i&rsquo; their drink. Ho&rsquo;d tha tongue, &lsquo;Liza,&rdquo; sez he,
+      when she wanted to put in a word &lsquo;at I were welcome to th&rsquo; brass, and she
+      were none afraid that I wouldn&rsquo;t pay it back. Then the Reverend cuts in,
+      seein&rsquo; as Jesse were losin&rsquo; his temper, an&rsquo; they fair beat me among them.
+      But it were &lsquo;Liza, as looked an&rsquo; said naught, as did more than either o&rsquo; 
+      their tongues, an&rsquo; soa I concluded to get converted.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Fwhat?&rsquo; shouted Mulvaney. Then, checking himself, he said softly, &lsquo;Let
+      be! Let be! Sure the Blessed Virgin is the mother of all religion an&rsquo; most
+      women; an&rsquo; there&rsquo;s a dale av piety in a girl if the men would only let ut
+      stay there. I&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; been converted myself under the circumstances.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, but,&rsquo; pursued Learoyd with a blush, &lsquo;I meaned it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris laughed as loudly as he dared, having regard to his business at
+      the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay, Ortheris, you may laugh, but you didn&rsquo;t know yon preacher Barraclough&mdash;a
+      little white-faced chap, wi&rsquo; a voice as &lsquo;ud wile a bird off an a bush, and
+      a way o&rsquo; layin&rsquo; hold of folks as made them think they&rsquo;d never had a live
+      man for a friend before. You never saw him, an&rsquo;&mdash;an&rsquo;&mdash;you never
+      seed &lsquo;Liza Roantree&mdash;never seed &lsquo;Liza Roantree.... Happen it was as
+      much &lsquo;Liza as th&rsquo; preacher and her father, but anyways they all meaned it,
+      an&rsquo; I was fair shamed o&rsquo; mysen, an&rsquo; so I become what they call a changed
+      character. And when I think on, it&rsquo;s hard to believe as yon chap going to
+      prayer-meetin&rsquo;s, chapel, and class-meetin&rsquo;s were me. But I never had
+      naught to say for mysen, though there was a deal o&rsquo; shoutin&rsquo;, and old
+      Sammy Strother, as were almost clemmed to death and doubled up with the
+      rheumatics, would sing out, &ldquo;Joyful! Joyful!&rdquo; and &lsquo;at it were better to go
+      up to heaven in a coal-basket than down to hell i&rsquo; a coach an&rsquo; six. And he
+      would put his poor old claw on my shoulder, sayin&rsquo;, &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t tha feel it,
+      tha great lump? Doesn&rsquo;t tha feel it?&rdquo; An&rsquo; sometimes I thought I did, and
+      then again I thought I didn&rsquo;t, an&rsquo; how was that?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The iverlastin&rsquo; nature av mankind,&rsquo; said Mulvaney. &lsquo;An&rsquo;, furthermore, I
+      misdoubt you were built for the Primitive Methodians. They&rsquo;re a new corps
+      anyways. I hold by the Ould Church, for she&rsquo;s the mother of them all&mdash;ay,
+      an&rsquo; the father, too. I like her bekaze she&rsquo;s most remarkable regimental in
+      her fittings. I may die in Honolulu, Nova Zambra, or Cape Cayenne, but
+      wherever I die, me bein&rsquo; fwhat I am, an&rsquo; a priest handy, I go under the
+      same orders an&rsquo; the same words an&rsquo; the same unction as tho&rsquo; the Pope
+      himself come down from the roof av St. Peter&rsquo;s to see me off. There&rsquo;s
+      neither high nor low, nor broad nor deep, nor betwixt nor between wid her,
+      an&rsquo; that&rsquo;s what I like. But mark you, she&rsquo;s no manner av Church for a wake
+      man, bekaze she takes the body and the soul av him, onless he has his
+      proper work to do. I remember when my father died that was three months
+      comin&rsquo; to his grave; begad he&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; sold the shebeen above our heads for
+      ten minutes&rsquo; quittance of purgathory. An&rsquo; he did all he could. That&rsquo;s why
+      I say ut takes a strong man to deal with the Ould Church, an&rsquo; for that
+      reason you&rsquo;ll find so many women go there. An&rsquo; that same&rsquo;s a conundrum.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wot&rsquo;s the use o&rsquo; worritin&rsquo; &lsquo;bout these things?&rsquo; said Ortheris. &lsquo;You&rsquo;re
+      bound to find all out quicker nor you want to, any&rsquo;ow.&rsquo; He jerked the
+      cartridge out of the breech-block into the palm of his hand. &lsquo;&rsquo;Ere&rsquo;s my
+      chaplain,&rsquo; he said, and made the venomous black-headed bullet bow like a
+      marionette. &lsquo;&rsquo;E&rsquo;s goin&rsquo; to teach a man all about which is which, an&rsquo; wot&rsquo;s
+      true, after all, before sundown. But wot &lsquo;appened after that, Jock?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There was one thing they boggled at, and almost shut th&rsquo; gate i&rsquo; my face
+      for, and that were my dog Blast, th&rsquo; only one saved out o&rsquo; a litter o&rsquo; 
+      pups as was blowed up when a keg o&rsquo; minin&rsquo; powder loosed off in th&rsquo; 
+      store-keeper&rsquo;s hut. They liked his name no better than his business, which
+      were fightin&rsquo; every dog he comed across; a rare good dog, wi&rsquo; spots o&rsquo; 
+      black and pink on his face, one ear gone, and lame o&rsquo; one side wi&rsquo; being
+      driven in a basket through an iron roof, a matter of half a mile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They said I mun give him up &lsquo;cause he were worldly and low; and would I
+      let mysen be shut out of heaven for the sake on a dog? &ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;if
+      th&rsquo; door isn&rsquo;t wide enough for th&rsquo; pair on us, we&rsquo;ll stop outside, for
+      we&rsquo;ll none be parted.&rdquo; And th&rsquo; preacher spoke up for Blast, as had a
+      likin&rsquo; for him from th&rsquo; first&mdash;I reckon that was why I come to like
+      th&rsquo; preacher&mdash;and wouldn&rsquo;t hear o&rsquo; changin&rsquo; his name to Bless, as
+      some o&rsquo; them wanted. So th&rsquo; pair on us became reg&rsquo;lar chapel-members. But
+      it&rsquo;s hard for a young chap o&rsquo; my build to cut traces from the world, th&rsquo; 
+      flesh, an&rsquo; the devil all uv a heap. Yet I stuck to it for a long time,
+      while th&rsquo; lads as used to stand about th&rsquo; town-end an&rsquo; lean ower th&rsquo; 
+      bridge, spittin&rsquo; into th&rsquo; beck o&rsquo; a Sunday, would call after me, &ldquo;Sitha,
+      Learoyd, when&rsquo;s ta bean to preach, &lsquo;cause we&rsquo;re comin&rsquo; to hear tha.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Ho&rsquo;d
+      tha jaw. He hasn&rsquo;t getten th&rsquo; white choaker on ta morn,&rdquo; another lad would
+      say, and I had to double my fists hard i&rsquo; th&rsquo; bottom of my Sunday coat,
+      and say to mysen, &ldquo;If &lsquo;twere Monday and I warn&rsquo;t a member o&rsquo; the Primitive
+      Methodists, I&rsquo;d leather all th&rsquo; lot of yond&rsquo;.&rdquo; That was th&rsquo; hardest of all&mdash;to
+      know that I could fight and I mustn&rsquo;t fight.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sympathetic grunts from Mulvaney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So what wi&rsquo; singin&rsquo;, practising and class-meetin&rsquo;s, and th&rsquo; big fiddle,
+      as he made me take between my knees, I spent a deal o&rsquo; time i&rsquo; Jesse
+      Roantree&rsquo;s house-place. But often as I was there, th&rsquo; preacher fared to me
+      to go oftener, and both th&rsquo; old man an&rsquo; th&rsquo; young woman were pleased to
+      have him. He lived i&rsquo; Pately Brig, as were a goodish step off, but he
+      come. He come all the same. I liked him as well or better as any man I&rsquo;d
+      ever seen i&rsquo; one way, and yet I hated him wi&rsquo; all my heart i&rsquo; t&rsquo;other, and
+      we watched each other like cat and mouse, but civil as you please, for I
+      was on my best behaviour, and he was that fair and open that I was bound
+      to be fair with him. Rare good company he was, if I hadn&rsquo;t wanted to wring
+      his cliver little neck half of the time. Often and often when he was goin&rsquo; 
+      from Jesse&rsquo;s I&rsquo;d set him a bit on the road.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;See &lsquo;im &lsquo;ome, you mean?&rsquo; said Ortheris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay. It&rsquo;s a way we have i&rsquo; Yorkshire o&rsquo; seein&rsquo; friends off. You was a
+      friend as I didn&rsquo;t want to come back, and he didn&rsquo;t want me to come back
+      neither, and so we&rsquo;d walk together towards Pately, and then he&rsquo;d set me
+      back again, and there we&rsquo;d be wal two o&rsquo;clock i&rsquo; the mornin&rsquo; settin&rsquo; each
+      other to an&rsquo; fro like a blasted pair o&rsquo; pendulums twixt hill and valley,
+      long after th&rsquo; light had gone out i&rsquo; &lsquo;Liza&rsquo;s window, as both on us had
+      been looking at, pretending to watch the moon.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; broke in Mulvaney, &lsquo;ye&rsquo;d no chanst against the maraudin&rsquo; 
+      psalm-singer. They&rsquo;ll take the airs an&rsquo; the graces instid av the man nine
+      times out av ten, an&rsquo; they only find the blunder later&mdash;the wimmen.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s just where yo&rsquo;re wrong,&rsquo; said Learoyd, reddening under the
+      freckled tan of his cheeks. &lsquo;I was th&rsquo; first wi&rsquo; &lsquo;Liza, an&rsquo; yo&rsquo;d think
+      that were enough. But th&rsquo; parson were a steady-gaited sort o&rsquo; chap, and
+      Jesse were strong o&rsquo; his side, and all th&rsquo; women i&rsquo; the congregation
+      dinned it to &lsquo;Liza &lsquo;at she were fair fond to take up wi&rsquo; a wastrel
+      ne&rsquo;er-do-weel like me, as was scarcelins respectable an&rsquo; a fighting dog at
+      his heels. It was all very well for her to be doing me good and saving my
+      soul, but she must mind as she didn&rsquo;t do herself harm. They talk o&rsquo; rich
+      folk bein&rsquo; stuck up an&rsquo; genteel, but for cast-iron pride o&rsquo; respectability
+      there&rsquo;s naught like poor chapel folk. It&rsquo;s as cold as th&rsquo; wind o&rsquo; Greenhow
+      Hill&mdash;ay, and colder, for &lsquo;twill never change. And now I come to
+      think on it, one at strangest things I know is &lsquo;at they couldn&rsquo;t abide th&rsquo; 
+      thought o&rsquo; soldiering. There&rsquo;s a vast o&rsquo; fightin&rsquo; i&rsquo; th&rsquo; Bible, and
+      there&rsquo;s a deal of Methodists i&rsquo; th&rsquo; army; but to hear chapel folk talk
+      yo&rsquo;d think that soldierin&rsquo; were next door, an&rsquo; t&rsquo;other side, to hangin&rsquo;.
+      I&rsquo; their meetin&rsquo;s all their talk is o&rsquo; fightin&rsquo;. When Sammy Strother were
+      stuck for summat to say in his prayers, he&rsquo;d sing out, &ldquo;Th&rsquo; sword o&rsquo; th&rsquo; 
+      Lord and o&rsquo; Gideon.&rdquo; They were allus at it about puttin&rsquo; on th&rsquo; whole
+      armour o&rsquo; righteousness, an&rsquo; fightin&rsquo; the good fight o&rsquo; faith. And then,
+      atop o&rsquo; &lsquo;t all, they held a prayer-meetin&rsquo; ower a young chap as wanted to
+      &lsquo;list, and nearly deafened him, till he picked up his hat and fair ran
+      away. And they&rsquo;d tell tales in th&rsquo; Sunday-school o&rsquo; bad lads as had been
+      thumped and brayed for bird-nesting o&rsquo; Sundays and playin&rsquo; truant o&rsquo; 
+      week-days, and how they took to wrestlin&rsquo;, dog-fightin&rsquo;, rabbit-runnin&rsquo;,
+      and drinkin&rsquo;, till at last, as if &lsquo;twere a hepitaph on a gravestone, they
+      damned him across th&rsquo; moors wi&rsquo;, &ldquo;an&rsquo; then he went and &lsquo;listed for a
+      soldier,&rdquo; an&rsquo; they&rsquo;d all fetch a deep breath, and throw up their eyes like
+      a hen drinkin&rsquo;.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Fwhy is ut?&rsquo; said Mulvaney, bringing down his hand on his thigh with a
+      crack.&rsquo; In the name av God, fwhy is ut? I&rsquo;ve seen ut, tu. They cheat an&rsquo; 
+      they swindle an&rsquo; they lie an&rsquo; they slander, an&rsquo; fifty things fifty times
+      worse; but the last an&rsquo; the worst by their reckonin&rsquo; is to serve the Widdy
+      honest. It&rsquo;s like the talk av childher&mdash;seein&rsquo; things all round.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Plucky lot of fightin&rsquo; good fights of whatsername they&rsquo;d do if we didn&rsquo;t
+      see they had a quiet place to fight in. And such fightin&rsquo; as theirs is!
+      Cats on the tiles. T&rsquo;other callin&rsquo; to which to come on. I&rsquo;d give a month&rsquo;s
+      pay to get some o&rsquo; them broad-backed beggars in London sweatin&rsquo; through a
+      day&rsquo;s road-makin&rsquo; an&rsquo; a night&rsquo;s rain. They&rsquo;d carry on a deal afterwards&mdash;same
+      as we&rsquo;re supposed to carry on. I&rsquo;ve bin turned out of a measly arf-license
+      pub down Lambeth way, full o&rsquo; greasy kebmen, &lsquo;fore now,&rsquo; said Ortheris
+      with an oath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Maybe you were dhrunk,&rsquo; said Mulvaney soothingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Worse nor that. The Forders were drunk. <i>I</i> was wearin&rsquo; the Queen&rsquo;s
+      uniform.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;d no particular thought to be a soldier i&rsquo; them days,&rsquo; said Learoyd,
+      still keeping his eye on the bare hill opposite, &lsquo;but this sort o&rsquo; talk
+      put it i&rsquo; my head. They was so good, th&rsquo; chapel folk, that they tumbled
+      ower t&rsquo;other side. But I stuck to it for &lsquo;Liza&rsquo;s sake, specially as she
+      was learning me to sing the bass part in a horotorio as Jesse were gettin&rsquo; 
+      up. She sung like a throstle hersen, and we had practisin&rsquo;s night after
+      night for a matter of three months.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I know what a horotorio is,&rsquo; said Ortheris pertly. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s a sort of
+      chaplain&rsquo;s sing-song&mdash;words all out of the Bible, and hullabaloojah
+      choruses.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Most Greenhow Hill folks played some instrument or t&rsquo;other, an&rsquo; they all
+      sung so you might have heard them miles away, and they were so pleased wi&rsquo; 
+      the noise they made they didn&rsquo;t fair to want anybody to listen. The
+      preacher sung high seconds when he wasn&rsquo;t playin&rsquo; the flute, an&rsquo; they set
+      me, as hadn&rsquo;t got far with big fiddle, again Willie Satterthwaite, to jog
+      his elbow when he had to get a&rsquo; gate playin&rsquo;. Old Jesse was happy if ever
+      a man was, for he were th&rsquo; conductor an&rsquo; th&rsquo; first fiddle an&rsquo; th&rsquo; leadin&rsquo; 
+      singer, beatin&rsquo; time wi&rsquo; his fiddle-stick, till at times he&rsquo;d rap with it
+      on the table, and cry out, &ldquo;Now, you mun all stop; it&rsquo;s my turn.&rdquo; And he&rsquo;d
+      face round to his front, fair sweating wi&rsquo; pride, to sing th&rsquo; tenor solos.
+      But he were grandest i&rsquo; th&rsquo; choruses, waggin&rsquo; his head, flinging his arms
+      round like a windmill, and singin&rsquo; hisself black in the face. A rare
+      singer were Jesse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yo&rsquo; see, I was not o&rsquo; much account wi&rsquo; &lsquo;em all exceptin&rsquo; to &lsquo;Liza
+      Roantree, and I had a deal o&rsquo; time settin&rsquo; quiet at meetings and horotorio
+      practises to hearken their talk, and if it were strange to me at
+      beginnin&rsquo;, it got stranger still at after, when I was shut on it, and
+      could study what it meaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Just after th&rsquo; horotorios come off, &lsquo;Liza, as had allus been weakly like,
+      was took very bad. I walked Dr. Warbottom&rsquo;s horse up and down a deal of
+      times while he were inside, where they wouldn&rsquo;t let me go, though I fair
+      ached to see her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;She&rsquo;ll be better i&rsquo; noo, lad&mdash;better i&rsquo; noo,&rdquo; he used to say. &ldquo;Tha
+      mun ha&rsquo; patience.&rdquo; Then they said if I was quiet I might go in, and th&rsquo; 
+      Reverend Amos Barraclough used to read to her lyin&rsquo; propped up among th&rsquo; 
+      pillows. Then she began to mend a bit, and they let me carry her on to th&rsquo; 
+      settle, and when it got warm again she went about same as afore. Th&rsquo; 
+      preacher and me and Blast was a deal together i&rsquo; them days, and i&rsquo; one way
+      we was rare good comrades. But I could ha&rsquo; stretched him time and again
+      with a good will. I mind one day he said he would like to go down into th&rsquo; 
+      bowels o&rsquo; th&rsquo; earth, and see how th&rsquo; Lord had builded th&rsquo; framework o&rsquo; th&rsquo; 
+      everlastin&rsquo; hills. He were one of them chaps as had a gift o&rsquo; sayin&rsquo; 
+      things. They rolled off the tip of his clever tongue, same as Mulvaney
+      here, as would ha&rsquo; made a rare good preacher if he had nobbut given his
+      mind to it. I lent him a suit o&rsquo; miner&rsquo;s kit as almost buried th&rsquo; little
+      man, and his white face down i&rsquo; th&rsquo; coat-collar and hat-flap looked like
+      the face of a boggart, and he cowered down i&rsquo; th&rsquo; bottom o&rsquo; the waggon. I
+      was drivin&rsquo; a tram as led up a bit of an incline up to th&rsquo; cave where the
+      engine was pumpin&rsquo;, and where th&rsquo; ore was brought up and put into th&rsquo; 
+      waggons as went down o&rsquo; themselves, me puttin&rsquo; th&rsquo; brake on and th&rsquo; horses
+      a-trottin&rsquo; after. Long as it was daylight we were good friends, but when
+      we got fair into th&rsquo; dark, and could nobbut see th&rsquo; day shinin&rsquo; at the
+      hole like a lamp at a street-end, I feeled downright wicked. Ma religion
+      dropped all away from me when I looked back at him as were always comin&rsquo; 
+      between me and &lsquo;Liza. The talk was &lsquo;at they were to be wed when she got
+      better, an&rsquo; I couldn&rsquo;t get her to say yes or nay to it. He began to sing a
+      hymn in his thin voice, and I came out wi&rsquo; a chorus that was all cussin&rsquo; 
+      an&rsquo; swearin&rsquo; at my horses, an&rsquo; I began to know how I hated him. He were
+      such a little chap, too. I could drop him wi&rsquo; one hand down Garstang&rsquo;s
+      Copper-hole&mdash;a place where th&rsquo; beck slithered ower th&rsquo; edge on a
+      rock, and fell wi&rsquo; a bit of a whisper into a pit as no rope i&rsquo; Greenhow
+      could plump.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Learoyd rooted up the innocent violets. &lsquo;Ay, he should see th&rsquo; 
+      bowels o&rsquo; th&rsquo; earth an&rsquo; never naught else. I could take him a mile or two
+      along th&rsquo; drift, and leave him wi&rsquo; his candle doused to cry hallelujah,
+      wi&rsquo; none to hear him and say amen. I was to lead him down th&rsquo; ladder-way
+      to th&rsquo; drift where Jesse Roantree was workin&rsquo;, and why shouldn&rsquo;t he slip
+      on th&rsquo; ladder, wi&rsquo; my feet on his fingers till they loosed grip, and I put
+      him down wi&rsquo; my heel? If I went fust down th&rsquo; ladder I could click hold on
+      him and chuck him over my head, so as he should go squshin&rsquo; down the
+      shaft, breakin&rsquo; his bones at ev&rsquo;ry timberin&rsquo; as Bill Appleton did when he
+      was fresh, and hadn&rsquo;t a bone left when he wrought to th&rsquo; bottom. Niver a
+      blasted leg to walk from Pately. Niver an arm to put round &lsquo;Liza
+      Roantree&rsquo;s waist. Niver no more&mdash;niver no more.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thick lips curled back over the yellow teeth, and that flushed face
+      was not pretty to look upon. Mulvaney nodded sympathy, and Ortheris, moved
+      by his comrade&rsquo;s passion, brought up the rifle to his shoulder, and
+      searched the hillside for his quarry, muttering ribaldry about a sparrow,
+      a spout, and a thunder-storm. The voice of the watercourse supplied the
+      necessary small talk till Learoyd picked up his story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But it&rsquo;s none so easy to kill a man like you. When I&rsquo;d given up my horses
+      to th&rsquo; lad as took my place and I was showin&rsquo; th&rsquo; preacher th&rsquo; workin&rsquo;s,
+      shoutin&rsquo; into his ear across th&rsquo; clang o&rsquo; th&rsquo; pumpin&rsquo; engines, I saw he
+      were afraid o&rsquo; naught; and when the lamplight showed his black eyes, I
+      could feel as he was masterin&rsquo; me again. I were no better nor Blast
+      chained up short and growlin&rsquo; i&rsquo; the depths of him while a strange dog
+      went safe past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Th&rsquo;art a coward and a fool,&rdquo; I said to mysen; an&rsquo; I wrestled i&rsquo; my mind
+      again&rsquo; him till, when we come to Garstang&rsquo;s Copper-hole, I laid hold o&rsquo; 
+      the preacher and lifted him up over my head and held him into the darkest
+      on it. &ldquo;Now, lad,&rdquo; I says &ldquo;it&rsquo;s to be one or t&rsquo;other on us&mdash;thee or
+      me&mdash;for &lsquo;Liza Roantree. Why, isn&rsquo;t thee afraid for thysen?&rdquo; I says,
+      for he were still i&rsquo; my arms as a sack. &ldquo;Nay; I&rsquo;m but afraid for thee, my
+      poor lad, as knows naught,&rdquo; says he. I set him down on th&rsquo; edge, an&rsquo; th&rsquo; 
+      beck run stiller, an&rsquo; there was no more buzzin&rsquo; in my head like when th&rsquo; 
+      bee come through th&rsquo; window o&rsquo; Jesse&rsquo;s house. &ldquo;What dost tha mean?&rdquo; says
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve often thought as thou ought to know,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;but &lsquo;twas hard to
+      tell thee. &lsquo;Liza Roantree&rsquo;s for neither on us, nor for nobody o&rsquo; this
+      earth. Dr. Warbottom says&mdash;and he knows her, and her mother before
+      her&mdash;that she is in a decline, and she cannot live six months longer.
+      He&rsquo;s known it for many a day. Steady, John! Steady!&rdquo; says he. And that
+      weak little man pulled me further back and set me again&rsquo; him, and talked
+      it all over quiet and still, me turnin&rsquo; a bunch o&rsquo; candles in my hand, and
+      counting them ower and ower again as I listened. A deal on it were th&rsquo; 
+      regular preachin&rsquo; talk, but there were a vast lot as made me begin to
+      think as he were more of a man than I&rsquo;d ever given him credit for, till I
+      were cut as deep for him as I were for mysen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Six candles we had, and we crawled and climbed all that day while they
+      lasted, and I said to mysen, &ldquo;&lsquo;Liza Roantree hasn&rsquo;t six months to live.&rdquo;
+       And when we came into th&rsquo; daylight again we were like dead men to look at,
+      an&rsquo; Blast come behind us without so much as waggin&rsquo; his tail. When I saw
+      &lsquo;Liza again she looked at me a minute and says, &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s telled tha? For I
+      see tha knows.&rdquo; And she tried to smile as she kissed me, and I fair broke
+      down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yo&rsquo; see, I was a young chap i&rsquo; them days, and had seen naught o&rsquo; life,
+      let alone death, as is allus a-waitin&rsquo;. She telled me as Dr. Warbottom
+      said as Greenhow air was too keen, and they were goin&rsquo; to Bradford, to
+      Jesse&rsquo;s brother David, as worked i&rsquo; a mill, and I mun hold up like a man
+      and a Christian, and she&rsquo;d pray for me. Well, and they went away, and the
+      preacher that same back end o&rsquo; th&rsquo; year were appointed to another circuit,
+      as they call it, and I were left alone on Greenhow Hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I tried, and I tried hard, to stick to th&rsquo; chapel, but &lsquo;tweren&rsquo;t th&rsquo; same
+      thing at after. I hadn&rsquo;t &lsquo;Liza&rsquo;s voice to follow i&rsquo; th&rsquo; singin&rsquo;, nor her
+      eyes a-shinin&rsquo; acrost their heads. And i&rsquo; th&rsquo; class-meetings they said as
+      I mun have some experiences to tell, and I hadn&rsquo;t a word to say for mysen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Blast and me moped a good deal, and happen we didn&rsquo;t behave ourselves
+      over well, for they dropped us and wondered however they&rsquo;d come to take us
+      up. I can&rsquo;t tell how we got through th&rsquo; time, while i&rsquo; th&rsquo; winter I gave
+      up my job and went to Bradford. Old Jesse were at th&rsquo; door o&rsquo; th&rsquo; house,
+      in a long street o&rsquo; little houses. He&rsquo;d been sendin&rsquo; th&rsquo; children &lsquo;way as
+      were clatterin&rsquo; their clogs in th&rsquo; causeway, for she were asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Is it thee?&rdquo; he says; &ldquo;but you&rsquo;re not to see her. I&rsquo;ll none have her
+      wakened for a nowt like thee. She&rsquo;s goin&rsquo; fast, and she mun go in peace.
+      Thou&rsquo;lt never be good for naught i&rsquo; th&rsquo; world, and as long as thou lives
+      thou&rsquo;ll never play the big fiddle. Get away, lad, get away!&rdquo; So he shut
+      the door softly i&rsquo; my face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nobody never made Jesse my master, but it seemed to me he was about
+      right, and I went away into the town and knocked up against a recruiting
+      sergeant. The old tales o&rsquo; th&rsquo; chapel folk came buzzin&rsquo; into my head. I
+      was to get away, and this were th&rsquo; regular road for the likes o&rsquo; me. I
+      &lsquo;listed there and then, took th&rsquo; Widow&rsquo;s shillin&rsquo;, and had a bunch o&rsquo; 
+      ribbons pinned i&rsquo; my hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But next day I found my way to David Roantree&rsquo;s door, and Jesse came to
+      open it. Says he, &ldquo;Thou&rsquo;s come back again wi&rsquo; th&rsquo; devil&rsquo;s colours flyin&rsquo;&mdash;thy
+      true colours, as I always telled thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But I begged and prayed of him to let me see her nobbut to say good-bye,
+      till a woman calls down th&rsquo; stairway, &ldquo;She says John Learoyd&rsquo;s to come
+      up.&rdquo; Th&rsquo; old man shifts aside in a flash, and lays his hand on my arm,
+      quite gentle like. &ldquo;But thou&rsquo;lt be quiet, John,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;for she&rsquo;s rare
+      and weak. Thou was allus a good lad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Her eyes were all alive wi&rsquo; light, and her hair was thick on the pillow
+      round her, but her cheeks were thin&mdash;thin to frighten a man that&rsquo;s
+      strong. &ldquo;Nay, father, yo mayn&rsquo;t say th&rsquo; devil&rsquo;s colours. Them ribbons is
+      pretty.&rdquo; An&rsquo; she held out her hands for th&rsquo; hat, an&rsquo; she put all straight
+      as a woman will wi&rsquo; ribbons. &ldquo;Nay, but what they&rsquo;re pretty,&rdquo; she says.
+      &ldquo;Eh, but I&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; liked to see thee i&rsquo; thy red coat, John, for thou was
+      allus my own lad&mdash;my very own lad, and none else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She lifted up her arms, and they come round my neck i&rsquo; a gentle grip, and
+      they slacked away, and she seemed fainting. &ldquo;Now yo&rsquo; mun get away, lad,&rdquo;
+       says Jesse, and I picked up my hat and I came downstairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Th&rsquo; recruiting sergeant were waitin&rsquo; for me at th&rsquo; corner public-house.
+      &ldquo;Yo&rsquo;ve seen your sweetheart?&rdquo; says he. &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;ve seen her,&rdquo; says I.
+      &ldquo;Well, we&rsquo;ll have a quart now, and you&rsquo;ll do your best to forget her,&rdquo;
+       says he, bein&rsquo; one o&rsquo; them smart, bustlin&rsquo; chaps. &ldquo;Ay, sergeant,&rdquo; says I.
+      &ldquo;Forget her.&rdquo; And I&rsquo;ve been forgettin&rsquo; her ever since.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw away the wilted clump of white violets as he spoke. Ortheris
+      suddenly rose to his knees, his rifle at his shoulder, and peered across
+      the valley in the clear afternoon light. His chin cuddled the stock, and
+      there was a twitching of the muscles of the right cheek as he sighted;
+      Private Stanley Ortheris was engaged on his business. A speck of white
+      crawled up the watercourse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;See that beggar? . . . Got &lsquo;im.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seven hundred yards away, and a full two hundred down the hillside, the
+      deserter of the Aurangabadis pitched forward, rolled down a red rock, and
+      lay very still, with his face in a clump of blue gentians, while a big
+      raven flapped out of the pine wood to make investigation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s a clean shot, little man,&rsquo; said Mulvaney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Learoyd thoughtfully watched the smoke clear away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Happen there was a lass tewed up wi&rsquo; him, too,&rsquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris did not reply. He was staring across the valley, with the smile
+      of the artist who looks on the completed work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE MAN WHO WAS
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ The Earth gave up her dead that tide,
+      Into our camp he came,
+ And said his say, and went his way,
+      And left our hearts aflame.
+
+ Keep tally&mdash;on the gun-butt score
+      The vengeance we must take,
+ When God shall bring full reckoning,
+      For our dead comrade&rsquo;s sake.
+                        BALLAD.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person till
+      he tucks in his shirt. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only when he
+      insists upon being treated as the most easterly of western peoples instead
+      of the most westerly of easterns that he becomes a racial anomaly
+      extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows which side of his
+      nature is going to turn up next.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dirkovitch was a Russian&mdash;a Russian of the Russians&mdash;who
+      appeared to get his bread by serving the Czar as an officer in a Cossack
+      regiment, and corresponding for a Russian newspaper with a name that was
+      never twice alike. He was a handsome young Oriental, fond of wandering
+      through unexplored portions of the earth, and he arrived in India from
+      nowhere in particular. At least no living man could ascertain whether it
+      was by way of Balkh, Badakshan, Chitral, Beluchistan, or Nepaul, or
+      anywhere else. The Indian Government, being in an unusually affable mood,
+      gave orders that he was to be civilly treated and shown everything that
+      was to be seen. So he drifted, talking bad English and worse French, from
+      one city to another, till he foregathered with Her Majesty&rsquo;s White Hussars
+      in the city of Peshawur, which stands at the mouth of that narrow swordcut
+      in the hills that men call the Khyber Pass. He was undoubtedly an officer,
+      and he was decorated after the manner of the Russians with little
+      enamelled crosses, and he could talk, and (though this has nothing to do
+      with his merits) he had been given up as a hopeless task, or cask, by the
+      Black Tyrone, who individually and collectively, with hot whisky and
+      honey, mulled brandy, and mixed spirits of every kind, had striven in all
+      hospitality to make him drunk. And when the Black Tyrone, who are
+      exclusively Irish, fail to disturb the peace of head of a foreigner&mdash;that
+      foreigner is certain to be a superior man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in
+      charging the enemy. All that they possessed, including some wondrous
+      brandy, was placed at the absolute disposition of Dirkovitch, and he
+      enjoyed himself hugely&mdash;even more than among the Black Tyrones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White Hussars
+      were &lsquo;My dear true friends,&rsquo; &lsquo;Fellow-soldiers glorious,&rsquo; and &lsquo;Brothers
+      inseparable.&rsquo; He would unburden himself by the hour on the glorious future
+      that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia when their hearts and
+      their territories should run side by side and the great mission of
+      civilising Asia should begin. That was unsatisfactory, because Asia is not
+      going to be civilised after the methods of the West. There is too much
+      Asia and she is too old. You cannot reform a lady of many lovers, and Asia
+      has been insatiable in her flirtations aforetime. She will never attend
+      Sunday-school or learn to vote save with swords for tickets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to talk
+      special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he could. Now and
+      then he volunteered a little, a very little, information about his own
+      sotnia of Cossacks, left apparently to look after themselves somewhere at
+      the back of beyond. He had done rough work in Central Asia, and had seen
+      rather more help-yourself fighting than most men of his years. But he was
+      careful never to betray his superiority, and more than careful to praise
+      on all occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and organisation of Her
+      Majesty&rsquo;s White Hussars. And indeed they were a regiment to be admired.
+      When Lady Durgan, widow of the late Sir John Durgan, arrived in their
+      station, and after a short time had been proposed to by every single man
+      at mess, she put the public sentiment very neatly when she explained that
+      they were all so nice that unless she could marry them all, including the
+      colonel and some majors already married, she was not going to content
+      herself with one hussar. Wherefore she wedded a little man in a rifle
+      regiment, being by nature contradictious; and the White Hussars were going
+      to wear crape on their arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in
+      full force, and lining the aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted
+      them all&mdash;from Basset-Holmer the senior captain to little Mildred the
+      junior subaltern, who could have given her four thousand a year and a
+      title.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only persons who did not share the general regard for the White
+      Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived
+      across the border, and answered to the name of Pathan. They had once met
+      the regiment officially and for something less than twenty minutes, but
+      the interview, which was complicated with many casualties, had filled them
+      with prejudice. They even called the White Hussars children of the devil
+      and sons of persons whom it would be perfectly impossible to meet in
+      decent society. Yet they were not above making their aversion fill their
+      money-belts. The regiment possessed carbines&mdash;beautiful Martini-Henri
+      carbines that would lob a bullet into an enemy&rsquo;s camp at one thousand
+      yards, and were even handier than the long rifle. Therefore they were
+      coveted all along the border, and since demand inevitably breeds supply,
+      they were supplied at the risk of life and limb for exactly their weight
+      in coined silver&mdash;seven and one-half pounds weight of rupees, or
+      sixteen pounds sterling reckoning the rupee at par. They were stolen at
+      night by snaky-haired thieves who crawled on their stomachs under the nose
+      of the sentries; they disappeared mysteriously from locked arm-racks, and
+      in the hot weather, when all the barrack doors and windows were open, they
+      vanished like puffs of their own smoke. The border people desired them for
+      family vendettas and contingencies. But in the long cold nights of the
+      northern Indian winter they were stolen most extensively. The traffic of
+      murder was liveliest among the hills at that season, and prices ruled
+      high. The regimental guards were first doubled and then trebled. A trooper
+      does not much care if he loses a weapon&mdash;Government must make it good&mdash;but
+      he deeply resents the loss of his sleep. The regiment grew very angry, and
+      one rifle-thief bears the visible marks of their anger upon him to this
+      hour. That incident stopped the burglaries for a time, and the guards were
+      reduced accordingly, and the regiment devoted itself to polo with
+      unexpected results; for it beat by two goals to one that very terrible
+      polo corps the Lushkar Light Horse, though the latter had four ponies
+      apiece for a short hour&rsquo;s fight, as well as a native officer who played
+      like a lambent flame across the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They gave a dinner to celebrate the event. The Lushkar team came, and
+      Dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform of a Cossack officer, which
+      is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced to the Lushkars, and
+      opened his eyes as he regarded. They were lighter men than the Hussars,
+      and they carried themselves with the swing that is the peculiar right of
+      the Punjab Frontier Force and all Irregular Horse. Like everything else in
+      the Service it has to be learnt, but, unlike many things, it is never
+      forgotten, and remains on the body till death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great beam-roofed mess-room of the White Hussars was a sight to be
+      remembered. All the mess plate was out on the long table&mdash;the same
+      table that had served up the bodies of five officers after a forgotten
+      fight long and long ago&mdash;the dingy, battered standards faced the door
+      of entrance, clumps of winter-roses lay between the silver candlesticks,
+      and the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked down on their
+      successors from between the heads of sambhur, nilghai, markhor, and, pride
+      of all the mess, two grinning snow-leopards that had cost Basset-Holmer
+      four months&rsquo; leave that he might have spent in England, instead of on the
+      road to Thibet and the daily risk of his life by ledge, snow-slide, and
+      grassy slope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The servants in spotless white muslin and the crest of their regiments on
+      the brow of their turbans waited behind their masters, who were clad in
+      the scarlet and gold of the White Hussars, and the cream and silver of the
+      Lushkar Light Horse. Dirkovitch&rsquo;s dull green uniform was the only dark
+      spot at the board, but his big onyx eyes made up for it. He was
+      fraternising effusively with the captain of the Lushkar team, who was
+      wondering how many of Dirkovitch&rsquo;s Cossacks his own dark wiry
+      down-countrymen could account for in a fair charge. But one does not speak
+      of these things openly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The talk rose higher and higher, and the regimental band played between
+      the courses, as is the immemorial custom, till all tongues ceased for a
+      moment with the removal of the dinner-slips and the first toast of
+      obligation, when an officer rising said, &lsquo;Mr. Vice, the Queen,&rsquo; and little
+      Mildred from the bottom of the table answered, &lsquo;The Queen, God bless her,&rsquo; 
+      and the big spurs clanked as the big men heaved themselves up and drank
+      the Queen upon whose pay they were falsely supposed to settle their
+      mess-bills. That Sacrament of the Mess never grows old, and never ceases
+      to bring a lump into the throat of the listener wherever he be by sea or
+      by land. Dirkovitch rose with his &lsquo;brothers glorious,&rsquo; but he could not
+      understand. No one but an officer can tell what the toast means; and the
+      bulk have more sentiment than comprehension. Immediately after the little
+      silence that follows on the ceremony there entered the native officer who
+      had played for the Lushkar team. He could not, of course, eat with the
+      mess, but he came in at dessert, all six feet of him, with the blue and
+      silver turban atop, and the big black boots below. The mess rose joyously
+      as he thrust forward the hilt of his sabre in token of fealty for the
+      colonel of the White Hussars to touch, and dropped into a vacant chair
+      amid shouts of: &lsquo;Rung ho, Hira Singh!&rsquo; (which being translated means &lsquo;Go
+      in and win&rsquo;). &lsquo;Did I whack you over the knee, old man?&rsquo; &lsquo;Ressaidar Sahib,
+      what the devil made you play that kicking pig of a pony in the last ten
+      minutes?&rsquo; &lsquo;Shabash, Ressaidar Sahib!&rsquo; Then the voice of the colonel, &lsquo;The
+      health of Ressaidar Hira Singh!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the shouting had died away Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was the
+      cadet of a royal house, the son of a king&rsquo;s son, and knew what was due on
+      these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular:&mdash;&lsquo;Colonel Sahib and
+      officers of this regiment. Much honour have you done me. This will I
+      remember. We came down from afar to play you. But we were beaten.&rsquo; (&lsquo;No
+      fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own ground y&rsquo;know. Your
+      ponies were cramped from the railway. Don&rsquo;t apologise!&rsquo;) &lsquo;Therefore
+      perhaps we will come again if it be so ordained.&rsquo; (&lsquo;Hear! Hear! Hear,
+      indeed! Bravo! Hsh!&rsquo;) &lsquo;Then we will play you afresh&rsquo; (&lsquo;Happy to meet
+      you.&rsquo;) &lsquo;till there are left no feet upon our ponies. Thus far for sport.&rsquo; 
+      He dropped one hand on his sword-hilt and his eye wandered to Dirkovitch
+      lolling back in his chair. &lsquo;But if by the will of God there arises any
+      other game which is not the polo game, then be assured, Colonel Sahib and
+      officers, that we will play it out side by side, though THEY,&rsquo; again his
+      eye sought Dirkovitch, &lsquo;though THEY I say have fifty ponies to our one
+      horse.&rsquo; And with a deep-mouthed Rung ho! that sounded like a musket-butt
+      on flagstones he sat down amid leaping glasses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dirkovitch, who had devoted himself steadily to the brandy&mdash;the
+      terrible brandy aforementioned&mdash;did not understand, nor did the
+      expurgated translations offered to him at all convey the point. Decidedly
+      Hira Singh&rsquo;s was the speech of the evening, and the clamour might have
+      continued to the dawn had it not been broken by the noise of a shot
+      without that sent every man feeling at his defenceless left side. Then
+      there was a scuffle and a yell of pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Carbine-stealing again!&rsquo; said the adjutant, calmly sinking back in his
+      chair. &lsquo;This comes of reducing the guards. I hope the sentries have killed
+      him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The feet of armed men pounded on the verandah flags, and it was as though
+      something was being dragged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why don&rsquo;t they put him in the cells till the morning?&rsquo; said the colonel
+      testily. &lsquo;See if they&rsquo;ve damaged him, sergeant.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mess sergeant fled out into the darkness and returned with two
+      troopers and a corporal, all very much perplexed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Caught a man stealin&rsquo; carbines, sir,&rsquo; said the corporal. &lsquo;Leastways &lsquo;e
+      was crawlin&rsquo; towards the barricks, sir, past the main road sentries, an&rsquo; 
+      the sentry &lsquo;e sez, sir&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The limp heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. Never was seen so
+      destitute and demoralised an Afghan. He was turbanless, shoeless, caked
+      with dirt, and all but dead with rough handling. Hira Singh started
+      slightly at the sound of the man&rsquo;s pain. Dirkovitch took another glass of
+      brandy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;WHAT does the sentry say?&rsquo; said the colonel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sez &lsquo;e speaks English, sir,&rsquo; said the corporal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the sergeant!
+      If he spoke all the Tongues of the Pentecost you&rsquo;ve no business&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the bundle groaned and muttered. Little Mildred had risen from his
+      place to inspect. He jumped back as though he had been shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Perhaps it would be better, sir, to send the men away,&rsquo; said he to the
+      colonel, for he was a much privileged subaltern. He put his arms round the
+      ragbound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair. It may not have
+      been explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in his being six feet
+      four and big in proportion. The corporal seeing that an officer was
+      disposed to look after the capture, and that the colonel&rsquo;s eye was
+      beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and his men. The mess was
+      left alone with the carbine-thief, who laid his head on the table and wept
+      bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably, as little children weep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hira Singh leapt to his feet. &lsquo;Colonel Sahib,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;that man is no
+      Afghan, for they weep Ai! Ai! Nor is he of Hindustan, for they weep Oh!
+      Ho! He weeps after the fashion of the white men, who say Ow! Ow!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now where the dickens did you get that knowledge, Hira Singh?&rsquo; said the
+      captain of the Lushkar team.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hear him!&rsquo; said Hira Singh simply, pointing at the crumpled figure that
+      wept as though it would never cease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He said, &ldquo;My God!&rdquo;&rsquo; said little Mildred. &lsquo;I heard him say it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The colonel and the mess-room looked at the man in silence. It is a
+      horrible thing to hear a man cry. A woman can sob from the top of her
+      palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man must cry from his
+      diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Poor devil!&rsquo; said the colonel, coughing tremendously. &lsquo;We ought to send
+      him to hospital. He&rsquo;s been man-handled.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the adjutant loved his carbines. They were to him as his
+      grandchildren, the men standing in the first place. He grunted
+      rebelliously: &lsquo;I can understand an Afghan stealing, because he&rsquo;s built
+      that way. But I can&rsquo;t understand his crying. That makes it worse.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair and
+      stared at the ceiling. There was nothing special in the ceiling beyond a
+      shadow as of a huge black coffin. Owing to some peculiarity in the
+      construction of the mess-room this shadow was always thrown when the
+      candles were lighted. It never disturbed the digestion of the White
+      Hussars. They were in fact rather proud of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is he going to cry all night?&rsquo; said the colonel, &lsquo;or are we supposed to
+      sit up with little Mildred&rsquo;s guest until he feels better?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man in the chair threw up his head and stared at the mess. &lsquo;Oh, my
+      God!&rsquo; he said, and every soul in the mess rose to his feet. Then the
+      Lushkar captain did a deed for which he ought to have been given the
+      Victoria Cross&mdash;distinguished gallantry in a fight against
+      overwhelming curiosity. He picked up his team with his eyes as the hostess
+      picks up the ladies at the opportune moment, and pausing only by the
+      colonel&rsquo;s chair to say, &lsquo;This isn&rsquo;t OUR affair, you know, sir,&rsquo; led them
+      into the verandah and the gardens. Hira Singh was the last to go, and he
+      looked at Dirkovitch. But Dirkovitch had departed into a brandy-paradise
+      of his own. His lips moved without sound and he was studying the coffin on
+      the ceiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;White&mdash;white all over,&rsquo; said Basset-Holmer, the adjutant. &lsquo;What a
+      pernicious renegade he must be! I wonder where he came from?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The colonel shook the man gently by the arm, and &lsquo;Who are you?&rsquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no answer. The man stared round the mess-room and smiled in the
+      colonel&rsquo;s face. Little Mildred, who was always more of a woman than a man
+      till &lsquo;Boot and saddle&rsquo; was sounded, repeated the question in a voice that
+      would have drawn confidences from a geyser. The man only smiled.
+      Dirkovitch at the far end of the table slid gently from his chair to the
+      floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No son of Adam in this present imperfect world can mix the Hussars&rsquo; 
+      champagne with the Hussars&rsquo; brandy by five and eight glasses of each
+      without remembering the pit whence he was digged and descending thither.
+      The band began to play the tune with which the White Hussars from the date
+      of their formation have concluded all their functions. They would sooner
+      be disbanded than abandon that tune; it is a part of their system. The man
+      straightened himself in his chair and drummed on the table with his
+      fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t see why we should entertain lunatics,&rsquo; said the colonel. &lsquo;Call a
+      guard and send him off to the cells. We&rsquo;ll look into the business in the
+      morning. Give him a glass of wine first though.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Mildred filled a sherry-glass with the brandy and thrust it over to
+      the man. He drank, and the tune rose louder, and he straightened himself
+      yet more. Then he put out his long-taloned hands to a piece of plate
+      opposite and fingered it lovingly. There was a mystery connected with that
+      piece of plate, in the shape of a spring which converted what was a
+      seven-branched candlestick, three springs on each side and one in the
+      middle, into a sort of wheel-spoke candelabrum. He found the spring,
+      pressed it, and laughed weakly. He rose from his chair and inspected a
+      picture on the wall, then moved on to another picture, the mess watching
+      him without a word. When he came to the mantelpiece he shook his head and
+      seemed distressed. A piece of plate representing a mounted hussar in full
+      uniform caught his eye. He pointed to it, and then to the mantelpiece with
+      inquiry in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is it&mdash;Oh what is it?&rsquo; said little Mildred. Then as a mother
+      might speak to a child, &lsquo;That is a horse. Yes, a horse.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very slowly came the answer in a thick, passionless guttural&mdash;&lsquo;Yes, I&mdash;have
+      seen. But&mdash;where is THE horse?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You could have heard the hearts of the mess beating as the men drew back
+      to give the stranger full room in his wanderings. There was no question of
+      calling the guard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again he spoke&mdash;very slowly, &lsquo;Where is OUR horse?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is but one horse in the White Hussars, and his portrait hangs
+      outside the door of the mess-room. He is the piebald drum-horse, the king
+      of the regimental band, that served the regiment for seven-and-thirty
+      years, and in the end was shot for old age. Half the mess tore the thing
+      down from its place and thrust it into the man&rsquo;s hands. He placed it above
+      the mantel-piece, it clattered on the ledge as his poor hands dropped it,
+      and he staggered towards the bottom of the table, falling into Mildred&rsquo;s
+      chair. Then all the men spoke to one another something after this fashion,
+      &lsquo;The drum-horse hasn&rsquo;t hung over the mantelpiece since &lsquo;67.&rsquo; &lsquo;How does he
+      know?&rsquo; &lsquo;Mildred, go and speak to him again.&rsquo; &lsquo;Colonel, what are you going
+      to do?&rsquo; &lsquo;Oh, dry up, and give the poor devil a chance to pull himself
+      together.&rsquo; &lsquo;It isn&rsquo;t possible anyhow. The man&rsquo;s a lunatic.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Mildred stood at the colonel&rsquo;s side talking in his ear. &lsquo;Will you
+      be good enough to take your seats please, gentlemen!&rsquo; he said, and the
+      mess dropped into the chairs. Only Dirkovitch&rsquo;s seat, next to little
+      Mildred&rsquo;s, was blank, and little Mildred himself had found Hira Singh&rsquo;s
+      place. The wide-eyed mess-sergeant filled the glasses in deep silence.
+      Once more the colonel rose, but his hand shook and the port spilled on the
+      table as he looked straight at the man in little Mildred&rsquo;s chair and said
+      hoarsely, &lsquo;Mr. Vice, the Queen.&rsquo; There was a little pause, but the man
+      sprung to his feet and answered without hesitation, &lsquo;The Queen, God bless
+      her!&rsquo; and as he emptied the thin glass he snapped the shank between his
+      fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long and long ago, when the Empress of India was a young woman and there
+      were no unclean ideals in the land, it was the custom of a few messes to
+      drink the Queen&rsquo;s toast in broken glass, to the vast delight of the
+      mess-contractors. The custom is now dead, because there is nothing to
+      break anything for, except now and again the word of a Government, and
+      that has been broken already.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That settles it,&rsquo; said the colonel, with a gasp. &lsquo;He&rsquo;s not a sergeant.
+      What in the world is he?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The entire mess echoed the word, and the volley of questions would have
+      scared any man. It was no wonder that the ragged, filthy invader could
+      only smile and shake his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From under the table, calm and smiling, rose Dirkovitch, who had been
+      roused from healthful slumber by feet upon his body. By the side of the
+      man he rose, and the man shrieked and grovelled. It was a horrible sight
+      coming so swiftly upon the pride and glory of the toast that had brought
+      the strayed wits together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dirkovitch made no offer to raise him, but little Mildred heaved him up in
+      an instant. It is not good that a gentleman who can answer to the Queen&rsquo;s
+      toast should lie at the feet of a subaltern of Cossacks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hasty action tore the wretch&rsquo;s upper clothing nearly to the waist, and
+      his body was seamed with dry black scars. There is only one weapon in the
+      world that cuts: in parallel lines, and it is neither the cane nor the
+      cat. Dirkovitch saw the marks, and the pupils of his eyes dilated. Also
+      his face changed. He said something that sounded like Shto ve takete, and
+      the man fawning answered, Chetyre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rsquo; said everybody together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;His number. That is number four, you know.&rsquo; Dirkovitch spoke very
+      thickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What has a Queen&rsquo;s officer to do with a qualified number?&rsquo; said the
+      Colonel, and an unpleasant growl ran round the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How can I tell?&rsquo; said the affable Oriental with a sweet smile. &lsquo;He is a&mdash;how
+      you have it?&mdash;escape&mdash;run-a-way, from over there.&rsquo; He nodded
+      towards the darkness of the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Speak to him if he&rsquo;ll answer you, and speak to him gently,&rsquo; said little
+      Mildred, settling the man in a chair. It seemed most improper to all
+      present that Dirkovitch should sip brandy as he talked in purring,
+      spitting Russian to the creature who answered so feebly and with such
+      evident dread. But since Dirkovitch appeared to understand no one said a
+      word. All breathed heavily, leaning forward, in the long gaps of the
+      conversation. The next time that they have no engagements on hand the
+      White Hussars intend to go to St. Petersburg in a body to learn Russian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He does not know how many years ago,&rsquo; said Dirkovitch, facing the mess,
+      &lsquo;but he says it was very long ago in a war. I think that there was an
+      accident. He says he was of this glorious and distinguished regiment in
+      the war.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The rolls! The rolls! Holmer, get the rolls!&rsquo; said little Mildred, and
+      the adjutant dashed off bare-headed to the orderly-room, where the
+      muster-rolls of the regiment were kept. He returned just in time to hear
+      Dirkovitch conclude, &lsquo;Therefore, my dear friends, I am most sorry to say
+      there was an accident which would have been reparable if he had apologised
+      to that our colonel, which he had insulted.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then followed another growl which the colonel tried to beat down. The mess
+      was in no mood just then to weigh insults to Russian colonels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He does not remember, but I think that there was an accident, and so he
+      was not exchanged among the prisoners, but he was sent to another place&mdash;how
+      do you say?&mdash;the country. SO, he says, he came here. He does not know
+      how he came. Eh? He was at Chepany&rsquo;&mdash;the man caught the word, nodded,
+      and shivered&mdash;&lsquo;at Zhigansk and Irkutsk. I cannot understand how he
+      escaped. He says, too, that he was in the forests for many years, but how
+      many years he has forgotten&mdash;that with many things. It was an
+      accident; done because he did not apologise to that our colonel. Ah!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of echoing Dirkovitch&rsquo;s sigh of regret, it is sad to record that
+      the White Hussars livelily exhibited un-Christian delight and other
+      emotions, hardly restrained by their sense of hospitality. Holmer flung
+      the frayed and yellow regimental rolls on the table, and the men flung
+      themselves at these.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Steady! Fifty-six&mdash;fifty-five&mdash;fifty-four,&rsquo; said Holmer. &lsquo;Here
+      we are. &ldquo;Lieutenant Austin Limmason. MISSING.&rdquo; That was before Sebastopol.
+      What an infernal shame! Insulted one of their colonels, and was quietly
+      shipped off. Thirty years of his life wiped out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But he never apologised. Said he&rsquo;d see him damned first,&rsquo; chorused the
+      mess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Poor chap! I suppose he never had the chance afterwards. How did he come
+      here?&rsquo; said the colonel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dingy heap in the chair could give no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do you know who you are?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It laughed weakly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do you know that you are Limmason&mdash;Lieutenant Limmason of the White
+      Hussars?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swiftly as a shot came the answer, in a slightly surprised tone, &lsquo;Yes, I&rsquo;m
+      Limmason, of course.&rsquo; The light died out in his eyes, and the man
+      collapsed, watching every motion of Dirkovitch with terror. A flight from
+      Siberia may fix a few elementary facts in the mind, but it does not seem
+      to lead to continuity of thought. The man could not explain how, like a
+      homing pigeon, he had found his way to his own old mess again. Of what he
+      had suffered or seen he knew nothing. He cringed before Dirkovitch as
+      instinctively as he had pressed the spring of the candlestick, sought the
+      picture of the drum-horse, and answered to the toast of the Queen. The
+      rest was a blank that the dreaded Russian tongue could only in part
+      remove. His head bowed on his breast, and he giggled and cowered
+      alternately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The devil that lived in the brandy prompted Dirkovitch at this extremely
+      inopportune moment to make a speech. He rose, swaying slightly, gripped
+      the table-edge, while his eyes glowed like opals, and began:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Fellow-soldiers glorious&mdash;true friends and hospitables. It was an
+      accident, and deplorable&mdash;most deplorable.&rsquo; Here he smiled sweetly
+      all round the mess. &lsquo;But you will think of this little, little thing. So
+      little, is it not? The Czar! Posh! I slap my fingers&mdash;I snap my
+      fingers at him. Do I believe in him? No! But in us Slav who has done
+      nothing, HIM I believe. Seventy&mdash;how much&mdash;millions peoples that
+      have done nothing&mdash;not one thing. Posh! Napoleon was an episode.&rsquo; He
+      banged a hand on the table. &lsquo;Hear you, old peoples, we have done nothing
+      in the world&mdash;out here. All our work is to do; and it shall be done,
+      old peoples. Get a-way!&rsquo; He waved his hand imperiously, and pointed to the
+      man. &lsquo;You see him. He is not good to see. He was just one little&mdash;oh,
+      so little&mdash;accident, that no one remembered. Now he is THAT! So will
+      you be, brother-soldiers so brave&mdash;so will you be. But you will never
+      come back. You will all go where he is gone, or&rsquo;&mdash;he pointed to the
+      great coffin-shadow on the ceiling, and muttering, &lsquo;Seventy millions&mdash;get
+      a-way, you old peoples,&rsquo; fell asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sweet, and to the point,&rsquo; said little Mildred. &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the use of getting
+      wroth? Let&rsquo;s make this poor devil comfortable.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that was a matter suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands of
+      the White Hussars. The lieutenant had returned only to go away again three
+      days later, when the wail of the Dead March, and the tramp of the
+      squadrons, told the wondering Station, who saw no gap in the mess-table,
+      that an officer of the regiment had resigned his new-found commission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Dirkovitch, bland, supple, and always genial, went away too by a night
+      train. Little Mildred and another man saw him off, for he was the guest of
+      the mess, and even had he smitten the colonel with the open hand, the law
+      of that mess allowed no relaxation of hospitality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good-bye, Dirkovitch, and a pleasant journey,&rsquo; said little Mildred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Au revoir,&rsquo; said the Russian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Indeed! But we thought you were going home?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, but I will come again. My dear friends, is that road shut?&rsquo; He
+      pointed to where the North Star burned over the Khyber Pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By Jove! I forgot. Of course. Happy to meet you, old man, any time you
+      like. Got everything you want? Cheroots, ice, bedding? That&rsquo;s all right.
+      Well, au revoir, Dirkovitch.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Um,&rsquo; said the other man, as the tail-lights of the train grew small. &lsquo;Of&mdash;all&mdash;the&mdash;unmitigated&mdash;!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Mildred answered nothing, but watched the North Star and hummed a
+      selection from a recent Simla burlesque that had much delighted the White
+      Hussars. It ran&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     I&rsquo;m sorry for Mister Bluebeard,
+     I&rsquo;m sorry to cause him pain;
+     But a terrible spree there&rsquo;s sure to be
+     When he comes back again.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    There&rsquo;s a convict more in the Central Jail,
+       Behind the old mud wall;
+     There&rsquo;s a lifter less on the Border trail,
+       And the Queen&rsquo;s Peace over all,
+                                    Dear boys
+     The Queen&rsquo;s Peace over all.
+
+    For we must bear our leader&rsquo;s blame,
+       On us the shame will fall,
+     If we lift our hand from a fettered land
+       And the Queen&rsquo;s Peace over all,
+                                    Dear boys,
+     The Queen&rsquo;s Peace over all!
+                      THE RUNNING OF SHINDAND.
+</pre>
+    <h3>
+      I
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Indus had risen in flood without warning. Last night it was a fordable
+      shallow; to-night five miles of raving muddy water parted bank and caving
+      bank, and the river was still rising under the moon. A litter borne by six
+      bearded men, all unused to the work, stopped in the white sand that
+      bordered the whiter plain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s God&rsquo;s will,&rsquo; they said. &lsquo;We dare not cross to-night, even in a boat.
+      Let us light a fire and cook food. We be tired men.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They looked at the litter inquiringly. Within, the Deputy Commissioner of
+      the Kot-Kumharsen district lay dying of fever. They had brought him across
+      country, six fighting-men of a frontier clan that he had won over to the
+      paths of a moderate righteousness, when he had broken down at the foot of
+      their inhospitable hills. And Tallantire, his assistant, rode with them,
+      heavy-hearted as heavy-eyed with sorrow and lack of sleep. He had served
+      under the sick man for three years, and had learned to love him as men
+      associated in toil of the hardest learn to love&mdash;or hate. Dropping
+      from his horse he parted the curtains of the litter and peered inside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Orde&mdash;Orde, old man, can you hear? We have to wait till the river
+      goes down, worse luck.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I hear,&rsquo; returned a dry whisper. &lsquo;Wait till the river goes down. I
+      thought we should reach camp before the dawn. Polly knows. She&rsquo;ll meet
+      me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the litter-men stared across the river and caught a faint twinkle
+      of light on the far side. He whispered to Tallantire, &lsquo;There are his
+      camp-fires, and his wife. They will cross in the morning, for they have
+      better boats. Can he live so long?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tallantire shook his head. Yardley-Orde was very near to death. What need
+      to vex his soul with hopes of a meeting that could not be? The river
+      gulped at the banks, brought down a cliff of sand, and snarled the more
+      hungrily. The litter-men sought for fuel in the waste-dried camel-thorn
+      and refuse of the camps that had waited at the ford. Their sword-belts
+      clinked as they moved softly in the haze of the moonlight, and
+      Tallantire&rsquo;s horse coughed to explain that he would like a blanket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m cold too,&rsquo; said the voice from the litter. &lsquo;I fancy this is the end.
+      Poor Polly!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tallantire rearranged the blankets. Khoda Dad Khan, seeing this, stripped
+      off his own heavy-wadded sheepskin coat and added it to the pile. &lsquo;I shall
+      be warm by the fire presently,&rsquo; said he. Tallantire took the wasted body
+      of his chief into his arms and held it against his breast. Perhaps if they
+      kept him very warm Orde might live to see his wife once more. If only
+      blind Providence would send a three-foot fall in the river!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s better,&rsquo; said Orde faintly. &lsquo;Sorry to be a nuisance, but is&mdash;is
+      there anything to drink?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They gave him milk and whisky, and Tallantire felt a little warmth against
+      his own breast. Orde began to mutter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It isn&rsquo;t that I mind dying,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s leaving Polly and the
+      district. Thank God! we have no children. Dick, you know, I&rsquo;m dipped&mdash;awfully
+      dipped&mdash;debts in my first five years&rsquo; service. It isn&rsquo;t much of a
+      pension, but enough for her. She has her mother at home. Getting there is
+      the difficulty. And&mdash;and&mdash;you see, not being a soldier&rsquo;s wife&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll arrange the passage home, of course,&rsquo; said Tallantire quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s not nice to think of sending round the hat; but, good Lord! how many
+      men I lie here and remember that had to do it! Morten&rsquo;s dead&mdash;he was
+      of my year. Shaughnessy is dead, and he had children; I remember he used
+      to read us their school-letters; what a bore we thought him! Evans is dead&mdash;Kot-Kumharsen
+      killed him! Ricketts of Myndonie is dead&mdash;and I&rsquo;m going too. &ldquo;Man
+      that is born of a woman is small potatoes and few in the hill.&rdquo; That
+      reminds me, Dick; the four Khusru Kheyl villages in our border want a
+      one-third remittance this spring. That&rsquo;s fair; their crops are bad. See
+      that they get it, and speak to Ferris about the canal. I should like to
+      have lived till that was finished; it means so much for the North-Indus
+      villages&mdash;but Ferris is an idle beggar&mdash;wake him up. You&rsquo;ll have
+      charge of the district till my successor comes. I wish they would appoint
+      you permanently; you know the folk. I suppose it will be Bullows, though.
+      &lsquo;Good man, but too weak for frontier work; and he doesn&rsquo;t understand the
+      priests. The blind priest at Jagai will bear watching. You&rsquo;ll find it in
+      my papers,&mdash;in the uniform-case, I think. Call the Khusru Kheyl men
+      up; I&rsquo;ll hold my last public audience. Khoda Dad Khan!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leader of the men sprang to the side of the litter, his companions
+      following.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Men, I&rsquo;m dying,&rsquo; said Orde quickly, in the vernacular; &lsquo;and soon there
+      will be no more Orde Sahib to twist your tails and prevent you from
+      raiding cattle.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;God forbid this thing!&rsquo; broke out the deep bass chorus. &lsquo;The Sahib is not
+      going to die.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, he is; and then he will know whether Mahomed speaks truth, or Moses.
+      But you must be good men, when I am not here. Such of you as live in our
+      borders must pay your taxes quietly as before. I have spoken of the
+      villages to be gently treated this year. Such of you as live in the hills
+      must refrain from cattle-lifting, and burn no more thatch, and turn a deaf
+      ear to the voice of the priests, who, not knowing the strength of the
+      Government, would lead you into foolish wars, wherein you will surely die
+      and your crops be eaten by strangers. And you must not sack any caravans,
+      and must leave your arms at the police-post when you come in; as has been
+      your custom, and my order. And Tallantire Sahib will be with you, but I do
+      not know who takes my place. I speak now true talk, for I am as it were
+      already dead, my children,&mdash;for though ye be strong men, ye are
+      children.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And thou art our father and our mother,&rsquo; broke in Khoda Dad Khan with an
+      oath. &lsquo;What shall we do, now there is no one to speak for us, or to teach
+      us to go wisely!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There remains Tallantire Sahib. Go to him; he knows your talk and your
+      heart. Keep the young men quiet, listen to the old men, and obey. Khoda
+      Dad Khan, take my ring. The watch and chain go to thy brother. Keep those
+      things for my sake, and I will speak to whatever God I may encounter and
+      tell him that the Khusru Kheyl are good men. Ye have my leave to go.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Khoda Dad Khan, the ring upon his finger, choked audibly as he caught the
+      well-known formula that closed an interview. His brother turned to look
+      across the river. The dawn was breaking, and a speck of white showed on
+      the dull silver of the stream. &lsquo;She comes,&rsquo; said the man under his breath.
+      &lsquo;Can he live for another two hours?&rsquo; And he pulled the newly-acquired
+      watch out of his belt and looked uncomprehendingly at the dial, as he had
+      seen Englishmen do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two hours the bellying sail tacked and blundered up and down the
+      river, Tallantire still clasping Orde in his arms, and Khoda Dad Khan
+      chafing his feet. He spoke now and again of the district and his wife,
+      but, as the end neared, more frequently of the latter. They hoped he did
+      not know that she was even then risking her life in a crazy native boat to
+      regain him. But the awful foreknowledge of the dying deceived them.
+      Wrenching himself forward, Orde looked through the curtains and saw how
+      near was the sail. &lsquo;That&rsquo;s Polly,&rsquo; he said simply, though his mouth was
+      wried with agony. &lsquo;Polly and&mdash;the grimmest practical joke ever played
+      on a man. Dick&mdash;you&rsquo;ll&mdash;have&mdash;to&mdash;explain.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And an hour later Tallantire met on the bank a woman in a gingham
+      riding-habit and a sun-hat who cried out to him for her husband&mdash;her
+      boy and her darling&mdash;while Khoda Dad Khan threw himself face-down on
+      the sand and covered his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The very simplicity of the notion was its charm. What more easy to win a
+      reputation for far-seeing statesmanship, originality, and, above all,
+      deference to the desires of the people, than by appointing a child of the
+      country to the rule of that country? Two hundred millions of the most
+      loving and grateful folk under Her Majesty&rsquo;s dominion would laud the fact,
+      and their praise would endure for ever. Yet he was indifferent to praise
+      or blame, as befitted the Very Greatest of All the Viceroys. His
+      administration was based upon principle, and the principle must be
+      enforced in season and out of season. His pen and tongue had created the
+      New India, teeming with possibilities&mdash;loud-voiced, insistent, a
+      nation among nations&mdash;all his very own. Wherefore the Very Greatest
+      of All the Viceroys took another step in advance, and with it counsel of
+      those who should have advised him on the appointment of a successor to
+      Yardley-Orde. There was a gentleman and a member of the Bengal Civil
+      Service who had won his place and a university degree to boot in fair and
+      open competition with the sons of the English. He was cultured, of the
+      world, and, if report spoke truly, had wisely and, above all,
+      sympathetically ruled a crowded district in South-Eastern Bengal. He had
+      been to England and charmed many drawing-rooms there. His name, if the
+      Viceroy recollected aright, was Mr. Grish Chunder De, M. A. In short, did
+      anybody see any objection to the appointment, always on principle, of a
+      man of the people to rule the people? The district in South-Eastern Bengal
+      might with advantage, he apprehended, pass over to a younger civilian of
+      Mr. G. C. De&rsquo;s nationality (who had written a remarkably clever pamphlet
+      on the political value of sympathy in administration); and Mr. G. C. De
+      could be transferred northward to Kot-Kumharsen. The Viceroy was averse,
+      on principle, to interfering with appointments under control of the
+      Provincial Governments. He wished it to be understood that he merely
+      recommended and advised in this instance. As regarded the mere question of
+      race, Mr. Grish Chunder De was more English than the English, and yet
+      possessed of that peculiar sympathy and insight which the best among the
+      best Service in the world could only win to at the end of their service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stern, black-bearded kings who sit about the Council-board of India
+      divided on the step, with the inevitable result of driving the Very
+      Greatest of All the Viceroys into the borders of hysteria, and a
+      bewildered obstinacy pathetic as that of a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The principle is sound enough,&rsquo; said the weary-eyed Head of the Red
+      Provinces in which Kot-Kumharsen lay, for he too held theories. &lsquo;The only
+      difficulty is&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Put the screw on the District officials; brigade De with a very strong
+      Deputy Commissioner on each side of him; give him the best assistant in
+      the Province; rub the fear of God into the people beforehand; and if
+      anything goes wrong, say that his colleagues didn&rsquo;t back him up. All these
+      lovely little experiments recoil on the District-Officer in the end,&rsquo; said
+      the Knight of the Drawn Sword with a truthful brutality that made the Head
+      of the Red Provinces shudder. And on a tacit understanding of this kind
+      the transfer was accomplished, as quietly as might be for many reasons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is sad to think that what goes for public opinion in India did not
+      generally see the wisdom of the Viceroy&rsquo;s appointment. There were not
+      lacking indeed hireling organs, notoriously in the pay of a tyrannous
+      bureaucracy, who more than hinted that His Excellency was a fool, a
+      dreamer of dreams, a doctrinaire, and, worst of all, a trifler with the
+      lives of men. &lsquo;The Viceroy&rsquo;s Excellence Gazette,&rsquo; published in Calcutta,
+      was at pains to thank &lsquo;Our beloved Viceroy for once more and again thus
+      gloriously vindicating the potentialities of the Bengali nations for
+      extended executive and administrative duties in foreign parts beyond our
+      ken. We do not at all doubt that our excellent fellow-townsman, Mr. Grish
+      Chunder De, Esq., M. A., will uphold the prestige of the Bengali,
+      notwithstanding what underhand intrigue and peshbundi may be set on foot
+      to insidiously nip his fame and blast his prospects among the proud
+      civilians, some of which will now have to serve under a despised native
+      and take orders too. How will you like that, Misters? We entreat our
+      beloved Viceroy still to substantiate himself superiorly to race-prejudice
+      and colour-blindness, and to allow the flower of this now OUR Civil
+      Service all the full pays and allowances granted to his more fortunate
+      brethren.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;When does this man take over charge? I&rsquo;m alone just now, and I gather
+      that I&rsquo;m to stand fast under him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Would you have cared for a transfer?&rsquo; said Bullows keenly. Then, laying
+      his hand on Tallantire&rsquo;s shoulder: &lsquo;We&rsquo;re all in the same boat; don&rsquo;t
+      desert us. And yet, why the devil should you stay, if you can get another
+      charge?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It was Orde&rsquo;s,&rsquo; said Tallantire simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, it&rsquo;s De&rsquo;s now. He&rsquo;s a Bengali of the Bengalis, crammed with code
+      and case law; a beautiful man so far as routine and deskwork go, and
+      pleasant to talk to. They naturally have always kept him in his own home
+      district, where all his sisters and his cousins and his aunts lived,
+      somewhere south of Dacca. He did no more than turn the place into a
+      pleasant little family preserve, allowed his subordinates to do what they
+      liked, and let everybody have a chance at the shekels. Consequently he&rsquo;s
+      immensely popular down there.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve nothing to do with that. How on earth am I to explain to the
+      district that they are going to be governed by a Bengali? Do you&mdash;does
+      the Government, I mean&mdash;suppose that the Khusru Kheyl will sit quiet
+      when they once know? What will the Mahomedan heads of villages say? How
+      will the police&mdash;Muzbi Sikhs and Pathans&mdash;how will THEY work
+      under him? We couldn&rsquo;t say anything if the Government appointed a sweeper;
+      but my people will say a good deal, you know that. It&rsquo;s a piece of cruel
+      folly!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;My dear boy, I know all that, and more. I&rsquo;ve represented it, and have
+      been told that I am exhibiting &ldquo;culpable and puerile prejudice.&rdquo; By Jove,
+      if the Khusru Kheyl don&rsquo;t exhibit something worse than that I don&rsquo;t know
+      the Border! The chances are that you will have the district alight on your
+      hands, and I shall have to leave my work and help you pull through. I
+      needn&rsquo;t ask you to stand by the Bengali man in every possible way. You&rsquo;ll
+      do that for your own sake.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For Orde&rsquo;s. I can&rsquo;t say that I care twopence personally.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t be an ass. It&rsquo;s grievous enough, God knows, and the Government will
+      know later on; but that&rsquo;s no reason for your sulking. YOU must try to run
+      the district, YOU must stand between him and as much insult as possible;
+      YOU must show him the ropes; YOU must pacify the Khusru Kheyl, and just
+      warn Curbar of the Police to look out for trouble by the way. I&rsquo;m always
+      at the end of a telegraph-wire, and willing to peril my reputation to hold
+      the district together. You&rsquo;ll lose yours, of course, If you keep things
+      straight, and he isn&rsquo;t actually beaten with a stick when he&rsquo;s on tour,
+      he&rsquo;ll get all the credit. If anything goes wrong, you&rsquo;ll be told that you
+      didn&rsquo;t support him loyally.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I know what I&rsquo;ve got to do,&rsquo; said Tallantire wearily, &lsquo;and I&rsquo;m going to
+      do it. But it&rsquo;s hard.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The work is with us, the event is with Allah,&mdash;as Orde used to say
+      when he was more than usually in hot water.&rsquo; And Bullows rode away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That two gentlemen in Her Majesty&rsquo;s Bengal Civil Service should thus
+      discuss a third, also in that service, and a cultured and affable man
+      withal, seems strange and saddening. Yet listen to the artless babble of
+      the Blind Mullah of Jagai, the priest of the Khusru Kheyl, sitting upon a
+      rock overlooking the Border. Five years before, a chance-hurled shell from
+      a screw-gun battery had dashed earth in the face of the Mullah, then
+      urging a rush of Ghazis against half a dozen British bayonets. So he
+      became blind, and hated the English none the less for the little accident.
+      Yardley-Orde knew his failing, and had many times laughed at him therefor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dogs you are,&rsquo; said the Blind Mullah to the listening tribesmen round the
+      fire. &lsquo;Whipped dogs! Because you listened to Orde Sahib and called him
+      father and behaved as his children, the British Government have proven how
+      they regard you. Orde Sahib ye know is dead.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ai! ai! ai!&rsquo; said half a dozen voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was a man. Comes now in his stead, whom think ye? A Bengali of Bengal&mdash;an
+      eater of fish from the South.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A lie!&rsquo; said Khoda Dad Khan. &lsquo;And but for the small matter of thy
+      priesthood, I&rsquo;d drive my gun butt-first down thy throat.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oho, art thou there, lickspittle of the English? Go in to-morrow across
+      the Border to pay service to Orde Sahib&rsquo;s successor, and thou shalt slip
+      thy shoes at the tent-door of a Bengali, as thou shalt hand thy offering
+      to a Bengali&rsquo;s black fist. This I know; and in my youth, when a young man
+      spoke evil to a Mullah holding the doors of Heaven and Hell, the gun-butt
+      was not rammed down the Mullah&rsquo;s gullet. No!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Blind Mullah hated Khoda Dad Khan with Afghan hatred; both being
+      rivals for the headship of the tribe; but the latter was feared for bodily
+      as the other for spiritual gifts. Khoda Dad Khan looked at Orde&rsquo;s ring and
+      grunted, &lsquo;I go in to-morrow because I am not an old fool, preaching war
+      against the English. If the Government, smitten with madness, have done
+      this, then...&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then,&rsquo; croaked the Mullah, &lsquo;thou wilt take out the young men and strike
+      at the four villages within the Border?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Or wring thy neck, black raven of Jehannum, for a bearer of ill-tidings.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Khoda Dad Khan oiled his long locks with great care, put on his best
+      Bokhara belt, a new turban-cap and fine green shoes, and accompanied by a
+      few friends came down from the hills to pay a visit to the new Deputy
+      Commissioner of Kot-Kumharsen. Also he bore tribute&mdash;four or five
+      priceless gold mohurs of Akbar&rsquo;s time in a white handkerchief. These the
+      Deputy Commissioner would touch and remit. The little ceremony used to be
+      a sign that, so far as Khoda Dad Khan&rsquo;s personal influence went, the
+      Khusru Kheyl would be good boys,&mdash;till the next time; especially if
+      Khoda Dad Khan happened to like the new Deputy Commissioner. In
+      Yardley-Orde&rsquo;s consulship his visit concluded with a sumptuous dinner and
+      perhaps forbidden liquors; certainly with some wonderful tales and great
+      good-fellowship. Then Khoda Dad Khan would swagger back to his hold,
+      vowing that Orde Sahib was one prince and Tallantire Sahib another, and
+      that whosoever went a-raiding into British territory would be flayed
+      alive. On this occasion he found the Deputy Commissioner&rsquo;s tents looking
+      much as usual. Regarding himself as privileged he strode through the open
+      door to confont a suave, portly Bengali in English costume writing at a
+      table. Unversed in the elevating influence of education, and not in the
+      least caring for university degrees, Khoda Dad Khan promptly set the man
+      down for a Babu&mdash;the native clerk of the Deputy Commissioner&mdash;a
+      hated and despised animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ugh!&rsquo; said he cheerfully. &lsquo;Where&rsquo;s your master, Babujee?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am the Deputy Commissioner,&rsquo; said the gentleman in English. Now he
+      overvalued the effects of university degrees, and stared Khoda Dad Khan in
+      the face. But if from your earliest infancy you have been accustomed to
+      look on battle, murder, and sudden death, if spilt blood affects your
+      nerves as much as red paint, and, above all, if you have faithfully
+      believed that the Bengali was the servant of all Hindustan, and that all
+      Hindustan was vastly inferior to your own large, lustful self, you can
+      endure, even though uneducated, a very large amount of looking over. You
+      can even stare down a graduate of an Oxford college if the latter has been
+      born in a hothouse, of stock bred in a hothouse, and fearing physical pain
+      as some men fear sin; especially if your opponent&rsquo;s mother has frightened
+      him to sleep in his youth with horrible stories of devils inhabiting
+      Afghanistan, and dismal legends of the black North. The eyes behind the
+      gold spectacles sought the floor. Khoda Dad Khan chuckled, and swung out
+      to find Tallantire hard by. &lsquo;Here,&rsquo; said he roughly, thrusting the coins
+      before him, &lsquo;touch and remit. That answers for MY good behaviour. But, O
+      Sahib, has the Government gone mad to send a black Bengali dog to us? And
+      am I to pay service to such an one? And are you to work under him? What
+      does it mean?&rsquo; &lsquo;It is an order,&rsquo; said Tallantire. He had expected
+      something of this kind. &lsquo;He is a very clever S-sahib.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He a Sahib! He&rsquo;s a kala admi&mdash;a black man&mdash;unfit to run at the
+      tail of a potter&rsquo;s donkey. All the peoples of the earth have harried
+      Bengal. It is written. Thou knowest when we of the North wanted women or
+      plunder whither went we? To Bengal&mdash;where else? What child&rsquo;s talk is
+      this of Sahibdom&mdash;after Orde Sahib too! Of a truth the Blind Mullah
+      was right.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What of him?&rsquo; asked Tallantire uneasily. He mistrusted that old man with
+      his dead eyes and his deadly tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, now, because of the oath that I sware to Orde Sahib when we watched
+      him die by the river yonder, I will tell. In the first place, is it true
+      that the English have set the heel of the Bengali on their own neck, and
+      that there is no more English rule in the land?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am here,&rsquo; said Tallantire, &lsquo;and I serve the Maharanee of England.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The Mullah said otherwise, and further that because we loved Orde Sahib
+      the Government sent us a pig to show that we were dogs, who till now have
+      been held by the strong hand. Also that they were taking away the white
+      soldiers, that more Hindustanis might come, and that all was changing.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the worst of ill-considered handling of a very large country. What
+      looks so feasible in Calcutta, so right in Bombay, so unassailable in
+      Madras, is misunderstood by the North and entirely changes its complexion
+      on the banks of the Indus. Khoda Dad Khan explained as clearly as he could
+      that, though he himself intended to be good, he really could not answer
+      for the more reckless members of his tribe under the leadership of the
+      Blind Mullah. They might or they might not give trouble, but they
+      certainly had no intention whatever of obeying the new Deputy
+      Commissioner. Was Tallantire perfectly sure that in the event of any
+      systematic border-raiding the force in the district could put it down
+      promptly?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tell the Mullah if he talks any more fool&rsquo;s talk,&rsquo; said Tallantire
+      curtly, &lsquo;that he takes his men on to certain death, and his tribe to
+      blockade, trespass-fine, and blood-money. But why do I talk to one who no
+      longer carries weight in the counsels of the tribe?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Khoda Dad Khan pocketed that insult. He had learned something that he much
+      wanted to know, and returned to his hills to be sarcastically complimented
+      by the Mullah, whose tongue raging round the camp-fires was deadlier flame
+      than ever dung-cake fed.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Be pleased to consider here for a moment the unknown district of
+      Kot-Kumharsen. It lay cut lengthways by the Indus under the line of the
+      Khusru hills&mdash;ramparts of useless earth and tumbled stone. It was
+      seventy miles long by fifty broad, maintained a population of something
+      less than two hundred thousand, and paid taxes to the extent of forty
+      thousand pounds a year on an area that was by rather more than half sheer,
+      hopeless waste. The cultivators were not gentle people, the miners for
+      salt were less gentle still, and the cattle-breeders least gentle of all.
+      A police-post in the top right-hand corner and a tiny mud fort in the top
+      left-hand corner prevented as much salt-smuggling and cattle-lifting as
+      the influence of the civilians could not put down; and in the bottom
+      right-hand corner lay Jumala, the district headquarters&mdash;a pitiful
+      knot of lime-washed barns facetiously rented as houses, reeking with
+      frontier fever, leaking in the rain, and ovens in the summer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was to this place that Grish Chunder De was travelling, there formally
+      to take over charge of the district. But the news of his coming had gone
+      before. Bengalis were as scarce as poodles among the simple Borderers, who
+      cut each other&rsquo;s heads open with their long spades and worshipped
+      impartially at Hindu and Mahomedan shrines. They crowded to see him,
+      pointing at him, and diversely comparing him to a gravid milch-buffalo, or
+      a broken-down horse, as their limited range of metaphor prompted. They
+      laughed at his police-guard, and wished to know how long the burly Sikhs
+      were going to lead Bengali apes. They inquired whether he had brought his
+      women with him, and advised him explicitly not to tamper with theirs. It
+      remained for a wrinkled hag by the roadside to slap her lean breasts as he
+      passed, crying, &lsquo;I have suckled six that could have eaten six thousand of
+      HIM. The Government shot them, and made this That a king!&rsquo; Whereat a
+      blue-turbaned huge-boned plough-mender shouted, &lsquo;Have hope, mother o&rsquo; 
+      mine! He may yet go the way of thy wastrels.&rsquo; And the children, the little
+      brown puff-balls, regarded curiously. It was generally a good thing for
+      infancy to stray into Orde Sahib&rsquo;s tent, where copper coins were to be won
+      for the mere wishing, and tales of the most authentic, such as even their
+      mothers knew but the first half of. No! This fat black man could never
+      tell them how Pir Prith hauled the eye-teeth out of ten devils; how the
+      big stones came to lie all in a row on top of the Khusru hills, and what
+      happened if you shouted through the village-gate to the gray wolf at even
+      &lsquo;Badl Khas is dead.&rsquo; Meantime Grish Chunder De talked hastily and much to
+      Tallantire, after the manner of those who are &lsquo;more English than the
+      English,&rsquo;&mdash;of Oxford and &lsquo;home,&rsquo; with much curious book-knowledge of
+      bump-suppers, cricket-matches, hunting-runs, and other unholy sports of
+      the alien. &lsquo;We must get these fellows in hand,&rsquo; he said once or twice
+      uneasily; &lsquo;get them well in hand, and drive them on a tight rein. No use,
+      you know, being slack with your district.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And a moment later Tallantire heard Debendra Nath De, who brotherliwise
+      had followed his kinsman&rsquo;s fortune and hoped for the shadow of his
+      protection as a pleader, whisper in Bengali, &lsquo;Better are dried fish at
+      Dacca than drawn swords at Delhi. Brother of mine, these men are devils,
+      as our mother said. And you will always have to ride upon a horse!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night there was a public audience in a broken-down little town thirty
+      miles from Jumala, when the new Deputy Commissioner, in reply to the
+      greetings of the subordinate native officials, delivered a speech. It was
+      a carefully thought-out speech, which would have been very valuable had
+      not his third sentence begun with three innocent words, &lsquo;Hamara hookum hai&mdash;It
+      is my order.&rsquo; Then there was a laugh, clear and bell-like, from the back
+      of the big tent, where a few border landholders sat, and the laugh grew
+      and scorn mingled with it, and the lean, keen face of Debendra Nath De
+      paled, and Grish Chunder turning to Tallantire spake: &lsquo;YOU&mdash;you put
+      up this arrangement.&rsquo; Upon that instant the noise of hoofs rang without,
+      and there entered Curbar, the District Superintendent of Police, sweating
+      and dusty. The State had tossed him into a corner of the province for
+      seventeen weary years, there to check smuggling of salt, and to hope for
+      promotion that never came. He had forgotten how to keep his white uniform
+      clean, had screwed rusty spurs into patent-leather shoes, and clothed his
+      head indifferently with a helmet or a turban. Soured, old, worn with heat
+      and cold, he waited till he should be entitled to sufficient pension to
+      keep him from starving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tallantire,&rsquo; said he, disregarding Grish Chunder De, &lsquo;come outside. I
+      want to speak to you.&rsquo; They withdrew. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s this,&rsquo; continued Curbar. &lsquo;The
+      Khusru Kheyl have rushed and cut up half a dozen of the coolies on
+      Ferris&rsquo;s new canal-embankment; killed a couple of men and carried off a
+      woman. I wouldn&rsquo;t trouble you about that&mdash;Ferris is after them and
+      Hugonin, my assistant, with ten mounted police. But that&rsquo;s only the
+      beginning, I fancy. Their fires are out on the Hassan Ardeb heights, and
+      unless we&rsquo;re pretty quick there&rsquo;ll be a flare-up all along our Border.
+      They are sure to raid the four Khusru villages on our side of the line;
+      there&rsquo;s been bad blood between them for years; and you know the Blind
+      Mullah has been preaching a holy war since Orde went out. What&rsquo;s your
+      notion?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Damn!&rsquo; said Tallantire thoughtfully. &lsquo;They&rsquo;ve begun quick. Well, it seems
+      to me I&rsquo;d better ride off to Fort Ziar and get what men I can there to
+      picket among the lowland villages, if it&rsquo;s not too late. Tommy Dodd
+      commands at Fort Ziar, I think. Ferris and Hugonin ought to teach the
+      canal-thieves a lesson, and&mdash;No, we can&rsquo;t have the Head of the Police
+      ostentatiously guarding the Treasury. You go back to the canal. I&rsquo;ll wire
+      Bullows to come into Jumala with a strong police-guard, and sit on the
+      Treasury. They won&rsquo;t touch the place, but it looks well.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&mdash;I&mdash;I insist upon knowing what this means,&rsquo; said the voice of
+      the Deputy Commissioner, who had followed the speakers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh!&rsquo; said Curbar, who being in the Police could not understand that
+      fifteen years of education must, on principle, change the Bengali into a
+      Briton. &lsquo;There has been a fight on the Border, and heaps of men are
+      killed. There&rsquo;s going to be another fight, and heaps more will be killed.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What for?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Because the teeming millions of this district don&rsquo;t exactly approve of
+      you, and think that under your benign rule they are going to have a good
+      time. It strikes me that you had better make arrangements. I act, as you
+      know, by your orders. What do you advise?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&mdash;I take you all to witness that I have not yet assumed charge of
+      the district,&rsquo; stammered the Deputy Commissioner, not in the tones of the
+      &lsquo;more English.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah, I thought so. Well, as I was saying, Tallantire, your plan is sound.
+      Carry it out. Do you want an escort?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No; only a decent horse. But how about wiring to headquarters?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I fancy, from the colour of his cheeks, that your superior officer will
+      send some wonderful telegrams before the night&rsquo;s over. Let him do that,
+      and we shall have half the troops of the province coming up to see what&rsquo;s
+      the trouble. Well, run along, and take care of yourself&mdash;the Khusru
+      Kheyl jab upwards from below, remember. Ho! Mir Khan, give Tallantire
+      Sahib the best of the horses, and tell five men to ride to Jumala with the
+      Deputy Commissioner Sahib Bahadur. There is a hurry toward.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was; and it was not in the least bettered by Debendra Nath De
+      clinging to a policeman&rsquo;s bridle and demanding the shortest, the very
+      shortest way to Jumala. Now originality is fatal to the Bengali. Debendra
+      Nath should have stayed with his brother, who rode steadfastly for Jumala
+      on the railway-line, thanking gods entirely unknown to the most catholic
+      of universities that he had not taken charge of the district, and could
+      still&mdash;happy resource of a fertile race!&mdash;fall sick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I grieve to say that when he reached his goal two policemen, not
+      devoid of rude wit, who had been conferring together as they bumped in
+      their saddles, arranged an entertainment for his behoof. It consisted of
+      first one and then the other entering his room with prodigious details of
+      war, the massing of bloodthirsty and devilish tribes, and the burning of
+      towns. It was almost as good, said these scamps, as riding with Curbar
+      after evasive Afghans. Each invention kept the hearer at work for half an
+      hour on telegrams which the sack of Delhi would hardly have justified. To
+      every power that could move a bayonet or transfer a terrified man, Grish
+      Chunder De appealed telegraphically. He was alone, his assistants had
+      fled, and in truth he had not taken over charge of the district. Had the
+      telegrams been despatched many things would have occurred; but since the
+      only signaller in Jumala had gone to bed, and the station-master, after
+      one look at the tremendous pile of paper, discovered that railway
+      regulations forbade the forwarding of imperial messages, policemen Ram
+      Singh and Nihal Singh were fain to turn the stuff into a pillow and slept
+      on it very comfortably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tallantire drove his spurs into a rampant skewbald stallion with
+      china-blue eyes, and settled himself for the forty-mile ride to Fort Ziar.
+      Knowing his district blindfold, he wasted no time hunting for short cuts,
+      but headed across the richer grazing-ground to the ford where Orde had
+      died and been buried. The dusty ground deadened the noise of his horse&rsquo;s
+      hoofs, the moon threw his shadow, a restless goblin, before him, and the
+      heavy dew drenched him to the skin. Hillock, scrub that brushed against
+      the horse&rsquo;s belly, unmetalled road where the whip-like foliage of the
+      tamarisks lashed his forehead, illimitable levels of lowland furred with
+      bent and speckled with drowsing cattle, waste, and hillock anew, dragged
+      themselves past, and the skewbald was labouring in the deep sand of the
+      Indus-ford. Tallantire was conscious of no distinct thought till the nose
+      of the dawdling ferry-boat grounded on the farther side, and his horse
+      shied snorting at the white headstone of Orde&rsquo;s grave. Then he uncovered,
+      and shouted that the dead might hear, &lsquo;They&rsquo;re out, old man! Wish me
+      luck.&rsquo; In the chill of the dawn he was hammering with a stirrup-iron at
+      the gate of Fort Ziar, where fifty sabres of that tattered regiment, the
+      Belooch Beshaklis were supposed to guard Her Majesty&rsquo;s interests along a
+      few hundred miles of Border. This particular fort was commanded by a
+      subaltern, who, born of the ancient family of the Derouletts, naturally
+      answered to the name of Tommy Dodd. Him Tallantire found robed in a
+      sheepskin coat, shaking with fever like an aspen, and trying to read the
+      native apothecary&rsquo;s list of invalids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So you&rsquo;ve come, too,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;Well, we&rsquo;re all sick here, and I don&rsquo;t
+      think I can horse thirty men; but we&rsquo;re bub&mdash;bub&mdash;bub blessed
+      willing. Stop, does this impress you as a trap or a lie?&rsquo; He tossed a
+      scrap of paper to Tallantire, on which was written painfully in crabbed
+      Gurmukhi, &lsquo;We cannot hold young horses. They will feed after the moon goes
+      down in the four border villages issuing from the Jagai pass on the next
+      night.&rsquo; Then in English round hand&mdash;&lsquo;Your sincere friend.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good man!&rsquo; said Tallantire. &lsquo;That&rsquo;s Khoda Dad Khan&rsquo;s work, I know. It&rsquo;s
+      the only piece of English he could ever keep in his head, and he is
+      immensely proud of it. He is playing against the Blind Mullah for his own
+      hand&mdash;the treacherous young ruffian!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t know the politics of the Khusru Kheyl, but if you&rsquo;re satisfied, I
+      am. That was pitched in over the gate-head last night, and I thought we
+      might pull ourselves together and see what was on. Oh, but we&rsquo;re sick with
+      fever here and no mistake! Is this going to be a big business, think you?&rsquo; 
+      said Tommy Dodd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tallantire gave him briefly the outlines of the case, and Tommy Dodd
+      whistled and shook with fever alternately. That day he devoted to
+      strategy, the art of war, and the enlivenment of the invalids, till at
+      dusk there stood ready forty-two troopers, lean, worn, and dishevelled,
+      whom Tommy Dodd surveyed with pride, and addressed thus: &lsquo;O men! If you
+      die you will go to Hell. Therefore endeavour to keep alive. But if you go
+      to Hell that place cannot be hotter than this place, and we are not told
+      that we shall there suffer from fever. Consequently be not afraid of
+      dying. File out there!&rsquo; They grinned, and went.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It will be long ere the Khusru Kheyl forget their night attack on the
+      lowland villages. The Mullah had promised an easy victory and unlimited
+      plunder; but behold, armed troopers of the Queen had risen out of the very
+      earth, cutting, slashing, and riding down under the stars, so that no man
+      knew where to turn, and all feared that they had brought an army about
+      their ears, and ran back to the hills. In the panic of that flight more
+      men were seen to drop from wounds inflicted by an Afghan knife jabbed
+      upwards, and yet more from long-range carbine-fire. Then there rose a cry
+      of treachery, and when they reached their own guarded heights, they had
+      left, with some forty dead and sixty wounded, all their confidence in the
+      Blind Mullah on the plains below. They clamoured, swore, and argued round
+      the fires; the women wailing for the lost, and the Mullah shrieking curses
+      on the returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Khoda Dad Khan, eloquent and unbreathed, for he had taken no part in
+      the fight, rose to improve the occasion. He pointed out that the tribe
+      owed every item of its present misfortune to the Blind Mullah, who had
+      lied in every possible particular and talked them into a trap. It was
+      undoubtedly an insult that a Bengali, the son of a Bengali, should presume
+      to administer the Border, but that fact did not, as the Mullah pretended,
+      herald a general time of license and lifting; and the inexplicable madness
+      of the English had not in the least impaired their power of guarding their
+      marches. On the contrary, the baffled and out-generalled tribe would now,
+      just when their food-stock was lowest, be blockaded from any trade with
+      Hindustan until they had sent hostages for good behaviour, paid
+      compensation for disturbance, and blood-money at the rate of thirty-six
+      English pounds per head for every villager that they might have slain.
+      &lsquo;And ye know that those lowland dogs will make oath that we have slain
+      scores. Will the Mullah pay the fines or must we sell our guns?&rsquo; A low
+      growl ran round the fires. &lsquo;Now, seeing that all this is the Mullah&rsquo;s
+      work, and that we have gained nothing but promises of Paradise thereby, it
+      is in my heart that we of the Khusru Kheyl lack a shrine whereat to pray.
+      We are weakened, and henceforth how shall we dare to cross into the Madar
+      Kheyl border, as has been our custom, to kneel to Pir Sajji&rsquo;s tomb? The
+      Madar men will fall upon us, and rightly. But our Mullah is a holy man. He
+      has helped two score of us into Paradise this night. Let him therefore
+      accompany his flock, and we will build over his body a dome of the blue
+      tiles of Mooltan, and burn lamps at his feet every Friday night. He shall
+      be a saint: we shall have a shrine; and there our women shall pray for
+      fresh seed to fill the gaps in our fighting-tale. How think you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A grim chuckle followed the suggestion, and the soft wheep, wheep of
+      unscabbarded knives followed the chuckle. It was an excellent notion, and
+      met a long felt want of the tribe. The Mullah sprang to his feet, glaring
+      with withered eyeballs at the drawn death he could not see, and calling
+      down the curses of God and Mahomed on the tribe. Then began a game of
+      blind man&rsquo;s buff round and between the fires, whereof Khuruk Shah, the
+      tribal poet, has sung in verse that will not die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They tickled him gently under the armpit with the knife-point. He leaped
+      aside screaming, only to feel a cold blade drawn lightly over the back of
+      his neck, or a rifle-muzzle rubbing his beard. He called on his adherents
+      to aid him, but most of these lay dead on the plains, for Khoda Dad Khan
+      had been at some pains to arrange their decease. Men described to him the
+      glories of the shrine they would build, and the little children clapping
+      their hands cried, &lsquo;Run, Mullah, run! There&rsquo;s a man behind you!&rsquo; In the
+      end, when the sport wearied, Khoda Dad Khan&rsquo;s brother sent a knife home
+      between his ribs. &lsquo;Wherefore,&rsquo; said Khoda Dad Khan with charming
+      simplicity, &lsquo;I am now Chief of the Khusru Kheyl!&rsquo; No man gainsaid him; and
+      they all went to sleep very stiff and sore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the plain below Tommy Dodd was lecturing on the beauties of a cavalry
+      charge by night, and Tallantire, bowed on his saddle, was gasping
+      hysterically because there was a sword dangling from his wrist flecked
+      with the blood of the Khusru Kheyl, the tribe that Orde had kept in leash
+      so well. When a Rajpoot trooper pointed out that the skewbald&rsquo;s right ear
+      had been taken off at the root by some blind slash of its unskilled rider,
+      Tallantire broke down altogether, and laughed and sobbed till Tommy Dodd
+      made him lie down and rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We must wait about till the morning,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;I wired to the Colonel
+      just before we left, to send a wing of the Beshaklis after us. He&rsquo;ll be
+      furious with me for monopolising the fun, though. Those beggars in the
+      hills won&rsquo;t give us any more trouble.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then tell the Beshaklis to go on and see what has happened to Curbar on
+      the canal. We must patrol the whole line of the Border. You&rsquo;re quite sure,
+      Tommy, that&mdash;that stuff was&mdash;was only the skewbald&rsquo;s ear?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, quite,&rsquo; said Tommy. &lsquo;You just missed cutting off his head. <i>I</i>
+      saw you when we went into the mess. Sleep, old man.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noon brought two squadrons of Beshaklis and a knot of furious brother
+      officers demanding the court-martial of Tommy Dodd for &lsquo;spoiling the
+      picnic,&rsquo; and a gallop across country to the canal-works where Ferris,
+      Curbar, and Hugonin were haranguing the terror-stricken coolies on the
+      enormity of abandoning good work and high pay, merely because half a dozen
+      of their fellows had been cut down. The sight of a troop of the Beshaklis
+      restored wavering confidence, and the police-hunted section of the Khusru
+      Kheyl had the joy of watching the canal-bank humming with life as usual,
+      while such of their men as had taken refuge in the watercourses and
+      ravines were being driven out by the troopers. By sundown began the
+      remorseless patrol of the Border by police and trooper, most like the
+      cow-boys&rsquo; eternal ride round restless cattle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now,&rsquo; said Khoda Dad Khan to his fellows, pointing out a line of
+      twinkling fires below, &lsquo;ye may see how far the old order changes. After
+      their horse will come the little devil-guns that they can drag up to the
+      tops of the hills, and, for aught I know, to the clouds when we crown the
+      hills. If the tribe-council thinks good, I will go to Tallantire Sahib&mdash;who
+      loves me&mdash;and see if I can stave off at least the blockade. Do I
+      speak for the tribe?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay, speak for the tribe in God&rsquo;s name. How those accursed fires wink! Do
+      the English send their troops on the wire&mdash;or is this the work of the
+      Bengali?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Khoda Dad Khan went down the hill he was delayed by an interview with a
+      hard-pressed tribesman, which caused him to return hastily for something
+      he had forgotten. Then, handing himself over to the two troopers who had
+      been chasing his friend, he claimed escort to Tallantire Sahib, then with
+      Bullows at Jumala. The Border was safe, and the time for reasons in
+      writing had begun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thank Heaven!&rsquo; said Bullows, &lsquo;that the trouble came at once. Of course we
+      can never put down the reason in black and white, but all India will
+      understand. And it is better to have a sharp short outbreak than five
+      years of impotent administration inside the Border. It costs less. Grish
+      Chunder De has reported himself sick, and has been transferred to his own
+      province without any sort of reprimand. He was strong on not having taken
+      over the district.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of course,&rsquo; said Tallantire bitterly. &lsquo;Well, what am I supposed to have
+      done that was wrong?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, you will be told that you exceeded all your powers, and should have
+      reported, and written, and advised for three weeks until the Khusru Kheyl
+      could really come down in force. But I don&rsquo;t think the authorities will
+      dare to make a fuss about it. They&rsquo;ve had their lesson. Have you seen
+      Curbar&rsquo;s version of the affair? He can&rsquo;t write a report, but he can speak
+      the truth.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the use of the truth? He&rsquo;d much better tear up the report. I&rsquo;m
+      sick and heartbroken over it all. It was so utterly unnecessary&mdash;except
+      in that it rid us of that Babu.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Entered unabashed Khoda Dad Khan, a stuffed forage-net in his hand, and
+      the troopers behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;May you never be tired!&rsquo; said he cheerily. &lsquo;Well, Sahibs, that was a good
+      fight, and Naim Shah&rsquo;s mother is in debt to you, Tallantire Sahib. A clean
+      cut, they tell me, through jaw, wadded coat, and deep into the
+      collar-bone. Well done! But I speak for the tribe. There has been a fault&mdash;a
+      great fault. Thou knowest that I and mine, Tallantire Sahib, kept the oath
+      we sware to Orde Sahib on the banks of the Indus.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;As an Afghan keeps his knife&mdash;sharp on one side, blunt on the
+      other,&rsquo; said Tallantire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The better swing in the blow, then. But I speak God&rsquo;s truth. Only the
+      Blind Mullah carried the young men on the tip of his tongue, and said that
+      there was no more Border-law because a Bengali had been sent, and we need
+      not fear the English at all. So they came down to avenge that insult and
+      get plunder. Ye know what befell, and how far I helped. Now five score of
+      us are dead or wounded, and we are all shamed and sorry, and desire no
+      further war. Moreover, that ye may better listen to us, we have taken off
+      the head of the Blind Mullah, whose evil counsels have led us to folly. I
+      bring it for proof,&rsquo;&mdash;and he heaved on the floor the head. &lsquo;He will
+      give no more trouble, for I am chief now, and so I sit in a higher place
+      at all audiences. Yet there is an offset to this head. That was another
+      fault. One of the men found that black Bengali beast, through whom this
+      trouble arose, wandering on horseback and weeping. Reflecting that he had
+      caused loss of much good life, Alla Dad Khan, whom, if you choose, I will
+      to-morrow shoot, whipped off this head, and I bring it to you to cover
+      your shame, that ye may bury it. See, no man kept the spectacles, though
+      they were of gold.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly rolled to Tallantire&rsquo;s feet the crop-haired head of a spectacled
+      Bengali gentleman, open-eyed, open-mouthed&mdash;the head of Terror
+      incarnate. Bullows bent down. &lsquo;Yet another blood-fine and a heavy one,
+      Khoda Dad Khan, for this is the head of Debendra Nath, the man&rsquo;s brother.
+      The Babu is safe long since. All but the fools of the Khusru Kheyl know
+      that.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, I care not for carrion. Quick meat for me. The thing was under our
+      hills asking the road to Jumala and Alla Dad Khan showed him the road to
+      Jehannum, being, as thou sayest, but a fool. Remains now what the
+      Government will do to us. As to the blockade&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Who art thou, seller of dog&rsquo;s flesh,&rsquo; thundered Tallantire, &lsquo;to speak of
+      terms and treaties? Get hence to the hills&mdash;go, and wait there
+      starving, till it shall please the Government to call thy people out for
+      punishment&mdash;children and fools that ye be! Count your dead, and be
+      still. Best assured that the Government will send you a MAN!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay,&rsquo; returned Khoda Dad Khan, &lsquo;for we also be men.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he looked Tallantire between the eyes, he added, &lsquo;And by God, Sahib,
+      may thou be that man!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Before my Spring I garnered Autumn&rsquo;s gain,
+     Out of her time my field was white with grain,
+       The year gave up her secrets to my woe.
+     Forced and deflowered each sick season lay,
+     In mystery of increase and decay;
+     I saw the sunset ere men saw the day,
+       Who am too wise in that I should not know.
+                             BITTER WATERS.
+</pre>
+    <h3>
+      I
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But if it be a girl?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Lord of my life, it cannot be. I have prayed for so many nights, and sent
+      gifts to Sheikh Badl&rsquo;s shrine so often, that I know God will give us a son&mdash;a
+      man-child that shall grow into a man. Think of this and be glad. My mother
+      shall be his mother till I can take him again, and the mullah of the
+      Pattan mosque shall cast his nativity&mdash;God send he be born in an
+      auspicious hour!&mdash;and then, and then thou wilt never weary of me, thy
+      slave.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Since when hast thou been a slave, my queen?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Since the beginning&mdash;till this mercy came to me. How could I be sure
+      of thy love when I knew that I had been bought with silver?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, that was the dowry. I paid it to thy mother.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And she has buried it, and sits upon it all day long like a hen. What
+      talk is yours of dower! I was bought as though I had been a Lucknow
+      dancing-girl instead of a child.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Art thou sorry for the sale?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have sorrowed; but to-day I am glad. Thou wilt never cease to love me
+      now?&mdash;answer, my king.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Never&mdash;never. No.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Not even though the mem-log&mdash;the white women of thy own blood&mdash;love
+      thee? And remember, I have watched them driving in the evening; they are
+      very fair.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have seen fire-balloons by the hundred. I have seen the moon, and&mdash;then
+      I saw no more fire-balloons.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ameera clapped her hands and laughed. &lsquo;Very good talk,&rsquo; she said. Then
+      with an assumption of great stateliness, &lsquo;It is enough. Thou hast my
+      permission to depart,&mdash;if thou wilt.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man did not move. He was sitting on a low red-lacquered couch in a
+      room furnished only with a blue and white floor-cloth, some rugs, and a
+      very complete collection of native cushions. At his feet sat a woman of
+      sixteen, and she was all but all the world in his eyes. By every rule and
+      law she should have been otherwise, for he was an Englishman, and she a
+      Mussulman&rsquo;s daughter bought two years before from her mother, who, being
+      left without money, would have sold Ameera shrieking to the Prince of
+      Darkness if the price had been sufficient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a contract entered into with a light heart; but even before the
+      girl had reached her bloom she came to fill the greater portion of John
+      Holden&rsquo;s life. For her, and the withered hag her mother, he had taken a
+      little house overlooking the great red-walled city, and found,&mdash;when
+      the marigolds had sprung up by the well in the courtyard and Ameera had
+      established herself according to her own ideas of comfort, and her mother
+      had ceased grumbling at the inadequacy of the cooking-places, the distance
+      from the daily market, and at matters of house-keeping in general,&mdash;that
+      the house was to him his home. Any one could enter his bachelor&rsquo;s bungalow
+      by day or night, and the life that he led there was an unlovely one. In
+      the house in the city his feet only could pass beyond the outer courtyard
+      to the women&rsquo;s rooms; and when the big wooden gate was bolted behind him
+      he was king in his own territory, with Ameera for queen. And there was
+      going to be added to this kingdom a third person whose arrival Holden felt
+      inclined to resent. It interfered with his perfect happiness. It
+      disarranged the orderly peace of the house that was his own. But Ameera
+      was wild with delight at the thought of it, and her mother not less so.
+      The love of a man, and particularly a white man, was at the best an
+      inconstant affair, but it might, both women argued, be held fast by a
+      baby&rsquo;s hands. &lsquo;And then,&rsquo; Ameera would always say, &lsquo;then he will never
+      care for the white mem-log. I hate them all&mdash;I hate them all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He will go back to his own people in time,&rsquo; said the mother; &lsquo;but by the
+      blessing of God that time is yet afar off.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holden sat silent on the couch thinking of the future, and his thoughts
+      were not pleasant. The drawbacks of a double life are manifold. The
+      Government, with singular care, had ordered him out of the station for a
+      fortnight on special duty in the place of a man who was watching by the
+      bedside of a sick wife. The verbal notification of the transfer had been
+      edged by a cheerful remark that Holden ought to think himself lucky in
+      being a bachelor and a free man. He came to break the news to Ameera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is not good,&rsquo; she said slowly, &lsquo;but it is not all bad. There is my
+      mother here, and no harm will come to me&mdash;unless indeed I die of pure
+      joy. Go thou to thy work and think no troublesome thoughts. When the days
+      are done I believe... nay, I am sure. And&mdash;and then I shall lay HIM
+      in thy arms, and thou wilt love me for ever. The train goes to-night, at
+      midnight is it not? Go now, and do not let thy heart be heavy by cause of
+      me. But thou wilt not delay in returning? Thou wilt not stay on the road
+      to talk to the bold white mem-log. Come back to me swiftly, my life.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he left the courtyard to reach his horse that was tethered to the
+      gate-post, Holden spoke to the white-haired old watchman who guarded the
+      house, and bade him under certain contingencies despatch the filled-up
+      telegraph-form that Holden gave him. It was all that could be done, and
+      with the sensations of a man who has attended his own funeral Holden went
+      away by the night mail to his exile. Every hour of the day he dreaded the
+      arrival of the telegram, and every hour of the night he pictured to
+      himself the death of Ameera. In consequence his work for the State was not
+      of first-rate quality, nor was his temper towards his colleagues of the
+      most amiable. The fortnight ended without a sign from his home, and, torn
+      to pieces by his anxieties, Holden returned to be swallowed up for two
+      precious hours by a dinner at the club, wherein he heard, as a man hears
+      in a swoon, voices telling him how execrably he had performed the other
+      man&rsquo;s duties, and how he had endeared himself to all his associates. Then
+      he fled on horseback through the night with his heart in his mouth. There
+      was no answer at first to his blows on the gate, and he had just wheeled
+      his horse round to kick it in when Pir Khan appeared with a lantern and
+      held his stirrup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Has aught occurred?&rsquo; said Holden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The news does not come from my mouth, Protector of the Poor, but&mdash;&rsquo; 
+      He held out his shaking hand as befitted the bearer of good news who is
+      entitled to a reward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holden hurried through the courtyard. A light burned in the upper room.
+      His horse neighed in the gateway, and he heard a shrill little wail that
+      sent all the blood into the apple of his throat. It was a new voice, but
+      it did not prove that Ameera was alive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Who is there?&rsquo; he called up the narrow brick staircase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a cry of delight from Ameera, and then the voice of the mother,
+      tremulous with old age and pride&mdash;&lsquo;We be two women and&mdash;the&mdash;man&mdash;thy&mdash;son.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the threshold of the room Holden stepped on a naked dagger, that was
+      laid there to avert ill-luck, and it broke at the hilt under his impatient
+      heel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;God is great!&rsquo; cooed Ameera in the half-light. &lsquo;Thou hast taken his
+      misfortunes on thy head.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay, but how is it with thee, life of my life? Old woman, how is it with
+      her?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She has forgotten her sufferings for joy that the child is born. There is
+      no harm; but speak softly,&rsquo; said the mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It only needed thy presence to make me all well,&rsquo; said Ameera. &lsquo;My king,
+      thou hast been very long away. What gifts hast thou for me? Ah, ah! It is
+      I that bring gifts this time. Look, my life, look. Was there ever such a
+      babe? Nay, I am too weak even to clear my arm from him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Rest then, and do not talk. I am here, bachari [little woman].&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well said, for there is a bond and a heel-rope [peecharee] between us now
+      that nothing can break. Look&mdash;canst thou see in this light? He is
+      without spot or blemish. Never was such a man-child. Ya illah! he shall be
+      a pundit&mdash;no, a trooper of the Queen. And, my life, dost thou love me
+      as well as ever, though I am faint and sick and worn? Answer truly.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yea. I love as I have loved, with all my soul. Lie still, pearl, and
+      rest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then do not go. Sit by my side here&mdash;so. Mother, the lord of this
+      house needs a cushion. Bring it.&rsquo; There was an almost imperceptible
+      movement on the part of the new life that lay in the hollow of Ameera&rsquo;s
+      arm. &lsquo;Aho!&rsquo; she said, her voice breaking with love. &lsquo;The babe is a
+      champion from his birth. He is kicking me in the side with mighty kicks.
+      Was there ever such a babe! And he is ours to us&mdash;thine and mine. Put
+      thy hand on his head, but carefully, for he is very young, and men are
+      unskilled in such matters.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very cautiously Holden touched with the tips of his fingers the downy
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He is of the faith,&rsquo; said Ameera; &lsquo;for lying here in the night-watches I
+      whispered the call to prayer and the profession of faith into his ears.
+      And it is most marvellous that he was born upon a Friday, as I was born.
+      Be careful of him, my life; but he can almost grip with his hands.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holden found one helpless little hand that closed feebly on his finger.
+      And the clutch ran through his body till it settled about his heart. Till
+      then his sole thought had been for Ameera. He began to realise that there
+      was some one else in the world, but he could not feel that it was a
+      veritable son with a soul. He sat down to think, and Ameera dozed lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Get hence, sahib,&rsquo; said her mother under her breath. &lsquo;It is not good that
+      she should find you here on waking. She must be still.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I go,&rsquo; said Holden submissively. &lsquo;Here be rupees. See that my baba gets
+      fat and finds all that he needs.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chink of the silver roused Ameera. &lsquo;I am his mother, and no hireling,&rsquo; 
+      she said weakly. &lsquo;Shall I look to him more or less for the sake of money?
+      Mother, give it back. I have born my lord a son.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deep sleep of weakness came upon her almost before the sentence was
+      completed. Holden went down to the courtyard very softly with his heart at
+      ease. Pir Khan, the old watchman, was chuckling with delight. &lsquo;This house
+      is now complete,&rsquo; he said, and without further comment thrust into
+      Holden&rsquo;s hands the hilt of a sabre worn many years ago when he, Pir Khan,
+      served the Queen in the police. The bleat of a tethered goat came from the
+      well-kerb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There be two,&rsquo; said Pir Khan, &lsquo;two goats of the best. I bought them, and
+      they cost much money; and since there is no birth-party assembled their
+      flesh will be all mine. Strike craftily, sahib! &lsquo;Tis an ill-balanced sabre
+      at the best. Wait till they raise their heads from cropping the
+      marigolds.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And why?&rsquo; said Holden, bewildered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For the birth-sacrifice. What else? Otherwise the child being unguarded
+      from fate may die. The Protector of the Poor knows the fitting words to be
+      said.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holden had learned them once with little thought that he would ever speak
+      them in earnest. The touch of the cold sabre-hilt in his palm turned
+      suddenly to the clinging grip of the child upstairs&mdash;the child that
+      was his own son&mdash;and a dread of loss filled him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Strike!&rsquo; said Pir Khan. &lsquo;Never life came into the world but life was paid
+      for it. See, the goats have raised their heads. Now! With a drawing cut!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hardly knowing what he did Holden cut twice as he muttered the Mahomedan
+      prayer that runs: &lsquo;Almighty! In place of this my son I offer life for
+      life, blood for blood, head for head, bone for bone, hair for hair, skin
+      for skin.&rsquo; The waiting horse snorted and bounded in his pickets at the
+      smell of the raw blood that spirted over Holden&rsquo;s riding-boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well smitten!&rsquo; said Pir Khan, wiping the sabre. &lsquo;A swordsman was lost in
+      thee. Go with a light heart, Heaven-born. I am thy servant, and the
+      servant of thy son. May the Presence live a thousand years and... the
+      flesh of the goats is all mine?&rsquo; Pir Khan drew back richer by a month&rsquo;s
+      pay. Holden swung himself into the saddle and rode off through the
+      low-hanging wood-smoke of the evening. He was full of riotous exultation,
+      alternating with a vast vague tenderness directed towards no particular
+      object, that made him choke as he bent over the neck of his uneasy horse.
+      &lsquo;I never felt like this in my life,&rsquo; he thought. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll go to the club and
+      pull myself together.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A game of pool was beginning, and the room was full of men. Holden
+      entered, eager to get to the light and the company of his fellows, singing
+      at the top of his voice&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    In Baltimore a-walking, a lady I did meet!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Did you?&rsquo; said the club-secretary from his corner. &lsquo;Did she happen to
+      tell you that your boots were wringing wet? Great goodness, man, it&rsquo;s
+      blood!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bosh!&rsquo; said Holden, picking his cue from the rack. &lsquo;May I cut in? It&rsquo;s
+      dew. I&rsquo;ve been riding through high crops. My faith! my boots are in a mess
+      though!
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &lsquo;And if it be a girl she shall wear a wedding-ring,
+     And if it be a boy he shall fight for his king,
+     With his dirk, and his cap, and his little jacket blue,
+     He shall walk the quarter-deck&mdash;&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yellow on blue&mdash;green next player,&rsquo; said the marker monotonously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He shall walk the quarter-deck,&mdash;Am I green, marker? He shall walk
+      the quarter-deck,&mdash;eh! that&rsquo;s a bad shot,&mdash;As his daddy used to
+      do!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t see that you have anything to crow about,&rsquo; said a zealous junior
+      civilian acidly. &lsquo;The Government is not exactly pleased with your work
+      when you relieved Sanders.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Does that mean a wigging from headquarters?&rsquo; said Holden with an
+      abstracted smile. &lsquo;I think I can stand it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The talk beat up round the ever-fresh subject of each man&rsquo;s work, and
+      steadied Holden till it was time to go to his dark empty bungalow, where
+      his butler received him as one who knew all his affairs. Holden remained
+      awake for the greater part of the night, and his dreams were pleasant
+      ones.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How old is he now?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ya illah! What a man&rsquo;s question! He is all but six weeks old; and on this
+      night I go up to the housetop with thee, my life, to count the stars. For
+      that is auspicious. And he was born on a Friday under the sign of the Sun,
+      and it has been told to me that he will outlive us both and get wealth.
+      Can we wish for aught better, beloved?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There is nothing better. Let us go up to the roof, and thou shalt count
+      the stars&mdash;but a few only, for the sky is heavy with cloud.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The winter rains are late, and maybe they come out of season. Come,
+      before all the stars are hid. I have put on my richest jewels.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thou hast forgotten the best of all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ai! Ours. He comes also. He has never yet seen the skies.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ameera climbed the narrow staircase that led to the flat roof. The child,
+      placid and unwinking, lay in the hollow of her right arm, gorgeous in
+      silver-fringed muslin with a small skull-cap on his head. Ameera wore all
+      that she valued most. The diamond nose-stud that takes the place of the
+      Western patch in drawing attention to the curve of the nostril, the gold
+      ornament in the centre of the forehead studded with tallow-drop emeralds
+      and flawed rubies, the heavy circlet of beaten gold that was fastened
+      round her neck by the softness of the pure metal, and the chinking
+      curb-patterned silver anklets hanging low over the rosy ankle-bone. She
+      was dressed in jade-green muslin as befitted a daughter of the Faith, and
+      from shoulder to elbow and elbow to wrist ran bracelets of silver tied
+      with floss silk, frail glass bangles slipped over the wrist in proof of
+      the slenderness of the hand, and certain heavy gold bracelets that had no
+      part in her country&rsquo;s ornaments but, since they were Holden&rsquo;s gift and
+      fastened with a cunning European snap, delighted her immensely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat down by the low white parapet of the roof, overlooking the city
+      and its lights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They are happy down there,&rsquo; said Ameera. &lsquo;But I do not think that they
+      are as happy as we. Nor do I think the white mem-log are as happy. And
+      thou?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I know they are not.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How dost thou know?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They give their children over to the nurses.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have never seen that,&rsquo; said Ameera with a sigh, &lsquo;nor do I wish to see.
+      Ahi!&mdash;she dropped her head on Holden&rsquo;s shoulder,&mdash;&lsquo;I have
+      counted forty stars, and I am tired. Look at the child, love of my life,
+      he is counting too.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The baby was staring with round eyes at the dark of the heavens. Ameera
+      placed him in Holden&rsquo;s arms, and he lay there without a cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What shall we call him among ourselves?&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;Look! Art thou ever
+      tired of looking? He carries thy very eyes. But the mouth&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is thine, most dear. Who should know better than I?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Tis such a feeble mouth. Oh, so small! And yet it holds my heart between
+      its lips. Give him to me now. He has been too long away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, let him lie; he has not yet begun to cry.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;When he cries thou wilt give him back&mdash;eh? What a man of mankind
+      thou art! If he cried he were only the dearer to me. But, my life, what
+      little name shall we give him?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The small body lay close to Holden&rsquo;s heart. It was utterly helpless and
+      very soft. He scarcely dared to breathe for fear of crushing it. The caged
+      green parrot that is regarded as a sort of guardian-spirit in most native
+      households moved on its perch and fluttered a drowsy wing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There is the answer,&rsquo; said Holden. &lsquo;Mian Mittu has spoken. He shall be
+      the parrot. When he is ready he will talk mightily and run about. Mian
+      Mittu is the parrot in thy&mdash;in the Mussulman tongue, is it not?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why put me so far off?&rsquo; said Ameera fretfully. &lsquo;Let it be like unto some
+      English name&mdash;but not wholly. For he is mine.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then call him Tota, for that is likest English.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay, Tota, and that is still the parrot. Forgive me, my lord, for a minute
+      ago, but in truth he is too little to wear all the weight of Mian Mittu
+      for name. He shall be Tota&mdash;our Tota to us. Hearest thou, O small
+      one? Littlest, thou art Tota.&rsquo; She touched the child&rsquo;s cheek, and he
+      waking wailed, and it was necessary to return him to his mother, who
+      soothed him with the wonderful rhyme of Are koko, Jare koko! which says:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Oh crow! Go crow! Baby&rsquo;s sleeping sound,
+     And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound.
+     Only a penny a pound, baba, only a penny a pound.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Reassured many times as to the price of those plums, Tota cuddled himself
+      down to sleep. The two sleek, white well-bullocks in the courtyard were
+      steadily chewing the cud of their evening meal; old Pir Khan squatted at
+      the head of Holden&rsquo;s horse, his police sabre across his knees, pulling
+      drowsily at a big water-pipe that croaked like a bull-frog in a pond.
+      Ameera&rsquo;s mother sat spinning in the lower verandah, and the wooden gate
+      was shut and barred. The music of a marriage-procession came to the roof
+      above the gentle hum of the city, and a string of flying-foxes crossed the
+      face of the low moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have prayed,&rsquo; said Ameera after a long pause, &lsquo;I have prayed for two
+      things. First, that I may die in thy stead if thy death is demanded, and
+      in the second that I may die in the place of the child. I have prayed to
+      the Prophet and to Beebee Miriam [the Virgin Mary]. Thinkest thou either
+      will hear?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;From thy lips who would not hear the lightest word?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I asked for straight talk, and thou hast given me sweet talk. Will my
+      prayers be heard?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How can I say? God is very good.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of that I am not sure. Listen now. When I die, or the child dies, what is
+      thy fate? Living, thou wilt return to the bold white mem-log, for kind
+      calls to kind.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Not always.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;With a woman, no; with a man it is otherwise. Thou wilt in this life,
+      later on, go back to thine own folk. That I could almost endure, for I
+      should be dead. But in thy very death thou wilt be taken away to a strange
+      place and a paradise that I do not know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Will it be paradise?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Surely, for who would harm thee? But we two&mdash;I and the child&mdash;shall
+      be elsewhere, and we cannot come to thee, nor canst thou come to us. In
+      the old days, before the child was born, I did not think of these things;
+      but now I think of them always. It is very hard talk.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It will fall as it will fall. To-morrow we do not know, but to-day and
+      love we know well. Surely we are happy now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So happy that it were well to make our happiness assured. And thy Beebee
+      Miriam should listen to me; for she is also a woman. But then she would
+      envy me! It is not seemly for men to worship a woman.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holden laughed aloud at Ameera&rsquo;s little spasm of jealousy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is it not seemly? Why didst thou not turn me from worship of thee, then?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thou a worshipper! And of me? My king, for all thy sweet words, well I
+      know that I am thy servant and thy slave, and the dust under thy feet. And
+      I would not have it otherwise. See!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Holden could prevent her she stooped forward and touched his feet;
+      recovering herself with a little laugh she hugged Tota closer to her
+      bosom. Then, almost savagely&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is it true that the bold white mem-log live for three times the length of
+      my life? Is it true that they make their marriages not before they are old
+      women?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They marry as do others&mdash;when they are women.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That I know, but they wed when they are twenty-five. Is that true?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That is true.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ya illah! At twenty-five! Who would of his own will take a wife even of
+      eighteen? She is a woman&mdash;aging every hour. Twenty-five! I shall be
+      an old woman at that age, and&mdash;Those mem-log remain young for ever.
+      How I hate them!&rsquo; &lsquo;What have they to do with us?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I cannot tell. I know only that there may now be alive on this earth a
+      woman ten years older than I who may come to thee and take thy love ten
+      years after I am an old woman, gray-headed, and the nurse of Tota&rsquo;s son.
+      That is unjust and evil. They should die too.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now, for all thy years thou art a child, and shalt be picked up and
+      carried down the staircase.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tota! Have a care for Tota, my lord! Thou at least art as foolish as any
+      babe!&rsquo; Ameera tucked Tota out of harm&rsquo;s way in the hollow of her neck, and
+      was carried downstairs laughing in Holden&rsquo;s arms, while Tota opened his
+      eyes and smiled after the manner of the lesser angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a silent infant, and, almost before Holden could realise that he
+      was in the world, developed into a small gold-coloured little god and
+      unquestioned despot of the house overlooking the city. Those were months
+      of absolute happiness to Holden and Ameera&mdash;happiness withdrawn from
+      the world, shut in behind the wooden gate that Pir Khan guarded. By day
+      Holden did his work with an immense pity for such as were not so fortunate
+      as himself, and a sympathy for small children that amazed and amused many
+      mothers at the little station-gatherings. At nightfall he returned to
+      Ameera,&mdash;Ameera, full of the wondrous doings of Tota; how he had been
+      seen to clap his hands together and move his fingers with intention and
+      purpose&mdash;which was manifestly a miracle&mdash;how later, he had of
+      his own initiative crawled out of his low bedstead on to the floor and
+      swayed on both feet for the space of three breaths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And they were long breaths, for my heart stood still with delight,&rsquo; said
+      Ameera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Tota took the beasts into his councils&mdash;the well-bullocks, the
+      little gray squirrels, the mongoose that lived in a hole near the well,
+      and especially Mian Mittu, the parrot, whose tail he grievously pulled,
+      and Mian Mittu screamed till Ameera and Holden arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O villain! Child of strength! This to thy brother on the house-top!
+      Tobah, tobah! Fie! Fie! But I know a charm to make him wise as Suleiman
+      and Aflatoun [Solomon and Plato]. Now look,&rsquo; said Ameera. She drew from an
+      embroidered bag a handful of almonds. &lsquo;See! we count seven. In the name of
+      God!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She placed Mian Mittu, very angry and rumpled, on the top of his cage, and
+      seating herself between the babe and the bird she cracked and peeled an
+      almond less white than her teeth. &lsquo;This is a true charm, my life, and do
+      not laugh. See! I give the parrot one half and Tota the other.&rsquo; Mian Mittu
+      with careful beak took his share from between Ameera&rsquo;s lips, and she
+      kissed the other half into the mouth of the child, who ate it slowly with
+      wondering eyes. &lsquo;This I will do each day of seven, and without doubt he
+      who is ours will be a bold speaker and wise. Eh, Tota, what wilt thou be
+      when thou art a man and I am gray-headed?&rsquo; Tota tucked his fat legs into
+      adorable creases. He could crawl, but he was not going to waste the spring
+      of his youth in idle speech. He wanted Mian Mittu&rsquo;s tail to tweak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he was advanced to the dignity of a silver belt&mdash;which, with a
+      magic square engraved on silver and hung round his neck, made up the
+      greater part of his clothing&mdash;he staggered on a perilous journey down
+      the garden to Pir Khan and proffered him all his jewels in exchange for
+      one little ride on Holden&rsquo;s horse, having seen his mother&rsquo;s mother
+      chaffering with pedlars in the verandah. Pir Khan wept and set the untried
+      feet on his own gray head in sign of fealty, and brought the bold
+      adventurer to his mother&rsquo;s arms, vowing that Tota would be a leader of men
+      ere his beard was grown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One hot evening, while he sat on the roof between his father and mother
+      watching the never-ending warfare of the kites that the city boys flew, he
+      demanded a kite of his own with Pir Khan to fly it, because he had a fear
+      of dealing with anything larger than himself, and when Holden called him a
+      &lsquo;spark,&rsquo; he rose to his feet and answered slowly in defence of his
+      new-found individuality, &lsquo;Hum&rsquo;park nahin hai. Hum admi hai [I am no spark,
+      but a man].&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The protest made Holden choke and devote himself very seriously to a
+      consideration of Tota&rsquo;s future. He need hardly have taken the trouble. The
+      delight of that life was too perfect to endure. Therefore it was taken
+      away as many things are taken away in India&mdash;suddenly and without
+      warning. The little lord of the house, as Pir Khan called him, grew
+      sorrowful and complained of pains who had never known the meaning of pain.
+      Ameera, wild with terror, watched him through the night, and in the
+      dawning of the second day the life was shaken out of him by fever&mdash;the
+      seasonal autumn fever. It seemed altogether impossible that he could die,
+      and neither Ameera nor Holden at first believed the evidence of the little
+      body on the bedstead. Then Ameera beat her head against the wall and would
+      have flung herself down the well in the garden had Holden not restrained
+      her by main force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One mercy only was granted to Holden. He rode to his office in broad
+      daylight and found waiting him an unusually heavy mail that demanded
+      concentrated attention and hard work. He was not, however, alive to this
+      kindness of the gods.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The first shock of a bullet is no more than a brisk pinch. The wrecked
+      body does not send in its protest to the soul till ten or fifteen seconds
+      later. Holden realised his pain slowly, exactly as he had realised his
+      happiness, and with the same imperious necessity for hiding all trace of
+      it. In the beginning he only felt that there had been a loss, and that
+      Ameera needed comforting, where she sat with her head on her knees
+      shivering as Mian Mittu from the house-top called, Tota! Tota! Tota! Later
+      all his world and the daily life of it rose up to hurt him. It was an
+      outrage that any one of the children at the band-stand in the evening
+      should be alive and clamorous, when his own child lay dead. It was more
+      than mere pain when one of them touched him, and stories told by over-fond
+      fathers of their children&rsquo;s latest performances cut him to the quick. He
+      could not declare his pain. He had neither help, comfort, nor sympathy;
+      and Ameera at the end of each weary day would lead him through the hell of
+      self-questioning reproach which is reserved for those who have lost a
+      child, and believe that with a little&mdash;just a little&mdash;more care
+      it might have been saved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Perhaps,&rsquo; Ameera would say, &lsquo;I did not take sufficient heed. Did I, or
+      did I not? The sun on the roof that day when he played so long alone and I
+      was&mdash;ahi! braiding my hair&mdash;it may be that the sun then bred the
+      fever. If I had warned him from the sun he might have lived. But, oh my
+      life, say that I am guiltless! Thou knowest that I loved him as I love
+      thee. Say that there is no blame on me, or I shall die&mdash;I shall die!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There is no blame,&mdash;before God, none. It was written and how could
+      we do aught to save? What has been, has been. Let it go, beloved.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was all my heart to me. How can I let the thought go when my arm tells
+      me every night that he is not here? Ahi! Ahi! O Tota, come back to me&mdash;come
+      back again, and let us be all together as it was before!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Peace, peace! For thine own sake, and for mine also, if thou lovest me&mdash;rest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By this I know thou dost not care; and how shouldst thou? The white men
+      have hearts of stone and souls of iron. Oh, that I had married a man of
+      mine own people&mdash;though he beat me&mdash;and had never eaten the
+      bread of an alien!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Am I an alien&mdash;mother of my son?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What else&mdash;Sahib?... Oh, forgive me&mdash;forgive! The death has
+      driven me mad. Thou art the life of my heart, and the light of my eyes,
+      and the breath of my life, and&mdash;and I have put thee from me, though
+      it was but for a moment. If thou goest away, to whom shall I look for
+      help? Do not be angry. Indeed, it was the pain that spoke and not thy
+      slave.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I know, I know. We be two who were three. The greater need therefore that
+      we should be one.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were sitting on the roof as of custom. The night was a warm one in
+      early spring, and sheet-lightning was dancing on the horizon to a broken
+      tune played by far-off thunder. Ameera settled herself in Holden&rsquo;s arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The dry earth is lowing like a cow for the rain, and I&mdash;I am afraid.
+      It was not like this when we counted the stars. But thou lovest me as much
+      as before, though a bond is taken away? Answer!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I love more because a new bond has come out of the sorrow that we have
+      eaten together, and that thou knowest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yea, I knew,&rsquo; said Ameera in a very small whisper. &lsquo;But it is good to
+      hear thee say so, my life, who art so strong to help. I will be a child no
+      more, but a woman and an aid to thee. Listen! Give me my sitar and I will
+      sing bravely.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took the light silver-studded sitar and began a song of the great hero
+      Rajah Rasalu. The hand failed on the strings, the tune halted, checked,
+      and at a low note turned off to the poor little nursery-rhyme about the
+      wicked crow&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound.
+     Only a penny a pound, baba&mdash;only . . .
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then came the tears, and the piteous rebellion against fate till she
+      slept, moaning a little in her sleep, with the right arm thrown clear of
+      the body as though it protected something that was not there. It was after
+      this night that life became a little easier for Holden. The ever-present
+      pain of loss drove him into his work, and the work repaid him by filling
+      up his mind for nine or ten hours a day. Ameera sat alone in the house and
+      brooded, but grew happier when she understood that Holden was more at
+      ease, according to the custom of women. They touched happiness again, but
+      this time with caution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It was because we loved Tota that he died. The jealousy of God was upon
+      us,&rsquo; said Ameera. &lsquo;I have hung up a large black jar before our window to
+      turn the evil eye from us, and we must make no protestations of delight,
+      but go softly underneath the stars, lest God find us out. Is that not good
+      talk, worthless one?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had shifted the accent on the word that means &lsquo;beloved,&rsquo; in proof of
+      the sincerity of her purpose. But the kiss that followed the new
+      christening was a thing that any deity might have envied. They went about
+      henceforward saying, &lsquo;It is naught, it is naught;&rsquo; and hoping that all the
+      Powers heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Powers were busy on other things. They had allowed thirty million
+      people four years of plenty wherein men fed well and the crops were
+      certain, and the birth-rate rose year by year; the districts reported a
+      purely agricultural population varying from nine hundred to two thousand
+      to the square mile of the overburdened earth; and the Member for Lower
+      Tooting, wandering about India in pot-hat and frock-coat, talked largely
+      of the benefits of British rule and suggested as the one thing needful the
+      establishment of a duly qualified electoral system and a general bestowal
+      of the franchise. His long-suffering hosts smiled and made him welcome,
+      and when he paused to admire, with pretty picked words, the blossom of the
+      blood-red dhak-tree that had flowered untimely for a sign of what was
+      coming, they smiled more than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the Deputy Commissioner of Kot-Kumharsen, staying at the club for a
+      day, who lightly told a tale that made Holden&rsquo;s blood run cold as he
+      overheard the end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He won&rsquo;t bother any one any more. Never saw a man so astonished in my
+      life. By Jove, I thought he meant to ask a question in the House about it.
+      Fellow-passenger in his ship&mdash;dined next him&mdash;bowled over by
+      cholera and died in eighteen hours. You needn&rsquo;t laugh, you fellows. The
+      Member for Lower Tooting is awfully angry about it; but he&rsquo;s more scared.
+      I think he&rsquo;s going to take his enlightened self out of India.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;d give a good deal if he were knocked over. It might keep a few
+      vestrymen of his kidney to their own parish. But what&rsquo;s this about
+      cholera? It&rsquo;s full early for anything of that kind,&rsquo; said the warden of an
+      unprofitable salt-lick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t know,&rsquo; said the Deputy Commissioner reflectively. &lsquo;We&rsquo;ve got
+      locusts with us. There&rsquo;s sporadic cholera all along the north&mdash;at
+      least we&rsquo;re calling it sporadic for decency&rsquo;s sake. The spring crops are
+      short in five districts, and nobody seems to know where the rains are.
+      It&rsquo;s nearly March now. I don&rsquo;t want to scare anybody, but it seems to me
+      that Nature&rsquo;s going to audit her accounts with a big red pencil this
+      summer.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Just when I wanted to take leave, too!&rsquo; said a voice across the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There won&rsquo;t be much leave this year, but there ought to be a great deal
+      of promotion. I&rsquo;ve come in to persuade the Government to put my pet canal
+      on the list of famine-relief works. It&rsquo;s an ill-wind that blows no good. I
+      shall get that canal finished at last.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is it the old programme then,&rsquo; said Holden; &lsquo;famine, fever, and cholera?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh no. Only local scarcity and an unusual prevalence of seasonal
+      sickness. You&rsquo;ll find it all in the reports if you live till next year.
+      You&rsquo;re a lucky chap. YOU haven&rsquo;t got a wife to send out of harm&rsquo;s way. The
+      hill-stations ought to be full of women this year.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I think you&rsquo;re inclined to exaggerate the talk in the bazars&rsquo; said a
+      young civilian in the Secretariat. &lsquo;Now I have observed&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I daresay you have,&rsquo; said the Deputy Commissioner, &lsquo;but you&rsquo;ve a great
+      deal more to observe, my son. In the meantime, I wish to observe to you&mdash;&rsquo; 
+      and he drew him aside to discuss the construction of the canal that was so
+      dear to his heart. Holden went to his bungalow and began to understand
+      that he was not alone in the world, and also that he was afraid for the
+      sake of another,&mdash;which is the most soul-satisfying fear known to
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two months later, as the Deputy had foretold, Nature began to audit her
+      accounts with a red pencil. On the heels of the spring-reapings came a cry
+      for bread, and the Government, which had decreed that no man should die of
+      want, sent wheat. Then came the cholera from all four quarters of the
+      compass. It struck a pilgrim-gathering of half a million at a sacred
+      shrine. Many died at the feet of their god; the others broke and ran over
+      the face of the land carrying the pestilence with them. It smote a walled
+      city and killed two hundred a day. The people crowded the trains, hanging
+      on to the footboards and squatting on the roofs of the carriages, and the
+      cholera followed them, for at each station they dragged out the dead and
+      the dying. They died by the roadside, and the horses of the Englishmen
+      shied at the corpses in the grass. The rains did not come, and the earth
+      turned to iron lest man should escape death by hiding in her. The English
+      sent their wives away to the hills and went about their work, coming
+      forward as they were bidden to fill the gaps in the fighting-line. Holden,
+      sick with fear of losing his chiefest treasure on earth, had done his best
+      to persuade Ameera to go away with her mother to the Himalayas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why should I go?&rsquo; said she one evening on the roof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There is sickness, and people are dying, and all the white mem-log have
+      gone.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All of them?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All&mdash;unless perhaps there remain some old scald-head who vexes her
+      husband&rsquo;s heart by running risk of death.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay; who stays is my sister, and thou must not abuse her, for I will be a
+      scald-head too. I am glad all the bold mem-log are gone.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do I speak to a woman or a babe? Go to the hills and I will see to it
+      that thou goest like a queen&rsquo;s daughter. Think, child. In a red-lacquered
+      bullock-cart, veiled and curtained, with brass peacocks upon the pole and
+      red cloth hangings. I will send two orderlies for guard, and&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Peace! Thou art the babe in speaking thus. What use are those toys to me?
+      HE would have patted the bullocks and played with the housings. For his
+      sake, perhaps,&mdash;thou hast made me very English&mdash;I might have
+      gone. Now, I will not. Let the mem-log run.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Their husbands are sending them, beloved.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Very good talk. Since when hast thou been my husband to tell me what to
+      do? I have but borne thee a son. Thou art only all the desire of my soul
+      to me. How shall I depart when I know that if evil befall thee by the
+      breadth of so much as my littlest finger-nail&mdash;is that not small?&mdash;I
+      should be aware of it though I were in paradise. And here, this summer
+      thou mayest die&mdash;ai, janee, die! and in dying they might call to tend
+      thee a white woman, and she would rob me in the last of thy love!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But love is not born in a moment or on a death-bed!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What dost thou know of love, stoneheart? She would take thy thanks at
+      least and, by God and the Prophet and Beebee Miriam the mother of thy
+      Prophet, that I will never endure. My lord and my love, let there be no
+      more foolish talk of going away. Where thou art, I am. It is enough.&rsquo; She
+      put an arm round his neck and a hand on his mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are not many happinesses so complete as those that are snatched
+      under the shadow of the sword. They sat together and laughed, calling each
+      other openly by every pet name that could move the wrath of the gods. The
+      city below them was locked up in its own torments. Sulphur fires blazed in
+      the streets; the conches in the Hindu temples screamed and bellowed, for
+      the gods were inattentive in those days. There was a service in the great
+      Mahomedan shrine, and the call to prayer from the minarets was almost
+      unceasing. They heard the wailing in the houses of the dead, and once the
+      shriek of a mother who had lost a child and was calling for its return. In
+      the gray dawn they saw the dead borne out through the city gates, each
+      litter with its own little knot of mourners. Wherefore they kissed each
+      other and shivered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a red and heavy audit, for the land was very sick and needed a
+      little breathing-space ere the torrent of cheap life should flood it anew.
+      The children of immature fathers and undeveloped mothers made no
+      resistance. They were cowed and sat still, waiting till the sword should
+      be sheathed in November if it were so willed. There were gaps among the
+      English, but the gaps were filled. The work of superintending
+      famine-relief, cholera-sheds, medicine-distribution, and what little
+      sanitation was possible, went forward because it was so ordered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holden had been told to keep himself in readiness to move to replace the
+      next man who should fall. There were twelve hours in each day when he
+      could not see Ameera, and she might die in three. He was considering what
+      his pain would be if he could not see her for three months, or if she died
+      out of his sight. He was absolutely certain that her death would be
+      demanded&mdash;so certain that when he looked up from the telegram and saw
+      Pir Khan breathless in the doorway, he laughed aloud. &lsquo;And?&rsquo; said he,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;When there is a cry in the night and the spirit flutters into the throat,
+      who has a charm that will restore? Come swiftly, Heaven-born! It is the
+      black cholera.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holden galloped to his home. The sky was heavy with clouds, for the
+      long-deferred rains were near and the heat was stifling. Ameera&rsquo;s mother
+      met him in the courtyard, whimpering, &lsquo;She is dying. She is nursing
+      herself into death. She is all but dead. What shall I do, sahib?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ameera was lying in the room in which Tota had been born. She made no sign
+      when Holden entered, because the human soul is a very lonely thing and,
+      when it is getting ready to go away, hides itself in a misty borderland
+      where the living may not follow. The black cholera does its work quietly
+      and without explanation. Ameera was being thrust out of life as though the
+      Angel of Death had himself put his hand upon her. The quick breathing
+      seemed to show that she was either afraid or in pain, but neither eyes nor
+      mouth gave any answer to Holden&rsquo;s kisses. There was nothing to be said or
+      done. Holden could only wait and suffer. The first drops of the rain began
+      to fall on the roof, and he could hear shouts of joy in the parched city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The soul came back a little and the lips moved. Holden bent down to
+      listen. &lsquo;Keep nothing of mine,&rsquo; said Ameera. &lsquo;Take no hair from my head.
+      SHE would make thee burn it later on. That flame I should feel. Lower!
+      Stoop lower! Remember only that I was thine and bore thee a son. Though
+      thou wed a white woman to-morrow, the pleasure of receiving in thy arms
+      thy first son is taken from thee for ever. Remember me when thy son is
+      born&mdash;the one that shall carry thy name before all men. His
+      misfortunes be on my head. I bear witness&mdash;I bear witness&rsquo;&mdash;the
+      lips were forming the words on his ear&mdash;&lsquo;that there is no God but&mdash;thee,
+      beloved!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she died. Holden sat still, and all thought was taken from him,&mdash;till
+      he heard Ameera&rsquo;s mother lift the curtain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is she dead, sahib?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She is dead.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then I will mourn, and afterwards take an inventory of the furniture in
+      this house. For that will be mine. The sahib does not mean to resume it?
+      It is so little, so very little, sahib, and I am an old woman. I would
+      like to lie softly.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For the mercy of God be silent a while. Go out and mourn where I cannot
+      hear.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sahib, she will be buried in four hours.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I know the custom. I shall go ere she is taken away. That matter is in
+      thy hands. Look to it, that the bed on which&mdash;on which she lies&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Aha! That beautiful red-lacquered bed. I have long desired&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That the bed is left here untouched for my disposal. All else in the
+      house is thine. Hire a cart, take everything, go hence, and before sunrise
+      let there be nothing in this house but that which I have ordered thee to
+      respect.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am an old woman. I would stay at least for the days of mourning, and
+      the rains have just broken. Whither shall I go?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is that to me? My order is that there is a going. The house-gear is
+      worth a thousand rupees and my orderly shall bring thee a hundred rupees
+      to-night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That is very little. Think of the cart-hire.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It shall be nothing unless thou goest, and with speed. O woman, get hence
+      and leave me with my dead!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother shuffled down the staircase, and in her anxiety to take stock
+      of the house-fittings forgot to mourn. Holden stayed by Ameera&rsquo;s side and
+      the rain roared on the roof. He could not think connectedly by reason of
+      the noise, though he made many attempts to do so. Then four sheeted ghosts
+      glided dripping into the room and stared at him through their veils. They
+      were the washers of the dead. Holden left the room and went out to his
+      horse. He had come in a dead, stifling calm through ankle-deep dust. He
+      found the courtyard a rain-lashed pond alive with frogs; a torrent of
+      yellow water ran under the gate, and a roaring wind drove the bolts of the
+      rain like buckshot against the mud-walls. Pir Khan was shivering in his
+      little hut by the gate, and the horse was stamping uneasily in the water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have been told the sahib&rsquo;s order,&rsquo; said Pir Khan. &lsquo;It is well. This
+      house is now desolate. I go also, for my monkey-face would be a reminder
+      of that which has been. Concerning the bed, I will bring that to thy house
+      yonder in the morning; but remember, sahib, it will be to thee a knife
+      turning in a green wound. I go upon a pilgrimage, and I will take no
+      money. I have grown fat in the protection of the Presence whose sorrow is
+      my sorrow. For the last time I hold his stirrup.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He touched Holden&rsquo;s foot with both hands and the horse sprang out into the
+      road, where the creaking bamboos were whipping the sky and all the frogs
+      were chuckling. Holden could not see for the rain in his face. He put his
+      hands before his eyes and muttered&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh you brute! You utter brute!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The news of his trouble was already in his bungalow. He read the knowledge
+      in his butler&rsquo;s eyes when Ahmed Khan brought in food, and for the first
+      and last time in his life laid a hand upon his master&rsquo;s shoulder, saying,
+      &lsquo;Eat, sahib, eat. Meat is good against sorrow. I also have known. Moreover
+      the shadows come and go, sahib; the shadows come and go. These be curried
+      eggs.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holden could neither eat nor sleep. The heavens sent down eight inches of
+      rain in that night and washed the earth clean. The waters tore down walls,
+      broke roads, and scoured open the shallow graves on the Mahomedan
+      burying-ground. All next day it rained, and Holden sat still in his house
+      considering his sorrow. On the morning of the third day he received a
+      telegram which said only, &lsquo;Ricketts, Myndonie. Dying. Holden relieve.
+      Immediate.&rsquo; Then he thought that before he departed he would look at the
+      house wherein he had been master and lord. There was a break in the
+      weather, and the rank earth steamed with vapour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found that the rains had torn down the mud pillars of the gateway, and
+      the heavy wooden gate that had guarded his life hung lazily from one
+      hinge. There was grass three inches high in the courtyard; Pir Khan&rsquo;s
+      lodge was empty, and the sodden thatch sagged between the beams. A gray
+      squirrel was in possession of the verandah, as if the house had been
+      untenanted for thirty years instead of three days. Ameera&rsquo;s mother had
+      removed everything except some mildewed matting. The tick-tick of the
+      little scorpions as they hurried across the floor was the only sound in
+      the house. Ameera&rsquo;s room and the other one where Tota had lived were heavy
+      with mildew; and the narrow staircase leading to the roof was streaked and
+      stained with rain-borne mud. Holden saw all these things, and came out
+      again to meet in the road Durga Dass, his landlord,&mdash;portly, affable,
+      clothed in white muslin, and driving a Cee-spring buggy. He was
+      overlooking his property to see how the roofs stood the stress of the
+      first rains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have heard,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;you will not take this place any more, sahib?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What are you going to do with it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Perhaps I shall let it again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then I will keep it on while I am away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Durga Dass was silent for some time. &lsquo;You shall not take it on, sahib,&rsquo; he
+      said. &lsquo;When I was a young man I also&mdash;, but to-day I am a member of
+      the Municipality. Ho! Ho! No. When the birds have gone what need to keep
+      the nest? I will have it pulled down&mdash;the timber will sell for
+      something always. It shall be pulled down, and the Municipality shall make
+      a road across, as they desire, from the burning-ghat to the city wall, so
+      that no man may say where this house stood.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ The sky is lead and our faces are red,
+ And the gates of Hell are opened and riven,
+ And the winds of Hell are loosened and driven,
+ And the dust flies up in the face of Heaven,
+ And the clouds come down in a fiery sheet,
+ Heavy to raise and hard to be borne.
+ And the soul of man is turned from his meat,
+ Turned from the trifles for which he has striven
+ Sick in his body, and heavy hearted,
+ And his soul flies up like the dust in the sheet
+ Breaks from his flesh and is gone and departed,
+ As the blasts they blow on the cholera-horn.
+                            HIMALAYAN.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Four men, each entitled to &lsquo;life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,&rsquo; 
+      sat at a table playing whist. The thermometer marked&mdash;for them&mdash;one
+      hundred and one degrees of heat. The room was darkened till it was only
+      just possible to distinguish the pips of the cards and the very white
+      faces of the players. A tattered, rotten punkah of whitewashed calico was
+      puddling the hot air and whining dolefully at each stroke. Outside lay
+      gloom of a November day in London. There was neither sky, sun, nor
+      horizon,&mdash;nothing but a brown purple haze of heat. It was as though
+      the earth were dying of apoplexy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From time to time clouds of tawny dust rose from the ground without wind
+      or warning, flung themselves tablecloth-wise among the tops of the parched
+      trees, and came down again. Then a whirling dust-devil would scutter
+      across the plain for a couple of miles, break, and fall outward, though
+      there was nothing to check its flight save a long low line of piled
+      railway-sleepers white with the dust, a cluster of huts made of mud,
+      condemned rails, and canvas, and the one squat four-roomed bungalow that
+      belonged to the assistant engineer in charge of a section of the Gaudhari
+      State line then under construction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The four, stripped to the thinnest of sleeping-suits, played whist
+      crossly, with wranglings as to leads and returns. It was not the best kind
+      of whist, but they had taken some trouble to arrive at it. Mottram of the
+      Indian Survey had ridden thirty and railed one hundred miles from his
+      lonely post in the desert since the night before; Lowndes of the Civil
+      Service, on special duty in the political department, had come as far to
+      escape for an instant the miserable intrigues of an impoverished native
+      State whose king alternately fawned and blustered for more money from the
+      pitiful revenues contributed by hard-wrung peasants and despairing
+      camel-breeders; Spurstow, the doctor of the line, had left a
+      cholera-stricken camp of coolies to look after itself for forty-eight
+      hours while he associated with white men once more. Hummil, the assistant
+      engineer, was the host. He stood fast and received his friends thus every
+      Sunday if they could come in. When one of them failed to appear, he would
+      send a telegram to his last address, in order that he might know whether
+      the defaulter were dead or alive. There are very many places in the East
+      where it is not good or kind to let your acquaintances drop out of sight
+      even for one short week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The players were not conscious of any special regard for each other. They
+      squabbled whenever they met; but they ardently desired to meet, as men
+      without water desire to drink. They were lonely folk who understood the
+      dread meaning of loneliness. They were all under thirty years of age,&mdash;which
+      is too soon for any man to possess that knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Pilsener?&rsquo; said Spurstow, after the second rubber, mopping his forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Beer&rsquo;s out, I&rsquo;m sorry to say, and there&rsquo;s hardly enough soda-water for
+      to-night,&rsquo; said Hummil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What filthy bad management!&rsquo; Spurstow snarled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Can&rsquo;t help it. I&rsquo;ve written and wired; but the trains don&rsquo;t come through
+      regularly yet. Last week the ice ran out,&mdash;as Lowndes knows.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Glad I didn&rsquo;t come. I could ha&rsquo; sent you some if I had known, though.
+      Phew! it&rsquo;s too hot to go on playing bumblepuppy.&rsquo; This with a savage scowl
+      at Lowndes, who only laughed. He was a hardened offender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mottram rose from the table and looked out of a chink in the shutters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What a sweet day!&rsquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The company yawned all together and betook themselves to an aimless
+      investigation of all Hummil&rsquo;s possessions,&mdash;guns, tattered novels,
+      saddlery, spurs, and the like. They had fingered them a score of times
+      before, but there was really nothing else to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Got anything fresh?&rsquo; said Lowndes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Last week&rsquo;s Gazette of India, and a cutting from a home paper. My father
+      sent it out. It&rsquo;s rather amusing.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;One of those vestrymen that call &lsquo;emselves M.P.&lsquo;s again, is it?&rsquo; said
+      Spurstow, who read his newspapers when he could get them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes. Listen to this. It&rsquo;s to your address, Lowndes. The man was making a
+      speech to his constituents, and he piled it on. Here&rsquo;s a sample: &ldquo;And I
+      assert unhesitatingly that the Civil Service in India is the preserve&mdash;the
+      pet preserve&mdash;of the aristocracy of England. What does the democracy&mdash;what
+      do the masses&mdash;get from that country, which we have step by step
+      fraudulently annexed? I answer, nothing whatever. It is farmed with a
+      single eye to their own interests by the scions of the aristocracy. They
+      take good care to maintain their lavish scale of incomes, to avoid or
+      stifle any inquiries into the nature and conduct of their administration,
+      while they themselves force the unhappy peasant to pay with the sweat of
+      his brow for all the luxuries in which they are lapped.&rdquo;&rsquo; Hummil waved the
+      cutting above his head. &lsquo;&rsquo;Ear! &lsquo;ear!&rsquo; said his audience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Lowndes, meditatively: &lsquo;I&rsquo;d give&mdash;I&rsquo;d give three months&rsquo; pay to
+      have that gentleman spend one month with me and see how the free and
+      independent native prince works things. Old Timbersides&rsquo;&mdash;this was
+      his flippant title for an honoured and decorated feudatory prince&mdash;&lsquo;has
+      been wearing my life out this week past for money. By Jove, his latest
+      performance was to send me one of his women as a bribe!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good for you! Did you accept it?&rsquo; said Mottram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No. I rather wish I had, now. She was a pretty little person, and she
+      yarned away to me about the horrible destitution among the king&rsquo;s
+      women-folk. The darlings haven&rsquo;t had any new clothes for nearly a month,
+      and the old man wants to buy a new drag from Calcutta,&mdash;solid silver
+      railings and silver lamps, and trifles of that kind. I&rsquo;ve tried to make
+      him understand that he has played the deuce with the revenues for the last
+      twenty years and must go slow. He can&rsquo;t see it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But he has the ancestral treasure-vaults to draw on. There must be three
+      millions at least in jewels and coin under his palace,&rsquo; said Hummil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Catch a native king disturbing the family treasure! The priests forbid it
+      except as the last resort. Old Timbersides has added something like a
+      quarter of a million to the deposit in his reign.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where the mischief does it all come from?&rsquo; said Mottram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The country. The state of the people is enough to make you sick. I&rsquo;ve
+      known the tax-men wait by a milch-camel till the foal was born and then
+      hurry off the mother for arrears. And what can I do? I can&rsquo;t get the court
+      clerks to give me any accounts; I can&rsquo;t raise anything more than a fat
+      smile from the commander-in-chief when I find out the troops are three
+      months in arrears; and old Timbersides begins to weep when I speak to him.
+      He has taken to the King&rsquo;s Peg heavily,&mdash;liqueur brandy for whisky,
+      and Heidsieck for soda-water.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s what the Rao of Jubela took to. Even a native can&rsquo;t last long at
+      that,&rsquo; said Spurstow. &lsquo;He&rsquo;ll go out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And a good thing, too. Then I suppose we&rsquo;ll have a council of regency,
+      and a tutor for the young prince, and hand him back his kingdom with ten
+      years&rsquo; accumulations.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Whereupon that young prince, having been taught all the vices of the
+      English, will play ducks and drakes with the money and undo ten years&rsquo; 
+      work in eighteen months. I&rsquo;ve seen that business before,&rsquo; said Spurstow.
+      &lsquo;I should tackle the king with a light hand, if I were you, Lowndes.
+      They&rsquo;ll hate you quite enough under any circumstances.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s all very well. The man who looks on can talk about the light hand;
+      but you can&rsquo;t clean a pig-stye with a pen dipped in rose-water. I know my
+      risks; but nothing has happened yet. My servant&rsquo;s an old Pathan, and he
+      cooks for me. They are hardly likely to bribe him, and I don&rsquo;t accept food
+      from my true friends, as they call themselves. Oh, but it&rsquo;s weary work!
+      I&rsquo;d sooner be with you, Spurstow. There&rsquo;s shooting near your camp.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Would you? I don&rsquo;t think it. About fifteen deaths a day don&rsquo;t incite a
+      man to shoot anything but himself. And the worst of it is that the poor
+      devils look at you as though you ought to save them. Lord knows, I&rsquo;ve
+      tried everything. My last attempt was empirical, but it pulled an old man
+      through. He was brought to me apparently past hope, and I gave him gin and
+      Worcester sauce with cayenne. It cured him; but I don&rsquo;t recommend it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How do the cases run generally?&rsquo; said Hummil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Very simply indeed. Chlorodyne, opium pill, chlorodyne, collapse, nitre,
+      bricks to the feet, and then&mdash;the burning-ghat. The last seems to be
+      the only thing that stops the trouble. It&rsquo;s black cholera, you know. Poor
+      devils! But, I will say, little Bunsee Lal, my apothecary, works like a
+      demon. I&rsquo;ve recommended him for promotion if he comes through it all
+      alive.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And what are your chances, old man?&rsquo; said Mottram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t know; don&rsquo;t care much; but I&rsquo;ve sent the letter in. What are you
+      doing with yourself generally?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sitting under a table in the tent and spitting on the sextant to keep it
+      cool,&rsquo; said the man of the survey. &lsquo;Washing my eyes to avoid ophthalmia,
+      which I shall certainly get, and trying to make a sub-surveyor understand
+      that an error of five degrees in an angle isn&rsquo;t quite so small as it
+      looks. I&rsquo;m altogether alone, y&rsquo; know, and shall be till the end of the hot
+      weather.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hummil&rsquo;s the lucky man,&rsquo; said Lowndes, flinging himself into a long
+      chair. &lsquo;He has an actual roof&mdash;torn as to the ceiling-cloth, but
+      still a roof&mdash;over his head. He sees one train daily. He can get beer
+      and soda-water and ice &lsquo;em when God is good. He has books, pictures,&mdash;-they
+      were torn from the Graphic,&mdash;&lsquo;and the society of the excellent
+      sub-contractor Jevins, besides the pleasure of receiving us weekly.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hummil smiled grimly. &lsquo;Yes, I&rsquo;m the lucky man, I suppose. Jevins is
+      luckier.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How? Not&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes. Went out. Last Monday.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By his own hand?&rsquo; said Spurstow quickly, hinting the suspicion that was
+      in everybody&rsquo;s mind. There was no cholera near Hummil&rsquo;s section. Even
+      fever gives a man at least a week&rsquo;s grace, and sudden death generally
+      implied self-slaughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I judge no man this weather,&rsquo; said Hummil. &lsquo;He had a touch of the sun, I
+      fancy; for last week, after you fellows had left, he came into the
+      verandah and told me that he was going home to see his wife, in Market
+      Street, Liverpool, that evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I got the apothecary in to look at him, and we tried to make him lie
+      down. After an hour or two he rubbed his eyes and said he believed he had
+      had a fit,&mdash;hoped he hadn&rsquo;t said anything rude. Jevins had a great
+      idea of bettering himself socially. He was very like Chucks in his
+      language.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then he went to his own bungalow and began cleaning a rifle. He told the
+      servant that he was going to shoot buck in the morning. Naturally he
+      fumbled with the trigger, and shot himself through the head&mdash;accidentally.
+      The apothecary sent in a report to my chief, and Jevins is buried
+      somewhere out there. I&rsquo;d have wired to you, Spurstow, if you could have
+      done anything.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;re a queer chap,&rsquo; said Mottram. &lsquo;If you&rsquo;d killed the man yourself you
+      couldn&rsquo;t have been more quiet about the business.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good Lord! what does it matter?&rsquo; said Hummil calmly. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve got to do a
+      lot of his overseeing work in addition to my own. I&rsquo;m the only person that
+      suffers. Jevins is out of it,&mdash;by pure accident, of course, but out
+      of it. The apothecary was going to write a long screed on suicide. Trust a
+      babu to drivel when he gets the chance.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you let it go in as suicide?&rsquo; said Lowndes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No direct proof. A man hasn&rsquo;t many privileges in this country, but he
+      might at least be allowed to mishandle his own rifle. Besides, some day I
+      may need a man to smother up an accident to myself. Live and let live. Die
+      and let die.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You take a pill,&rsquo; said Spurstow, who had been watching Hummil&rsquo;s white
+      face narrowly. &lsquo;Take a pill, and don&rsquo;t be an ass. That sort of talk is
+      skittles. Anyhow, suicide is shirking your work. If I were Job ten times
+      over, I should be so interested in what was going to happen next that I&rsquo;d
+      stay on and watch.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! I&rsquo;ve lost that curiosity,&rsquo; said Hummil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Liver out of order?&rsquo; said Lowndes feelingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No. Can&rsquo;t sleep. That&rsquo;s worse.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By Jove, it is!&rsquo; said Mottram. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m that way every now and then, and the
+      fit has to wear itself out. What do you take for it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nothing. What&rsquo;s the use? I haven&rsquo;t had ten minutes&rsquo; sleep since Friday
+      morning.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Poor chap! Spurstow, you ought to attend to this,&rsquo; said Mottram. &lsquo;Now you
+      mention it, your eyes are rather gummy and swollen.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spurstow, still watching Hummil, laughed lightly. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll patch him up,
+      later on. Is it too hot, do you think, to go for a ride?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where to?&rsquo; said Lowndes wearily. &lsquo;We shall have to go away at eight, and
+      there&rsquo;ll be riding enough for us then. I hate a horse, when I have to use
+      him as a necessity. Oh, heavens! what is there to do?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Begin whist again, at chick points [&lsquo;a chick&rsquo; is supposed to be eight
+      shillings] and a gold mohur on the rub,&rsquo; said Spurstow promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Poker. A month&rsquo;s pay all round for the pool,&mdash;no limit,&mdash;and
+      fifty-rupee raises. Somebody would be broken before we got up,&rsquo; said
+      Lowndes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Can&rsquo;t say that it would give me any pleasure to break any man in this
+      company,&rsquo; said Mottram. &lsquo;There isn&rsquo;t enough excitement in it, and it&rsquo;s
+      foolish.&rsquo; He crossed over to the worn and battered little camp-piano,&mdash;wreckage
+      of a married household that had once held the bungalow,&mdash;and opened
+      the case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s used up long ago,&rsquo; said Hummil. &lsquo;The servants have picked it to
+      pieces.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The piano was indeed hopelessly out of order, but Mottram managed to bring
+      the rebellious notes into a sort of agreement, and there rose from the
+      ragged keyboard something that might once have been the ghost of a popular
+      music-hall song. The men in the long chairs turned with evident interest
+      as Mottram banged the more lustily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s good!&rsquo; said Lowndes. &lsquo;By Jove! the last time I heard that song was
+      in &lsquo;79, or thereabouts, just before I came out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; said Spurstow with pride,&rsquo; I was home in &lsquo;80.&rsquo; And he mentioned a
+      song of the streets popular at that date.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mottram executed it roughly. Lowndes criticised and volunteered
+      emendations. Mottram dashed into another ditty, not of the music-hall
+      character, and made as if to rise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sit down,&rsquo; said Hummil. &lsquo;I didn&rsquo;t know that you had any music in your
+      composition. Go on playing until you can&rsquo;t think of anything more. I&rsquo;ll
+      have that piano tuned up before you come again. Play something festive.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very simple indeed were the tunes to which Mottram&rsquo;s art and the
+      limitations of the piano could give effect, but the men listened with
+      pleasure, and in the pauses talked all together of what they had seen or
+      heard when they were last at home. A dense dust-storm sprung up outside,
+      and swept roaring over the house, enveloping it in the choking darkness of
+      midnight, but Mottram continued unheeding, and the crazy tinkle reached
+      the ears of the listeners above the flapping of the tattered
+      ceiling-cloth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the silence after the storm he glided from the more directly personal
+      songs of Scotland, half humming them as he played, into the Evening Hymn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sunday,&rsquo; said he, nodding his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go on. Don&rsquo;t apologise for it,&rsquo; said Spurstow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hummil laughed long and riotously. &lsquo;Play it, by all means. You&rsquo;re full of
+      surprises to-day. I didn&rsquo;t know you had such a gift of finished sarcasm.
+      How does that thing go?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mottram took up the tune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Too slow by half. You miss the note of gratitude,&rsquo; said Hummil. &lsquo;It ought
+      to go to the &ldquo;Grasshopper&rsquo;s Polka,&rdquo;&mdash;this way.&rsquo; And he chanted,
+      prestissimo,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Glory to thee, my God, this night. For all the blessings of the light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That shows we really feel our blessings. How does it go on?&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If in the night I sleepless lie, My soul with sacred thoughts supply; May
+      no ill dreams disturb my rest.&rsquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quicker, Mottram!&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Or powers of darkness me molest!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bah! what an old hypocrite you are!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t be an ass,&rsquo; said Lowndes. &lsquo;You are at full liberty to make fun of
+      anything else you like, but leave that hymn alone. It&rsquo;s associated in my
+      mind with the most sacred recollections&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Summer evenings in the country,&mdash;stained-glass window,&mdash;light
+      going out, and you and she jamming your heads together over one
+      hymn-book,&rsquo; said Mottram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, and a fat old cockchafer hitting you in the eye when you walked
+      home. Smell of hay, and a moon as big as a bandbox sitting on the top of a
+      haycock; bats,&mdash;roses,&mdash;milk and midges,&rsquo; said Lowndes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Also mothers. I can just recollect my mother singing me to sleep with
+      that when I was a little chap,&rsquo; said Spurstow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The darkness had fallen on the room. They could hear Hummil squirming in
+      his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Consequently,&rsquo; said he testily, &lsquo;you sing it when you are seven fathom
+      deep in Hell! It&rsquo;s an insult to the intelligence of the Deity to pretend
+      we&rsquo;re anything but tortured rebels.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Take TWO pills,&rsquo; said Spurstow; &lsquo;that&rsquo;s tortured liver.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The usually placid Hummil is in a vile bad temper. I&rsquo;m sorry for his
+      coolies to-morrow,&rsquo; said Lowndes, as the servants brought in the lights
+      and prepared the table for dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they were settling into their places about the miserable goat-chops,
+      and the smoked tapioca pudding, Spurstow took occasion to whisper to
+      Mottram, &lsquo;Well done, David!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look after Saul, then,&rsquo; was the reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What are you two whispering about?&rsquo; said Hummil suspiciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Only saying that you are a damned poor host. This fowl can&rsquo;t be cut,&rsquo; 
+      returned Spurstow with a sweet smile. &lsquo;Call this a dinner?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t help it. You don&rsquo;t expect a banquet, do you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Throughout that meal Hummil contrived laboriously to insult directly and
+      pointedly all his guests in succession, and at each insult Spurstow kicked
+      the aggrieved persons under the table; but he dared not exchange a glance
+      of intelligence with either of them. Hummil&rsquo;s face was white and pinched,
+      while his eyes were unnaturally large. No man dreamed for a moment of
+      resenting his savage personalities, but as soon as the meal was over they
+      made haste to get away. &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t go. You&rsquo;re just getting amusing, you
+      fellows. I hope I haven&rsquo;t said anything that annoyed you. You&rsquo;re such
+      touchy devils.&rsquo; Then, changing the note into one of almost abject
+      entreaty, Hummil added, &lsquo;I say, you surely aren&rsquo;t going?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;In the language of the blessed Jorrocks, where I dines I sleeps,&rsquo; said
+      Spurstow. &lsquo;I want to have a look at your coolies to-morrow, if you don&rsquo;t
+      mind. You can give me a place to lie down in, I suppose?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The others pleaded the urgency of their several duties next day, and,
+      saddling up, departed together, Hummil begging them to come next Sunday.
+      As they jogged off, Lowndes unbosomed himself to Mottram&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;... And I never felt so like kicking a man at his own table in my life.
+      He said I cheated at whist, and reminded me I was in debt! &lsquo;Told you you
+      were as good as a liar to your face! You aren&rsquo;t half indignant enough over
+      it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Not I,&rsquo; said Mottram. &lsquo;Poor devil! Did you ever know old Hummy behave
+      like that before or within a hundred miles of it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s no excuse. Spurstow was hacking my shin all the time, so I kept a
+      hand on myself. Else I should have&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, you wouldn&rsquo;t. You&rsquo;d have done as Hummy did about Jevins; judge no man
+      this weather. By Jove! the buckle of my bridle is hot in my hand! Trot out
+      a bit, and &lsquo;ware rat-holes.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten minutes&rsquo; trotting jerked out of Lowndes one very sage remark when he
+      pulled up, sweating from every pore&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Good thing Spurstow&rsquo;s with him to-night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ye-es. Good man, Spurstow. Our roads turn here. See you again next
+      Sunday, if the sun doesn&rsquo;t bowl me over.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;S&rsquo;pose so, unless old Timbersides&rsquo; finance minister manages to dress some
+      of my food. Good-night, and&mdash;God bless you!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s wrong now?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, nothing.&rsquo; Lowndes gathered up his whip, and, as he flicked Mottram&rsquo;s
+      mare on the flank, added, &lsquo;You&rsquo;re not a bad little chap,&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      all.&rsquo; And the mare bolted half a mile across the sand, on the word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the assistant engineer&rsquo;s bungalow Spurstow and Hummil smoked the pipe
+      of silence together, each narrowly watching the other. The capacity of a
+      bachelor&rsquo;s establishment is as elastic as its arrangements are simple. A
+      servant cleared away the dining-room table, brought in a couple of rude
+      native bedsteads made of tape strung on a light wood frame, flung a square
+      of cool Calcutta matting over each, set them side by side, pinned two
+      towels to the punkah so that their fringes should just sweep clear of the
+      sleepers&rsquo; nose and mouth, and announced that the couches were ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men flung themselves down, ordering the punkah-coolies by all the
+      powers of Hell to pull. Every door and window was shut, for the outside
+      air was that of an oven. The atmosphere within was only 104 degrees, as
+      the thermometer bore witness, and heavy with the foul smell of
+      badly-trimmed kerosene lamps; and this stench, combined with that of
+      native tobacco, baked brick, and dried earth, sends the heart of many a
+      strong man down to his boots, for it is the smell of the Great Indian
+      Empire when she turns herself for six months into a house of torment.
+      Spurstow packed his pillows craftily so that he reclined rather than lay,
+      his head at a safe elevation above his feet. It is not good to sleep on a
+      low pillow in the hot weather if you happen to be of thick-necked build,
+      for you may pass with lively snores and gugglings from natural sleep into
+      the deep slumber of heat-apoplexy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Pack your pillows,&rsquo; said the doctor sharply, as he saw Hummil preparing
+      to lie down at full length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night-light was trimmed; the shadow of the punkah wavered across the
+      room, and the &lsquo;flick&rsquo; of the punkah-towel and the soft whine of the rope
+      through the wall-hole followed it. Then the punkah flagged, almost ceased.
+      The sweat poured from Spurstow&rsquo;s brow. Should he go out and harangue the
+      coolie? It started forward again with a savage jerk, and a pin came out of
+      the towels. When this was replaced, a tomtom in the coolie-lines began to
+      beat with the steady throb of a swollen artery inside some brain-fevered
+      skull. Spurstow turned on his side and swore gently. There was no movement
+      on Hummil&rsquo;s part. The man had composed himself as rigidly as a corpse, his
+      hands clinched at his sides. The respiration was too hurried for any
+      suspicion of sleep. Spurstow looked at the set face. The jaws were
+      clinched, and there was a pucker round the quivering eyelids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He&rsquo;s holding himself as tightly as ever he can,&rsquo; thought Spurstow. &lsquo;What
+      in the world is the matter with him?&mdash;Hummil!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; in a thick constrained voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Can&rsquo;t you get to sleep?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Head hot? &lsquo;Throat feeling bulgy? or how?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Neither, thanks. I don&rsquo;t sleep much, you know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Feel pretty bad?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Pretty bad, thanks. There is a tomtom outside, isn&rsquo;t there? I thought it
+      was my head at first.... Oh, Spurstow, for pity&rsquo;s sake give me something
+      that will put me asleep,&mdash;sound asleep,&mdash;if it&rsquo;s only for six
+      hours!&rsquo; He sprang up, trembling from head to foot. &lsquo;I haven&rsquo;t been able to
+      sleep naturally for days, and I can&rsquo;t stand it!&mdash;I can&rsquo;t stand it!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Poor old chap!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s no use. Give me something to make me sleep. I tell you I&rsquo;m nearly
+      mad. I don&rsquo;t know what I say half my time. For three weeks I&rsquo;ve had to
+      think and spell out every word that has come through my lips before I
+      dared say it. Isn&rsquo;t that enough to drive a man mad? I can&rsquo;t see things
+      correctly now, and I&rsquo;ve lost my sense of touch. My skin aches&mdash;my
+      skin aches! Make me sleep. Oh, Spurstow, for the love of God make me sleep
+      sound. It isn&rsquo;t enough merely to let me dream. Let me sleep!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All right, old man, all right. Go slow; you aren&rsquo;t half as bad as you
+      think.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flood-gates of reserve once broken, Hummil was clinging to him like a
+      frightened child. &lsquo;You&rsquo;re pinching my arm to pieces.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll break your neck if you don&rsquo;t do something for me. No, I didn&rsquo;t mean
+      that. Don&rsquo;t be angry, old fellow.&rsquo; He wiped the sweat off himself as he
+      fought to regain composure. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m a bit restless and off my oats, and
+      perhaps you could recommend some sort of sleeping mixture,&mdash;bromide
+      of potassium.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bromide of skittles! Why didn&rsquo;t you tell me this before? Let go of my
+      arm, and I&rsquo;ll see if there&rsquo;s anything in my cigarette-case to suit your
+      complaint.&rsquo; Spurstow hunted among his day-clothes, turned up the lamp,
+      opened a little silver cigarette-case, and advanced on the expectant
+      Hummil with the daintiest of fairy squirts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The last appeal of civilisation,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;and a thing I hate to use.
+      Hold out your arm. Well, your sleeplessness hasn&rsquo;t ruined your muscle; and
+      what a thick hide it is! Might as well inject a buffalo subcutaneously.
+      Now in a few minutes the morphia will begin working. Lie down and wait.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A smile of unalloyed and idiotic delight began to creep over Hummil&rsquo;s
+      face. &lsquo;I think,&rsquo; he whispered,&mdash;&lsquo;I think I&rsquo;m going off now. Gad! it&rsquo;s
+      positively heavenly! Spurstow, you must give me that case to keep; you&mdash;&rsquo; 
+      The voice ceased as the head fell back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Not for a good deal,&rsquo; said Spurstow to the unconscious form. &lsquo;And now, my
+      friend, sleeplessness of your kind being very apt to relax the moral fibre
+      in little matters of life and death, I&rsquo;ll just take the liberty of spiking
+      your guns.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paddled into Hummil&rsquo;s saddle-room in his bare feet and uncased a
+      twelve-bore rifle, an express, and a revolver. Of the first he unscrewed
+      the nipples and hid them in the bottom of a saddlery-case; of the second
+      he abstracted the lever, kicking it behind a big wardrobe. The third he
+      merely opened, and knocked the doll-head bolt of the grip up with the heel
+      of a riding-boot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s settled,&rsquo; he said, as he shook the sweat off his hands. &lsquo;These
+      little precautions will at least give you time to turn. You have too much
+      sympathy with gun-room accidents.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as he rose from his knees, the thick muffled voice of Hummil cried in
+      the doorway, &lsquo;You fool!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such tones they use who speak in the lucid intervals of delirium to their
+      friends a little before they die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spurstow started, dropping the pistol. Hummil stood in the doorway,
+      rocking with helpless laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That was awf&rsquo;ly good of you, I&rsquo;m sure,&rsquo; he said, very slowly, feeling for
+      his words. &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t intend to go out by my own hand at present. I say,
+      Spurstow, that stuff won&rsquo;t work. What shall I do? What shall I do?&rsquo; And
+      panic terror stood in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Lie down and give it a chance. Lie down at once.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I daren&rsquo;t. It will only take me half-way again, and I shan&rsquo;t be able to
+      get away this time. Do you know it was all I could do to come out just
+      now? Generally I am as quick as lightning; but you had clogged my feet. I
+      was nearly caught.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh yes, I understand. Go and lie down.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, it isn&rsquo;t delirium; but it was an awfully mean trick to play on me. Do
+      you know I might have died?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a sponge rubs a slate clean, so some power unknown to Spurstow had
+      wiped out of Hummil&rsquo;s face all that stamped it for the face of a man, and
+      he stood at the doorway in the expression of his lost innocence. He had
+      slept back into terrified childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is he going to die on the spot?&rsquo; thought Spurstow. Then, aloud, &lsquo;All
+      right, my son. Come back to bed, and tell me all about it. You couldn&rsquo;t
+      sleep; but what was all the rest of the nonsense?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A place,&mdash;a place down there,&rsquo; said Hummil, with simple sincerity.
+      The drug was acting on him by waves, and he was flung from the fear of a
+      strong man to the fright of a child as his nerves gathered sense or were
+      dulled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good God! I&rsquo;ve been afraid of it for months past, Spurstow. It has made
+      every night hell to me; and yet I&rsquo;m not conscious of having done anything
+      wrong.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Be still, and I&rsquo;ll give you another dose. We&rsquo;ll stop your nightmares, you
+      unutterable idiot!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, but you must give me so much that I can&rsquo;t get away. You must make me
+      quite sleepy,&mdash;not just a little sleepy. It&rsquo;s so hard to run then.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I know it; I know it. I&rsquo;ve felt it myself. The symptoms are exactly as
+      you describe.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t laugh at me, confound you! Before this awful sleeplessness came
+      to me I&rsquo;ve tried to rest on my elbow and put a spur in the bed to sting me
+      when I fell back. Look!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By Jove! the man has been rowelled like a horse! Ridden by the nightmare
+      with a vengeance! And we all thought him sensible enough. Heaven send us
+      understanding! You like to talk, don&rsquo;t you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, sometimes. Not when I&rsquo;m frightened. THEN I want to run. Don&rsquo;t you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Always. Before I give you your second dose try to tell me exactly what
+      your trouble is.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hummil spoke in broken whispers for nearly ten minutes, whilst Spurstow
+      looked into the pupils of his eyes and passed his hand before them once or
+      twice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of the narrative the silver cigarette-case was produced, and
+      the last words that Hummil said as he fell back for the second time were,
+      &lsquo;Put me quite to sleep; for if I&rsquo;m caught I die,&mdash;I die!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, yes; we all do that sooner or later,&mdash;thank Heaven who has set
+      a term to our miseries,&rsquo; said Spurstow, settling the cushions under the
+      head. &lsquo;It occurs to me that unless I drink something I shall go out before
+      my time. I&rsquo;ve stopped sweating, and&mdash;I wear a seventeen-inch collar.&rsquo; 
+      He brewed himself scalding hot tea, which is an excellent remedy against
+      heat-apoplexy if you take three or four cups of it in time. Then he
+      watched the sleeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A blind face that cries and can&rsquo;t wipe its eyes, a blind face that chases
+      him down corridors! H&rsquo;m! Decidedly, Hummil ought to go on leave as soon as
+      possible; and, sane or otherwise, he undoubtedly did rowel himself most
+      cruelly. Well, Heaven send us understanding!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At mid-day Hummil rose, with an evil taste in his mouth, but an unclouded
+      eye and a joyful heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I was pretty bad last night, wasn&rsquo;t I?&rsquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have seen healthier men. You must have had a touch of the sun. Look
+      here: if I write you a swingeing medical certificate, will you apply for
+      leave on the spot?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why not? You want it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, but I can hold on till the weather&rsquo;s a little cooler.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why should you, if you can get relieved on the spot?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Burkett is the only man who could be sent; and he&rsquo;s a born fool.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, never mind about the line. You aren&rsquo;t so important as all that. Wire
+      for leave, if necessary.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hummil looked very uncomfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I can hold on till the Rains,&rsquo; he said evasively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You can&rsquo;t. Wire to headquarters for Burkett.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I won&rsquo;t. If you want to know why, particularly, Burkett is married, and
+      his wife&rsquo;s just had a kid, and she&rsquo;s up at Simla, in the cool, and Burkett
+      has a very nice billet that takes him into Simla from Saturday to Monday.
+      That little woman isn&rsquo;t at all well. If Burkett was transferred she&rsquo;d try
+      to follow him. If she left the baby behind she&rsquo;d fret herself to death. If
+      she came,&mdash;and Burkett&rsquo;s one of those selfish little beasts who are
+      always talking about a wife&rsquo;s place being with her husband,&mdash;she&rsquo;d
+      die. It&rsquo;s murder to bring a woman here just now. Burkett hasn&rsquo;t the
+      physique of a rat. If he came here he&rsquo;d go out; and I know she hasn&rsquo;t any
+      money, and I&rsquo;m pretty sure she&rsquo;d go out too. I&rsquo;m salted in a sort of way,
+      and I&rsquo;m not married. Wait till the Rains, and then Burkett can get thin
+      down here. It&rsquo;ll do him heaps of good.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do you mean to say that you intend to face&mdash;what you have faced,
+      till the Rains break?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, it won&rsquo;t be so bad, now you&rsquo;ve shown me a way out of it. I can always
+      wire to you. Besides, now I&rsquo;ve once got into the way of sleeping, it&rsquo;ll be
+      all right. Anyhow, I shan&rsquo;t put in for leave. That&rsquo;s the long and the
+      short of it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;My great Scott! I thought all that sort of thing was dead and done with.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bosh! You&rsquo;d do the same yourself. I feel a new man, thanks to that
+      cigarette-case. You&rsquo;re going over to camp now, aren&rsquo;t you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes; but I&rsquo;ll try to look you up every other day, if I can.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m not bad enough for that. I don&rsquo;t want you to bother. Give the coolies
+      gin and ketchup.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then you feel all right?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Fit to fight for my life, but not to stand out in the sun talking to you.
+      Go along, old man, and bless you!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hummil turned on his heel to face the echoing desolation of his bungalow,
+      and the first thing he saw standing in the verandah was the figure of
+      himself. He had met a similar apparition once before, when he was
+      suffering from overwork and the strain of the hot weather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;This is bad,&mdash;already,&rsquo; he said, rubbing his eyes. &lsquo;If the thing
+      slides away from me all in one piece, like a ghost, I shall know it is
+      only my eyes and stomach that are out of order. If it walks&mdash;my head
+      is going.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He approached the figure, which naturally kept at an unvarying distance
+      from him, as is the use of all spectres that are born of overwork. It slid
+      through the house and dissolved into swimming specks within the eyeball as
+      soon as it reached the burning light of the garden. Hummil went about his
+      business till even. When he came in to dinner he found himself sitting at
+      the table. The vision rose and walked out hastily. Except that it cast no
+      shadow it was in all respects real.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No living man knows what that week held for Hummil. An increase of the
+      epidemic kept Spurstow in camp among the coolies, and all he could do was
+      to telegraph to Mottram, bidding him go to the bungalow and sleep there.
+      But Mottram was forty miles away from the nearest telegraph, and knew
+      nothing of anything save the needs of the survey till he met, early on
+      Sunday morning, Lowndes and Spurstow heading towards Hummil&rsquo;s for the
+      weekly gathering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hope the poor chap&rsquo;s in a better temper,&rsquo; said the former, swinging
+      himself off his horse at the door. &lsquo;I suppose he isn&rsquo;t up yet.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll just have a look at him,&rsquo; said the doctor. &lsquo;If he&rsquo;s asleep there&rsquo;s
+      no need to wake him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And an instant later, by the tone of Spurstow&rsquo;s voice calling upon them to
+      enter, the men knew what had happened. There was no need to wake him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The punkah was still being pulled over the bed, but Hummil had departed
+      this life at least three hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The body lay on its back, hands clinched by the side, as Spurstow had seen
+      it lying seven nights previously. In the staring eyes was written terror
+      beyond the expression of any pen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mottram, who had entered behind Lowndes, bent over the dead and touched
+      the forehead lightly with his lips. &lsquo;Oh, you lucky, lucky devil!&rsquo; he
+      whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lowndes had seen the eyes, and withdrew shuddering to the other side
+      of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Poor chap! poor old chap! And the last time I met him I was angry.
+      Spurstow, we should have watched him. Has he&mdash;?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deftly Spurstow continued his investigations, ending by a search round the
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, he hasn&rsquo;t,&rsquo; he snapped. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s no trace of anything. Call the
+      servants.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They came, eight or ten of them, whispering and peering over each other&rsquo;s
+      shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;When did your Sahib go to bed?&rsquo; said Spurstow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;At eleven or ten, we think,&rsquo; said Hummil&rsquo;s personal servant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was well then? But how should you know?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was not ill, as far as our comprehension extended. But he had slept
+      very little for three nights. This I know, because I saw him walking much,
+      and specially in the heart of the night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Spurstow was arranging the sheet, a big straight-necked hunting-spur
+      tumbled on the ground. The doctor groaned. The personal servant peeped at
+      the body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What do you think, Chuma?&rsquo; said Spurstow, catching the look on the dark
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Heaven-born, in my poor opinion, this that was my master has descended
+      into the Dark Places, and there has been caught because he was not able to
+      escape with sufficient speed. We have the spur for evidence that he fought
+      with Fear. Thus have I seen men of my race do with thorns when a spell was
+      laid upon them to overtake them in their sleeping hours and they dared not
+      sleep.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Chuma, you&rsquo;re a mud-head. Go out and prepare seals to be set on the
+      Sahib&rsquo;s property.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;God has made the Heaven-born. God has made me. Who are we, to inquire
+      into the dispensations of God? I will bid the other servants hold aloof
+      while you are reckoning the tale of the Sahib&rsquo;s property. They are all
+      thieves, and would steal.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;As far as I can make out, he died from&mdash;oh, anything; stoppage of
+      the heart&rsquo;s action, heat-apoplexy, or some other visitation,&rsquo; said
+      Spurstow to his companions. &lsquo;We must make an inventory of his effects, and
+      so on.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was scared to death,&rsquo; insisted Lowndes. &lsquo;Look at those eyes! For
+      pity&rsquo;s sake don&rsquo;t let him be buried with them open!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Whatever it was, he&rsquo;s clear of all the trouble now,&rsquo; said Mottram softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spurstow was peering into the open eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come here,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;Can you see anything there?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t face it!&rsquo; whimpered Lowndes. &lsquo;Cover up the face! Is there any
+      fear on earth that can turn a man into that likeness? It&rsquo;s ghastly. Oh,
+      Spurstow, cover it up!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No fear&mdash;on earth,&rsquo; said Spurstow. Mottram leaned over his shoulder
+      and looked intently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I see nothing except some gray blurs in the pupil. There can be nothing
+      there, you know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Even so. Well, let&rsquo;s think. It&rsquo;ll take half a day to knock up any sort of
+      coffin; and he must have died at midnight. Lowndes, old man, go out and
+      tell the coolies to break ground next to Jevins&rsquo;s grave. Mottram, go round
+      the house with Chuma and see that the seals are put on things. Send a
+      couple of men to me here, and I&rsquo;ll arrange.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The strong-armed servants when they returned to their own kind told a
+      strange story of the doctor Sahib vainly trying to call their master back
+      to life by magic arts,&mdash;to wit, the holding of a little green box
+      that clicked to each of the dead man&rsquo;s eyes, and of a bewildered muttering
+      on the part of the doctor Sahib, who took the little green box away with
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The resonant hammering of a coffin-lid is no pleasant thing to hear, but
+      those who have experience maintain that much more terrible is the soft
+      swish of the bed-linen, the reeving and unreeving of the bed-tapes, when
+      he who has fallen by the roadside is apparelled for burial, sinking
+      gradually as the tapes are tied over, till the swaddled shape touches the
+      floor and there is no protest against the indignity of hasty disposal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the last moment Lowndes was seized with scruples of conscience. &lsquo;Ought
+      you to read the service,&mdash;from beginning to end?&rsquo; said he to
+      Spurstow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I intend to. You&rsquo;re my senior as a civilian. You can take it if you
+      like.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I didn&rsquo;t mean that for a moment. I only thought if we could get a
+      chaplain from somewhere,&mdash;I&rsquo;m willing to ride anywhere,&mdash;and
+      give poor Hummil a better chance. That&rsquo;s all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bosh!&rsquo; said Spurstow, as he framed his lips to the tremendous words that
+      stand at the head of the burial service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After breakfast they smoked a pipe in silence to the memory of the dead.
+      Then Spurstow said absently&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Tisn&rsquo;t in medical science.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Things in a dead man&rsquo;s eye.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For goodness&rsquo; sake leave that horror alone!&rsquo; said Lowndes. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve seen a
+      native die of pure fright when a tiger chivied him. I know what killed
+      Hummil.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The deuce you do! I&rsquo;m going to try to see.&rsquo; And the doctor retreated into
+      the bath-room with a Kodak camera. After a few minutes there was the sound
+      of something being hammered to pieces, and he emerged, very white indeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Have you got a picture?&rsquo; said Mottram. &lsquo;What does the thing look like?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It was impossible, of course. You needn&rsquo;t look, Mottram. I&rsquo;ve torn up the
+      films. There was nothing there. It was impossible.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That,&rsquo; said Lowndes, very distinctly, watching the shaking hand striving
+      to relight the pipe, &lsquo;is a damned lie.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mottram laughed uneasily. &lsquo;Spurstow&rsquo;s right,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;We&rsquo;re all in such
+      a state now that we&rsquo;d believe anything. For pity&rsquo;s sake let&rsquo;s try to be
+      rational.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no further speech for a long time. The hot wind whistled
+      without, and the dry trees sobbed. Presently the daily train, winking
+      brass, burnished steel, and spouting steam, pulled up panting in the
+      intense glare. &lsquo;We&rsquo;d better go on on that,&rsquo; said Spurstow. &lsquo;Go back to
+      work. I&rsquo;ve written my certificate. We can&rsquo;t do any more good here, and
+      work&rsquo;ll keep our wits together. Come on.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one moved. It is not pleasant to face railway journeys at mid-day in
+      June. Spurstow gathered up his hat and whip, and, turning in the doorway,
+      said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There may be Heaven,&mdash;there must be Hell. Meantime, there is our
+      life here. We-ell?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither Mottram nor Lowndes had any answer to the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Sec. 7.  { Cause       }              { in forces }   Regular forces,
+  (I)      { Consipiring }              { belonging }   Reserve forces,
+           { with other  }   a mutiny   { to Her    }   Auxiliary forces.
+           { persons to  }   sedition   { Majesty&rsquo;s }   Navy.
+           { cause       }
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      When three obscure gentlemen in San Francisco argued on insufficient
+      premises they condemned a fellow-creature to a most unpleasant death in a
+      far country, which had nothing whatever to do with the United States. They
+      foregathered at the top of a tenement-house in Tehama Street, an unsavoury
+      quarter of the city, and, there calling for certain drinks, they conspired
+      because they were conspirators by trade, officially known as the Third
+      Three of the I.A.A.&mdash;an institution for the propagation of pure
+      light, not to be confounded with any others, though it is affiliated to
+      many. The Second Three live in Montreal, and work among the poor there;
+      the First Three have their home in New York, not far from Castle Garden,
+      and write regularly once a week to a small house near one of the big
+      hotels at Boulogne. What happens after that, a particular section of
+      Scotland Yard knows too well, and laughs at. A conspirator detests
+      ridicule. More men have been stabbed with Lucrezia Borgia daggers and
+      dropped into the Thames for laughing at Head Centres and Triangles than
+      for betraying secrets; for this is human nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Third Three conspired over whisky cocktails and a clean sheet of
+      notepaper against the British Empire and all that lay therein. This work
+      is very like what men without discernment call politics before a general
+      election. You pick out and discuss, in the company of congenial friends,
+      all the weak points in your opponents&rsquo; organisation, and unconsciously
+      dwell upon and exaggerate all their mishaps, till it seems to you a
+      miracle that the hated party holds together for an hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Our principle is not so much active demonstration&mdash;that we leave to
+      others&mdash;as passive embarrassment, to weaken and unnerve,&rsquo; said the
+      first man. &lsquo;Wherever an organisation is crippled, wherever a confusion is
+      thrown into any branch of any department, we gain a step for those who
+      take on the work; we are but the forerunners.&rsquo; He was a German enthusiast,
+      and editor of a newspaper, from whose leading articles he quoted
+      frequently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That cursed Empire makes so many blunders of her own that unless we
+      doubled the year&rsquo;s average I guess it wouldn&rsquo;t strike her anything special
+      had occurred,&rsquo; said the second man. &lsquo;Are you prepared to say that all our
+      resources are equal to blowing off the muzzle of a hundred-ton gun or
+      spiking a ten-thousand-ton ship on a plain rock in clear daylight? They
+      can beat us at our own game. &lsquo;Better join hands with the practical
+      branches; we&rsquo;re in funds now. Try a direct scare in a crowded street. They
+      value their greasy hides.&rsquo; He was the drag upon the wheel, and an
+      Americanised Irishman of the second generation, despising his own race and
+      hating the other. He had learned caution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third man drank his cocktail and spoke no word. He was the strategist,
+      but unfortunately his knowledge of life was limited. He picked a letter
+      from his breast-pocket and threw it across the table. That epistle to the
+      heathen contained some very concise directions from the First Three in New
+      York. It said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The boom in black iron has already affected the eastern markets, where
+      our agents have been forcing down the English-held stock among the smaller
+      buyers who watch the turn of shares. Any immediate operations, such as
+      western bears, would increase their willingness to unload. This, however,
+      cannot be expected till they see clearly that foreign iron-masters are
+      witting to co-operate. Mulcahy should be dispatched to feel the pulse of
+      the market, and act accordingly. Mavericks are at present the best for our
+      purpose.&mdash;P.D.Q.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a message referring to an iron crisis in Pennsylvania, it was
+      interesting, if not lucid. As a new departure in organised attack on an
+      outlying English dependency, it was more than interesting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second man read it through and murmured&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Already? Surely they are in too great a hurry. All that Dhulip Singh
+      could do in India he has done, down to the distribution of his photographs
+      among the peasantry. Ho! Ho! The Paris firm arranged that, and he has no
+      substantial money backing from the Other Power. Even our agents in India
+      know he hasn&rsquo;t. What is the use of our organisation wasting men on work
+      that is already done? Of course the Irish regiments in India are half
+      mutinous as they stand.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This shows how near a lie may come to the truth. An Irish regiment, for
+      just so long as it stands still, is generally a hard handful to control,
+      being reckless and rough. When, however, it is moved in the direction of
+      musketry-firing, it becomes strangely and unpatriotically content with its
+      lot. It has even been heard to cheer the Queen with enthusiasm on these
+      occasions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the notion of tampering with the army was, from the point of view of
+      Tehama Street, an altogether sound one. There is no shadow of stability in
+      the policy of an English Government, and the most sacred oaths of England
+      would, even if engrossed on vellum, find very few buyers among colonies
+      and dependencies that have suffered from vain beliefs. But there remains
+      to England always her army. That cannot change except in the matter of
+      uniform and equipment. The officers may write to the papers demanding the
+      heads of the Horse Guards in default of cleaner redress for grievances;
+      the men may break loose across a country town and seriously startle the
+      publicans; but neither officers nor men have it in their composition to
+      mutiny after the continental manner. The English people, when they trouble
+      to think about the army at all, are, and with justice, absolutely assured
+      that it is absolutely trustworthy. Imagine for a moment their emotions on
+      realising that such and such a regiment was in open revolt from causes
+      directly due to England&rsquo;s management of Ireland. They would probably send
+      the regiment to the polls forthwith and examine their own consciences as
+      to their duty to Erin; but they would never be easy any more. And it was
+      this vague, unhappy mistrust that the I. A. A. were labouring to produce.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sheer waste of breath,&rsquo; said the second man after a pause in the council,
+      &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t see the use of tampering with their fool-army, but it has been
+      tried before and we must try it again. It looks well in the reports. If we
+      send one man from here you may bet your life that other men are going too.
+      Order up Mulcahy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They ordered him up&mdash;a slim, slight, dark-haired young man, devoured
+      with that blind rancorous hatred of England that only reaches its full
+      growth across the Atlantic. He had sucked it from his mother&rsquo;s breast in
+      the little cabin at the back of the northern avenues of New York; he had
+      been taught his rights and his wrongs, in German and Irish, on the canal
+      fronts of Chicago; and San Francisco held men who told him strange and
+      awful things of the great blind power over the seas. Once, when business
+      took him across the Atlantic, he had served in an English regiment, and
+      being insubordinate had suffered extremely. He drew all his ideas of
+      England that were not bred by the cheaper patriotic prints from one
+      iron-fisted colonel and an unbending adjutant. He would go to the mines if
+      need be to teach his gospel. And he went as his instructions advised
+      p.d.q.&mdash;which means &lsquo;with speed&rsquo;&mdash;to introduce embarrassment
+      into an Irish regiment, &lsquo;already half-mutinous, quartered among Sikh
+      peasantry, all wearing miniatures of His Highness Dhulip Singh, Maharaja
+      of the Punjab, next their hearts, and all eagerly expecting his arrival.&rsquo; 
+      Other information equally valuable was given him by his masters. He was to
+      be cautious, but never to grudge expense in winning the hearts of the men
+      in the regiment. His mother in New York would supply funds, and he was to
+      write to her once a month. Life is pleasant for a man who has a mother in
+      New York to send him two hundred pounds a year over and above his
+      regimental pay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In process of time, thanks to his intimate knowledge of drill and musketry
+      exercise, the excellent Mulcahy, wearing the corporal&rsquo;s stripe, went out
+      in a troopship and joined Her Majesty&rsquo;s Royal Loyal Musketeers, commonly
+      known as the &lsquo;Mavericks,&rsquo; because they were masterless and unbranded
+      cattle-sons of small farmers in County Clare, shoeless vagabonds of Kerry,
+      herders of Bally-vegan, much wanted &lsquo;moonlighters&rsquo; from the bare rainy
+      headlands of the south coast, officered by O&rsquo;Mores, Bradys, Hills,
+      Kilreas, and the like. Never to outward seeming was there more promising
+      material to work on. The First Three had chosen their regiment well. It
+      feared nothing that moved or talked save the colonel and the regimental
+      Roman Catholic chaplain, the fat Father Dennis, who held the keys of
+      heaven and hell, and blared like an angry bull when he desired to be
+      convincing. Him also it loved because on occasions of stress he was used
+      to tuck up his cassock and charge with the rest into the merriest of the
+      fray, where he always found, good man, that the saints sent him a revolver
+      when there was a fallen private to be protected, or&mdash;but this came as
+      an afterthought&mdash;his own gray head to be guarded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cautiously as he had been instructed, tenderly and with much beer, Mulcahy
+      opened his projects to such as he deemed fittest to listen. And these
+      were, one and all, of that quaint, crooked, sweet, profoundly
+      irresponsible and profoundly lovable race that fight like fiends, argue
+      like children, reason like women, obey like men, and jest like their own
+      goblins of the rath through rebellion, loyalty, want, woe, or war. The
+      underground work of a conspiracy is always dull and very much the same the
+      world over. At the end of six months&mdash;the seed always falling on good
+      ground&mdash;Mulcahy spoke almost explicitly, hinting darkly in the
+      approved fashion at dread powers behind him, and advising nothing more nor
+      less than mutiny. Were they not dogs, evilly treated? had they not all
+      their own and their national revenges to satisfy? Who in these days would
+      do aught to nine hundred men in rebellion? Who, again, could stay them if
+      they broke for the sea, licking up on their way other regiments only too
+      anxious to join? And afterwards... here followed windy promises of gold
+      and preferment, office, and honour, ever dear to a certain type of
+      Irishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he finished his speech, in the dusk of a twilight, to his chosen
+      associates, there was a sound of a rapidly unslung belt behind him. The
+      arm of one Dan Grady flew out in the gloom and arrested something. Then
+      said Dan&mdash;-
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mulcahy, you&rsquo;re a great man, an&rsquo; you do credit to whoever sent you. Walk
+      about a bit while we think of it.&rsquo; Mulcahy departed elate. He knew his
+      words would sink deep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why the triple-dashed asterisks did ye not let me belt him?&rsquo; grunted a
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Because I&rsquo;m not a fat-headed fool. Boys, &lsquo;tis what he&rsquo;s been driving at
+      these six months&mdash;our superior corpril with his education and his
+      copies of the Irish papers and his everlasting beer. He&rsquo;s been sent for
+      the purpose and that&rsquo;s where the money comes from. Can ye not see? That
+      man&rsquo;s a gold-mine, which Horse Egan here would have destroyed with a
+      belt-buckle. It would be throwing away the gifts of Providence not to fall
+      in with his little plans. Of coorse we&rsquo;ll mut&rsquo;ny till all&rsquo;s dry. Shoot the
+      colonel on the parade-ground, massacree the company officers, ransack the
+      arsenal, and then&mdash;Boys, did he tell you what next? He told me the
+      other night when he was beginning to talk wild. Then we&rsquo;re to join with
+      the niggers, and look for help from Dhulip Singh and the Russians!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And spoil the best campaign that ever was this side of Hell! Danny, I&rsquo;d
+      have lost the beer to ha&rsquo; given him the belting he requires.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, let him go this awhile, man! He&rsquo;s got no&mdash;no constructiveness,
+      but that&rsquo;s the egg-meat of his plan, and you must understand that I&rsquo;m in
+      with it, an&rsquo; so are you. We&rsquo;ll want oceans of beer to convince us&mdash;firmaments
+      full. We&rsquo;ll give him talk for his money, and one by one all the boys &lsquo;ll
+      come in and he&rsquo;ll have a nest of nine hundred mutineers to squat in an&rsquo; 
+      give drink to.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What makes me killing-mad is his wanting us to do what the niggers did
+      thirty years gone. That an&rsquo; his pig&rsquo;s cheek in saying that other regiments
+      would come along,&rsquo; said a Kerry man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s not so bad as hintin&rsquo; we should loose off on the colonel.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Colonel be sugared! I&rsquo;d as soon as not put a shot through his helmet to
+      see him jump and clutch his old horse&rsquo;s head. But Mulcahy talks o&rsquo; 
+      shootin&rsquo; our comp&rsquo;ny orf&rsquo;cers accidental.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He said that, did he?&rsquo; said Horse Egan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Somethin&rsquo; like that, anyways. Can&rsquo;t ye fancy ould Barber Brady wid a
+      bullet in his lungs, coughin&rsquo; like a sick monkey, an&rsquo; sayin&rsquo;, &ldquo;Bhoys, I do
+      not mind your gettin&rsquo; dhrunk, but you must hould your liquor like men. The
+      man that shot me is dhrunk. I&rsquo;ll suspend investigations for six hours,
+      while I get this bullet cut out, an&rsquo; then&mdash;&ldquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; then,&rsquo; continued Horse Egan, for the peppery Major&rsquo;s peculiarities of
+      speech and manner were as well known as his tanned face; &ldquo;&lsquo;an&rsquo; then, ye
+      dissolute, half-baked, putty-faced scum o&rsquo; Connemara, if I find a man so
+      much as lookin&rsquo; confused, begad, I&rsquo;ll coort-martial the whole company. A
+      man that can&rsquo;t get over his liquor in six hours is not fit to belong to
+      the Mavericks!&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shout of laughter bore witness to the truth of the sketch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s pretty to think of,&rsquo; said the Kerry man slowly. &lsquo;Mulcahy would have
+      us do all the devilmint, and get clear himself, someways. He wudn&rsquo;t be
+      takin&rsquo; all this fool&rsquo;s throuble in shpoilin&rsquo; the reputation of the
+      regiment&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Reputation of your grandmother&rsquo;s pig!&rsquo; said Dan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, an&rsquo; HE had a good reputation tu; so it&rsquo;s all right. Mulcahy must
+      see his way to clear out behind him, or he&rsquo;d not ha&rsquo; come so far, talkin&rsquo; 
+      powers of darkness.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Did you hear anything of a regimental court-martial among the Black
+      Boneens, these days? Half a company of &lsquo;em took one of the new draft an&rsquo; 
+      hanged him by his arms with a tent-rope from a third story verandah. They
+      gave no reason for so doin&rsquo;, but he was half dead. I&rsquo;m thinking that the
+      Boneens are short-sighted. It was a friend of Mulcahy&rsquo;s, or a man in the
+      same trade. They&rsquo;d a deal better ha&rsquo; taken his beer,&rsquo; returned Dan
+      reflectively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Better still ha&rsquo; handed him up to the Colonel,&rsquo; said Horse Egan, &lsquo;onless&mdash;but
+      sure the news wud be all over the counthry an&rsquo; give the reg&rsquo;ment a bad
+      name.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; there&rsquo;d be no reward for that man&mdash;he but went about talkin&rsquo;,&rsquo; 
+      said the Kerry man artlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You speak by your breed,&rsquo; said Dan with a laugh. &lsquo;There was never a Kerry
+      man yet that wudn&rsquo;t sell his brother for a pipe o&rsquo; tobacco an&rsquo; a pat on
+      the back from a p&rsquo;liceman.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Praise God I&rsquo;m not a bloomin&rsquo; Orangeman,&rsquo; was the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, nor never will be,&rsquo; said Dan. &lsquo;They breed MEN in Ulster. Would you
+      like to thry the taste of one?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Kerry man looked and longed, but forbore. The odds of battle were too
+      great.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then you&rsquo;ll not even give Mulcahy a&mdash;a strike for his money,&rsquo; said
+      the voice of Horse Egan, who regarded what he called &lsquo;trouble&rsquo; of any kind
+      as the pinnacle of felicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan answered not at all, but crept on tip-toe, with large strides, to the
+      mess-room, the men following. The room was empty. In a corner, cased like
+      the King of Dahomey&rsquo;s state umbrella, stood the regimental Colours. Dan
+      lifted them tenderly and unrolled in the light of the candles the record
+      of the Mavericks&mdash;tattered, worn, and hacked. The white satin was
+      darkened everywhere with big brown stains, the gold threads on the crowned
+      harp were frayed and discoloured, and the Red Bull, the totem of the
+      Mavericks, was coffee-hued. The stiff, embroidered folds, whose price is
+      human life, rustled down slowly. The Mavericks keep their colours long and
+      guard them very sacredly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Vittoria, Salamanca, Toulouse, Waterloo, Moodkee, Ferozshah, an&rsquo; Sobraon&mdash;that
+      was fought close next door here, against the very beggars he wants us to
+      join. Inkermann, The Alma, Sebastopol! What are those little businesses
+      compared to the campaigns of General Mulcahy? The Mut&rsquo;ny, think o&rsquo; that;
+      the Mut&rsquo;ny an&rsquo; some dirty little matters in Afghanistan; an&rsquo; for that an&rsquo; 
+      these an&rsquo; those&rsquo;&mdash;Dan pointed to the names of glorious battles&mdash;&lsquo;that
+      Yankee man with the partin&rsquo; in his hair comes an&rsquo; says as easy as &ldquo;have a
+      drink.&rdquo;... Holy Moses, there&rsquo;s the captain!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was the mess-sergeant who came in just as the men clattered out,
+      and found the colours uncased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that day dated the mutiny of the Mavericks, to the joy of Mulcahy and
+      the pride of his mother in New York&mdash;the good lady who sent the money
+      for the beer. Never, so far as words went, was such a mutiny. The
+      conspirators, led by Dan Grady and Horse Egan, poured in daily. They were
+      sound men, men to be trusted, and they all wanted blood; but first they
+      must have beer. They cursed the Queen, they mourned over Ireland, they
+      suggested hideous plunder of the Indian country side, and then, alas&mdash;some
+      of the younger men would go forth and wallow on the ground in spasms of
+      wicked laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The genius of the Irish for conspiracies is remarkable. None the less they
+      would swear no oaths but those of their own making, which were rare and
+      curious, and they were always at pains to impress Mulcahy with the risks
+      they ran. Naturally the flood of beer wrought demoralisation. But Mulcahy
+      confused the causes of things, and when a very muzzy Maverick smote a
+      sergeant on the nose or called his commanding officer a bald-headed old
+      lard-bladder and even worse names, he fancied that rebellion and not
+      liquor was at the bottom of the outbreak. Other gentlemen who have
+      concerned themselves in larger conspiracies have made the same error.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hot season, in which they protested no man could rebel, came to an
+      end, and Mulcahy suggested a visible return for his teachings. As to the
+      actual upshot of the mutiny he cared nothing. It would be enough if the
+      English, infatuatedly trusting to the integrity of their army, should be
+      startled with news of an Irish regiment revolting from political
+      considerations. His persistent demands would have ended, at Dan&rsquo;s
+      instigation, in a regimental belting which in all probability would have
+      killed him and cut off the supply of beer, had not he been sent on special
+      duty some fifty miles away from the cantonment to cool his heels in a mud
+      fort and dismount obsolete artillery. Then the colonel of the Mavericks,
+      reading his newspaper diligently, and scenting Frontier trouble from afar,
+      posted to the army headquarters and pled with the Commander-in-chief for
+      certain privileges, to be granted under certain contingencies; which
+      contingencies came about only a week later, when the annual little war on
+      the border developed itself and the colonel returned to carry the good
+      news to the Mavericks. He held the promise of the Chief for active
+      service, and the men must get ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the evening of the same day, Mulcahy, an unconsidered corporal&mdash;yet
+      great in conspiracy&mdash;returned to cantonments, and heard sounds of
+      strife and howlings from afar off. The mutiny had broken out and the
+      barracks of the Mavericks were one white-washed pandemonium. A private
+      tearing through the barrack-square, gasped in his ear, &lsquo;Service! Active
+      service. It&rsquo;s a burnin&rsquo; shame.&rsquo; Oh joy, the Mavericks had risen on the eve
+      of battle! They would not&mdash;noble and loyal sons of Ireland&mdash;serve
+      the Queen longer. The news would flash through the country side and over
+      to England, and he&mdash;Mulcahy&mdash;the trusted of the Third Three, had
+      brought about the crash. The private stood in the middle of the square and
+      cursed colonel, regiment, officers, and doctor, particularly the doctor,
+      by his gods. An orderly of the native cavalry regiment clattered through
+      the mob of soldiers. He was half lifted, half dragged from his horse,
+      beaten on the back with mighty hand-claps till his eyes watered, and
+      called all manner of endearing names. Yes, the Mavericks had fraternised
+      with the native troops. Who then was the agent among the latter that had
+      blindly wrought with Mulcahy so well?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An officer slunk, almost ran, from the mess to a barrack. He was mobbed by
+      the infuriated soldiery, who closed round but did not kill him, for he
+      fought his way to shelter, flying for the life. Mulcahy could have wept
+      with pure joy and thankfulness. The very prisoners in the guard-room were
+      shaking the bars of their cells and howling like wild beasts, and from
+      every barrack poured the booming as of a big war-drum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mulcahy hastened to his own barrack. He could hardly hear himself speak.
+      Eighty men were pounding with fist and heel the tables and trestles&mdash;eighty
+      men, flushed with mutiny, stripped to their shirt sleeves, their knapsacks
+      half-packed for the march to the sea, made the two-inch boards thunder
+      again as they chanted to a tune that Mulcahy knew well, the Sacred War
+      Song of the Mavericks&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Listen in the north, my boys, there&rsquo;s trouble on the wind;
+     Tramp o&rsquo; Cossack hooves in front, gray great-coats behind,
+     Trouble on the Frontier of a most amazin&rsquo; kind,
+       Trouble on the waters o&rsquo; the Oxus!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then, as a table broke under the furious accompaniment&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Hurrah! hurrah! it&rsquo;s north by west we go;
+     Hurrah! hurrah! the chance we wanted so;
+     Let &lsquo;em hear the chorus from Umballa to MosCOW,
+     As we go marchin&rsquo; to the Kremling.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mother of all the saints in bliss and all the devils in cinders, where&rsquo;s
+      my fine new sock widout the heel?&rsquo; howled Horse Egan, ransacking
+      everybody&rsquo;s valise but his own. He was engaged in making up deficiencies
+      of kit preparatory to a campaign, and in that work he steals best who
+      steals last. &lsquo;Ah, Mulcahy, you&rsquo;re in good time,&rsquo; he shouted. &lsquo;We&rsquo;ve got
+      the route, and we&rsquo;re off on Thursday for a pic-nic wid the Lancers next
+      door.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An ambulance orderly appeared with a huge basket full of lint rolls,
+      provided by the forethought of the Queen for such as might need them later
+      on. Horse Egan unrolled his bandage, and flicked it under Mulcahy&rsquo;s nose,
+      chanting&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &lsquo;Sheepskin an&rsquo; bees&rsquo; wax, thunder, pitch, and plaster,
+     The more you try to pull it off, the more it sticks the faster.
+     As I was goin&rsquo; to New Orleans&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You know the rest of it, my Irish American-Jew boy. By gad, ye have to
+      fight for the Queen in the inside av a fortnight, my darlin&rsquo;.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A roar of laughter interrupted. Mulcahy looked vacantly down the room. Bid
+      a boy defy his father when the pantomime-cab is at the door; or a girl
+      develop a will of her own when her mother is putting the last touches to
+      the first ball-dress; but do not ask an Irish regiment to embark upon
+      mutiny on the eve of a campaign; when it has fraternised with the native
+      regiment that accompanies it, and driven its officers into retirement with
+      ten thousand clamorous questions, and the prisoners dance for joy, and the
+      sick men stand in the open, calling down all known diseases on the head of
+      the doctor, who has certified that they are &ldquo;medically unfit for active
+      service.&rdquo; At even the Mavericks might have been mistaken for mutineers by
+      one so unversed in their natures as Mulcahy. At dawn a girls&rsquo; school might
+      have learned deportment from them. They knew that their colonel&rsquo;s hand had
+      closed, and that he who broke that iron discipline would not go to the
+      front: nothing in the world will persuade one of our soldiers when he is
+      ordered to the north on the smallest of affairs that he is not immediately
+      going gloriously to slay Cossacks and cook his kettles in the palace of
+      the Czar. A few of the younger men mourned for Mulcahy&rsquo;s beer, because the
+      campaign was to be conducted on strict temperance principles, but as Dan
+      and Horse Egan said sternly, &lsquo;We&rsquo;ve got the beer-man with us. He shall
+      drink now on his own hook.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mulcahy had not taken into account the possibility of being sent on active
+      service. He had made up his mind that he would not go under any
+      circumstances, but fortune was against him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sick&mdash;you?&rsquo; said the doctor, who had served an unholy apprenticeship
+      to his trade in Tralee poorhouses. &lsquo;You&rsquo;re only home-sick, and what you
+      call varicose veins come from over-eating. A little gentle exercise will
+      cure that.&rsquo; And later, &lsquo;Mulcahy, my man, everybody is allowed to apply for
+      a sick-certificate ONCE. If he tries it twice we call him by an ugly name.
+      Go back to your duty, and let&rsquo;s hear no more of your diseases.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am ashamed to say that Horse Egan enjoyed the study of Mulcahy&rsquo;s soul in
+      those days, and Dan took an equal interest. Together they would
+      communicate to their corporal all the dark lore of death which is the
+      portion of those who have seen men die. Egan had the larger experience,
+      but Dan the finer imagination. Mulcahy shivered when the former spoke of
+      the knife as an intimate acquaintance, or the latter dwelt with loving
+      particularity on the fate of those who, wounded and helpless, had been
+      overlooked by the ambulances, and had fallen into the hands of the Afghan
+      women-folk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mulcahy knew that the mutiny, for the present at least, was dead; knew,
+      too, that a change had come over Dan&rsquo;s usually respectful attitude towards
+      him, and Horse Egan&rsquo;s laughter and frequent allusions to abortive
+      conspiracies emphasised all that the conspirator had guessed. The horrible
+      fascination of the death-stories, however, made him seek the men&rsquo;s
+      society. He learnt much more than he had bargained for; and in this
+      manner: It was on the last night before the regiment entrained to the
+      front. The barracks were stripped of everything movable, and the men were
+      too excited to sleep. The bare walls gave out a heavy hospital smell of
+      chloride of lime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And what,&rsquo; said Mulcahy in an awe-stricken whisper, after some
+      conversation on the eternal subject, &lsquo;are you going to do to me, Dan?&rsquo; 
+      This might have been the language of an able conspirator conciliating a
+      weak spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;ll see,&rsquo; said Dan grimly, turning over in his cot, &lsquo;or I rather shud
+      say you&rsquo;ll not see.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was hardly the language of a weak spirit. Mulcahy shook under the
+      bed-clothes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Be easy with him,&rsquo; put in Egan from the next cot. &lsquo;He has got his chanst
+      o&rsquo; goin&rsquo; clean. Listen, Mulcahy; all we want is for the good sake of the
+      regiment that you take your death standing up, as a man shud. There be
+      heaps an&rsquo; heaps of enemy&mdash;plenshus heaps. Go there an&rsquo; do all you can
+      and die decent. You&rsquo;ll die with a good name THERE. &lsquo;Tis not a hard thing
+      considerin&rsquo;.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Mulcahy shivered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; how could a man wish to die better than fightin&rsquo;?&rsquo; added Dan
+      consolingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And if I won&rsquo;t?&rsquo; said the corporal in a dry whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;ll be a dale of smoke,&rsquo; returned Dan, sitting up and ticking off
+      the situation on his fingers, &lsquo;sure to be, an&rsquo; the noise of the firin&rsquo; &lsquo;ll
+      be tremenjus, an&rsquo; we&rsquo;ll be running about up and down, the regiment will.
+      But WE, Horse and I&mdash;we&rsquo;ll stay by you, Mulcahy, and never let you
+      go. Maybe there&rsquo;ll be an accident.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s playing it low on me. Let me go. For pity&rsquo;s sake let me go. I never
+      did you harm, and&mdash;and I stood you as much beer as I could. Oh, don&rsquo;t
+      be hard on me, Dan! You are&mdash;you were in it too. You won&rsquo;t kill me up
+      there, will you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m not thinkin&rsquo; of the treason; though you shud be glad any honest boys
+      drank with you. It&rsquo;s for the regiment. We can&rsquo;t have the shame o&rsquo; you
+      bringin&rsquo; shame on us. You went to the doctor quiet as a sick cat to get
+      and stay behind an&rsquo; live with the women at the depot&mdash;you that wanted
+      us to run to the sea in wolf-packs like the rebels none of your black
+      blood dared to be! But WE knew about your goin&rsquo; to the doctor, for he told
+      in mess, and it&rsquo;s all over the regiment. Bein&rsquo;, as we are, your best
+      friends, we didn&rsquo;t allow any one to molest you YET. We will see to you
+      ourselves. Fight which you will&mdash;us or the enemy&mdash;you&rsquo;ll never
+      lie in that cot again, and there&rsquo;s more glory and maybe less kicks from
+      fightin&rsquo; the enemy. That&rsquo;s fair speakin&rsquo;.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And he told us by word of mouth to go and join with the niggers&mdash;you&rsquo;ve
+      forgotten that, Dan,&rsquo; said Horse Egan, to justify sentence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the use of plaguin&rsquo; the man? One shot pays for all. Sleep ye
+      sound, Mulcahy. But you onderstand, do ye not?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mulcahy for some weeks understood very little of anything at all save that
+      ever at his elbow, in camp, or at parade, stood two big men with soft
+      voices adjuring him to commit hari-kari lest a worse thing should happen&mdash;to
+      die for the honour of the regiment in decency among the nearest knives.
+      But Mulcahy dreaded death. He remembered certain things that priests had
+      said in his infancy, and his mother&mdash;not the one at New York&mdash;starting
+      from her sleep with shrieks to pray for a husband&rsquo;s soul in torment. It is
+      well to be of a cultured intelligence, but in time of trouble the weak
+      human mind returns to the creed it sucked in at the breast, and if that
+      creed be not a pretty one trouble follows. Also, the death he would have
+      to face would be physically painful. Most conspirators have large
+      imaginations. Mulcahy could see himself, as he lay on the earth in the
+      night, dying by various causes. They were all horrible; the mother in New
+      York was very far away, and the Regiment, the engine that, once you fall
+      in its grip, moves you forward whether you will or won&rsquo;t, was daily coming
+      closer to the enemy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were brought to the field of Marzun-Katai, and with the Black Boneens
+      to aid, they fought a fight that has never been set down in the
+      newspapers. In response, many believe, to the fervent prayers of Father
+      Dennis, the enemy not only elected to fight in the open, but made a
+      beautiful fight, as many weeping Irish mothers knew later. They gathered
+      behind walls or flickered across the open in shouting masses, and were
+      pot-valiant in artillery. It was expedient to hold a large reserve and
+      wait for the psychological moment that was being prepared by the shrieking
+      shrapnel. Therefore the Mavericks lay down in open order on the brow of a
+      hill to watch the play till their call should come. Father Dennis, whose
+      duty was in the rear, to smooth the trouble of the wounded, had naturally
+      managed to make his way to the foremost of his boys and lay like a black
+      porpoise, at length on the grass. To him crawled Mulcahy, ashen-gray,
+      demanding absolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wait till you&rsquo;re shot,&rsquo; said Father Dennis sweetly. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s a time for
+      everything.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan Grady chuckled as he blew for the fiftieth time into the breech of his
+      speckless rifle. Mulcahy groaned and buried his head in his arms till a
+      stray shot spoke like a snipe immediately above his head, and a general
+      heave and tremour rippled the line. Other shots followed and a few took
+      effect, as a shriek or a grunt attested. The officers, who had been lying
+      down with the men, rose and began to walk steadily up and down the front
+      of their companies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This manoeuvre, executed, not for publication, but as a guarantee of good
+      faith, to soothe men, demands nerve. You must not hurry, you must not look
+      nervous, though you know that you are a mark for every rifle within
+      extreme range, and above all if you are smitten you must make as little
+      noise as possible and roll inwards through the files. It is at this hour,
+      when the breeze brings the first salt whiff of the powder to noses rather
+      cold at the tip, and the eye can quietly take in the appearance of each
+      red casualty, that the strain on the nerves is strongest. Scotch regiments
+      can endure for half a day and abate no whit of their zeal at the end;
+      English regiments sometimes sulk under punishment, while the Irish, like
+      the French, are apt to run forward by ones and twos, which is just as bad
+      as running back. The truly wise commandant of highly strung troops allows
+      them, in seasons of waiting, to hear the sound of their own voices
+      uplifted in song. There is a legend of an English regiment that lay by its
+      arms under fire chaunting &lsquo;Sam Hall,&rsquo; to the horror of its newly appointed
+      and pious colonel. The Black Boneens, who were suffering more than the
+      Mavericks, on a hill half a mile away, began presently to explain to all
+      who cared to listen&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We&rsquo;ll sound the jubilee, from the centre to the sea, And Ireland shall be
+      free, says the Shan-van Vogh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sing, boys,&rsquo; said Father Dennis softly. &lsquo;It looks as if we cared for
+      their Afghan peas.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan Grady raised himself to his knees and opened his mouth in a song
+      imparted to him, as to most of his comrades, in the strictest confidence
+      by Mulcahy&mdash;-the Mulcahy then lying limp and fainting on the grass,
+      the chill fear of death upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Company after company caught up the words which, the I. A. A. say, are to
+      herald the general rising of Erin, and to breathe which, except to those
+      duly appointed to hear, is death. Wherefore they are printed in this
+      place.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The Saxon in Heaven&rsquo;s just balance is weighed,
+       His doom like Belshazzar&rsquo;s in death has been cast,
+     And the hand of the venger shall never be stayed
+       Till his race, faith, and speech are a dream of the past.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      They were heart-filling lines and they ran with a swirl; the I. A. A. are
+      better served by their pens than their petards. Dan clapped Mulcahy
+      merrily on the back, asking him to sing up. The officers lay down again.
+      There was no need to walk any more. Their men were soothing themselves
+      thunderously, thus&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     St. Mary in Heaven has written the vow
+       That the land shall not rest till the heretic blood,
+     From the babe at the breast to the hand at the plough,
+       Has rolled to the ocean like Shannon in flood!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll speak to you after all&rsquo;s over,&rsquo; said Father Dennis authoritatively
+      in Dan&rsquo;s ear. &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the use of confessing to me when you do this
+      foolishness? Dan, you&rsquo;ve been playing with fire! I&rsquo;ll lay you more penance
+      in a week than&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come along to Purgatory with us, Father dear. The Boneens are on the
+      move; they&rsquo;ll let us go now!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The regiment rose to the blast of the bugle as one man; but one man there
+      was who rose more swiftly than all the others, for half an inch of bayonet
+      was in the fleshy part of his leg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;ve got to do it,&rsquo; said Dan grimly. &lsquo;Do it decent, anyhow;&rsquo; and the
+      roar of the rush drowned his words, for the rear companies thrust forward
+      the first, still singing as they swung down the slope&mdash;-
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the child at the breast to the hand at the plough Shall roll to the
+      ocean like Shannon in flood!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They should have sung it in the face of England, not of the Afghans, whom,
+      it impressed as much as did the wild Irish yell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They came down singing,&rsquo; said the unofficial report of the enemy, borne
+      from village to village the next day. &lsquo;They continued to sing, and it was
+      written that our men could not abide when they came. It is believed that
+      there was magic in the aforesaid song.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan and Horse Egan kept themselves in the neighbourhood of Mulcahy. Twice
+      the man would have bolted back in the confusion. Twice he was heaved,
+      kicked, and shouldered back again into the unpaintable inferno of a hotly
+      contested charge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end, the panic excess of his fear drove him into madness beyond all
+      human courage. His eyes staring at nothing, his mouth open and frothing,
+      and breathing as one in a cold bath, he went forward demented, while Dan
+      toiled after him. The charge checked at a high mud wall. It was Mulcahy
+      who scrambled up tooth and nail and hurled down among the bayonets the
+      amazed Afghan who barred his way. It was Mulcahy, keeping to the straight
+      line of the rabid dog, who led a collection of ardent souls at a newly
+      unmasked battery and flung himself on the muzzle of a gun as his
+      companions danced among the gunners. It was Mulcahy who ran wildly on from
+      that battery into the open plain, where the enemy were retiring in sullen
+      groups. His hands were empty, he had lost helmet and belt, and he was
+      bleeding from a wound in the neck. Dan and Horse Egan, panting and
+      distressed, had thrown themselves down on the ground by the captured guns,
+      when they noticed Mulcahy&rsquo;s charge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mad,&rsquo; said Horse Egan critically. &lsquo;Mad with fear! He&rsquo;s going straight to
+      his death, an&rsquo; shouting&rsquo;s no use.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let him go. Watch now! If we fire we&rsquo;ll hit him, maybe.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last of a hurrying crowd of Afghans turned at the noise of shod feet
+      behind him, and shifted his knife ready to hand. This, he saw, was no time
+      to take prisoners. Mulcahy tore on, sobbing; the straight-held blade went
+      home through the defenceless breast, and the body pitched forward almost
+      before a shot from Dan&rsquo;s rifle brought down the slayer and still further
+      hurried the Afghan retreat. The two Irishmen went out to bring in their
+      dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was given the point and that was an easy death,&rsquo; said Horse Egan,
+      viewing the corpse. &lsquo;But would you ha&rsquo; shot him, Danny, if he had lived?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He didn&rsquo;t live, so there&rsquo;s no sayin&rsquo;. But I doubt I wud have bekase of
+      the fun he gave us&mdash;let alone the beer. Hike up his legs, Horse, and
+      we&rsquo;ll bring him in. Perhaps &lsquo;tis better this way.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They bore the poor limp body to the mass of the regiment, lolling
+      open-mouthed on their rifles; and there was a general snigger when one of
+      the younger subalterns said, &lsquo;That was a good man!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Phew,&rsquo; said Horse Egan, when a burial-party had taken over the burden.
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m powerful dhry, and this reminds me there&rsquo;ll be no more beer at all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Fwhy not?&rsquo; said Dan, with a twinkle in his eye as he stretched himself
+      for rest. &lsquo;Are we not conspirin&rsquo; all we can, an&rsquo; while we conspire are we
+      not entitled to free dhrinks? Sure his ould mother in New York would not
+      let her son&rsquo;s comrades perish of drouth&mdash;if she can be reached at the
+      end of a letter.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;re a janius,&rsquo; said Horse Egan. &lsquo;O&rsquo; coorse she will not. I wish this
+      crool war was over an&rsquo; we&rsquo;d get back to canteen. Faith, the
+      Commander-in-Chief ought to be hanged in his own little sword-belt for
+      makin&rsquo; us work on wather.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mavericks were generally of Horse Egan&rsquo;s opinion. So they made haste
+      to get their work done as soon as possible, and their industry was
+      rewarded by unexpected peace. &lsquo;We can fight the sons of Adam,&rsquo; said the
+      tribesmen, &lsquo;but we cannot fight the sons of Eblis, and this regiment never
+      stays still in one place. Let us therefore come in.&rsquo; They came in and
+      &lsquo;this regiment&rsquo; withdrew to conspire under the leadership of Dan Grady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Excellent as a subordinate Dan failed altogether as a chief-in-command&mdash;possibly
+      because he was too much swayed by the advice of the only man in the
+      regiment who could manufacture more than one kind of handwriting. The same
+      mail that bore to Mulcahy&rsquo;s mother in New York a letter from the colonel
+      telling her how valiantly her son had fought for the Queen, and how
+      assuredly he would have been recommended for the Victoria Cross had he
+      survived, carried a communication signed, I grieve to say, by that same
+      colonel and all the officers of the regiment, explaining their willingness
+      to do &lsquo;anything which is contrary to the regulations and all kinds of
+      revolutions&rsquo; if only a little money could be forwarded to cover incidental
+      expenses. Daniel Grady, Esquire, would receive funds, vice Mulcahy, who
+      &lsquo;was unwell at this present time of writing.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both letters were forwarded from New York to Tehama Street, San Francisco,
+      with marginal comments as brief as they were bitter. The Third Three read
+      and looked at each other. Then the Second Conspirator-he who believed in
+      &lsquo;joining hands with the practical branches&rsquo;&mdash;-began to laugh, and on
+      recovering his gravity said, &lsquo;Gentlemen, I consider this will be a lesson
+      to us. We&rsquo;re left again. Those cursed Irish have let us down. I knew they
+      would, but&rsquo;-here he laughed afresh-&rsquo;I&rsquo;d give considerable to know what was
+      at the back of it all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His curiosity would have been satisfied had he seen Dan Grady, discredited
+      regimental conspirator, trying to explain to his thirsty comrades in India
+      the non-arrival of funds from New York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE MARK OF THE BEAST
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Your Gods and my Gods-do you or I know which are the stronger? Native
+      Proverb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EAST of Suez, some hold, the direct control of Providence ceases; Man
+      being there handed over to the power of the Gods and Devils of Asia, and
+      the Church of England Providence only exercising an occasional and
+      modified supervision in the case of Englishmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This theory accounts for some of the more unnecessary horrors of life in
+      India: it may be stretched to explain my story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My friend Strickland of the Police, who knows as much of natives of India
+      as is good for any man, can bear witness to the facts of the case.
+      Dumoise, our doctor, also saw what Strickland and I saw. The inference
+      which he drew from the evidence was entirely incorrect. He is dead now; he
+      died, in a rather curious manner, which has been elsewhere described.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Fleete came to India he owned a little money and some land in the
+      Himalayas, near a place called Dharmsala. Both properties had been left
+      him by an uncle, and he came out to finance them. He was a big, heavy,
+      genial, and inoffensive man. His knowledge of natives was, of course,
+      limited, and he complained of the difficulties of the language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rode in from his place in the hills to spend New Year in the station,
+      and he stayed with Strickland. On New Year&rsquo;s Eve there was a big dinner at
+      the club, and the night was excusably wet. When men foregather from the
+      uttermost ends of the Empire, they have a right to be riotous. The
+      Frontier had sent down a contingent o&rsquo; Catch-&rsquo;em-Alive-O&rsquo;s who had not
+      seen twenty white faces for a year, and were used to ride fifteen miles to
+      dinner at the next Fort at the risk of a Khyberee bullet where their
+      drinks should lie. They profited by their new security, for they tried to
+      play pool with a curled-up hedgehog found in the garden, and one of them
+      carried the marker round the room in his teeth. Half a dozen planters had
+      come in from the south and were talking &lsquo;horse&rsquo; to the Biggest Liar in
+      Asia, who was trying to cap all their stories at once. Everybody was
+      there, and there was a general closing up of ranks and taking stock of our
+      losses in dead or disabled that had fallen during the past year. It was a
+      very wet night, and I remember that we sang &lsquo;Auld Lang Syne&rsquo; with our feet
+      in the Polo Championship Cup, and our heads among the stars, and swore
+      that we were all dear friends. Then some of us went away and annexed
+      Burma, and some tried to open up the Soudan and were opened up by Fuzzies
+      in that cruel scrub outside Suakim, and some found stars and medals, and
+      some were married, which was bad, and some did other things which were
+      worse, and the others of us stayed in our chains and strove to make money
+      on insufficient experiences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleete began the night with sherry and bitters, drank champagne steadily
+      up to dessert, then raw, rasping Capri with all the strength of whisky,
+      took Benedictine with his coffee, four or five whiskies and sodas to
+      improve his pool strokes, beer and bones at half-past two, winding up with
+      old brandy. Consequently, when he came out, at half-past three in the
+      morning, into fourteen degrees of frost, he was very angry with his horse
+      for coughing, and tried to leapfrog into the saddle. The horse broke away
+      and went to his stables; so Strickland and I formed a Guard of Dishonour
+      to take Fleete home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our road lay through the bazaar, close to a little temple of Hanuman, the
+      Monkey-god, who is a leading divinity worthy of respect. All gods have
+      good points, just as have all priests. Personally, I attach much
+      importance to Hanuman, and am kind to his people&mdash;the great gray apes
+      of the hills. One never knows when one may want a friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a light in the temple, and as we passed, we could hear voices of
+      men chanting hymns. In a native temple, the priests rise at all hours of
+      the night to do honour to their god. Before we could stop him, Fleete
+      dashed up the steps, patted two priests on the back, and was gravely
+      grinding the ashes of his cigar-butt into the forehead of the red stone
+      image of Hanuman. Strickland tried to drag him out, but he sat down and
+      said solemnly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Shee that? &lsquo;Mark of the B-beasht! <i>I</i> made it. Ishn&rsquo;t it fine?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In half a minute the temple was alive and noisy, and Strickland, who knew
+      what came of polluting gods, said that things might occur. He, by virtue
+      of his official position, long residence in the country, and weakness for
+      going among the natives, was known to the priests and he felt unhappy.
+      Fleete sat on the ground and refused to move. He said that &lsquo;good old
+      Hanuman&rsquo; made a very soft pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, without any warning, a Silver Man came out of a recess behind the
+      image of the god. He was perfectly naked in that bitter, bitter cold, and
+      his body shone like frosted silver, for he was what the Bible calls &lsquo;a
+      leper as white as snow.&rsquo; Also he had no face, because he was a leper of
+      some years&rsquo; standing and his disease was heavy upon him. We two stooped to
+      haul Fleete up, and the temple was filling and filling with folk who
+      seemed to spring from the earth, when the Silver Man ran in under our
+      arms, making a noise exactly like the mewing of an otter, caught Fleete
+      round the body and dropped his head on Fleete&rsquo;s breast before we could
+      wrench him away. Then he retired to a corner and sat mewing while the
+      crowd blocked all the doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priests were very angry until the Silver Man touched Fleete. That
+      nuzzling seemed to sober them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of a few minutes&rsquo; silence one of the priests came to Strickland
+      and said, in perfect English, &lsquo;Take your friend away. He has done with
+      Hanuman, but Hanurnan has not done with him.&rsquo; The crowd gave room and we
+      carried Fleete into the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland was very angry. He said that we might all three have been
+      knifed, and that Fleete should thank his stars that he had escaped without
+      injury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleete thanked no one. He said that he wanted to go to bed. He was
+      gorgeously drunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We moved on, Strickland silent and wrathful, until Fleete was taken with
+      violent shivering fits and sweating. He said that the smells of the bazaar
+      were overpowering, and he wondered why slaughter-houses were permitted so
+      near English residences. &lsquo;Can&rsquo;t you smell the blood?&rsquo; said Fleete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We put him to bed at last, just as the dawn was breaking, and Strickland
+      invited me to have another whisky and soda. While we were drinking he
+      talked of the trouble in the temple, and admitted that it baffled him
+      completely. Strickland hates being mystified by natives, because his
+      business in life is to overmatch them with their own weapons. He has not
+      yet succeeded in doing this, but in fifteen or twenty years he will have
+      made some small progress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They should have mauled us,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;instead of mewing at us. I wonder
+      what they meant. I don&rsquo;t like it one little bit.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said that the Managing Committee of the temple would in all probability
+      bring a criminal action against us for insulting their religion. There was
+      a section of the Indian Penal Code which exactly met Fleete&rsquo;s offence.
+      Strickland said he only hoped and prayed that they would do this. Before I
+      left I looked into Fleete&rsquo;s room, and saw him lying on his right side,
+      scratching his left breast. Then. I went to bed cold, depressed, and
+      unhappy, at seven o&rsquo;clock in the morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At one o&rsquo;clock I rode over to Strickland&rsquo;s house to inquire after Fleete&rsquo;s
+      head. I imagined that it would be a sore one. Fleete was breakfasting and
+      seemed unwell. His temper was gone, for he was abusing the cook for not
+      supplying him with an underdone chop. A man who can eat raw meat after a
+      wet night is a curiosity. I told Fleete this and he laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You breed queer mosquitoes in these parts,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve been bitten to
+      pieces, but only in one place.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let&rsquo;s have a look at the bite,&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;It may have gone down
+      since this morning.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the chops were being cooked, Fleete opened his shirt and showed us,
+      just over his left breast, a mark, the perfect double of the black
+      rosettes&mdash;the five or six irregular blotches arranged in a circle&mdash;on
+      a leopard&rsquo;s hide. Strickland looked and said, &lsquo;It was only pink this
+      morning. It&rsquo;s grown black now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleete ran to a glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By Jove!&rsquo; he said,&rsquo; this is nasty. What is it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We could not answer. Here the chops came in, all red and juicy, and Fleete
+      bolted three in a most offensive manner. He ate on his right grinders
+      only, and threw his head over his right shoulder as he snapped the meat.
+      When he had finished, it struck him that he had been behaving strangely,
+      for he said apologetically, &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t think I ever felt so hungry in my
+      life. I&rsquo;ve bolted like an ostrich.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After breakfast Strickland said to me, &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t go. Stay here, and stay for
+      the night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing that my house was not three miles from Strickland&rsquo;s, this request
+      was absurd. But Strickland insisted, and was going to say something when
+      Fleete interrupted by declaring in a shamefaced way that he felt hungry
+      again. Strickland sent a man to my house to fetch over my bedding and a
+      horse, and we three went down to Strickland&rsquo;s stables to pass the hours
+      until it was time to go out for a ride. The man who has a weakness for
+      horses never wearies of inspecting them; and when two men are killing time
+      in this way they gather knowledge and lies the one from the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were five horses in the stables, and I shall never forget the scene
+      as we tried to look them over. They seemed to have gone mad. They reared
+      and screamed and nearly tore up their pickets; they sweated and shivered
+      and lathered and were distraught with fear. Strickland&rsquo;s horses used to
+      know him as well as his dogs; which made the matter more curious. We left
+      the stable for fear of the brutes throwing themselves in their panic. Then
+      Strickland turned back and called me. The horses were still frightened,
+      but they let us &lsquo;gentle&rsquo; and make much of them, and put their heads in our
+      bosoms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They aren&rsquo;t afraid of US,&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;D&rsquo;you know, I&rsquo;d give three
+      months&rsquo; pay if OUTRAGE here could talk.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Outrage was dumb, and could only cuddle up to his master and blow out
+      his nostrils, as is the custom of horses when they wish to explain things
+      but can&rsquo;t. Fleete came up when we were in the stalls, and as soon as the
+      horses saw him, their fright broke out afresh. It was all that we could do
+      to escape from the place unkicked. Strickland said, &lsquo;They don&rsquo;t seem to
+      love you, Fleete.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nonsense,&rsquo; said Fleete; &lsquo;my mare will follow me like a dog.&rsquo; He went to
+      her; she was in a loose-box; but as he slipped the bars she plunged,
+      knocked him down, and broke away into the garden. I laughed, but
+      Strickland was not amused. He took his moustache in both fists and pulled
+      at it till it nearly came out. Fleete, instead of going off to chase his
+      property, yawned, saying that he felt sleepy. He went to the house to lie
+      down, which was a foolish way of spending New Year&rsquo;s Day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland sat with me in the stables and asked if I had noticed anything
+      peculiar in Fleete&rsquo;s manner. I said that he ate his food like a beast; but
+      that this might have been the result of living alone in the hills out of
+      the reach of society as refined and elevating as ours for instance.
+      Strickland was not amused. I do not think that he listened to me, for his
+      next sentence referred to the mark on Fleete&rsquo;s breast, and I said that it
+      might have been caused by blister-flies, or that it was possibly a
+      birth-mark newly born and now visible for the first time. We both agreed
+      that it was unpleasant to look at, and Strickland found occasion to say
+      that I was a fool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you what I think now,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;because you would call me a
+      madman; but you must stay with me for the next few days, if you can. I
+      want you to watch Fleete, but don&rsquo;t tell me what you think till I have
+      made up my mind.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But I am dining out to-night,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;So am I,&rsquo; said Strickland, &lsquo;and
+      so is Fleete. At least if he doesn&rsquo;t change his mind.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We walked about the garden smoking, but saying nothing&mdash;because we
+      were friends, and talking spoils good tobacco&mdash;till our pipes were
+      out. Then we went to wake up Fleete. He was wide awake and fidgeting about
+      his room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I say, I want some more chops,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;Can I get them?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We laughed and said, &lsquo;Go and change. The ponies will be round in a
+      minute.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All right,&rsquo; said Fleete. I&rsquo;ll go when I get the chops&mdash;underdone
+      ones, mind.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed to be quite in earnest. It was four o&rsquo;clock, and we had had
+      breakfast at one; still, for a long time, he demanded those underdone
+      chops. Then he changed into riding clothes and went out into the verandah.
+      His pony&mdash;the mare had not been caught&mdash;would not let him come
+      near. All three horses were unmanageable&mdash;-mad with fear&mdash;-and
+      finally Fleete said that he would stay at home and get something to eat.
+      Strickland and I rode out wondering. As we passed the temple of Hanuman,
+      the Silver Man came out and mewed at us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He is not one of the regular priests of the temple,&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;I
+      think I should peculiarly like to lay my hands on him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no spring in our gallop on the racecourse that evening. The
+      horses were stale, and moved as though they had been ridden out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The fright after breakfast has been too much for them,&rsquo; said Strickland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the only remark he made through the remainder of the ride. Once
+      or twice I think he swore to himself; but that did not count.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We came back in the dark at seven o&rsquo;clock, and saw that there were no
+      lights in the bungalow. &lsquo;Careless ruffians my servants are!&rsquo; said
+      Strickland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My horse reared at something on the carriage drive, and Fleete stood up
+      under its nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What are you doing, grovelling about the garden?&rsquo; said Strickland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But both horses bolted and nearly threw us. We dismounted by the stables
+      and returned to Fleete, who was on his hands and knees under the
+      orange-bushes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What the devil&rsquo;s wrong with you?&rsquo; said Strickland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nothing, nothing in the world,&rsquo; said Fleete, speaking very quickly and
+      thickly. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve been gardening-botanising you know. The smell of the earth
+      is delightful. I think I&rsquo;m going for a walk-a long walk-all night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I saw that there was something excessively out of order somewhere,
+      and I said to Strickland, &lsquo;I am not dining out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bless you!&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;Here, Fleete, get up. You&rsquo;ll catch fever
+      there. Come in to dinner and let&rsquo;s have the lamps lit. We &lsquo;ll all dine at
+      home.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleete stood up unwillingly, and said, &lsquo;No lamps-no lamps. It&rsquo;s much nicer
+      here. Let&rsquo;s dine outside and have some more chops-lots of &lsquo;em and
+      underdone&mdash;bloody ones with gristle.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now a December evening in Northern India is bitterly cold, and Fleete&rsquo;s
+      suggestion was that of a maniac.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come in,&rsquo; said Strickland sternly. &lsquo;Come in at once.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleete came, and when the lamps were brought, we saw that he was literally
+      plastered with dirt from head to foot. He must have been rolling in the
+      garden. He shrank from the light and went to his room. His eyes were
+      horrible to look at. There was a green light behind them, not in them, if
+      you understand, and the man&rsquo;s lower lip hung down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland said, &lsquo;There is going to be trouble-big trouble-to-night. Don&rsquo;t
+      you change your riding-things.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We waited and waited for Fleete&rsquo;s reappearance, and ordered dinner in the
+      meantime. We could hear him moving about his own room, but there was no
+      light there. Presently from the room came the long-drawn howl of a wolf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      People write and talk lightly of blood running cold and hair standing up
+      and things of that kind. Both sensations are too horrible to be trifled
+      with. My heart stopped as though a knife had been driven through it, and
+      Strickland turned as white as the tablecloth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The howl was repeated, and was answered by another howl far across the
+      fields.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That set the gilded roof on the horror. Strickland dashed into Fleete&rsquo;s
+      room. I followed, and we saw Fleete getting out of the window. He made
+      beast-noises in the back of his throat. He could not answer us when we
+      shouted at him. He spat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don&rsquo;t quite remember what followed, but I think that Strickland must
+      have stunned him with the long boot-jack or else I should never have been
+      able to sit on his chest. Fleete could not speak, he could only snarl, and
+      his snarls were those of a wolf, not of a man. The human spirit must have
+      been giving way all day and have died out with the twilight. We were
+      dealing with a beast that had once been Fleete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The affair was beyond any human and rational experience. I tried to say
+      &lsquo;Hydrophobia,&rsquo; but the word wouldn&rsquo;t come, because I knew that I was
+      lying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We bound this beast with leather thongs of the punkah-rope, and tied its
+      thumbs and big toes together, and gagged it with a shoe-horn, which makes
+      a very efficient gag if you know how to arrange it. Then we carried it
+      into the dining-room, and sent a man to Dumoise, the doctor, telling him
+      to come over at once. After we had despatched the messenger and were
+      drawing breath, Strickland said, &lsquo;It&rsquo;s no good. This isn&rsquo;t any doctor&rsquo;s
+      work.&rsquo; I, also, knew that he spoke the truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The beast&rsquo;s head was free, and it threw it about from side to side. Any
+      one entering the room would have believed that we were curing a wolf&rsquo;s
+      pelt. That was the most loathsome accessory of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland sat with his chin in the heel of his fist, watching the beast
+      as it wriggled on the ground, but saying nothing. The shirt had been torn
+      open in the scuffle and showed the black rosette mark on the left breast.
+      It stood out like a blister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the silence of the watching we heard something without mewing like a
+      she-otter. We both rose to our feet, and, I answer for myself, not
+      Strickland, felt sick&mdash;actually and physically sick. We told each
+      other, as did the men in Pinafore, that it was the cat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dumoise arrived, and I never saw a little man so unprofessionally shocked.
+      He said that it was a heart-rending case of hydrophobia, and that nothing
+      could be done. At least any palliative measures would only prolong the
+      agony. The beast was foaming at the mouth. Fleete, as we told Dumoise, had
+      been bitten by dogs once or twice. Any man who keeps half a dozen terriers
+      must expect a nip now and again. Dumoise could offer no help. He could
+      only certify that Fleete was dying of hydrophobia. The beast was then
+      howling, for it had managed to spit out the shoe-horn. Dumoise said that
+      he would be ready to certify to the cause of death, and that the end was
+      certain. He was a good little man, and he offered to remain with us; but
+      Strickland refused the kindness. He did not wish to poison Dumoise&rsquo;s New
+      Year. He would only ask him not to give the real cause of Fleete&rsquo;s death
+      to the public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Dumoise left, deeply agitated; and as soon as the noise of the
+      cart-wheels had died away, Strickland told me, in a whisper, his
+      suspicions. They were so wildly improbable that he dared not say them out
+      aloud; and I, who entertained all Strickland&rsquo;s beliefs, was so ashamed of
+      owning to them that I pretended to disbelieve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Even if the Silver Man had bewtiched Fleete for polluting the image of
+      Hanuman, the punishment could not have fallen so quickly.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I was whispering this the cry outside the house rose again, and the
+      beast fell into a fresh paroxysm of struggling till we were afraid that
+      the thongs that held it would give way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Watch!&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;If this happens six times I shall take the law
+      into my own hands. I order you to help me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went into his room and came out in a few minutes with the barrels of an
+      old shot-gun, a piece of fishing-line, some thick cord, and his heavy
+      wooden bedstead. I reported that the convulsions had followed the cry by
+      two seconds in each case, and the beast seemed perceptibly weaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland muttered, &lsquo;But he can&rsquo;t take away the life! He can&rsquo;t take away
+      the life!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said, though I knew that I was arguing against myself, &lsquo;It may be a cat.
+      It must be a cat. If the Silver Man is responsible, why does he dare to
+      come here?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland arranged the wood on the hearth, put the gun-barrels into the
+      glow of the fire, spread the twine on the table and broke a walking stick
+      in two. There was one yard of fishing line, gut, lapped with wire, such as
+      is used for mahseer-fishing, and he tied the two ends together in a loop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he said, &lsquo;How can we catch him? He must be taken alive and unhurt.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said that we must trust in Providence, and go out softly with
+      polo-sticks into the shrubbery at the front of the house. The man or
+      animal that made the cry was evidently moving round the house as regularly
+      as a night-watchman. We could wait in the bushes till he came by and knock
+      him over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland accepted this suggestion, and we slipped out from a bath-room
+      window into the front verandah and then across the carriage drive into the
+      bushes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the moonlight we could see the leper coming round the corner of the
+      house. He was perfectly naked, and from time to time he mewed and stopped
+      to dance with his shadow. It was an unattractive sight, and thinking of
+      poor Fleete, brought to such degradation by so foul a creature, I put away
+      all my doubts and resolved to help Strickland from the heated gun-barrels
+      to the loop of twine-from the loins to the head and back again&mdash;-with
+      all tortures that might be needful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leper halted in the front porch for a moment and we jumped out on him
+      with the sticks. He was wonderfully strong, and we were afraid that he
+      might escape or be fatally injured before we caught him. We had an idea
+      that lepers were frail creatures, but this proved to be incorrect.
+      Strickland knocked his legs from under him and I put my foot on his neck.
+      He mewed hideously, and even through my riding-boots I could feel that his
+      flesh was not the flesh of a clean man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He struck at us with his hand and feet-stumps. We looped the lash of a
+      dog-whip round him, under the armpits, and dragged him backwards into the
+      hall and so into the dining-room where the beast lay. There we tied him
+      with trunk-straps. He made no attempt to escape, but mewed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we confronted him with the beast the scene was beyond description.
+      The beast doubled backwards into a bow as though he had been poisoned with
+      strychnine, and moaned in the most pitiable fashion. Several other things
+      happened also, but they cannot be put down here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I think I was right,&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;Now we will ask him to cure this
+      case.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the leper only mewed. Strickland wrapped a towel round his hand and
+      took the gun-barrels out of the fire. I put the half of the broken walking
+      stick through the loop of fishing-line and buckled the leper comfortably
+      to Strickland&rsquo;s bedstead. I understood then how men and women and little
+      children can endure to see a witch burnt alive; for the beast was moaning
+      on the floor, and though the Silver Man had no face, you could see
+      horrible feelings passing through the slab that took its place, exactly as
+      waves of heat play across red-hot iron&mdash;gun-barrels for instance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland shaded his eyes with his hands for a moment and we got to work.
+      This part is not to be printed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dawn was beginning to break when the leper spoke. His mewings had not
+      been satisfactory up to that point. The beast had fainted from exhaustion
+      and the house was very still. We unstrapped the leper and told him to take
+      away the evil spirit. He crawled to the beast and laid his hand upon the
+      left breast. That was all. Then he fell face down and whined, drawing in
+      his breath as he did so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We watched the face of the beast, and saw the soul of Fleete coming back
+      into the eyes. Then a sweat broke out on the forehead and the eyes-they
+      were human eyes&mdash;-closed. We waited for an hour but Fleete still
+      slept. We carried him to his room and bade the leper go, giving him the
+      bedstead, and the sheet on the bedstead to cover his nakedness, the gloves
+      and the towels with which we had touched him, and the whip that had been
+      hooked round his body. He put the sheet about him and went out into the
+      early morning without speaking or mewing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland wiped his face and sat down. A night-gong, far away in the
+      city, made seven o&rsquo;clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Exactly four-and-twenty hours!&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;And I&rsquo;ve done enough to
+      ensure my dismissal from the service, besides permanent quarters in a
+      lunatic asylum. Do you believe that we are awake?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The red-hot gun-barrel had fallen on the floor and was singeing the
+      carpet. The smell was entirely real.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That morning at eleven we two together went to wake up Fleete. We looked
+      and saw that the black leopard-rosette on his chest had disappeared. He
+      was very drowsy and tired, but as soon as he saw us, he said, &lsquo;Oh!
+      Confound you fellows. Happy New Year to you. Never mix your liquors. I&rsquo;m
+      nearly dead.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thanks for your kindness, but you&rsquo;re over time,&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;To-day
+      is the morning of the second. You&rsquo;ve slept the clock round with a
+      vengeance.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened, and little Dumoise put his head in. He had come on foot,
+      and fancied that we were laving out Fleete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve brought a nurse,&rsquo; said Dumoise. &lsquo;I suppose that she can come in
+      for... what is necessary.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By all means,&rsquo; said Fleete cheerily, sitting up in bed. &lsquo;Bring on your
+      nurses.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dumoise was dumb. Strickland led him out and explained that there must
+      have been a mistake in the diagnosis. Dumoise remained dumb and left the
+      house hastily. He considered that his professional reputation had been
+      injured, and was inclined to make a personal matter of the recovery.
+      Strickland went out too. When he came back, he said that he had been to
+      call on the Temple of Hanuman to offer redress for the pollution of the
+      god, and had been solemnly assured that no white man had ever touched the
+      idol and that he was an incarnation of all the virtues labouring under a
+      delusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What do you think?&rsquo; said Strickland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said, &lsquo;&ldquo;There are more things . . .&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Strickland hates that quotation. He says that I have worn it
+      threadbare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One other curious thing happened which frightened me as much as anything
+      in all the night&rsquo;s work. When Fleete was dressed he came into the
+      dining-room and sniffed. He had a quaint trick of moving his nose when he
+      sniffed. &lsquo;Horrid doggy smell, here,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;You should really keep
+      those terriers of yours in better order. Try sulphur, Strick.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Strickland did not answer. He caught hold of the back of a chair, and,
+      without warning, went into an amazing fit of hysterics. It is terrible to
+      see a strong man overtaken with hysteria. Then it struck me that we had
+      fought for Fleete&rsquo;s soul with the Silver Man in that room, and had
+      disgraced ourselves as Englishmen for ever, and I laughed and gasped and
+      gurgled just as shamefully as Strickland, while Fleete thought that we had
+      both gone mad. We never told him what we had done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some years later, when Strickland had married and was a church-going
+      member of society for his wife&rsquo;s sake, we reviewed the incident
+      dispassionately, and Strickland suggested that I should put it before the
+      public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot myself see that this step is likely to clear up the mystery;
+      because, in the first place, no one will believe a rather unpleasant
+      story, and, in the second, it is well known to every right-minded man that
+      the gods of the heathen are stone and brass, and any attempt to deal with
+      them otherwise is justly condemned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE RETURN OF IMRAY
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ The doors were wide, the story saith,
+ Out of the night came the patient wraith,
+ He might not speak, and he could not stir
+ A hair of the Baron&rsquo;s minniver&mdash;
+ Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin,
+ He roved the castle to seek his kin.
+ And oh, &rsquo;twas a piteous thing to see
+ The dumb ghost follow his enemy!
+                             THE BARON.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Imray achieved the impossible. Without warning, for no conceivable motive,
+      in his youth, at the threshold of his career he chose to disappear from
+      the world&mdash;-which is to say, the little Indian station where he
+      lived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon a day he was alive, well, happy, and in great evidence among the
+      billiard-tables at his Club. Upon a morning, he was not, and no manner of
+      search could make sure where he might be. He had stepped out of his place;
+      he had not appeared at his office at the proper time, and his dogcart was
+      not upon the public roads. For these reasons, and because he was
+      hampering, in a microscopical degree, the administration of the Indian
+      Empire, that Empire paused for one microscopical moment to make inquiry
+      into the fate of Imray. Ponds were dragged, wells were plumbed, telegrams
+      were despatched down the lines of railways and to the nearest seaport
+      town-twelve hundred miles away; but Imray was not at the end of the
+      drag-ropes nor the telegraph wires. He was gone, and his place knew him no
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the work of the great Indian Empire swept forward, because it could
+      not be delayed, and Imray from being a man became a mystery&mdash;such a
+      thing as men talk over at their tables in the Club for a month, and then
+      forget utterly. His guns, horses, and carts were sold to the highest
+      bidder. His superior officer wrote an altogether absurd letter to his
+      mother, saying that Imray had unaccountably disappeared, and his bungalow
+      stood empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After three or four months of the scorching hot weather had gone by, my
+      friend Strickland, of the Police, saw fit to rent the bungalow from the
+      native landlord. This was before he was engaged to Miss Youghal&mdash;an
+      affair which has been described in another place&mdash;and while he was
+      pursuing his investigations into native life. His own life was
+      sufficiently peculiar, and men complained of his manners and customs.
+      There was always food in his house, but there were no regular times for
+      meals. He ate, standing up and walking about, whatever he might find at
+      the sideboard, and this is not good for human beings. His domestic
+      equipment was limited to six rifles, three shot-guns, five saddles, and a
+      collection of stiff-jointed mahseer-rods, bigger and stronger than the
+      largest salmon-rods. These occupied one-half of his bungalow, and the
+      other half was given up to Strickland and his dog Tietjens&mdash;an
+      enormous Rampur slut who devoured daily the rations of two men. She spoke
+      to Strickland in a language of her own; and whenever, walking abroad, she
+      saw things calculated to destroy the peace of Her Majesty the
+      Queen-Empress, she returned to her master and laid information. Strickland
+      would take steps at once, and the end of his labours was trouble and fine
+      and imprisonment for other people. The natives believed that Tietjens was
+      a familiar spirit, and treated her with the great reverence that is born
+      of hate and fear. One room in the bungalow was set apart for her special
+      use. She owned a bedstead, a blanket, and a drinking-trough, and if any
+      one came into Strickland&rsquo;s room at night her custom was to knock down the
+      invader and give tongue till some one came with a light. Strickland owed
+      his life to her, when he was on the Frontier, in search of a local
+      murderer, who came in the gray dawn to send Strickland much farther than
+      the Andaman Islands. Tietjens caught the man as he was crawling into
+      Strickland&rsquo;s tent with a dagger between his teeth; and after his record of
+      iniquity was established in the eyes of the law he was hanged. From that
+      date Tietjens wore a collar of rough silver, and employed a monogram on
+      her night-blanket; and the blanket was of double woven Kashmir cloth, for
+      she was a delicate dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under no circumstances would she be separated from Strickland; and once,
+      when he was ill with fever, made great trouble for the doctors, because
+      she did not know how to help her master and would not allow another
+      creature to attempt aid. Macarnaght, of the Indian Medical Service, beat
+      her over her head with a gun-butt before she could understand that she
+      must give room for those who could give quinine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A short time after Strickland had taken Imray&rsquo;s bungalow, my business took
+      me through that Station, and naturally, the Club quarters being full, I
+      quartered myself upon Strickland. It was a desirable bungalow,
+      eight-roomed and heavily thatched against any chance of leakage from rain.
+      Under the pitch of the roof ran a ceiling-cloth which looked just as neat
+      as a white-washed ceiling. The landlord had repainted it when Strickland
+      took the bungalow. Unless you knew how Indian bungalows were built you
+      would never have suspected that above the cloth lay the dark
+      three-cornered cavern of the roof, where the beams and the underside of
+      the thatch harboured all manner of rats, bats, ants, and foul things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tietjens met me in the verandah with a bay like the boom of the bell of
+      St. Paul&rsquo;s, putting her paws on my shoulder to show she was glad to see
+      me. Strickland had contrived to claw together a sort of meal which he
+      called lunch, and immediately after it was finished went out about his
+      business. I was left alone with Tietjens and my own affairs. The heat of
+      the summer had broken up and turned to the warm damp of the rains. There
+      was no motion in the heated air, but the rain fell like ramrods on the
+      earth, and flung up a blue mist when it splashed back. The bamboos, and
+      the custard-apples, the poinsettias, and the mango-trees in the garden
+      stood still while the warm water lashed through them, and the frogs began
+      to sing among the aloe hedges. A little before the light failed, and when
+      the rain was at its worst, I sat in the back verandah and heard the water
+      roar from the eaves, and scratched myself because I was covered with the
+      thing called prickly-heat. Tietjens came out with me and put her head in
+      my lap and was very sorrowful; so I gave her biscuits when tea was ready,
+      and I took tea in the back verandah on account of the little coolness
+      found there. The rooms of the house were dark behind me. I could smell
+      Strickland&rsquo;s saddlery and the oil on his guns, and I had no desire to sit
+      among these things. My own servant came to me in the twilight, the muslin
+      of his clothes clinging tightly to his drenched body, and told me that a
+      gentleman had called and wished to see some one. Very much against my
+      will, but only because of the darkness of the rooms, I went into the naked
+      drawing-room, telling my man to bring the lights. There might or might not
+      have been a caller waiting&mdash;-it seemed to me that I saw a figure by
+      one of the windows&mdash;-but when the lights came there was nothing save
+      the spikes of the rain without, and the smell of the drinking earth in my
+      nostrils. I explained to my servant that he was no wiser than he ought to
+      be, and went back to the verandah to talk to Tietjens. She had gone out
+      into the wet, and I could hardly coax her back to me; even with biscuits
+      with sugar tops. Strickland came home, dripping wet, just before dinner,
+      and the first thing he said was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Has any one called?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I explained, with apologies, that my servant had summoned me into the
+      drawing-room on a false alarm; or that some loafer had tried to call on
+      Strickland, and thinking better of it had fled after giving his name.
+      Strickiand ordered dinner, without comment, and since it was a real dinner
+      with a white tablecloth attached, we sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At nine o&rsquo;clock Strickland wanted to go to bed, and I was tired too.
+      Tietjens, who had been lying underneath the table, rose up, and swung into
+      the least exposed verandah as soon as her master moved to his own room,
+      which was next to the stately chamber set apart for Tietjens. If a mere
+      wife had wished to sleep out of doors in that pelting rain it would not
+      have mattered; but Tietjens was a dog, and therefore the better animal. I
+      looked at Strickland, expecting to see him flay her with a whip. He smiled
+      queerly, as a man would smile after telling some unpleasant domestic
+      tragedy. &lsquo;She has done this ever since I moved in here,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;Let her
+      go.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dog was Strickland&rsquo;s dog, so I said nothing, but I felt all that
+      Strickland felt In being thus made light of. Tietjens encamped outside my
+      bedroom window, and storm after storm came up, thundered on the thatch,
+      and died away. The lightning spattered the sky as a thrown egg spatters a
+      barn-door, but the light was pale blue, not yellow; and, looking through
+      my split bamboo blinds, I could see the great dog standing, not sleeping,
+      in the verandah, the hackles alift on her back and her feet anchored as
+      tensely as the drawn wire-rope of a suspension bridge. In the very short
+      pauses of the thunder I tried to sleep, but it seemed that some one wanted
+      me very urgently. He, whoever he was, was trying to call me by name, but
+      his voice was no more than a husky whisper. The thunder ceased, and
+      Tietjens went into the garden and howled at the low moon. Somebody tried
+      to open my door, walked about and about through the house and stood
+      breathing heavily in the verandahs, and just when I was falling asleep I
+      fancied that I heard a wild hammering and clamouring above my head or on
+      the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I ran into Strickland&rsquo;s room and asked him whether he was ill, and had
+      been calling for me. He was lying on his bed half dressed, a pipe in his
+      mouth. &lsquo;I thought you&rsquo;d come,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;Have I been walking round the
+      house recently?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I explained that he had been tramping in the dining-room and the
+      smoking-room and two or three other places, and he laughed and told me to
+      go back to bed. I went back to bed and slept till the morning, but through
+      all my mixed dreams I was sure I was doing some one an injustice in not
+      attending to his wants. What those wants were I could not tell; but a
+      fluttering, whispering, bolt-fumbling, lurking, loitering Someone was
+      reproaching me for my slackness, and, half awake, I heard the howling of
+      Tietjens in the garden and the threshing of the rain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I lived in that house for two days. Strickland went to his office daily,
+      leaving me alone for eight or ten hours with Tietjens for my only
+      companion. As long as the full light lasted I was comfortable, and so was
+      Tietjens; but in the twilight she and I moved into the back verandah and
+      cuddled each other for company. We were alone in the house, but none the
+      less it was much too fully occupied by a tenant with whom I did not wish
+      to interfere. I never saw him, but I could see the curtains between the
+      rooms quivering where he had just passed through; I could hear the chairs
+      creaking as the bamboos sprung under a weight that had just quitted them;
+      and I could feel when I went to get a book from the dining-room that
+      somebody was waiting in the shadows of the front verandah till I should
+      have gone away. Tietjens made the twilight more interesting by glaring
+      into the darkened rooms with every hair erect, and following the motions
+      of something that I could not see. She never entered the rooms, but her
+      eyes moved interestedly: that was quite sufficient. Only when my servant
+      came to trim the lamps and make all light and habitable she would come in
+      with me and spend her time sitting on her haunches, watching an invisible
+      extra man as he moved about behind my shoulder. Dogs are cheerful
+      companions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I explained to Strickland, gently as might be, that I would go over to the
+      Club and find for myself quarters there. I admired his hospitality, was
+      pleased with his guns and rods, but I did not much care for his house and
+      its atmosphere. He heard me out to the end, and then smiled very wearily,
+      but without contempt, for he is a man who understands things. &lsquo;Stay on,&rsquo; 
+      he said, &lsquo;and see what this thing means. All you have talked about I have
+      known since I took the bungalow. Stay on and wait. Tietjens has left me.
+      Are you going too?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had seen him through one little affair, connected with a heathen idol,
+      that had brought me to the doors of a lunatic asylum, and I had no desire
+      to help him through further experiences. He was a man to whom
+      unpleasantnesses arrived as do dinners to ordinary people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Therefore I explained more clearly than ever that I liked him immensely,
+      and would be happy to see him in the daytime; but that I did not care to
+      sleep under his roof. This was after dinner, when Tietjens had gone out to
+      lie in the verandah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Pon my soul, I don&rsquo;t wonder,&rsquo; said Strickland, with his eyes on the
+      ceiling-cloth. &lsquo;Look at that!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tails of two brown snakes were hanging between the cloth and the
+      cornice of the wall. They threw long shadows in the lamplight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If you are afraid of snakes of course&mdash;&rsquo; said Strickland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hate and fear snakes, because if you look into the eyes of any snake you
+      will see that it knows all and more of the mystery of man&rsquo;s fall, and that
+      it feels all the contempt that the Devil felt when Adam was evicted from
+      Eden. Besides which its bite is generally fatal, and it twists up trouser
+      legs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You ought to get your thatch overhauled,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Give me a mahseer-rod, and we&rsquo;ll poke &lsquo;em down.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They&rsquo;ll hide among the roof-beams,&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t stand
+      snakes overhead. I&rsquo;m going up into the roof. If I shake &lsquo;em down, stand by
+      with a cleaning-rod and break their backs.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was not anxious to assist Strickland in his work, but I took the
+      cleaning-rod and waited in the dining-room, while Strickland brought a
+      gardener&rsquo;s ladder from the verandah, and set it against the side of the
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The snake-tails drew themselves up and disappeared. We could hear the dry
+      rushing scuttle of long bodies running over the baggy ceiling-cloth.
+      Strickland took a lamp with him, while I tried to make clear to him the
+      danger of hunting roof-snakes between a ceiling-cloth and a thatch, apart
+      from the deterioration of property caused by ripping out ceiling-cloths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nonsense!&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;They&rsquo;re sure to hide near the walls by the
+      cloth. The bricks are too cold for &lsquo;em, and the heat of the room is just
+      what they like.&rsquo; He put his hand to the corner of the stuff and ripped it
+      from the cornice. It gave with a great sound of tearing, and Strickland
+      put his head through the opening into the dark of the angle of the
+      roof-beams. I set my teeth and lifted the rod, for I had not the least
+      knowledge of what might descend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;H&rsquo;m!&rsquo; said Strickland, and his voice rolled and rumbled in the roof.
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;s room for another set of rooms up here, and, by Jove, some one is
+      occupying &lsquo;em!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Snakes?&rsquo; I said from below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No. It&rsquo;s a buffalo. Hand me up the two last joints of a mahseer-rod, and
+      I&rsquo;ll prod it. It&rsquo;s lying on the main roof-beam.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I handed up the rod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What a nest for owls and serpents! No wonder the snakes live here,&rsquo; said
+      Strickland, climbing farther into the roof. I could see his elbow
+      thrusting with the rod. &lsquo;Come out of that, whoever you are! Heads below
+      there! It&rsquo;s falling.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw the ceiling-cloth nearly in the centre of the room bag with a shape
+      that was pressing it downwards and downwards towards the lighted lamp on
+      the table. I snatched the lamp out of danger and stood back. Then the
+      cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split, swayed, and shot down upon
+      the table something that I dared not look at, till Strickland had slid
+      down the ladder and was standing by my side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not say much, being a man of few words; but he picked up the loose
+      end of the tablecloth and threw it over the remnants on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It strikes me,&rsquo; said he, putting down the lamp, &lsquo;our friend Imray has
+      come back. Oh! you would, would you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a movement under the cloth, and a little snake wriggled out, to
+      be back-broken by the butt of the mahseer-rod. I was sufficiently sick to
+      make no remarks worth recording.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland meditated, and helped himself to drinks. The arrangement under
+      the cloth made no more signs of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is it Imray?&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland turned back the cloth for a moment, and looked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is Imray,&rsquo; he said; &lsquo;and his throat is cut from ear to ear.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we spoke, both together and to ourselves: &lsquo;That&rsquo;s why he whispered
+      about the house.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tietjens, in the garden, began to bay furiously. A little later her great
+      nose heaved open the dining-room door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sniffed and was still. The tattered ceiling-cloth hung down almost to
+      the level of the table, and there was hardly room to move away from the
+      discovery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tietjens came in and sat down; her teeth bared under her lip and her
+      forepaws planted. She looked at Strickland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s a bad business, old lady,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;Men don&rsquo;t climb up into the
+      roofs of their bungalows to die, and they don&rsquo;t fasten up the ceiling
+      cloth behind &lsquo;em. Let&rsquo;s think it out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let&rsquo;s think it out somewhere else,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Excellent idea! Turn the lamps out. We&rsquo;ll get into my room.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not turn the lamps out. I went into Strickland&rsquo;s room first, and
+      allowed him to make the darkness. Then he followed me, and we lit tobacco
+      and thought. Strickland thought. I smoked furiously, because I was afraid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Imray is back,&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;The question is&mdash;-who killed
+      Imray? Don&rsquo;t talk, I&rsquo;ve a notion of my own. When I took this bungalow I
+      took over most of Imray&rsquo;s servants. Imray was guileless and inoffensive,
+      wasn&rsquo;t he?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I agreed; though the heap under the cloth had looked neither one thing nor
+      the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If I call in all the servants they will stand fast in a crowd and lie
+      like Aryans. What do you suggest?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Call &lsquo;em in one by one,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They&rsquo;ll run away and give the news to all their fellows,&rsquo; said
+      Strickland. &lsquo;We must segregate &lsquo;em. Do you suppose your servant knows
+      anything about it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He may, for aught I know; but I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s likely. He has only been
+      here two or three days,&rsquo; I answered. &lsquo;What&rsquo;s your notion?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t quite tell. How the dickens did the man get the wrong side of the
+      ceiling-cloth?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a heavy coughing outside Strickland&rsquo;s bedroom door. This showed
+      that Bahadur Khan, his body-servant, had waked from sleep and wished to
+      put Strickland to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come in,&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s a very warm night, isn&rsquo;t it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bahadur Khan, a great, green-turbaned, six-foot Mahomedan, said that it
+      was a very warm night; but that there was more rain pending, which, by his
+      Honour&rsquo;s favour, would bring relief to the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It will be so, if God pleases,&rsquo; said Strickland, tugging off his boots.
+      &lsquo;It is in my mind, Bahadur Khan, that I have worked thee remorselessly for
+      many days&mdash;-ever since that time when thou first earnest into my
+      service. What time was that?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Has the Heaven-born forgotten? It was when Imray Sahib went secretly to
+      Europe without warning given; and I-even I-came into the honoured service
+      of the protector of the poor.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And Imray Sahib went to Europe?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is so said among those who were his servants.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And thou wilt take service with him when he returns?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Assuredly, Sahib. He was a good master, and cherished his dependants.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That is true. I am very tired, but I go buck-shooting to-morrow. Give me
+      the little sharp rifle that I use for black-buck; it is in the case
+      yonder.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man stooped over the case; handed barrels, stock, and fore-end to
+      Strickland, who fitted all together, yawning dolefully. Then he reached
+      down to the gun-case, took a solid-drawn cartridge, and slipped it into
+      the breech of the &lsquo;360 Express.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe secretly! That is very strange,
+      Bahadur Khan, is it not?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What do I know of the ways of the white man. Heaven-born?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Very little, truly. But thou shalt know more anon. It has reached me that
+      Imray Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and that even now
+      he lies in the next room, waiting his servant.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sahib!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lamplight slid along the barrels of the rifle as they levelled
+      themselves at Bahadur Khan&rsquo;s broad breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go and look!&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and he
+      waits thee. Go!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man picked up a lamp, and went into the dining-room, Strickland
+      following, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of the rifle. He looked
+      for a moment at the black depths behind the ceiling-cloth; at the writhing
+      snake under foot; and last, a gray glaze settling on his face, at the
+      thing under the tablecloth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hast thou seen?&rsquo; said Strickland after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have seen. I am clay in the white man&rsquo;s hands. What does the Presence
+      do?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hang thee within the month. What else?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For killing him? Nay, Sahib, consider. Walking among us, his servants, he
+      cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old. Him he bewitched, and
+      in ten days he died of the fever&mdash;my child!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What said Imray Sahib?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He said he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head; wherefore my
+      child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when he had
+      come back from office, and was sleeping. Wherefore I dragged him up into
+      the roof-beams and made all fast behind him. The Heaven-born knows all
+      things. I am the servant of the Heaven-born.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland looked at me above the rifle, and said, in the vernacular,
+      &lsquo;Thou art witness to this saying? He has killed.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bahadur Khan stood ashen gray in the light of the one lamp. The need for
+      justification came upon him very swiftly. &lsquo;I am trapped,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;but
+      the offence was that man&rsquo;s. He cast an evil eye upon my child, and I
+      killed and hid him. Only such as are served by devils,&rsquo; he glared at
+      Tietjens, couched stolidly before him, &lsquo;only such could know what I did.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It was clever. But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam with a rope.
+      Now, thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. Orderly!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A drowsy policeman answered Strickland&rsquo;s call. He was followed by another,
+      and Tietjens sat wondrous still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Take him to the police-station,&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;There is a case
+      toward.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do I hang, then?&rsquo; said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to escape, and
+      keeping his eyes on the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If the sun shines or the water runs&mdash;yes!&rsquo; said Strickland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bahadur Khan stepped back one long pace, quivered, and stood still. The
+      two policemen waited further orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go!&rsquo; said Strickland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay; but I go very swiftly,&rsquo; said Bahadur Khan. &lsquo;Look! I am even now a
+      dead man.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lifted his foot, and to the little toe there clung the head of the
+      half-killed snake, firm fixed in the agony of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I come of land-holding stock,&rsquo; said Bahadur Khan, rocking where he stood.
+      &lsquo;It were a disgrace to me to go to the public scaffold: therefore I take
+      this way. Be it remembered that the Sahib&rsquo;s shirts are correctly
+      enumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in his washbasin. My
+      child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard. Why should you seek to slay me
+      with the rope? My honour is saved, and&mdash;and&mdash;I die.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of an hour he died, as they die who are bitten by the little
+      brown karait, and the policemen bore him and the thing under the
+      tablecloth to their appointed places. All were needed to make clear the
+      disappearance of Imray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;This,&rsquo; said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed, &lsquo;is called
+      the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I heard,&rsquo; I answered. &lsquo;Imray made a mistake.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Simply and solely through not knowing the nature of the Oriental, and the
+      coincidence of a little seasonal fever. Bahadur Khan had been with him for
+      four years.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shuddered. My own servant had been with me for exactly that length of
+      time. When I went over to my own room I found my man waiting, impassive as
+      the copper head on a penny, to pull off my boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What has befallen Bahadur Khan?&rsquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was bitten by a snake and died. The rest the Sahib knows,&rsquo; was the
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And how much of this matter hast thou known?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;As much as might be gathered from One coming in in the twilight to seek
+      satisfaction. Gently, Sahib. Let me pull off those boots.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland
+      shouting from his side of the house&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tietjens has come back to her place!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so she had. The great deerhound was couched statelily on her own
+      bedstead on her own blanket, while, in the next room, the idle, empty,
+      ceiling-cloth waggled as it trailed on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      NAMGAY DOOLA
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ There came to the beach a poor exile of Erin,
+ The dew on his wet robe hung heavy and chill;
+ Ere the steamer that brought him had passed out of hearin&rsquo;,
+ He was Alderman Mike inthrojuicin&rsquo; a bill!
+                       AMERICAN SONG.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Once upon a time there was a King who lived on the road to Thibet, very
+      many miles in the Himalayas. His Kingdom was eleven thousand feet above
+      the sea and exactly four miles square; but most of the miles stood on end
+      owing to the nature of the country. His revenues were rather less than
+      four hundred pounds yearly, and they were expended in the maintenance of
+      one elephant and a standing army of five men. He was tributary to the
+      Indian Government, who allowed him certain sums for keeping a section of
+      the Himalaya-Thibet road in repair. He further increased his revenues by
+      selling timber to the railway-companies; for he would cut the great deodar
+      trees in his one forest, and they fell thundering into the Sutlej river
+      and were swept down to the plains three hundred miles away and became
+      railway-ties. Now and again this King, whose name does not matter, would
+      mount a ringstraked horse and ride scores of miles to Simla-town to confer
+      with the Lieutenant-Governor on matters of state, or to assure the Viceroy
+      that his sword was at the service of the Queen-Empress. Then the Viceroy
+      would cause a ruffle of drums to be sounded, and the ringstraked horse and
+      the cavalry of the State&mdash;-two men in tatters&mdash;and the herald
+      who bore the silver stick before the King would trot back to their own
+      place, which lay between the tail of a heaven-climbing glacier and a dark
+      birch-forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, from such a King, always remembering that he possessed one veritable
+      elephant, and could count his descent for twelve hundred years, I
+      expected, when it was my fate to wander through his dominions, no more
+      than mere license to live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night had closed in rain, and rolling clouds blotted out the lights of
+      the villages in the valley. Forty miles away, untouched by cloud or storm,
+      the white shoulder of Donga Pa&mdash;the Mountain of the Council of the
+      Gods&mdash;upheld the Evening Star. The monkeys sang sorrowfully to each
+      other as they hunted for dry roosts in the fern-wreathed trees, and the
+      last puff of the day-wind brought from the unseen villages the scent of
+      damp wood-smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine-cones.
+      That is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if once it creeps into the
+      blood of a man, that man will at the last, forgetting all else, return to
+      the hills to die. The clouds closed and the smell went away, and there
+      remained nothing in all the world except chilling white mist and the boom
+      of the Sutlej river racing through the valley below. A fat-tailed sheep,
+      who did not want to die, bleated piteously at my tent door. He was
+      scuffling with the Prime Minister and the Director-General of Public
+      Education, and he was a royal gift to me and my camp servants. I expressed
+      my thanks suitably, and asked if I might have audience of the King. The
+      Prime Minister readjusted his turban, which had fallen off in the
+      struggle, and assured me that the King would be very pleased to see me.
+      Therefore I despatched two bottles as a foretaste, and when the sheep had
+      entered upon another incarnation went to the King&rsquo;s Palace through the
+      wet. He had sent his army to escort me, but the army stayed to talk with
+      my cook. Soldiers are very much alike all the world over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Palace was a four-roomed and whitewashed mud and timber house, the
+      finest in all the hills for a day&rsquo;s journey. The King was dressed in a
+      purple velvet jacket, white muslin trousers, and a saffron-yellow turban
+      of price. He gave me audience in a little carpeted room opening off the
+      palace courtyard which was occupied by the Elephant of State. The great
+      beast was sheeted and anchored from trunk to tail, and the curve of his
+      back stood out grandly against the mist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Prime Minister and the Director-General of Public Education were
+      present to introduce me, but all the court had been dismissed, lest the
+      two bottles aforesaid should corrupt their morals. The King cast a wreath
+      of heavy-scented flowers round my neck as I bowed, and inquired how my
+      honoured presence had the felicity to be. I said that through seeing his
+      auspicious countenance the mists of the night had turned into sunshine,
+      and that by reason of his beneficent sheep his good deeds would be
+      remembered by the Gods. He said that since I had set my magnificent foot
+      in his Kingdom the crops would probably yield seventy per cent more than
+      the average. I said that the fame of the King had reached to the four
+      corners of the earth, and that the nations gnashed their teeth when they
+      heard daily of the glories of his realm and the wisdom of his moon-like
+      Prime Minister and lotus-like Director-General of Public Education.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we sat down on clean white cushions, and I was at the King&rsquo;s right
+      hand. Three minutes later he was telling me that the state of the maize
+      crop was something disgraceful, and that the railway-companies would not
+      pay him enough for his timber. The talk shifted to and fro with the
+      bottles, and we discussed very many stately things, and the King became
+      confidential on the subject of Government generally. Most of all he dwelt
+      on the shortcomings of one of his subjects, who, from all I could gather,
+      had been paralyzing the executive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;In the old days,&rsquo; said the King, &lsquo;I could have ordered the Elephant
+      yonder to trample him to death. Now I must e&rsquo;en send him seventy miles
+      across the hills to be tried, and his keep would be upon the State. The
+      Elephant eats everything.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What be the man&rsquo;s crimes, Rajah Sahib?&rsquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Firstly, he is an outlander and no man of mine own people. Secondly,
+      since of my favour I gave him land upon his first coming, he refuses to
+      pay revenue. Am I not the lord of the earth, above and below, entitled by
+      right and custom to one-eighth of the crop? Yet this devil, establishing
+      himself, refuses to pay a single tax; and he brings a poisonous spawn of
+      babes.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Cast him into jail,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sahib,&rsquo; the King answered, shifting a little on the cushions, &lsquo;once and
+      only once in these forty years sickness came upon me so that I was not
+      able to go abroad. In that hour I made a vow to my God that I would never
+      again cut man or woman from the light of the sun and the air of God; for I
+      perceived the nature of the punishment. How can I break my vow? Were it
+      only the lopping of a hand or a foot I should not delay. But even that is
+      impossible now that the English have rule. One or another of my people&rsquo;&mdash;he
+      looked obliquely at the Director-General of Public Education&mdash;&lsquo;would
+      at once write a letter to the Viceroy, and perhaps I should be deprived of
+      my ruffle of drums.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He unscrewed the mouthpiece of his silver water-pipe, fitted a plain amber
+      mouthpiece, and passed his pipe to me. &lsquo;Not content with refusing
+      revenue,&rsquo; he continued, &lsquo;this outlander refuses also the begar&rsquo; (this was
+      the corvee or forced labour on the roads) &lsquo;and stirs my people up to the
+      like treason. Yet he is, when he wills, an expert log-snatcher. There is
+      none better or bolder among my people to clear a block of the river when
+      the logs stick fast.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But he worships strange Gods,&rsquo; said the Prime Minister deferentially.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For that I have no concern,&rsquo; said the King, who was as tolerant as Akbar
+      in matters of belief. &lsquo;To each man his own God and the fire or Mother
+      Earth for us all at last. It is the rebellion that offends me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The King has an army,&rsquo; I suggested. &lsquo;Has not the King burned the man&rsquo;s
+      house and left him naked to the night dews?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, a hut is a hut, and it holds the life of a man. But once, I sent my
+      army against him when his excuses became wearisome: of their heads he
+      brake three across the top with a stick. The other two men ran away. Also
+      the guns would not shoot.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had seen the equipment of the infantry. One-third of it was an old
+      muzzle-loading fowling-piece, with a ragged rust-hole where the nipples
+      should have been, one-third a wire-bound matchlock with a worm-eaten
+      stock, and one-third a four-bore flint duck-gun without a flint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But it is to be remembered,&rsquo; said the King, reaching out for the bottle,
+      &lsquo;that he is a very expert log-snatcher and a man of a merry face. What
+      shall I do to him, Sahib?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was interesting. The timid hill-folk would as soon have refused taxes
+      to their king as revenues to their Gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If it be the King&rsquo;s permission,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;I will not strike my tents till
+      the third day and I will see this man. The mercy of the King is God-like,
+      and rebellion is like unto the sin of witchcraft. Moreover, both the
+      bottles and another be empty.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You have my leave to go,&rsquo; said the King.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning a crier went through the state proclaiming that there was a
+      log-jam on the river and that it behoved all loyal subjects to remove it.
+      The people poured down from their villages to the moist warm valley of
+      poppy-fields; and the King and I went with them. Hundreds of dressed
+      deodar-logs had caught on a snag of rock, and the river was bringing down
+      more logs every minute to complete the blockade. The water snarled and
+      wrenched and worried at the timber, and the population of the state began
+      prodding the nearest logs with a pole in the hope of starting a general
+      movement. Then there went up a shout of &lsquo;Namgay Doola! Namgay Doola!&rsquo; and
+      a large red-haired villager hurried up, stripping off his clothes as he
+      ran.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That is he. That is the rebel,&rsquo; said the King. &lsquo;Now will the dam be
+      cleared.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But why has he red hair?&rsquo; I asked, since red hair among hill-folks is as
+      common as blue or green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He is an outlander,&rsquo; said the King. &lsquo;Well done! Oh well done!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Namgay Doola had scrambled out on the jam and was clawing out the butt of
+      a log with a rude sort of boat-hook. It slid forward slowly as an
+      alligator moves, three or four others followed it, and the green water
+      spouted through the gaps they had made. Then the villagers howled and
+      shouted and scrambled across the logs, pulling and pushing the obstinate
+      timber, and the red head of Namgay Doola was chief among them all. The
+      logs swayed and chafed and groaned as fresh consignments from upstream
+      battered the now weakening dam. All gave way at last in a smother of foam,
+      racing logs, bobbing black heads and confusion indescribable. The river
+      tossed everything before it. I saw the red head go down with the last
+      remnants of the jam and disappear between the great grinding tree-trunks.
+      It rose close to the bank and blowing like a grampus. Namgay Doola wrung
+      the water out of his eyes and made obeisance to the King. I had time to
+      observe him closely. The virulent redness of his shock head and beard was
+      most startling; and in the thicket of hair wrinkled above high cheek bones
+      shone two very merry blue eyes. He was indeed an outlander, but yet a
+      Thibetan in language, habit, and attire. He spoke the Lepcha dialect with
+      an indescribable softening of the gutturals. It was not so much a lisp as
+      an accent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Whence comest thou?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;From Thibet.&rsquo; He pointed across the hills and grinned. That grin went
+      straight to my heart. Mechanically I held out my hand and Namgay Doola
+      shook it. No pure Thibetan would have understood the meaning of the
+      gesture. He went away to look for his clothes, and as he climbed back to
+      his village, I heard a joyous yell that seemed unaccountably familiar. It
+      was the whooping of Namgay Doola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You see now,&rsquo; said the King, &lsquo;why I would not kill him. He is a bold man
+      among my logs, but,&rsquo; and he shook his head like a schoolmaster, &lsquo;I know
+      that before long there will be complaints of him in the court. Let us
+      return to the Palace and do justice.&rsquo; It was that King&rsquo;s custom to judge
+      his subjects every day between eleven and three o&rsquo;clock. I saw him decide
+      equitably in weighty matters of trespass, slander, and a little
+      wife-stealing. Then his brow clouded and he summoned me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Again it is Namgay Doola,&rsquo; he said despairingly. &lsquo;Not content with
+      refusing revenue on his own part, he has bound half his village by an oath
+      to the like treason. Never before has such a thing befallen me! Nor are my
+      taxes heavy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A rabbit-faced villager, with a blush-rose stuck behind his ear, advanced
+      trembling. He had been in the conspiracy, but had told everything and
+      hoped for the King&rsquo;s favour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O King,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;if it be the King&rsquo;s will let this matter stand over
+      till the morning. Only the Gods can do right swiftly, and it may be that
+      yonder villager has lied.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, for I know the nature of Namgay Doola; but since a guest asks let
+      the matter remain. Wilt thou speak harshly to this red-headed outlander?
+      He may listen to thee.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I made an attempt that very evening, but for the life of me I could not
+      keep my countenance. Namgay Doola grinned persuasively, and began to tell
+      me about a big brown bear in a poppy-field by the river. Would I care to
+      shoot it? I spoke austerely on the sin of conspiracy, and the certainty of
+      punishment. Namgay Doola&rsquo;s face clouded for a moment. Shortly afterwards
+      he withdrew from my tent, and I heard him singing to himself softly among
+      the pines. The words were unintelligible to me, but the tune, like his
+      liquid insinuating speech, seemed the ghost of something strangely
+      familiar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dir hane mard-i-yemen dir To weeree ala gee.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      sang Namgay Doola again and again, and I racked my brain for that lost
+      tune. It was not till after dinner that I discovered some one had cut a
+      square foot of velvet from the centre of my best camera-cloth. This made
+      me so angry that I wandered down the valley in the hope of meeting the big
+      brown bear. I could hear him grunting like a discontented pig in the
+      poppy-field, and I waited shoulder deep in the dew-dripping Indian corn to
+      catch him after his meal. The moon was at full and drew out the rich scent
+      of the tasselled crop. Then I heard the anguished bellow of a Himalayan
+      cow, one of the little black crummies no bigger than Newfoundland dogs.
+      Two shadows that looked like a bear and her cub hurried past me. I was in
+      act to fire when I saw that they had each a brilliant red head. The lesser
+      animal was trailing some rope behind it that left a dark track on the
+      path. They passed within six feet of me, and the shadow of the moonlight
+      lay velvet-black on their faces. Velvet-black was exactly the word, for by
+      all the powers of moonlight they were masked in the velvet of my
+      camera-cloth! I marvelled and went to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning the Kingdom was in uproar. Namgay Doola, men said, had gone
+      forth in the night and with a sharp knife had cut off the tail of a cow
+      belonging to the rabbit-faced villager who had betrayed him. It was
+      sacrilege unspeakable against the Holy Cow. The State desired his blood,
+      but he had retreated into his hut, barricaded the doors and windows with
+      big stones, and defied the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King and I and the populace approached the hut cautiously. There was
+      no hope of capturing the man without loss of life, for from a hole in the
+      wall projected the muzzle of an extremely well-cared-for gun&mdash;the
+      only gun in the State that could shoot. Namgay Doola had narrowly missed a
+      villager just before we came up. The Standing Army stood. It could do no
+      more, for when it advanced pieces of sharp shale flew from the windows. To
+      these were added from time to time showers of scalding water. We saw red
+      heads bobbing up and down in the hut. The family of Namgay Doola were
+      aiding their sire, and blood-curdling yells of defiance were the only
+      answers to our prayers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Never,&rsquo; said the King, puffing, &lsquo;has such a thing befallen my State. Next
+      year I will certainly buy a little cannon.&rsquo; He looked at me imploringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is there any priest in the Kingdom to whom he will listen?&rsquo; said I, for a
+      light was beginning to break upon me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He worships his own God,&rsquo; said the Prime Minister. &lsquo;We can starve him
+      out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let the white man approach,&rsquo; said Namgay Doola from within. &lsquo;All others I
+      will kill. Send me the white man.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door was thrown open and I entered the smoky interior of a Thibetan
+      hut crammed with children. And every child had flaming red hair. A raw
+      cow&rsquo;s-tail lay on the floor, and by its side two pieces of black velvet&mdash;my
+      black velvet&mdash;rudely hacked into the semblance of masks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And what is this shame, Namgay Doola?&rsquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He grinned more winningly than ever. &lsquo;There is no shame,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;I did
+      but cut off the tail of that man&rsquo;s cow. He betrayed me. I was minded to
+      shoot him, Sahib. But not to death. Indeed not to death. Only in the
+      legs.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And why at all, since it is the custom to pay revenue to the King? Why at
+      all?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By the God of my father I cannot tell,&rsquo; said Namgay Doola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And who was thy father?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The same that had this gun.&rsquo; He showed me his weapon&mdash;a Tower musket
+      bearing date 1832 and the stamp of the Honourable East India Company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And thy father&rsquo;s name?&rsquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Timlay Doola,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;At the first, I being then a little child, it is
+      in my mind that he wore a red coat.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of that I have no doubt. But repeat the name of thy father thrice or four
+      times.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He obeyed, and I understood whence the puzzling accent in his speech came.
+      &lsquo;Thimla Dhula,&rsquo; said he excitedly. &lsquo;To this hour I worship his God.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;May I see that God?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;In a little while&mdash;at twilight time.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Rememberest thou aught of thy father&rsquo;s speech?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is long ago. But there is one word which he said often. Thus &ldquo;Shun.&rdquo;
+       Then I and my brethren stood upon our feet, our hands to our sides. Thus.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Even so. And what was thy mother?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A woman of the hills. We be Lepchas of Darjeeling, but me they call an
+      outlander because my hair is as thou seest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Thibetan woman, his wife, touched him on the arm gently. The long
+      parley outside the fort had lasted far into the day. It was now close upon
+      twilight&mdash;the hour of the Angelus. Very solemnly, the red-headed
+      brats rose from the floor and formed a semicircle. Namgay Doola laid his
+      gun against the wall, lighted a little oil lamp, and set it before a
+      recess in the wall. Pulling aside a curtain of dirty cloth, he revealed a
+      worn brass crucifix leaning against the helmet-badge of a long forgotten
+      East India regiment. &lsquo;Thus did my father,&rsquo; he said, crossing himself
+      clumsily. The wife and children followed suit. Then all together they
+      struck up the wailing chant that I heard on the hillside&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ Dir bane mard-i-yemen dir
+ To weeree ala gee.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I was puzzled no longer. Again and again they crooned, as if their hearts
+      would break, their version of the chorus of the Wearing of the Green&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They&rsquo;re hanging men and women too, For the wearing of the green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A diabolical inspiration came to me. One of the brats, a boy about eight
+      years old, was watching me as he sang. I pulled out a rupee, held the coin
+      between finger and thumb and looked&mdash;only looked&mdash;at the gun
+      against the wall. A grin of brilliant and perfect comprehension overspread
+      the face of the child. Never for an instant stopping the song, he held out
+      his hand for the money, and then slid the gun to my hand. I might have
+      shot Namgay Doola as he chanted. But I was satisfied. The blood-instinct
+      of the race held true. Namgay Doola drew the curtain across the recess.
+      Angelus was over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thus my father sang. There was much more, but I have forgotten, and I do
+      not know the purport of these words, but it may be that the God will
+      understand. I am not of this people, and I will not pay revenue.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And why?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again that soul-compelling grin. &lsquo;What occupation would be to me between
+      crop and crop? It is better than scaring bears. But these people do not
+      understand.&rsquo; He picked the masks from the floor, and looked in my face as
+      simply as a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By what road didst thou attain knowledge to make these devilries?&rsquo; I
+      said, pointing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I cannot tell. I am but a Lepcha of Darjeeling, and yet the stuff&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Which thou hast stolen.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, surely. Did I steal? I desired it so. The stuff&mdash;the stuff&mdash;what
+      else should I have done with the stuff?&rsquo; He twisted the velvet between his
+      fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But the sin of maiming the cow&mdash;consider that.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That is true; but oh, Sahib, that man betrayed me and I had no thought&mdash;but
+      the heifer&rsquo;s tail waved in the moonlight and I had my knife. What else
+      should I have done? The tail came off ere I was aware. Sahib, thou knowest
+      more than I.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That is true,&rsquo; said I. &lsquo;Stay within the door. I go to speak to the King.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The population of the State were ranged on the hillsides. I went forth and
+      spoke to the King.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O King,&rsquo; said I. &lsquo;Touching this man there be two courses open to thy
+      wisdom. Thou canst either hang him from a tree, he and his brood, till
+      there remains no hair that is red within the land.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay&rsquo; said the King. &lsquo;Why should I hurt the little children?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had poured out of the hut door and were making plump obeisance to
+      everybody. Namgay Doola waited with his gun across his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Or thou canst, discarding the impiety of the cow-maiming, raise him to
+      honour in thy Army. He comes of a race that will not pay revenue. A red
+      flame is in his blood which comes out at the top of his head in that
+      glowing hair. Make him chief of the Army. Give him honour as may befall,
+      and full allowance of work, but look to it, O King, that neither he nor
+      his hold a foot of earth from thee henceforward. Feed him with words and
+      favour, and also liquor from certain bottles that thou knowest of, and he
+      will be a bulwark of defence. But deny him even a tuft of grass for his
+      own. This is the nature that God has given him. Moreover he has brethren&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The State groaned unanimously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But if his brethren come, they will surely fight with each other till
+      they die; or else the one will always give information concerning the
+      other. Shall he be of thy Army, O King? Choose.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King bowed his head, and I said, &lsquo;Come forth, Namgay Doola, and
+      command the King&rsquo;s Army. Thy name shall no more be Namgay in the mouths of
+      men, but Patsay Doola, for as thou hast said, I know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Namgay Doola, new christened Patsay Doola, son of Timlay Doola, which
+      is Tim Doolan gone very wrong indeed, clasped the King&rsquo;s feet, cuffed the
+      Standing Army, and hurried in an agony of contrition from temple to
+      temple, making offerings for the sin of cattle-maiming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the King was so pleased with my perspicacity, that he offered to sell
+      me a village for twenty pounds sterling. But I buy no villages in the
+      Himalayas so long as one red head flares between the tail of the
+      heaven-climbing glacier and the dark birch-forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know that breed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BURTRAN AND BIMI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The orang-outang in the big iron cage lashed to the sheep-pen began the
+      discussion. The night was stiflingly hot, and as I and Hans Breitmann, the
+      big-beamed German, passed him, dragging our bedding to the fore-peak of
+      the steamer, he roused himself and chattered obscenely. He had been caught
+      somewhere in the Malayan Archipelago, and was going to England to be
+      exhibited at a shilling a head. For four days he had struggled, yelled,
+      and wrenched at the heavy bars of his prison without ceasing, and had
+      nearly slain a lascar, incautious enough to come within reach of the great
+      hairy paw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It would be well for you, mine friend, if you was a liddle seasick,&rsquo; said
+      Hans Breitmann, pausing by the cage.&rsquo; You haf too much Ego in your
+      Cosmos.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The orang-outang&rsquo;s arm slid out negligently from between the bars. No one
+      would have believed that it would make a sudden snakelike rush at the
+      German&rsquo;s breast. The thin silk of the sleeping-suit tore out; Hans stepped
+      back unconcernedly to pluck a banana from a bunch hanging close to one of
+      the boats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Too much Ego,&rsquo; said he, peeling the fruit and offering it to the caged
+      devil, who was rending the silk to tatters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we laid out our bedding in the bows among the sleeping Lascars, to
+      catch any breeze that the pace of the ship might give us. The sea was like
+      smoky oil, except where it turned to fire under our forefoot and whirled
+      back into the dark in smears of dull flame. There was a thunderstorm some
+      miles away; we could see the glimmer of the lightning. The ship&rsquo;s cow,
+      distressed by the heat and the smell of the ape-beast in the cage, lowed
+      unhappily from time to time in exactly the same key as that in which the
+      look-out man answered the hourly call from the bridge. The trampling tune
+      of the engines was very distinct, and the jarring of the ash-lift, as it
+      was tipped into the sea, hurt the procession of hushed noise. Hans lay
+      down by my side and lighted a good-night cigar. This was naturally the
+      beginning of conversation. He owned a voice as soothing as the wash of the
+      sea, and stores of experiences as vast as the sea itself; for his business
+      in life was to wander up and down the world, collecting orchids and wild
+      beasts and ethnological specimens for German and American dealers. I
+      watched the glowing end of his cigar wax and wane in the gloom, as the
+      sentences rose and fell, till I was nearly asleep. The orang-outang,
+      troubled by some dream of the forests of his freedom, began to yell like a
+      soul in purgatory, and to pluck madly at the bars of the cage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If he was out now dere would not be much of us left hereabout,&rsquo; said Hans
+      lazily. &lsquo;He screams goot. See, now, how I shall tame him when he stops
+      himself.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause in the outcry, and from Hans&rsquo; mouth came an imitation of
+      a snake&rsquo;s hiss, so perfect that I almost sprang to my feet. The sustained
+      murderous sound ran along the deck, and the wrenching at the bars ceased.
+      The orang-outang was quaking in an ecstasy of pure terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dot stopped him,&rsquo; said Hans. &lsquo;I learned dot trick in Mogoung Tanjong when
+      I was collecting liddle monkeys for some peoples in Berlin. Efery one in
+      der world is afraid of der monkeys&mdash;except der snake. So I blay snake
+      against monkey, and he keep quite still. Dere was too much Ego in his
+      Cosmos. Dot is der soul-custom of monkeys. Are you asleep, or will you
+      listen, and I will tell a dale dot you shall not pelief?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;s no tale in the wide world that I can&rsquo;t believe,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If you haf learned pelief you haf learned somedings. Now I shall try your
+      pelief. Goot! When I was collecting dose liddle monkeys&mdash;it was in
+      &lsquo;79 or &lsquo;80, und I was in der islands of der Archipelago&mdash;over dere in
+      der dark&rsquo;&mdash;he pointed southward to New Guinea generally&mdash;&lsquo;Mein
+      Gott! I would sooner collect life red devils than liddle monkeys. When dey
+      do not bite off your thumbs dey are always dying from nostalgia&mdash;home-sick&mdash;for
+      dey haf der imperfect soul, which is midway arrested in defelopment&mdash;und
+      too much Ego. I was dere for nearly a year, und dere I found a man dot was
+      called Bertran. He was a Frenchman, und he was goot man&mdash;naturalist
+      to his bone. Dey said he was an escaped convict, but he was naturalist,
+      und dot was enough for me. He would call all der life beasts from der
+      forest, und dey would come. I said he was St. Francis of Assizi in a new
+      dransmigration produced, und he laughed und said he haf never preach to
+      der fishes. He sold dem for tripang&mdash;beche-de-mer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Und dot man, who was king of beasts-tamer men, he had in der house shust
+      such anoder as dot devil-animal in der cage&mdash;a great orang-outang dot
+      thought he was a man. He haf found him when he was a child&mdash;der
+      orang-outang&mdash;und he was child und brother und opera comique all
+      round to Betran. He had his room in dot house&mdash;not a cage, but a room&mdash;mit
+      a bed und sheets, und he would go to bed und get up in der morning und
+      smoke his cigar und eat his dinner mit Bertran, und walk mit him hand in
+      hand, which was most horrible. Herr Gott! I haf seen dot beast throw
+      himself back in his chair und laugh when Bertran haf made fun of me. He
+      was NOT a beast; he was a man, und he talked to Bertran, und Bertran
+      comprehend, for I have seen dem. Und he was always politeful to me except
+      when I talk too long to Bertran und say nodings at all to him. Den he
+      would pull me away&mdash;dis great, dark devil, mit his enormous paws&mdash;shust
+      as if I was a child. He was not a beast; he was a man. Dis I saw pefore I
+      know him three months, und Bertran he haf saw the same; and Bimi, der
+      orang-outang, haf understood us both, mit his cigar between his big
+      dog-teeth und der blue gum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I was dere a year, dere und at dere oder islands&mdash;somedimes for
+      monkeys und somedimes for butterflies und orchits. One time Bertran says
+      to me dot he will be married, because he haf found a girl dot was goot,
+      und he enquire if this marrying idee was right. I would not say, pecause
+      it was not me dot was going to be married. Den he go off courting der girl&mdash;she
+      was a half-caste French girl&mdash;very pretty. Haf you got a new light
+      for my cigar? Ouf! Very pretty. Only I say, &ldquo;Haf you thought of Bimi? If
+      he pull me away when I talk to you, what will he do to your wife? He will
+      pull her in pieces. If I was you, Bertran, I would gif my wife for
+      wedding-present der stuff figure of Bimi.&rdquo; By dot time I had learned some
+      dings about der monkey peoples. &ldquo;Shoot him?&rdquo; says Bertran. &ldquo;He is your
+      beast,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;if he was mine he would be shot now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Den I felt at der back of my neck der fingers of Bimi. Mein Gott! I tell
+      you dot he talked through dose fingers. It was der deaf-and-dumb alphabet
+      all gomplete. He slide his hairy arm round my neck, und he tilt up my chin
+      und looked into my face, shust to see if I understood his talk so well as
+      he understood mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;See now dere!&rdquo; says Bertran, &ldquo;und you would shoot him while he is
+      cuddlin&rsquo; you? Dot is der Teuton ingrate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But I knew dot I had made Bimi a life&rsquo;s-enemy, pecause his fingers haf
+      talk murder through the back of my neck. Next dime I see Bimi dere was a
+      pistol in my belt, und he touched it once, und I open der breech to show
+      him it was loaded. He haf seen der liddle monkeys killed in der woods: he
+      understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So Bertran he was married, and he forgot clean about Bimi dot was
+      skippin&rsquo; alone on der beach mit der half of a human soul in his belly. I
+      was see him skip, und he took a big bough und thrash der sand till he haf
+      made a great hole like a grave. So I says to Bertran, &ldquo;For any sakes, kill
+      Bimi. He is mad mit der jealousy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bertran haf said &ldquo;He is not mad at all. He haf obey und lofe my wife, und
+      if she speak he will get her slippers,&rdquo; und he looked at his wife agross
+      der room. She was a very pretty girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Den I said to him, &ldquo;Dost dou pretend to know monkeys und dis beast dot is
+      lashing himself mad upon der sands, pecause you do not talk to him? Shoot
+      him when he comes to der house, for he haf der light in his eye dot means
+      killing&mdash;und killing.&rdquo; Bimi come to der house, but dere was no light
+      in his eye. It was all put away, cunning&mdash;so cunning&mdash;und he
+      fetch der girl her slippers, und Bertran turn to me und say, &ldquo;Dost dou
+      know him in nine months more dan I haf known him in twelve years? Shall a
+      child stab his fader? I haf fed him, und he was my child. Do not speak
+      this nonsense to my wife or to me any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dot next day Bertran came to my house to help me make some wood cases for
+      der specimens, und he tell me dot he haf left his wife a liddle while mit
+      Bimi in der garden. Den I finish my cases quick, und I say, &ldquo;Let us go to
+      your houses und get a trink.&rdquo; He laugh and say, &ldquo;Come along, dry mans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;His wife was not in der garden, und Bimi did not come when Bertran
+      called. Und his wife did not come when he called, und he knocked at her
+      bedroom door und dot was shut tight&mdash;locked. Den he look at me, und
+      his face was white. I broke down der door mit my shoulder, und der thatch
+      of der roof was torn into a great hole, und der sun came in upon der
+      floor. Haf you ever seen paper in der waste-basket, or cards at whist on
+      der table scattered? Dere was no wife dot could be seen. I tell you dere
+      was nodings in dot room dot might be a woman. Dere was stuff on der floor
+      und dot was all. I looked at dese things und I was very sick; but Bertran
+      looked a liddle longer at what was upon the floor und der walls, und der
+      hole in der thatch. Den he pegan to laugh, soft und low, und I knew und
+      thank Gott dot he was mad. He nefer cried, he nefer prayed. He stood all
+      still in der doorway und laugh to himself. Den he said, &ldquo;She haf locked
+      herself in dis room, and he haf torn up der thatch. Fi donc! Dot is so. We
+      will mend der thatch und wait for Bimi. He will surely come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I tell you we waited ten days in dot house, after der room was made into
+      a room again, und once or twice we saw Bimi comin&rsquo; a liddle way from der
+      woods. He was afraid pecause he haf done wrong. Bertran called him when he
+      was come to look on the tenth day, und Bimi come skipping along der beach
+      und making noises, mit a long piece of black hair in his hands. Den
+      Bertran laugh and say, &ldquo;Fi donc!&rdquo; shust as if it was a glass broken upon
+      der table; und Bimi come nearer, und Bertran was honey-sweet in his voice
+      und laughed to himself. For three days he made love to Bimi, pecause Bimi
+      would not let himself be touched. Den Bimi come to dinner at der same
+      table mit us, und the hair on his hands was all black und thick mit-mit
+      what had dried on der hands. Bertran gave him sangaree till Bimi was drunk
+      and stupid, und den&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hans paused to puff at his cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And then?&rsquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Und den Bertran he kill him mit his hands, und I go for a walk upon der
+      beach. It was Bertran&rsquo;s own piziness. When I come back der ape he was
+      dead, und Bertran he was dying abofe him; but still he laughed liddle und
+      low und he was quite content. Now you know der formula of der strength of
+      der orang-outang&mdash;it is more as seven to one in relation to man. But
+      Bertran, he haf killed Bimi mit sooch dings as Gott gif him. Dot was der
+      miracle.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The infernal clamour in the cage recommenced. &lsquo;Aha! Dot friend of ours haf
+      still too much Ego in his Cosmos. Be quiet, dou!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hans hissed long and venomously. We could hear the great beast quaking in
+      his cage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But why in the world didn&rsquo;t you help Bertran instead of letting him be
+      killed?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;My friend,&rsquo; said Hans, composedly stretching himself to slumber, &lsquo;it was
+      not nice even to mineself dot I should live after I haf seen dot room mit
+      der hole in der thatch. Und Bertran, he was her husband. Goot-night, und&mdash;sleep
+      well.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      MOTI GUJ&mdash;MUTINEER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Once upon a time there was a coffee-planter in India who wished to clear
+      some forest land for coffee-planting. When he had cut down all the trees
+      and burned the under-wood the stumps still remained. Dynamite is expensive
+      and slow-fire slow. The happy medium for stump-clearing is the lord of all
+      beats, who is the elephant. He will either push the stump out of the
+      ground with his tusks, if he has any, or drag it out with ropes. The
+      planter, therefore, hired elephants by ones and twos and threes, and fell
+      to work. The very best of all the elephants belonged to the very worst of
+      all the drivers or mahouts; and the superior beast&rsquo;s name was Moti Guj. He
+      was the absolute property of his mahout, which would never have been the
+      case under native rule, for Moti Guj was a creature to be desired by
+      kings; and his name, being translated, meant the Pearl Elephant. Because
+      the British Government was in the land, Deesa, the mahout, enjoyed his
+      property undisturbed. He was dissipated. When he had made much money
+      through the strength of his elephant, he would get extremely drunk and
+      give Moti Guj a beating with a tent-peg over the tender nails of the
+      forefeet. Moti Guj never trampled the life out of Deesa on these
+      occasions, for he knew that after the beating was over Deesa would embrace
+      his trunk and weep and call him his love and his life and the liver of his
+      soul, and give him some liquor. Moti Guj was very fond of liquor&mdash;arrack
+      for choice, though he would drink palm-tree toddy if nothing better
+      offered. Then Deesa would go to sleep between Moti Guj&rsquo;s forefeet, and as
+      Deesa generally chose the middle of the public road, and as Moti Guj
+      mounted guard over him and would not permit horse, foot, or cart to pass
+      by, traffic was congested till Deesa saw fit to wake up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no sleeping in the daytime on the planter&rsquo;s clearing: the wages
+      were too high to risk. Deesa sat on Moti Guj&rsquo;s neck and gave him orders,
+      while Moti Guj rooted up the stumps&mdash;for he owned a magnificent pair
+      of tusks; or pulled at the end of a rope&mdash;for he had a magnificent
+      pair of shoulders, while Deesa kicked him behind the ears and said he was
+      the king of elephants. At evening time Moti Guj would wash down his three
+      hundred pounds&rsquo; weight of green food with a quart of arrack, and Deesa
+      would take a share and sing songs between Moti Guj&rsquo;s legs till it was time
+      to go to bed. Once a week Deesa led Moti Guj down to the river, and Moti
+      Guj lay on his side luxuriously in the shallows, while Deesa went over him
+      with a coir-swab and a brick. Moti Guj never mistook the pounding blow of
+      the latter for the smack of the former that warned him to get up and turn
+      over on the other side. Then Deesa would look at his feet, and examine his
+      eyes, and turn up the fringes of his mighty ears in case of sores or
+      budding ophthalmia. After inspection, the two would &lsquo;come up with a song
+      from the sea,&rsquo; Moti Guj all black and shining, waving a torn tree branch
+      twelve feet long in his trunk, and Deesa knotting up his own long wet
+      hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a peaceful, well-paid life till Deesa felt the return of the desire
+      to drink deep. He wished for an orgie. The little draughts that led
+      nowhere were taking the manhood out of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to the planter, and &lsquo;My mother&rsquo;s dead,&rsquo; said he, weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She died on the last plantation two months ago; and she died once before
+      that when you were working for me last year,&rsquo; said the planter, who knew
+      something of the ways of nativedom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then it&rsquo;s my aunt, and she was just the same as a mother to me,&rsquo; said
+      Deesa, weeping more than ever. &lsquo;She has left eighteen small children
+      entirely without bread, and it is I who must fill their little stomachs,&rsquo; 
+      said Deesa, beating his head on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Who brought you the news?&rsquo; said the planter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The post&rsquo; said Deesa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There hasn&rsquo;t been a post here for the past week. Get back to your lines!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A devastating sickness has fallen on my village, and all my wives are
+      dying,&rsquo; yelled Deesa, really in tears this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Call Chihun, who comes from Deesa&rsquo;s village,&rsquo; said the planter.&rsquo; Chihun,
+      has this man a wife?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He!&rsquo; said Chihun. &lsquo;No. Not a woman of our village would look at him.
+      They&rsquo;d sooner marry the elephant.&rsquo; Chihun snorted. Deesa wept and
+      bellowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You will get into a difficulty in a minute,&rsquo; said the planter.&rsquo; Go back
+      to your work!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now I will speak Heaven&rsquo;s truth&rsquo; gulped Deesa, with an inspiration. &lsquo;I
+      haven&rsquo;t been drunk for two months. I desire to depart in order to get
+      properly drunk afar off and distant from this heavenly plantation. Thus I
+      shall cause no trouble.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A flickering smile crossed the planter&rsquo;s face. &lsquo;Deesa,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;you&rsquo;ve
+      spoken the truth, and I&rsquo;d give you leave on the spot if anything could be
+      done with Moti Guj while you&rsquo;re away. You know that he will only obey your
+      orders.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;May the Light of the Heavens live forty thousand years. I shall be absent
+      but ten little days. After that, upon my faith and honour and soul, I
+      return. As to the inconsiderable interval, have I the gracious permission
+      of the Heaven-born to call up Moti Guj?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Permission was granted, and, in answer to Deesa&rsquo;s shrill yell, the lordly
+      tusker swung out of the shade of a clump of trees where he had been
+      squirting dust over himself till his master should return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Light of my heart, Protector of the Drunken, Mountain of Might, give
+      ear,&rsquo; said Deesa, standing in front of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moti Guj gave ear, and saluted with his trunk. &lsquo;I am going away,&rsquo; said
+      Deesa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moti Guj&rsquo;s eyes twinkled. He liked jaunts as well as his master. One could
+      snatch all manner of nice things from the roadside then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But you, you fubsy old pig, must stay behind and work.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The twinkle died out as Moti Guj tried to look delighted. He hated
+      stump-hauling on the plantation. It hurt his teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I shall be gone for ten days, O Delectable One. Hold up your near
+      forefoot and I&rsquo;ll impress the fact upon it, warty toad of a dried
+      mud-puddle.&rsquo; Deesa took a tent-peg and banged Moti Guj ten times on the
+      nails. Moti Guj grunted and shuffled from foot to foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ten days,&rsquo; said Deesa, &lsquo;you must work and haul and root trees as Chihun
+      here shall order you. Take up Chihun and set him on your neck!&rsquo; Moti Guj
+      curled the tip of his trunk, Chihun put his foot there and was swung on to
+      the neck. Deesa handed Chihun the heavy ankus, the iron elephant-goad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chihun thumped Moti Guj&rsquo;s bald head as a paviour thumps a kerbstone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moti Guj trumpeted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Be still, hog of the backwoods. Chihun&rsquo;s your mahout for ten days. And
+      now bid me good-bye, beast after mine own heart. Oh, my lord, my king!
+      Jewel of all created elephants, lily of the herd, preserve your honoured
+      health; be virtuous. Adieu!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moti Guj lapped his trunk round Deesa and swung him into the air twice.
+      That was his way of bidding the man good-bye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He&rsquo;ll work now,&rsquo; said Dessa to the planter. &lsquo;Have I leave to go?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The planter nodded, and Deesa dived into the woods. Moti Guj went back to
+      haul stumps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chihun was very kind to him, but he felt unhappy and forlorn
+      notwithstanding. Chihun gave him balls of spices, and tickled him under
+      the chin, and Chihun&rsquo;s little baby cooed to him after work was over, and
+      Chihun&rsquo;s wife called him a darling; but Moti Guj was a bachelor by
+      instinct, as Deesa was. He did not understand the domestic emotions. He
+      wanted the light of his universe back again&mdash;the drink and the
+      drunken slumber, the savage beatings and the savage caresses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      None the less he worked well, and the planter wondered. Deesa had
+      vagabonded along the roads till he met a marriage procession of his own
+      caste and, drinking, dancing, and tippling, had drifted past all knowledge
+      of the lapse of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The morning of the eleventh day dawned, and there returned no Deesa. Moti
+      Guj was loosed from his ropes for the daily stint. He swung clear, looked
+      round, shrugged his shoulders, and began to walk away, as one having
+      business elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hi! ho! Come back, you,&rsquo; shouted Chihun. &lsquo;Come back, and put me on your
+      neck, Misborn Mountain. Return, Splendour of the Hillsides. Adornment of
+      all India, heave to, or I&rsquo;ll bang every toe off your fat fore-foot!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moti Guj gurgled gently, but did not obey. Chihun ran after him with a
+      rope and caught him up. Moti Guj put his ears forward, and Chihun knew
+      what that meant, though he tried to carry it off with high words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;None of your nonsense with me,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;To your pickets, Devil-son.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hrrump!&rsquo; said Moti Guj, and that was all&mdash;that and the forebent
+      ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moti Guj put his hands in his pockets, chewed a branch for a toothpick,
+      and strolled about the clearing, making jest of the other elephants, who
+      had just set to work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chihun reported the state of affairs to the planter, who came out with a
+      dog-whip and cracked it furiously. Moti Guj paid the white man the
+      compliment of charging him nearly a quarter of a mile across the clearing
+      and &lsquo;Hrrumping&rsquo; him into the verandah. Then he stood outside the house
+      chuckling to himself, and shaking all over with the fun of it, as an
+      elephant will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll thrash him,&rsquo; said the planter. &lsquo;He shall have the finest thrashing
+      that ever elephant received. Give Kala Nag and Nazim twelve foot of chain
+      apiece, and tell them to lay on twenty blows.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kala Nag&mdash;which means Black Snake&mdash;and Nazim were two of the
+      biggest elephants in the lines, and one of their duties was to administer
+      the graver punishments, since no man can beat an elephant properly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They took the whipping-chains and rattled them in their trunks as they
+      sidled up to Moti Guj, meaning to hustle him between them. Moti Guj had
+      never, in all his life of thirty-nine years, been whipped, and he did not
+      intend to open new experiences. So he waited, weaving his head from right
+      to left, and measuring the precise spot in Kala Nag&rsquo;s fat side where a
+      blunt tusk would sink deepest. Kala Nag had no tusks; the chain was his
+      badge of authority; but he judged it good to swing wide of Moti Guj at the
+      last minute, and seem to appear as if he had brought out the chain for
+      amusement. Nazim turned round and went home early. He did not feel
+      fighting-fit that morning, and so Moti Guj was left standing alone with
+      his ears cocked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That decided the planter to argue no more, and Moti Guj rolled back to his
+      inspection of the clearing. An elephant who will not work, and is not tied
+      up, is not quite so manageable as an eighty-one ton gun loose in a heavy
+      sea-way. He slapped old friends on the back and asked them if the stumps
+      were coming away easily; he talked nonsense concerning labour and the
+      inalienable rights of elephants to a long &lsquo;nooning&rsquo;; and, wandering to and
+      fro, thoroughly demoralized the garden till sundown, when he returned to
+      his pickets for food.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If you won&rsquo;t work you shan&rsquo;t eat,&rsquo; said Chihun angrily. &lsquo;You&rsquo;re a wild
+      elephant, and no educated animal at all. Go back to your jungle.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chihun&rsquo;s little brown baby, rolling on the floor of the hut, stretched its
+      fat arms to the huge shadow in the doorway. Moti Guj knew well that it was
+      the dearest thing on earth to Chihun. He swung out his trunk with a
+      fascinating crook at the end, and the brown baby threw itself shouting
+      upon it. Moti Guj made fast and pulled up till the brown baby was crowing
+      in the air twelve feet above his father&rsquo;s head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Great Chief!&rsquo; said Chihun. &lsquo;Flour cakes of the best, twelve in number,
+      two feet across, and soaked in rum shall be yours on the instant, and two
+      hundred pounds&rsquo; weight of fresh-cut young sugar-cane therewith. Deign only
+      to put down safely that insignificant brat who is my heart and my life to
+      me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moti Guj tucked the brown baby comfortably between his forefeet, that
+      could have knocked into toothpicks all Chihun&rsquo;s hut, and waited for his
+      food. He ate it, and the brown baby crawled away. Moti Guj dozed, and
+      thought of Deesa. One of many mysteries connected with the elephant is
+      that his huge body needs less sleep than anything else that lives. Four or
+      five hours in the night suffice&mdash;two just before midnight, lying down
+      on one side; two just after one o&rsquo;clock, lying down on the other. The rest
+      of the silent hours are filled with eating and fidgeting and long
+      grumbling soliloquies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At midnight, therefore, Moti Guj strode out of his pickets, for a thought
+      had come to him that Deesa might be lying drunk somewhere in the dark
+      forest with none to look after him. So all that night he chased through
+      the undergrowth, blowing and trumpeting and shaking his ears. He went down
+      to the river and blared across the shallows where Deesa used to wash him,
+      but there was no answer. He could not find Deesa, but he disturbed all the
+      elephants in the lines, and nearly frightened to death some gypsies in the
+      woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At dawn Deesa returned to the plantation. He had been very drunk indeed,
+      and he expected to fall into trouble for outstaying his leave. He drew a
+      long breath when he saw that the bungalow and the plantation were still
+      uninjured; for he knew something of Moti Guj&rsquo;s temper; and reported
+      himself with many lies and salaams. Moti Guj had gone to his pickets for
+      breakfast. His night exercise had made him hungry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Call up your beast,&rsquo; said the planter, and Deesa shouted in the
+      mysterious elephant-language, that some mahouts believe came from China at
+      the birth of the world, when elephants and not men were masters. Moti Guj
+      heard and came. Elephants do not gallop. They move from spots at varying
+      rates of speed. If an elephant wished to catch an express train he could
+      not gallop, but he could catch the train. Thus Moti Guj was at the
+      planter&rsquo;s door almost before Chihun noticed that he had left his pickets.
+      He fell into Deesa&rsquo;s arms trumpeting with joy, and the man and beast wept
+      and slobbered over each other, and handled each other from head to heel to
+      see that no harm had befallen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now we will get to work,&rsquo; said Deesa. &lsquo;Lift me up, my son and my joy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moti Guj swung him up and the two went to the coffee-clearing to look for
+      irksome stumps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The planter was too astonished to be very angry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      L&rsquo;ENVOI
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   My new-cut ashlar takes the light
+     Where crimson-blank the windows flare;
+   By my own work, before the night,
+    Great Overseer, I make my prayer.
+
+   If there be good in that I wrought,
+     Thy hand compelled it, Master, Thine;
+   Where I have failed to meet Thy thought
+     I know, through Thee, the blame is mine.
+
+   One instant&rsquo;s toil to Thee denied
+     Stands all Eternity&rsquo;s offence,
+   Of that I did with Thee to guide
+     To Thee, through Thee, be excellence.
+
+   Who, lest all thought of Eden fade,
+     Bring&rsquo;st Eden to the craftsman&rsquo;s brain,
+   Godlike to muse o&rsquo;er his own trade
+     And Manlike stand with God again.
+
+   The depth and dream of my desire,
+     The bitter paths wherein I stray,
+   Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire,
+     Thou knowest Who hast made the Clay.
+
+   One stone the more swings to her place
+     In that dread Temple of Thy Worth
+   &mdash;It is enough that through Thy grace
+     I saw naught common on Thy earth.
+
+   Take not that vision from my ken;
+     Oh whatso&rsquo;er may spoil or speed,
+   Help me to need no aid from men
+     That I may help such men as need!
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life&rsquo;s Handicap, by Rudyard Kipling
+
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+</pre>
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+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life's Handicap, by Rudyard Kipling
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Life's Handicap
+
+Author: Rudyard Kipling
+
+
+Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5777]
+This file was first posted on September 1, 2002
+Last Updated: April 16, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE'S HANDICAP ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LIFE'S HANDICAP
+
+BEING STORIES OF MINE OWN PEOPLE
+
+By Rudyard Kipling
+
+1915
+
+
+   TO
+   E.K.R.
+   FROM
+   R.K.
+   1887-89
+   C.M.G.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+In Northern India stood a monastery called The Chubara of Dhunni Bhagat.
+No one remembered who or what Dhunni Bhagat had been. He had lived his
+life, made a little money and spent it all, as every good Hindu should
+do, on a work of piety--the Chubara. That was full of brick cells, gaily
+painted with the figures of Gods and kings and elephants, where worn-out
+priests could sit and meditate on the latter end of things; the paths
+were brick paved, and the naked feet of thousands had worn them into
+gutters. Clumps of mangoes sprouted from between the bricks; great
+pipal trees overhung the well-windlass that whined all day; and hosts
+of parrots tore through the trees. Crows and squirrels were tame in that
+place, for they knew that never a priest would touch them.
+
+The wandering mendicants, charm-sellers, and holy vagabonds for a
+hundred miles round used to make the Chubara their place of call and
+rest. Mahomedan, Sikh, and Hindu mixed equally under the trees. They
+were old men, and when man has come to the turnstiles of Night all the
+creeds in the world seem to him wonderfully alike and colourless.
+
+Gobind the one-eyed told me this. He was a holy man who lived on an
+island in the middle of a river and fed the fishes with little bread
+pellets twice a day. In flood-time, when swollen corpses stranded
+themselves at the foot of the island, Gobind would cause them to be
+piously burned, for the sake of the honour of mankind, and having regard
+to his own account with God hereafter. But when two-thirds of the
+island was torn away in a spate, Gobind came across the river to Dhunni
+Bhagat's Chubara, he and his brass drinking vessel with the well-cord
+round the neck, his short arm-rest crutch studded with brass nails, his
+roll of bedding, his big pipe, his umbrella, and his tall sugar-loaf hat
+with the nodding peacock feathers in it. He wrapped himself up in his
+patched quilt made of every colour and material in the world, sat down
+in a sunny corner of the very quiet Chubara, and, resting his arm on his
+short-handled crutch, waited for death. The people brought him food and
+little clumps of marigold flowers, and he gave his blessing in return.
+He was nearly blind, and his face was seamed and lined and wrinkled
+beyond belief, for he had lived in his time which was before the English
+came within five hundred miles of Dhunni Bhagat's Chubara.
+
+When we grew to know each other well, Gobind would tell me tales in a
+voice most like the rumbling of heavy guns over a wooden bridge. His
+tales were true, but not one in twenty could be printed in an English
+book, because the English do not think as natives do. They brood over
+matters that a native would dismiss till a fitting occasion; and what
+they would not think twice about a native will brood over till a fitting
+occasion: then native and English stare at each other hopelessly across
+great gulfs of miscomprehension.
+
+'And what,' said Gobind one Sunday evening, 'is your honoured craft, and
+by what manner of means earn you your daily bread?'
+
+'I am,' said I, 'a kerani--one who writes with a pen upon paper, not
+being in the service of the Government.'
+
+'Then what do you write?' said Gobind. 'Come nearer, for I cannot see
+your countenance, and the light fails.'
+
+'I write of all matters that lie within my understanding, and of many
+that do not. But chiefly I write of Life and Death, and men and women,
+and Love and Fate according to the measure of my ability, telling the
+tale through the mouths of one, two, or more people. Then by the favour
+of God the tales are sold and money accrues to me that I may keep
+alive.'
+
+'Even so,' said Gobind. 'That is the work of the bazar story-teller; but
+he speaks straight to men and women and does not write anything at all.
+Only when the tale has aroused expectation, and calamities are about
+to befall the virtuous, he stops suddenly and demands payment ere he
+continues the narration. Is it so in your craft, my son?'
+
+'I have heard of such things when a tale is of great length, and is sold
+as a cucumber, in small pieces.'
+
+'Ay, I was once a famed teller of stories when I was begging on the road
+between Koshin and Etra; before the last pilgrimage that ever I took to
+Orissa. I told many tales and heard many more at the rest-houses in the
+evening when we were merry at the end of the march. It is in my heart
+that grown men are but as little children in the matter of tales, and
+the oldest tale is the most beloved.'
+
+'With your people that is truth,' said I. 'But in regard to our people
+they desire new tales, and when all is written they rise up and declare
+that the tale were better told in such and such a manner, and doubt
+either the truth or the invention thereof.'
+
+'But what folly is theirs!' said Gobind, throwing out his knotted hand.
+'A tale that is told is a true tale as long as the telling lasts. And
+of their talk upon it--you know how Bilas Khan, that was the prince of
+tale-tellers, said to one who mocked him in the great rest-house on the
+Jhelum road: "Go on, my brother, and finish that I have begun," and he
+who mocked took up the tale, but having neither voice nor manner for the
+task came to a standstill, and the pilgrims at supper made him eat abuse
+and stick half that night.'
+
+'Nay, but with our people, money having passed, it is their right; as we
+should turn against a shoeseller in regard to shoes if those wore out.
+If ever I make a book you shall see and judge.'
+
+'And the parrot said to the falling tree, Wait, brother, till I fetch a
+prop!' said Gobind with a grim chuckle. 'God has given me eighty years,
+and it may be some over. I cannot look for more than day granted by day
+and as a favour at this tide. Be swift.'
+
+'In what manner is it best to set about the task.' said I, 'O chiefest
+of those who string pearls with their tongue?'
+
+'How do I know? Yet'--he thought for a little--'how should I not know?
+God has made very many heads, but there is only one heart in all the
+world among your people or my people. They are children in the matter of
+tales.'
+
+'But none are so terrible as the little ones, if a man misplace a word,
+or in a second telling vary events by so much as one small devil.'
+
+'Ay, I also have told tales to the little ones, but do thou this--' His
+old eyes fell on the gaudy paintings of the wall, the blue and red dome,
+and the flames of the poinsettias beyond. 'Tell them first of those
+things that thou hast seen and they have seen together. Thus their
+knowledge will piece out thy imperfections. Tell them of what thou alone
+hast seen, then what thou hast heard, and since they be children tell
+them of battles and kings, horses, devils, elephants, and angels, but
+omit not to tell them of love and suchlike. All the earth is full of
+tales to him who listens and does not drive away the poor from his door.
+The poor are the best of tale-tellers; for they must lay their ear to
+the ground every night.'
+
+After this conversation the idea grew in my head, and Gobind was
+pressing in his inquiries as to the health of the book.
+
+Later, when we had been parted for months, it happened that I was to go
+away and far off, and I came to bid Gobind good-bye.
+
+'It is farewell between us now, for I go a very long journey,' I said.
+
+'And I also. A longer one than thou. But what of the book?' said he.
+
+'It will be born in due season if it is so ordained.'
+
+'I would I could see it,' said the old man, huddling beneath his quilt.
+'But that will not be. I die three days hence, in the night, a little
+before the dawn. The term of my years is accomplished.'
+
+In nine cases out of ten a native makes no miscalculation as to the day
+of his death. He has the foreknowledge of the beasts in this respect.
+
+'Then thou wilt depart in peace, and it is good talk, for thou hast said
+that life is no delight to thee.'
+
+'But it is a pity that our book is not born. How shall I know that there
+is any record of my name?'
+
+'Because I promise, in the forepart of the book, preceding everything
+else, that it shall be written, Gobind, sadhu, of the island in the
+river and awaiting God in Dhunni Bhagat's Chubara, first spoke of the
+book,' said I.
+
+'And gave counsel--an old man's counsel. Gobind, son of Gobind of the
+Chumi village in the Karaon tehsil, in the district of Mooltan. Will
+that be written also?'
+
+'That will be written also.'
+
+'And the book will go across the Black Water to the houses of your
+people, and all the Sahibs will know of me who am eighty years old?'
+
+'All who read the book shall know. I cannot promise for the rest.'
+
+'That is good talk. Call aloud to all who are in the monastery, and I
+will tell them this thing.'
+
+They trooped up, faquirs, sadhus, sunnyasis, byragis, nihangs, and
+mullahs, priests of all faiths and every degree of raggedness, and
+Gobind, leaning upon his crutch, spoke so that they were visibly filled
+with envy, and a white-haired senior bade Gobind think of his latter
+end instead of transitory repute in the mouths of strangers. Then Gobind
+gave me his blessing and I came away.
+
+These tales have been collected from all places, and all sorts of
+people, from priests in the Chubara, from Ala Yar the carver, Jiwun
+Singh the carpenter, nameless men on steamers and trains round the
+world, women spinning outside their cottages in the twilight, officers
+and gentlemen now dead and buried, and a few, but these are the very
+best, my father gave me. The greater part of them have been published in
+magazines and newspapers, to whose editors I am indebted; but some are
+new on this side of the water, and some have not seen the light before.
+
+The most remarkable stories are, of course, those which do not
+appear--for obvious reasons.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE LANG MEN O' LARUT
+
+REINGELDER AND THE GERMAN FLAG
+
+THE WANDERING JEW
+
+THROUGH THE FIRE
+
+THE FINANCES OF THE GODS
+
+THE AMIR'S HOMILY
+
+JEWS IN SHUSHAN
+
+THE LIMITATIONS OF PAMBE SERANG
+
+LITTLE TOBRAH
+
+BUBBLING WELL ROAD
+
+'THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT'
+
+GEORGIE PORGIE
+
+NABOTH
+
+THE DREAM OF DUNCAN PARRENNESS
+
+THE INCARNATION OF KRISHNA MULVANEY
+
+THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD
+
+ON GREENHOW HILL
+
+THE MAN WHO WAS
+
+THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT
+
+WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY
+
+AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE
+
+THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS
+
+THE MARK OF THE BEAST
+
+THE RETURN OF IMRAY
+
+NAMGAY DOOLA
+
+BERTRAN AND BIMI
+
+MOTI GUJ--MUTINEER
+
+
+
+
+THE LANG MEN O' LARUT
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN & CO.]
+
+
+The Chief Engineer's sleeping suit was of yellow striped with blue, and
+his speech was the speech of Aberdeen. They sluiced the deck under him,
+and he hopped on to the ornamental capstan, a black pipe between his
+teeth, though the hour was not seven of the morn.
+
+'Did you ever hear o' the Lang Men o' Larut?' he asked when the Man from
+Orizava had finished a story of an aboriginal giant discovered in the
+wilds of Brazil. There was never story yet passed the lips of teller,
+but the Man from Orizava could cap it.
+
+'No, we never did,' we responded with one voice. The Man from Orizava
+watched the Chief keenly, as a possible rival.
+
+'I'm not telling the story for the sake of talking merely,' said the
+Chief, 'but as a warning against betting, unless you bet on a perrfect
+certainty. The Lang Men o' Larut were just a certainty. I have had talk
+wi' them. Now Larut, you will understand, is a dependency, or it may be
+an outlying possession, o' the island o' Penang, and there they will get
+you tin and manganese, an' it mayhap mica, and all manner o' meenerals.
+Larut is a great place.'
+
+'But what about the population?' said the Man from Orizava.
+
+'The population,' said the Chief slowly, 'were few but enorrmous. You
+must understand that, exceptin' the tin-mines, there is no special
+inducement to Europeans to reside in Larut. The climate is warm and
+remarkably like the climate o' Calcutta; and in regard to Calcutta, it
+cannot have escaped your obsairvation that--'
+
+'Calcutta isn't Larut; and we've only just come from it,' protested
+the Man from Orizava. 'There's a meteorological department in Calcutta,
+too.'
+
+'Ay, but there's no meteorological department in Larut. Each man is a
+law to himself. Some drink whisky, and some drink brandipanee, and
+some drink cocktails--vara bad for the coats o' the stomach is a
+cocktail--and some drink sangaree, so I have been credibly informed;
+but one and all they sweat like the packing of piston-head on a
+fourrteen-days' voyage with the screw racing half her time. But, as I
+was saying, the population o' Larut was five all told of English--that
+is to say, Scotch--an' I'm Scotch, ye know,' said the Chief.
+
+The Man from Orizava lit another cigarette, and waited patiently. It was
+hopeless to hurry the Chief Engineer.
+
+'I am not pretending to account for the population o' Larut being
+laid down according to such fabulous dimensions. O' the five white men
+engaged upon the extraction o' tin ore and mercantile pursuits, there
+were three o' the sons o' Anak. Wait while I remember. Lammitter was the
+first by two inches--a giant in the land, an' a terreefic man to
+cross in his ways. From heel to head he was six feet nine inches, and
+proportionately built across and through the thickness of his body.
+Six good feet nine inches--an overbearin' man. Next to him, and I have
+forgotten his precise business, was Sandy Vowle. And he was six feet
+seven, but lean and lathy, and it was more in the elasteecity of his
+neck that the height lay than in any honesty o' bone and sinew. Five
+feet and a few odd inches may have been his real height. The remainder
+came out when he held up his head, and six feet seven he was upon the
+door-sills. I took his measure in chalk standin' on a chair. And next
+to him, but a proportionately made man, ruddy and of a fair countenance,
+was Jock Coan--that they called the Fir Cone. He was but six feet
+five, and a child beside Lammitter and Vowle. When the three walked
+out together, they made a scunner run through the colony o' Larut. The
+Malays ran round them as though they had been the giant trees in
+the Yosemite Valley--these three Lang Men o' Larut. It was perfectly
+ridiculous--a lusus naturae--that one little place should have contained
+maybe the three tallest ordinar' men upon the face o' the earth.
+
+'Obsairve now the order o' things. For it led to the finest big drink in
+Larut, and six sore heads the morn that endured for a week. I am against
+immoderate liquor, but the event to follow was a justification. You must
+understand that many coasting steamers call at Larut wi' strangers o'
+the mercantile profession. In the spring time, when the young cocoanuts
+were ripening, and the trees o' the forests were putting forth their
+leaves, there came an American man to Larut, and he was six foot three,
+or it may have been four, in his stockings. He came on business from
+Sacramento, but he stayed for pleasure wi' the Lang Men o' Larut. Less
+than, a half o' the population were ordinar' in their girth and stature,
+ye will understand--Howson and Nailor, merchants, five feet nine or
+thereabouts. He had business with those two, and he stood above them
+from the six feet threedom o' his height till they went to drink. In
+the course o' conversation he said, as tall men will, things about his
+height, and the trouble of it to him. That was his pride o' the flesh.
+
+'"As the longest man in the island--" he said, but there they took him
+up and asked if he were sure.
+
+'"I say I am the longest man in the island," he said, "and on that I'll
+bet my substance."
+
+'They laid down the bed-plates of a big drink then and there, and put
+it aside while they called Jock Coan from his house, near by among the
+fireflies' winking.
+
+'"How's a' wi' you?" said Jock, and came in by the side o' the
+Sacramento profligate, two inches, or it may have been one, taller than
+he.
+
+'"You're long," said the man, opening his eyes. "But I am longer." An'
+they sent a whistle through the night an' howkit out Sandy Vowle from
+his bit bungalow, and he came in an' stood by the side o' Jock, an' the
+pair just fillit the room to the ceiling-cloth.
+
+'The Sacramento man was a euchre-player and a most profane sweerer. "You
+hold both Bowers," he said, "but the Joker is with me."
+
+'"Fair an' softly," says Nailor. "Jock, whaur's Lang Lammitter?"
+
+'"Here," says that man, putting his leg through the window and coming
+in like an anaconda o' the desert furlong by furlong, one foot in Penang
+and one in Batavia, and a hand in North Borneo it may be.
+
+'"Are you suited?" said Nailor, when the hinder end o' Lang Lammitter
+was slidden through the sill an' the head of Lammitter was lost in the
+smoke away above.
+
+'The American man took out his card and put it on the table. "Esdras B.
+Longer is my name, America is my nation, 'Frisco is my resting-place,
+but this here beats Creation," said he. "Boys, giants--side-show
+giants--I minded to slide out of my bet if I had been overtopped, on the
+strength of the riddle on this paste-board. I would have done it if
+you had topped me even by three inches, but when it comes to
+feet--yards--miles, I am not the man to shirk the biggest drink that
+ever made the travellers'-joy palm blush with virginal indignation, or
+the orang-outang and the perambulating dyak howl with envy. Set them up
+and continue till the final conclusion."
+
+'O mon, I tell you 'twas an awful sight to see those four giants
+threshing about the house and the island, and tearin' down the pillars
+thereof an' throwing palm-trees broadcast, and currling their long legs
+round the hills o' Larut. An awfu' sight! I was there. I did not mean to
+tell you, but it's out now. I was not overcome, for I e'en sat me down
+under the pieces o' the table at four the morn an' meditated upon the
+strangeness of things.
+
+'Losh, yon's the breakfast-bell!'
+
+
+
+
+REINGELDER AND THE GERMAN FLAG
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN
+& CO.]
+
+
+Hans Breitmann paddled across the deck in his pink pyjamas, a cup of tea
+in one hand and a cheroot in the other, when the steamer was sweltering
+down the coast on her way to Singapur. He drank beer all day and all
+night, and played a game called 'Scairt' with three compatriots.
+
+'I haf washed,' said he in a voice of thunder, 'but dere is no
+use washing on these hell-seas. Look at me--I am still all wet and
+schweatin'. It is der tea dot makes me so. Boy, bring me Bilsener on
+ice.'
+
+'You will die if you drink beer before breakfast,' said one man. 'Beer
+is the worst thing in the world for--'
+
+'Ya, I know--der liver. I haf no liver, und I shall not die. At least I
+will not die obon dese benny sdeamers dot haf no beer fit to trink. If
+I should haf died, I will haf don so a hoondert dimes before now--in
+Shermany, in New York, in Japon, in Assam, und all over der inside bans
+of South Amerique. Also in Shamaica should I hat died or in Siam, but I
+am here; und der are my orchits dot I have drafelled all the vorld round
+to find.'
+
+He pointed towards the wheel, where, in two rough wooden boxes, lay a
+mass of shrivelled vegetation, supposed by all the ship to represent
+Assam orchids of fabulous value.
+
+Now, orchids do not grow in the main streets of towns, and Hans
+Breitmann had gone far to get his. There was nothing that he had not
+collected that year, from king-crabs to white kangaroos.
+
+'Lisden now,' said he, after he had been speaking for not much more than
+ten minutes without a pause; 'Lisden und I will dell you a sdory to show
+how bad und worse it is to go gollectin' und belief vot anoder fool haf
+said. Dis was in Uraguay which was in Amerique--North or Sout' you would
+not know--und I was hoontin' orchits und aferydings else dot I could
+back in my kanasters--dot is drafelling sbecimen-gaces. Dere vas den mit
+me anoder man--Reingelder, dot vas his name--und he vas hoontin' also
+but only coral-snakes--joost Uraguay coral-snakes--aferykind you could
+imagine. I dell you a coral-snake is a peauty--all red und white like
+coral dot has been gestrung in bands upon der neck of a girl. Dere is
+one snake howefer dot we who gollect know ash der Sherman Flag, pecause
+id is red und plack und white, joost like a sausage mit druffles.
+Reingelder he was naturalist--goot man--goot trinker--better as me! "By
+Gott," said Reingelder, "I will get a Sherman Flag snake or I will die."
+Und we toorned all Uraguay upside-behint all pecause of dot Sherman
+Flag.
+
+'Von day when we was in none knows where--shwingin' in our hummocks
+among der woods, oop comes a natif woman mit a Sherman Flag in a
+bickle-bottle--my bickle-bottle--und we both fell from our hummocks flat
+ubon our pot--what you call stomach--mit shoy at dis thing. Now I was
+gollectin' orchits also, und I knowed dot der idee of life to Reingelder
+vas dis Sherman Flag. Derefore I bicked myselfs oop und I said,
+"Reingelder, dot is YOUR find."--"Heart's true friend, dou art a goot
+man," said Reingelder, und mit dot he obens der bickle-bottle, und der
+natif woman she shqueals: "Herr Gott! It will bite." I said--pecause in
+Uraguay a man must be careful of der insects--"Reingelder, shpifligate
+her in der alcohol und den she will be all right."--"Nein," said
+Reingelder, "I will der shnake alife examine. Dere is no fear. Der
+coral-shnakes are mitout shting-apparatus brofided." Boot I looked at
+her het, und she vas der het of a boison-shnake--der true viper cranium,
+narrow und contract. "It is not goot," said I, "she may bite und den--we
+are tree hoondert mile from aferywheres. Broduce der alcohol und bickle
+him alife." Reingelder he had him in his hand--grawlin' und grawlin' as
+slow as a woorm und dwice as guiet. "Nonsense," says Reingelder. "Yates
+haf said dot not von of der coral-shnakes haf der sack of boison." Yates
+vas der crate authorite ubon der reptilia of Sout' Amerique. He
+haf written a book. You do not know, of course, but he vas a crate
+authorite.
+
+'I gum my eye upon der Sherman Flag, grawlin' und grawlin' in
+Reingelder's fist, und der het vas not der het of innocence. "Mein
+Gott," I said. "It is you dot will get der sack--der sack from dis life
+here pelow!"
+
+'"Den you may haf der shnake," says Reingelder, pattin' it ubon her het.
+"See now, I will show you vat Yates haf written!"
+
+'Uud mit dot he went indo his dent, unt brung out his big book of
+Yates; der Sherman Flag grawlin' in his fist. "Yates haf said," said
+Reingelder, und he throwed oben der book in der fork of his fist und
+read der passage, proofin' conglusivement dot nefer coral-shnake bite
+vas boison. Den he shut der book mit a bang, und dot shqueeze der
+Sherman Flag, und she nip once und dwice.
+
+'"Der liddle fool he haf bit me," says Reingelder.
+
+'Dese things was before we know apout der permanganat-potash injection.
+I was discomfordable.
+
+'"Die oop der arm, Reingelder," said I, "und trink whisky ontil you can
+no more trink."
+
+'"Trink ten tousand tevils! I will go to dinner," said Reingelder, und
+he put her afay und it vas very red mit emotion.
+
+'We lifed upon soup, horse-flesh, und beans for dinner, but before we
+vas eaten der soup, Reingelder he haf hold of his arm und cry, "It is
+genumben to der clavicle. I am a dead man; und Yates he haf lied in
+brint!"
+
+'I dell you it vas most sad, for der symbtoms dot came vas all dose of
+strychnine. He vas doubled into big knots, und den undoubled, und den
+redoubled mooch worse dan pefore, und he frothed. I vas mit him, saying,
+"Reingelder, dost dou know me?" but he himself, der inward gonsciousness
+part, was peyond knowledge, und so I know he vas not in bain. Den he
+wrop himself oop in von dremendous knot und den he died--all alone mit
+me in Uraguay. I was sorry, for I lofed Reingelder, und I puried
+him, und den I took der coral-shnake--dot Sherman Flag--so bad und
+dreacherous und I bickled him alife.
+
+'So I got him: und so I lost Reingelder.'
+
+
+
+
+THE WANDERING JEW
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by Macmillan & Co.]
+
+
+'If you go once round the world in an easterly direction, you gain one
+day,' said the men of science to John Hay. In after years John Hay went
+east, west, north, and south, transacted business, made love, and begat
+a family, as have done many men, and the scientific information above
+recorded lay neglected in the deeps of his mind with a thousand other
+matters of equal importance.
+
+When a rich relative died, he found himself wealthy beyond any
+reasonable expectation that he had entertained in his previous career,
+which had been a chequered and evil one. Indeed, long before the legacy
+came to him, there existed in the brain of John Hay a little cloud-a
+momentary obscuration of thought that came and went almost before he
+could realize that there was any solution of continuity. So do the bats
+flit round the eaves of a house to show that the darkness is falling. He
+entered upon great possessions, in money, land, and houses; but behind
+his delight stood a ghost that cried out that his enjoyment of these
+things should not be of long duration. It was the ghost of the rich
+relative, who had been permitted to return to earth to torture his
+nephew into the grave. Wherefore, under the spur of this constant
+reminder, John Hay, always preserving the air of heavy business-like
+stolidity that hid the shadow on his mind, turned investments, houses,
+and lands into sovereigns---rich, round, red, English sovereigns, each
+one worth twenty shillings. Lands may become valueless, and houses fly
+heavenward on the wings of red flame, but till the Day of Judgment
+a sovereign will always be a sovereign--that is to say, a king of
+pleasures.
+
+Possessed of his sovereigns, John Hay would fain have spent them one by
+one on such coarse amusements as his soul loved; but he was haunted by
+the instant fear of Death; for the ghost of his relative stood in the
+hall of his house close to the hat-rack, shouting up the stairway that
+life was short, that there was no hope of increase of days, and that the
+undertakers were already roughing out his nephew's coffin. John Hay was
+generally alone in the house, and even when he had company, his friends
+could not hear the clamorous uncle. The shadow inside his brain grew
+larger and blacker. His fear of death was driving John Hay mad.
+
+Then, from the deeps of his mind, where he had stowed away all his
+discarded information, rose to light the scientific fact of the Easterly
+journey. On the next occasion that his uncle shouted up the stairway
+urging him to make haste and live, a shriller voice cried, 'Who goes
+round the world once easterly, gains one day.'
+
+His growing diffidence and distrust of mankind made John Hay unwilling
+to give this precious message of hope to his friends. They might take
+it up and analyse it. He was sure it was true, but it would pain him
+acutely were rough hands to examine it too closely. To him alone of all
+the toiling generations of mankind had the secret of immortality
+been vouchsafed. It would be impious--against all the designs of the
+Creator--to set mankind hurrying eastward. Besides, this would crowd the
+steamers inconveniently, and John Hay wished of all things to be alone.
+If he could get round the world in two months--some one of whom he had
+read, he could not remember the name, had covered the passage in eighty
+days--he would gain a clear day; and by steadily continuing to do it for
+thirty years, would gain one hundred and eighty days, or nearly the half
+of a year. It would not be much, but in course of time, as civilisation
+advanced, and the Euphrates Valley Railway was opened, he could improve
+the pace.
+
+Armed with many sovereigns, John Hay, in the thirty-fifth year of his
+age, set forth on his travels, two voices bearing him company from
+Dover as he sailed to Calais. Fortune favoured him. The Euphrates Valley
+Railway was newly opened, and he was the first man who took ticket
+direct from Calais to Calcutta--thirteen days in the train. Thirteen
+days in the train are not good for the nerves; but he covered the world
+and returned to Calais from America in twelve days over the two months,
+and started afresh with four and twenty hours of precious time to his
+credit. Three years passed, and John Hay religiously went round this
+earth seeking for more time wherein to enjoy the remainder of his
+sovereigns. He became known on many lines as the man who wanted to go
+on; when people asked him what he was and what he did, he answered--
+
+'I'm the person who intends to live, and I am trying to do it now.'
+
+His days were divided between watching the white wake spinning behind
+the stern of the swiftest steamers, or the brown earth flashing past
+the windows of the fastest trains; and he noted in a pocket-book every
+minute that he had railed or screwed out of remorseless eternity.
+
+'This is better than praying for long life,' quoth John Hay as he turned
+his face eastward for his twentieth trip. The years had done more for
+him than he dared to hope.
+
+By the extension of the Brahmaputra Valley line to meet the
+newly-developed China Midland, the Calais railway ticket held good via
+Karachi and Calcutta to Hongkong. The round trip could be managed in a
+fraction over forty-seven days, and, filled with fatal exultation,
+John Hay told the secret of his longevity to his only friend, the
+house-keeper of his rooms in London. He spoke and passed; but the woman
+was one of resource, and immediately took counsel with the lawyers who
+had first informed John Hay of his golden legacy. Very many sovereigns
+still remained, and another Hay longed to spend them on things more
+sensible than railway tickets and steamer accommodation.
+
+The chase was long, for when a man is journeying literally for the dear
+life, he does not tarry upon the road. Round the world Hay swept anew,
+and overtook the wearied Doctor, who had been sent out to look for him,
+in Madras. It was there that he found the reward of his toil and the
+assurance of a blessed immortality. In half an hour the Doctor, watching
+always the parched lips, the shaking hands, and the eye that turned
+eternally to the east, won John Hay to rest in a little house close to
+the Madras surf. All that Hay need do was to hang by ropes from the roof
+of the room and let the round earth swing free beneath him. This was
+better than steamer or train, for he gained a day in a day, and was
+thus the equal of the undying sun. The other Hay would pay his expenses
+throughout eternity.
+
+ It is true that we cannot yet take tickets from Calais to Hongkong,
+though that will come about in fifteen years; but men say that if you
+wander along the southern coast of India you shall find in a neatly
+whitewashed little bungalow, sitting in a chair swung from the
+roof, over a sheet of thin steel which he knows so well destroys the
+attraction of the earth, an old and worn man who for ever faces the
+rising sun, a stop-watch in his hand, racing against eternity. He cannot
+drink, he does not smoke, and his living expenses amount to perhaps
+twenty-five rupees a month, but he is John Hay, the Immortal. Without,
+he hears the thunder of the wheeling world with which he is careful to
+explain he has no connection whatever; but if you say that it is only
+the noise of the surf, he will cry bitterly, for the shadow on his brain
+is passing away as the brain ceases to work, and he doubts sometimes
+whether the doctor spoke the truth.
+
+'Why does not the sun always remain over my head?' asks John Hay.
+
+
+
+
+THROUGH THE FIRE
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN & Co.]
+
+
+The Policeman rode through the Himalayan forest, under the moss-draped
+oaks, and his orderly trotted after him.
+
+'It's an ugly business, Bhere Singh,' said the Policeman. 'Where are
+they?'
+
+'It is a very ugly business,' said Bhere Singh; 'and as for THEM,
+they are, doubtless, now frying in a hotter fire than was ever made of
+spruce-branches.'
+
+'Let us hope not,' said the Policeman, 'for, allowing for the difference
+between race and race, it's the story of Francesca da Rimini, Bhere
+Singh.'
+
+Bhere Singh knew nothing about Francesca da Rimini, so he held his peace
+until they came to the charcoal-burners' clearing where the dying flames
+said 'whit, whit, whit' as they fluttered and whispered over the white
+ashes. It must have been a great fire when at full height. Men had seen
+it at Donga Pa across the valley winking and blazing through the night,
+and said that the charcoal-burners of Kodru were getting drunk. But
+it was only Suket Singh, Sepoy of the load Punjab Native Infantry, and
+Athira, a woman, burning--burning--burning.
+
+This was how things befell; and the Policeman's Diary will bear me out.
+
+Athira was the wife of Madu, who was a charcoal-burner, one-eyed and
+of a malignant disposition. A week after their marriage, he beat Athira
+with a heavy stick. A month later, Suket Singh, Sepoy, came that way to
+the cool hills on leave from his regiment, and electrified the villagers
+of Kodru with tales of service and glory under the Government, and the
+honour in which he, Suket Singh, was held by the Colonel Sahib Bahadur.
+And Desdemona listened to Othello as Desdemonas have done all the world
+over, and, as she listened, she loved.
+
+'I've a wife of my own,' said Suket Singh, 'though that is no matter
+when you come to think of it. I am also due to return to my regiment
+after a time, and I cannot be a deserter--I who intend to be Havildar.'
+There is no Himalayan version of 'I could not love thee, dear, as much,
+Loved I not Honour more;' but Suket Singh came near to making one.
+
+'Never mind,' said Athira, 'stay with me, and, if Madu tries to beat me,
+you beat him.'
+
+'Very good,' said Suket Singh; and he beat Madu severely, to the delight
+of all the charcoal-burners of Kodru.
+
+'That is enough,' said Suket Singh, as he rolled Madu down the hillside.
+'Now we shall have peace.' But Madu crawled up the grass slope again,
+and hovered round his hut with angry eyes.
+
+'He'll kill me dead,' said Athira to Suket Singh. 'You must take me
+away.'
+
+'There'll be a trouble in the Lines. My wife will pull out my beard; but
+never mind,' said Suket Singh, 'I will take you.'
+
+There was loud trouble in the Lines, and Suket Singh's beard was pulled,
+and Suket Singh's wife went to live with her mother and took away the
+children. 'That's all right,' said Athira; and Suket Singh said, 'Yes,
+that's all right.'
+
+So there was only Madu left in the hut that looks across the valley to
+Donga Pa; and, since the beginning of time, no one has had any sympathy
+for husbands so unfortunate as Madu.
+
+He went to Juseen Daze, the wizard-man who keeps the Talking Monkey's
+Head.
+
+'Get me back my wife,' said Madu.
+
+'I can't,' said Juseen Daze, 'until you have made the Sutlej in the
+valley run up the Donga Pa.'
+
+'No riddles,' said Madu, and he shook his hatchet above Juseen Daze's
+white head.
+
+'Give all your money to the headmen of the village,' said Juseen Daze;
+'and they will hold a communal Council, and the Council will send a
+message that your wife must come back.'
+
+So Madu gave up all his worldly wealth, amounting to twenty-seven
+rupees, eight annas, three pice, and a silver chain, to the Council of
+Kodru. And it fell as Juseen Daze foretold.
+
+They sent Athira's brother down into Suket Singh's regiment to call
+Athira home. Suket Singh kicked him once round the Lines, and then
+handed him over to the Havildar, who beat him with a belt.
+
+'Come back,' yelled Athira's brother.
+
+'Where to?' said Athira.
+
+'To Madu,' said he.
+
+'Never,' said she.
+
+'Then Juseen Daze will send a curse, and you will wither away like a
+barked tree in the springtime,' said Athira's brother. Athira slept over
+these things.
+
+Next morning she had rheumatism. 'I am beginning to wither away like a
+barked tree in the springtime,' she said. 'That is the curse of Juseen
+Daze.'
+
+And she really began to wither away because her heart was dried up with
+fear, and those who believe in curses die from curses. Suket Singh, too,
+was afraid because he loved Athira better than his very life. Two months
+passed, and Athira's brother stood outside the regimental Lines again
+and yelped, 'Aha! You are withering away. Come back.'
+
+'I will come back,' said Athira.
+
+'Say rather that WE will come back,' said Suket Singh.
+
+'Ai; but when?' said Athira's brother.
+
+'Upon a day very early in the morning,' said Suket Singh; and he tramped
+off to apply to the Colonel Sahib Bahadur for one week's leave.
+
+'I am withering away like a barked tree in the spring,' moaned Athira.
+
+'You will be better soon,' said Suket Singh; and he told her what was
+in his heart, and the two laughed together softly, for they loved each
+other. But Athira grew better from that hour.
+
+They went away together, travelling third-class by train as the
+regulations provided, and then in a cart to the low hills, and on foot
+to the high ones. Athira sniffed the scent of the pines of her own
+hills, the wet Himalayan hills. 'It is good to be alive,' said Athira.
+
+'Hah!' said Suket Singh. 'Where is the Kodru road and where is the
+Forest Ranger's house?'...
+
+'It cost forty rupees twelve years ago,' said the Forest Ranger, handing
+the gun.
+
+'Here are twenty,' said Suket Singh, 'and you must give me the best
+bullets.'
+
+'It is very good to be alive,' said Athira wistfully, sniffing the scent
+of the pine-mould; and they waited till the night had fallen upon Kodru
+and the Donga Pa. Madu had stacked the dry wood for the next day's
+charcoal-burning on the spur above his house. 'It is courteous in Madu
+to save us this trouble,' said Suket Singh as he stumbled on the pile,
+which was twelve foot square and four high. 'We must wait till the moon
+rises.'
+
+When the moon rose, Athira knelt upon the pile. 'If it were only a
+Government Snider,' said Suket Singh ruefully, squinting down the
+wire-bound barrel of the Forest Ranger's gun.
+
+'Be quick,' said Athira; and Suket Singh was quick; but Athira was quick
+no longer. Then he lit the pile at the four corners and climbed on to
+it, re-loading the gun.
+
+The little flames began to peer up between the big logs atop of the
+brushwood. 'The Government should teach us to pull the triggers with
+our toes,' said Suket Singh grimly to the moon. That was the last public
+observation of Sepoy Suket Singh.
+
+ Upon a day, early in the morning, Madu came to the pyre and shrieked
+very grievously, and ran away to catch the Policeman who was on tour in
+the district.
+
+'The base-born has ruined four rupees' worth of charcoal wood,' Madu
+gasped. 'He has also killed my wife, and he has left a letter which I
+cannot read, tied to a pine bough.'
+
+In the stiff, formal hand taught in the regimental school, Sepoy Suket
+Singh had written--
+
+'Let us be burned together, if anything remain over, for we have made
+the necessary prayers. We have also cursed Madu, and Malak the brother
+of Athira--both evil men. Send my service to the Colonel Sahib Bahadur.'
+
+The Policeman looked long and curiously at the marriage bed of red and
+white ashes on which lay, dull black, the barrel of the Ranger's gun.
+He drove his spurred heel absently into a half-charred log, and the
+chattering sparks flew upwards. 'Most extraordinary people,' said the
+Policeman.
+
+'WHE-W, WHEW, OUIOU,' said the little flames.
+
+The Policeman entered the dry bones of the case, for the Punjab
+Government does not approve of romancing, in his Diary.
+
+'But who will pay me those four rupees?' said Madu.
+
+
+
+
+THE FINANCES OF THE GODS
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN & Co.]
+
+
+The evening meal was ended in Dhunni Bhagat's Chubara and the old
+priests were smoking or counting their beads. A little naked child
+pattered in, with its mouth wide open, a handful of marigold flowers
+in one hand, and a lump of conserved tobacco in the other. It tried
+to kneel and make obeisance to Gobind, but it was so fat that it fell
+forward on its shaven head, and rolled on its side, kicking and gasping,
+while the marigolds tumbled one way and the tobacco the other. Gobind
+laughed, set it up again, and blessed the marigold flowers as he
+received the tobacco.
+
+'From my father,' said the child. 'He has the fever, and cannot come.
+Wilt thou pray for him, father?'
+
+'Surely, littlest; but the smoke is on the ground, and the night-chill
+is in the airs, and it is not good to go abroad naked in the autumn.'
+
+'I have no clothes,' said the child, 'and all to-day I have been
+carrying cow-dung cakes to the bazar. It was very hot, and I am very
+tired.' It shivered a little, for the twilight was cool.
+
+Gobind lifted an arm under his vast tattered quilt of many colours, and
+made an inviting little nest by his side. The child crept in, and Gobind
+filled his brass-studded leather waterpipe with the new tobacco. When
+I came to the Chubara the shaven head with the tuft atop, and the beady
+black eyes looked out of the folds of the quilt as a squirrel looks out
+from his nest, and Gobind was smiling while the child played with his
+beard.
+
+I would have said something friendly, but remembered in time that if the
+child fell ill afterwards I should be credited with the Evil Eye, and
+that is a horrible possession.
+
+'Sit thou still, Thumbling,' I said as it made to get up and run away.
+'Where is thy slate, and why has the teacher let such an evil character
+loose on the streets when there are no police to protect us weaklings?
+In which ward dost thou try to break thy neck with flying kites from the
+house-tops?'
+
+'Nay, Sahib, nay,' said the child, burrowing its face into Gobind's
+beard, and twisting uneasily. 'There was a holiday to-day among the
+schools, and I do not always fly kites. I play ker-li-kit like the
+rest.'
+
+Cricket is the national game among the schoolboys of the Punjab, from
+the naked hedge-school children, who use an old kerosene-tin for wicket,
+to the B.A.'s of the University, who compete for the Championship belt.
+
+'Thou play kerlikit! Thou art half the height of the bat!' I said.
+
+The child nodded resolutely. 'Yea, I DO play. PERLAYBALL OW-AT! RAN,
+RAN, RAN! I know it all.'
+
+'But thou must not forget with all this to pray to the Gods according
+to custom,' said Gobind, who did not altogether approve of cricket and
+western innovations.
+
+'I do not forget,' said the child in a hushed voice.
+
+'Also to give reverence to thy teacher, and'--Gobind's voice softened--'
+to abstain from pulling holy men by the beard, little badling. Eh, eh,
+eh?'
+
+The child's face was altogether hidden in the great white beard, and it
+began to whimper till Gobind soothed it as children are soothed all the
+world over, with the promise of a story.
+
+'I did not think to frighten thee, senseless little one. Look up! Am I
+angry? Are, are, are! Shall I weep too, and of our tears make a great
+pond and drown us both, and then thy father will never get well, lacking
+thee to pull his beard? Peace, peace, and I will tell thee of the Gods.
+Thou hast heard many tales?'
+
+'Very many, father.'
+
+'Now, this is a new one which thou hast not heard. Long and long ago
+when the Gods walked with men as they do to-day, but that we have not
+faith to see, Shiv, the greatest of Gods, and Parbati his wife, were
+walking in the garden of a temple.'
+
+'Which temple? That in the Nandgaon ward?' said the child.
+
+'Nay, very far away. Maybe at Trimbak or Hurdwar, whither thou must make
+pilgrimage when thou art a man. Now, there was sitting in the garden
+under the jujube trees, a mendicant that had worshipped Shiv for
+forty years, and he lived on the offerings of the pious, and meditated
+holiness night and day.'
+
+'Oh father, was it thou?' said the child, looking up with large eyes.
+
+'Nay, I have said it was long ago, and, moreover, this mendicant was
+married.'
+
+'Did they put him on a horse with flowers on his head, and forbid him
+to go to sleep all night long? Thus they did to me when they made my
+wedding,' said the child, who had been married a few months before.
+
+'And what didst thou do?' said I.
+
+'I wept, and they called me evil names, and then I smote HER, and we
+wept together.'
+
+'Thus did not the mendicant,' said Gobind; 'for he was a holy man, and
+very poor. Parbati perceived him sitting naked by the temple steps where
+all went up and down, and she said to Shiv, "What shall men think of the
+Gods when the Gods thus scorn their worshippers? For forty years yonder
+man has prayed to us, and yet there be only a few grains of rice and
+some broken cowries before him after all. Men's hearts will be hardened
+by this thing." And Shiv said, "It shall be looked to," and so he called
+to the temple which was the temple of his son, Ganesh of the elephant
+head, saying, "Son, there is a mendicant without who is very poor. What
+wilt thou do for him?" Then that great elephant-headed One awoke in the
+dark and answered, "In three days, if it be thy will, he shall have one
+lakh of rupees." Then Shiv and Parbati went away.
+
+'But there was a money-lender in the garden hidden among the
+marigolds'--the child looked at the ball of crumpled blossoms in its
+hands--'ay, among the yellow marigolds, and he heard the Gods talking.
+He was a covetous man, and of a black heart, and he desired that lakh
+of rupees for himself. So he went to the mendicant and said, "O brother,
+how much do the pious give thee daily?" The mendicant said, "I cannot
+tell. Sometimes a little rice, sometimes a little pulse, and a few
+cowries and, it has been, pickled mangoes, and dried fish."'
+
+'That is good,' said the child, smacking its lips.
+
+'Then said the money-lender, "Because I have long watched thee, and
+learned to love thee and thy patience, I will give thee now five rupees
+for all thy earnings of the three days to come. There is only a bond
+to sign on the matter." But the mendicant said, "Thou art mad. In two
+months I do not receive the worth of five rupees," and he told the
+thing to his wife that evening. She, being a woman, said, "When did
+money-lender ever make a bad bargain? The wolf runs through the corn for
+the sake of the fat deer. Our fate is in the hands of the Gods. Pledge
+it not even for three days."
+
+'So the mendicant returned to the money-lender, and would not sell. Then
+that wicked man sat all day before him offering more and more for those
+three days' earnings. First, ten, fifty, and a hundred rupees; and then,
+for he did not know when the Gods would pour down their gifts, rupees by
+the thousand, till he had offered half a lakh of rupees. Upon this sum
+the mendicant's wife shifted her counsel, and the mendicant signed the
+bond, and the money was paid in silver; great white bullocks bringing it
+by the cartload. But saving only all that money, the mendicant received
+nothing from the Gods at all, and the heart of the money-lender was
+uneasy on account of expectation. Therefore at noon of the third day the
+money-lender went into the temple to spy upon the councils of the Gods,
+and to learn in what manner that gift might arrive. Even as he was
+making his prayers, a crack between the stones of the floor gaped, and,
+closing, caught him by the heel. Then he heard the Gods walking in
+the temple in the darkness of the columns, and Shiv called to his son
+Ganesh, saying, "Son, what hast thou done in regard to the lakh of
+rupees for the mendicant?" And Ganesh woke, for the money-lender heard
+the dry rustle of his trunk uncoiling, and he answered, "Father, one
+half of the money has been paid, and the debtor for the other half I
+hold here fast by the heel."'
+
+The child bubbled with laughter. 'And the moneylender paid the
+mendicant?' it said.
+
+'Surely, for he whom the Gods hold by the heel must pay to the
+uttermost. The money was paid at evening, all silver, in great carts,
+and thus Ganesh did his work.'
+
+'Nathu! Ohe Nathu!'
+
+A woman was calling in the dusk by the door of the courtyard.
+
+The child began to wriggle. 'That is my mother,' it said.
+
+'Go then, littlest,' answered Gobind; 'but stay a moment.'
+
+He ripped a generous yard from his patchwork-quilt, put it over the
+child's shoulders, and the child ran away.
+
+
+
+
+THE AMIR'S HOMILY
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MacMillan & Co.]
+
+
+His Royal Highness Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, G.C.S.I., and
+trusted ally of Her Imperial Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of
+India, is a gentleman for whom all right-thinking people should have a
+profound regard. Like most other rulers, he governs not as he would but
+as he can, and the mantle of his authority covers the most turbulent
+race under the stars. To the Afghan neither life, property, law, nor
+kingship are sacred when his own lusts prompt him to rebel. He is a
+thief by instinct, a murderer by heredity and training, and frankly and
+bestially immoral by all three. None the less he has his own crooked
+notions of honour, and his character is fascinating to study. On
+occasion he will fight without reason given till he is hacked in pieces;
+on other occasions he will refuse to show fight till he is driven into
+a corner. Herein he is as unaccountable as the gray wolf, who is his
+blood-brother.
+
+And these men His Highness rules by the only weapon that they
+understand--the fear of death, which among some Orientals is the
+beginning of wisdom. Some say that the Amir's authority reaches no
+farther than a rifle bullet can range; but as none are quite certain
+when their king may be in their midst, and as he alone holds every one
+of the threads of Government, his respect is increased among men. Gholam
+Hyder, the Commander-in-chief of the Afghan army, is feared reasonably,
+for he can impale; all Kabul city fears the Governor of Kabul, who
+has power of life and death through all the wards; but the Amir of
+Afghanistan, though outlying tribes pretend otherwise when his back is
+turned, is dreaded beyond chief and governor together. His word is red
+law; by the gust of his passion falls the leaf of man's life, and his
+favour is terrible. He has suffered many things, and been a hunted
+fugitive before he came to the throne, and he understands all the
+classes of his people. By the custom of the East any man or woman having
+a complaint to make, or an enemy against whom to be avenged, has
+the right of speaking face to face with the king at the daily public
+audience. This is personal government, as it was in the days of Harun al
+Raschid of blessed memory, whose times exist still and will exist long
+after the English have passed away.
+
+The privilege of open speech is of course exercised at certain personal
+risk. The king may be pleased, and raise the speaker to honour for
+that very bluntness of speech which three minutes later brings a too
+imitative petitioner to the edge of the ever ready blade. And the people
+love to have it so, for it is their right.
+
+It happened upon a day in Kabul that the Amir chose to do his day's work
+in the Baber Gardens, which lie a short distance from the city of Kabul.
+A light table stood before him, and round the table in the open air were
+grouped generals and finance ministers according to their degree. The
+Court and the long tail of feudal chiefs--men of blood, fed and cowed
+by blood--stood in an irregular semicircle round the table, and the wind
+from the Kabul orchards blew among them. All day long sweating couriers
+dashed in with letters from the outlying districts with rumours of
+rebellion, intrigue, famine, failure of payments, or announcements of
+treasure on the road; and all day long the Amir would read the dockets,
+and pass such of these as were less private to the officials whom
+they directly concerned, or call up a waiting chief for a word of
+explanation. It is well to speak clearly to the ruler of Afghanistan.
+Then the grim head, under the black astrachan cap with the diamond star
+in front, would nod gravely, and that chief would return to his fellows.
+Once that afternoon a woman clamoured for divorce against her husband,
+who was bald, and the Amir, hearing both sides of the case, bade her
+pour curds over the bare scalp, and lick them off, that the hair might
+grown again, and she be contented. Here the Court laughed, and the woman
+withdrew, cursing her king under her breath.
+
+But when twilight was falling, and the order of the Court was a little
+relaxed, there came before the king, in custody, a trembling haggard
+wretch, sore with much buffeting, but of stout enough build, who had
+stolen three rupees--of such small matters does His Highness take
+cognisance.
+
+'Why did you steal?' said he; and when the king asks questions they do
+themselves service who answer directly.
+
+'I was poor, and no one gave. Hungry, and there was no food.'
+
+'Why did you not work?'
+
+'I could find no work, Protector of the Poor, and I was starving.'
+
+'You lie. You stole for drink, for lust, for idleness, for anything but
+hunger, since any man who will may find work and daily bread.'
+
+The prisoner dropped his eyes. He had attended the Court before, and he
+knew the ring of the death-tone.
+
+'Any man may get work. Who knows this so well as I do? for I too have
+been hungered--not like you, bastard scum, but as any honest man may be,
+by the turn of Fate and the will of God.'
+
+Growing warm, the Amir turned to his nobles all arow and thrust the hilt
+of his sabre aside with his elbow.
+
+'You have heard this Son of Lies? Hear me tell a true tale. I also was
+once starved, and tightened my belt on the sharp belly-pinch. Nor was
+I alone, for with me was another, who did not fail me in my evil days,
+when I was hunted, before ever I came to this throne. And wandering like
+a houseless dog by Kandahar, my money melted, melted, melted till--' He
+flung out a bare palm before the audience. 'And day upon day, faint and
+sick, I went back to that one who waited, and God knows how we lived,
+till on a day I took our best lihaf--silk it was, fine work of Iran,
+such as no needle now works, warm, and a coverlet for two, and all that
+we had. I brought it to a money-lender in a bylane, and I asked for
+three rupees upon it. He said to me, who am now the King, "You are a
+thief. This is worth three hundred." "I am no thief," I answered, "but a
+prince of good blood, and I am hungry."--"Prince of wandering beggars,"
+said that money-lender, "I have no money with me, but go to my house
+with my clerk and he will give you two rupees eight annas, for that is
+all I will lend." So I went with the clerk to the house, and we talked
+on the way, and he gave me the money. We lived on it till it was spent,
+and we fared hard. And then that clerk said, being a young man of a good
+heart, "Surely the money-lender will lend yet more on that lihaf," and
+he offered me two rupees. These I refused, saying, "Nay; but get me
+some work." And he got me work, and I, even I, Abdur Rahman, Amir
+of Afghanistan, wrought day by day as a coolie, bearing burdens, and
+labouring of my hands, receiving four annas wage a day for my sweat and
+backache. But he, this bastard son of naught, must steal! For a year
+and four months I worked, and none dare say that I lie, for I have a
+witness, even that clerk who is now my friend.'
+
+Then there rose in his place among the Sirdars and the nobles one clad
+in silk, who folded his hands and said, 'This is the truth of God, for
+I, who, by the favour of God and the Amir, am such as you know, was once
+clerk to that money-lender.'
+
+There was a pause, and the Amir cried hoarsely to the prisoner, throwing
+scorn upon him, till he ended with the dread 'Dar arid,' which clinches
+justice.
+
+So they led the thief away, and the whole of him was seen no more
+together; and the Court rustled out of its silence, whispering, 'Before
+God and the Prophet, but this is a man!'
+
+
+
+
+JEWS IN SHUSHAN
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1981, by Macmillan & Co.]
+
+
+My newly purchased house furniture was, at the least, insecure; the legs
+parted from the chairs, and the tops from the tables, on the slightest
+provocation. But such as it was, it was to be paid for, and Ephraim,
+agent and collector for the local auctioneer, waited in the verandah
+with the receipt. He was announced by the Mahomedan servant as 'Ephraim,
+Yahudi'--Ephraim the Jew. He who believes in the Brotherhood of Man
+should hear my Elahi Bukhsh grinding the second word through his white
+teeth with all the scorn he dare show before his master. Ephraim was,
+personally, meek in manner--so meek indeed that one could not understand
+how he had fallen into the profession of bill-collecting. He resembled
+an over-fed sheep, and his voice suited his figure. There was a fixed,
+unvarying mask of childish wonder upon his face. If you paid him, he
+was as one marvelling at your wealth; if you sent him away, he seemed
+puzzled at your hard-heartedness. Never was Jew more unlike his
+dread breed. Ephraim wore list slippers and coats of duster-cloth, so
+preposterously patterned that the most brazen of British subalterns
+would have shied from them in fear. Very slow and deliberate was his
+speech, and carefully guarded to give offence to no one. After many
+weeks, Ephraim was induced to speak to me of his friends.
+
+'There be eight of us in Shushan, and we are waiting till there are ten.
+Then we shall apply for a synagogue, and get leave from Calcutta.
+To-day we have no synagogue; and I, only I, am Priest and Butcher to
+our people. I am of the tribe of Judah--I think, but I am not sure. My
+father was of the tribe of Judah, and we wish much to get our synagogue.
+I shall be a priest of that synagogue.'
+
+Shushan is a big city in the North of India, counting its dwellers by
+the ten thousand; and these eight of the Chosen People were shut up
+in its midst, waiting till time or chance sent them their full
+congregation.
+
+Miriam the wife of Ephraim, two little children, an orphan boy of their
+people, Epraim's uncle Jackrael Israel, a white-haired old man, his wife
+Hester, a Jew from Cutch, one Hyem Benjamin, and Ephraim, Priest and
+Butcher, made up the list of the Jews in Shushan. They lived in one
+house, on the outskirts of the great city, amid heaps of saltpetre,
+rotten bricks, herds of kine, and a fixed pillar of dust caused by the
+incessant passing of the beasts to the river to drink. In the evening
+the children of the City came to the waste place to fly their kites, and
+Ephraim's sons held aloof, watching the sport from the roof, but never
+descending to take part in them. At the back of the house stood a small
+brick enclosure, in which Ephraim prepared the daily meat for his people
+after the custom of the Jews. Once the rude door of the square was
+suddenly smashed open by a struggle from inside, and showed the meek
+bill-collector at his work, nostrils dilated, lips drawn back over
+his teeth, and his hands upon a half-maddened sheep. He was attired in
+strange raiment, having no relation whatever to duster coats or list
+slippers, and a knife was in his mouth. As he struggled with the animal
+between the walls, the breath came from him in thick sobs, and the
+nature of the man seemed changed. When the ordained slaughter was ended,
+he saw that the door was open and shut it hastily, his hand leaving
+a red mark on the timber, while his children from the neighbouring
+house-top looked down awe-stricken and open-eyed. A glimpse of Ephraim
+busied in one of his religious capacities was no thing to be desired
+twice.
+
+Summer came upon Shushan, turning the trodden waste-ground to iron, and
+bringing sickness to the city.
+
+'It will not touch us,' said Ephraim confidently. 'Before the winter
+we shall have our synagogue. My brother and his wife and children
+are coming up from Calcutta, and THEN I shall be the priest of the
+synagogue.'
+
+Jackrael Israel, the old man, would crawl out in the stifling evenings
+to sit on the rubbish-heap and watch the corpses being borne down to the
+river.
+
+'It will not come near us,' said Jackrael Israel feebly, 'for we are the
+People of God, and my nephew will be priest of our synagogue. Let them
+die.' He crept back to his house again and barred the door to shut
+himself off from the world of the Gentile.
+
+But Miriam, the wife of Ephraim, looked out of the window at the dead
+as the biers passed and said that she was afraid. Ephraim comforted
+her with hopes of the synagogue to be, and collected bills as was his
+custom.
+
+In one night, the two children died and were buried early in the morning
+by Ephraim. The deaths never appeared in the City returns. 'The sorrow
+is my sorrow,' said Ephraim; and this to him seemed a sufficient reason
+for setting at naught the sanitary regulations of a large, flourishing,
+and remarkably well-governed Empire.
+
+The orphan boy, dependent on the charity of Ephraim and his wife, could
+have felt no gratitude, and must have been a ruffian. He begged for
+whatever money his protectors would give him, and with that fled
+down-country for his life. A week after the death of her children Miriam
+left her bed at night and wandered over the country to find them. She
+heard them crying behind every bush, or drowning in every pool of water
+in the fields, and she begged the cartmen on the Grand Trunk Road not
+to steal her little ones from her. In the morning the sun rose and beat
+upon her bare head, and she turned into the cool wet crops to lie down
+and never came back; though Hyem Benjamin and Ephraim sought her for two
+nights.
+
+The look of patient wonder on Ephraim's face deepened, but he presently
+found an explanation. 'There are so few of us here, and these people are
+so many,' said he, 'that, it may be, our God has forgotten us.'
+
+In the house on the outskirts of the city old Jackrael Israel and Hester
+grumbled that there was no one to wait on them, and that Miriam had been
+untrue to her race. Ephraim went out and collected bills, and in the
+evenings smoked with Hyem Benjamin till, one dawning, Hyem Benjamin
+died, having first paid all his debts to Ephraim. Jackrael Israel and
+Hester sat alone in the empty house all day, and, when Ephraim returned,
+wept the easy tears of age till they cried themselves asleep.
+
+A week later Ephraim, staggering under a huge bundle of clothes and
+cooking-pots, led the old man and woman to the railway station, where
+the bustle and confusion made them whimper.
+
+'We are going back to Calcutta,' said Ephraim, to whose sleeve Hester
+was clinging. 'There are more of us there, and here my house is empty.'
+
+He helped Hester into the carriage and, turning back, said to me, 'I
+should have been priest of the synagogue if there had been ten of us.
+Surely we must have been forgotten by our God.'
+
+The remnant of the broken colony passed out of the station on their
+journey south; while a subaltern, turning over the books on the
+bookstall, was whistling to himself 'The Ten Little Nigger Boys.'
+
+But the tune sounded as solemn as the Dead March.
+
+It was the dirge of the Jews in Shushan.
+
+
+
+
+THE LIMITATIONS OF PAMBE SERANG
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN
+& Co.]
+
+
+If you consider the circumstances of the case, it was the only thing
+that he could do. But Pambe Serang has been hanged by the neck till he
+is dead, and Nurkeed is dead also.
+
+Three years ago, when the Elsass-Lothringen steamer Saarbruck was
+coaling at Aden and the weather was very hot indeed, Nurkeed, the big
+fat Zanzibar stoker who fed the second right furnace thirty feet down
+in the hold, got leave to go ashore. He departed a 'Seedee boy,' as they
+call the stokers; he returned the full-blooded Sultan of Zanzibar--His
+Highness Sayyid Burgash, with a bottle in each hand. Then he sat on the
+fore-hatch grating, eating salt fish and onions, and singing the songs
+of a far country. The food belonged to Pambe, the Serang or head man of
+the lascar sailors. He had just cooked it for himself, turned to borrow
+some salt, and when he came back Nurkeed's dirty black fingers were
+spading into the rice.
+
+A serang is a person of importance, far above a stoker, though the
+stoker draws better pay. He sets the chorus of 'Hya! Hulla! Hee-ah!
+Heh!' when the captain's gig is pulled up to the davits; he heaves
+the lead too; and sometimes, when all the ship is lazy, he puts on
+his whitest muslin and a big red sash, and plays with the passengers'
+children on the quarter-deck. Then the passengers give him money, and he
+saves it all up for an orgie at Bombay or Calcutta, or Pulu Penang. 'Ho!
+you fat black barrel, you're eating my food!' said Pambe, in the Other
+Lingua Franca that begins where the Levant tongue stops, and runs from
+Port Said eastward till east is west, and the sealing-brigs of the
+Kurile Islands gossip with the strayed Hakodate junks.
+
+'Son of Eblis, monkey-face, dried shark's liver, pigman, I am the Sultan
+Sayyid Burgash, and the commander of all this ship. Take away your
+garbage;' and Nurkeed thrust the empty pewter rice-plate into Pambe's
+hand.
+
+Pambe beat it into a basin over Nurkeed's woolly head. Nurkeed drew HIS
+sheath-knife and stabbed Pambe in the leg. Pambe drew his sheath-knife;
+but Nurkeed dropped down into the darkness of the hold and spat through
+the grating at Pambe, who was staining the clean fore-deck with his
+blood.
+
+Only the white moon saw these things; for the officers were looking
+after the coaling, and the passengers were tossing in their close
+cabins. 'All right,' said Pambe--and went forward to tie up his leg--'we
+will settle the account later on.'
+
+He was a Malay born in India: married once in Burma, where his wife had
+a cigar-shop on the Shwe Dagon road; once in Singapore, to a Chinese
+girl; and once in Madras, to a Mahomedan woman who sold fowls. The
+English sailor cannot, owing to postal and telegraph facilities,
+marry as profusely as he used to do; but native sailors can, being
+uninfluenced by the barbarous inventions of the Western savage. Pambe
+was a good husband when he happened to remember the existence of a wife;
+but he was also a very good Malay; and it is not wise to offend a Malay,
+because he does not forget anything. Moreover, in Pambe's case blood had
+been drawn and food spoiled.
+
+Next morning Nurkeed rose with a blank mind. He was no longer Sultan
+of Zanzibar, but a very hot stoker. So he went on deck and opened
+his jacket to the morning breeze, till a sheath-knife came like a
+flying-fish and stuck into the woodwork of the cook's galley half an
+inch from his right armpit. He ran down below before his time, trying
+to remember what he could have said to the owner of the weapon. At noon,
+when all the ship's lascars were feeding, Nurkeed advanced into their
+midst, and, being a placid man with a large regard for his own skin, he
+opened negotiations, saying, 'Men of the ship, last night I was drunk,
+and this morning I know that I behaved unseemly to some one or another
+of you. Who was that man, that I may meet him face to face and say that
+I was drunk?'
+
+Pambe measured the distance to Nurkeed's naked breast. If he sprang at
+him he might be tripped up, and a blind blow at the chest sometimes only
+means a gash on the breast-bone. Ribs are difficult to thrust between
+unless the subject be asleep. So he said nothing; nor did the other
+lascars. Their faces immediately dropped all expression, as is the
+custom of the Oriental when there is killing on the carpet or any chance
+of trouble. Nurkeed looked long at the white eyeballs. He was only
+an African, and could not read characters. A big sigh--almost a
+groan--broke from him, and he went back to the furnaces. The lascars
+took up the conversation where he had interrupted it. They talked of the
+best methods of cooking rice.
+
+Nurkeed suffered considerably from lack of fresh air during the run to
+Bombay. He only came on deck to breathe when all the world was about;
+and even then a heavy block once dropped from a derrick within a foot
+of his head, and an apparently firm-lashed grating on which he set his
+foot, began to turn over with the intention of dropping him on the cased
+cargo fifteen feet below; and one insupportable night the sheath-knife
+dropped from the fo'c's'le, and this time it drew blood. So Nurkeed
+made complaint; and, when the Saarbruck reached Bombay, fled and buried
+himself among eight hundred thousand people, and did not sign articles
+till the ship had been a month gone from the port. Pambe waited too;
+but his Bombay wife grew clamorous, and he was forced to sign in the
+Spicheren to Hongkong, because he realised that all play and no work
+gives Jack a ragged shirt. In the foggy China seas he thought a great
+deal of Nurkeed, and, when Elsass-Lothringen steamers lay in port with
+the Spicheren, inquired after him and found he had gone to England via
+the Cape, on the Gravelotte. Pambe came to England on the Worth. The
+Spicheren met her by the Nore Light. Nurkeed was going out with the
+Spicheren to the Calicut coast.
+
+'Want to find a friend, my trap-mouthed coal-scuttle?' said a gentleman
+in the mercantile service. 'Nothing easier. Wait at the Nyanza Docks
+till he comes. Every one comes to the Nyanza Docks. Wait, you poor
+heathen.' The gentleman spoke truth. There are three great doors in the
+world where, if you stand long enough, you shall meet any one you wish.
+The head of the Suez Canal is one, but there Death comes also; Charing
+Cross Station is the second--for inland work; and the Nyanza Docks is
+the third. At each of these places are men and women looking eternally
+for those who will surely come. So Pambe waited at the docks. Time was
+no object to him; and the wives could wait, as he did from day to day,
+week to week, and month to month, by the Blue Diamond funnels, the Red
+Dot smoke-stacks, the Yellow Streaks, and the nameless dingy gypsies of
+the sea that loaded and unloaded, jostled, whistled, and roared in
+the everlasting fog. When money failed, a kind gentleman told Pambe to
+become a Christian; and Pambe became one with great speed, getting his
+religious teachings between ship and ship's arrival, and six or seven
+shillings a week for distributing tracts to mariners. What the faith
+was Pambe did not in the least care; but he knew if he said 'Native
+Ki-lis-ti-an, Sar' to men with long black coats he might get a few
+coppers; and the tracts were vendible at a little public-house that
+sold shag by the 'dottel,' which is even smaller weight than the
+'half-screw,' which is less than the half-ounce, and a most profitable
+retail trade.
+
+But after eight months Pambe fell sick with pneumonia, contracted from
+long standing still in slush; and much against his will he was forced to
+lie down in his two-and-sixpenny room raging against Fate.
+
+The kind gentleman sat by his bedside, and grieved to find that Pambe
+talked in strange tongues, instead of listening to good books, and
+almost seemed to become a benighted heathen again--till one day he was
+roused from semi-stupor by a voice in the street by the dock-head. 'My
+friend--he,' whispered Pambe. 'Call now--call Nurkeed. Quick! God has
+sent him!'
+
+'He wanted one of his own race,' said the kind gentleman; and, going
+out, he called 'Nurkeed!' at the top of his voice. An excessively
+coloured man in a rasping white shirt and brand-new slops, a shining
+hat, and a breastpin, turned round. Many voyages had taught Nurkeed how
+to spend his money and made him a citizen of the world.
+
+'Hi! Yes!' said he, when the situation was explained. 'Command
+him--black nigger--when I was in the Saarbruck. Ole Pambe, good ole
+Pambe. Dam lascar. Show him up, Sar;' and he followed into the room. One
+glance told the stoker what the kind gentleman had overlooked. Pambe was
+desperately poor. Nurkeed drove his hands deep into his pockets, then
+advanced with clenched fists on the sick, shouting, 'Hya, Pambe. Hya!
+Hee-ah! Hulla! Heh! Takilo! Takilo! Make fast aft, Pambe. You know,
+Pambe. You know me. Dekho, jee! Look! Dam big fat lazy lascar!'
+
+Pambe beckoned with his left hand. His right was under his pillow.
+Nurkeed removed his gorgeous hat and stooped over Pambe till he could
+catch a faint whisper. 'How beautiful!' said the kind gentleman. 'How
+these Orientals love like children!'
+
+'Spit him out,' said Nurkeed, leaning over Pambe yet more closely.
+
+'Touching the matter of that fish and onions--' said Pambe--and sent the
+knife home under the edge of the rib-bone upwards and forwards.
+
+There was a thick sick cough, and the body of the African slid slowly
+from the bed, his clutching hands letting fall a shower of silver pieces
+that ran across the room.
+
+'Now I can die!' said Pambe.
+
+But he did not die. He was nursed back to life with all the skill
+that money could buy, for the Law wanted him; and in the end he grew
+sufficiently healthy to be hanged in due and proper form.
+
+Pambe did not care particularly; but it was a sad blow to the kind
+gentleman.
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE TOBRAH
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN & Co.]
+
+
+'Prisoner's head did not reach to the top of the dock,' as the English
+newspapers say. This case, however, was not reported because nobody
+cared by so much as a hempen rope for the life or death of Little
+Tobrah. The assessors in the red court-house sat upon him all through
+the long hot afternoon, and whenever they asked him a question
+he salaamed and whined. Their verdict was that the evidence was
+inconclusive, and the Judge concurred. It was true that the dead body
+of Little Tobrah's sister had been found at the bottom of the well, and
+Little Tobrah was the only human being within a half mile radius at the
+time; but the child might have fallen in by accident. Therefore Little
+Tobrah was acquitted, and told to go where he pleased. This permission
+was not so generous as it sounds, for he had nowhere to go to, nothing
+in particular to eat, and nothing whatever to wear.
+
+He trotted into the court-compound, and sat upon the well-kerb,
+wondering whether an unsuccessful dive into the black water below would
+end in a forced voyage across the other Black Water. A groom put down
+an emptied nose-bag on the bricks, and Little Tobrah, being hungry, set
+himself to scrape out what wet grain the horse had overlooked.
+
+'O Thief--and but newly set free from the terror of the Law! Come
+along!' said the groom, and Little Tobrah was led by the ear to a large
+and fat Englishman, who heard the tale of the theft.
+
+'Hah!' said the Englishman three times (only he said a stronger word).
+'Put him into the net and take him home.' So Little Tobrah was thrown
+into the net of the cart, and, nothing doubting that he should be
+stuck like a pig, was driven to the Englishman's house. 'Hah!' said the
+Englishman as before. 'Wet grain, by Jove! Feed the little beggar, some
+of you, and we'll make a riding-boy of him! See? Wet grain, good Lord!'
+
+'Give an account of yourself,' said the Head of the Grooms, to Little
+Tobrah after the meal had been eaten, and the servants lay at ease in
+their quarters behind the house. 'You are not of the groom caste, unless
+it be for the stomach's sake. How came you into the court, and why?
+Answer, little devil's spawn!'
+
+'There was not enough to eat,' said Little Tobrah calmly. 'This is a
+good place.'
+
+'Talk straight talk,' said the Head Groom, 'or I will make you clean out
+the stable of that large red stallion who bites like a camel.'
+
+'We be Telis, oil-pressers,' said Little Tobrah, scratching his toes in
+the dust. 'We were Telis--my father, my mother, my brother, the elder by
+four years, myself, and the sister.'
+
+'She who was found dead in the well?' said one who had heard something
+of the trial.
+
+'Even so,' said Little Tobrah gravely. 'She who was found dead in the
+well. It befel upon a time, which is not in my memory, that the sickness
+came to the village where our oil-press stood, and first my sister was
+smitten as to her eyes, and went without sight, for it was mata--the
+smallpox. Thereafter, my father and my mother died of that same
+sickness, so we were alone--my brother who had twelve years, I who had
+eight, and the sister who could not see. Yet were there the bullock and
+the oil-press remaining, and we made shift to press the oil as before.
+But Surjun Dass, the grain-seller, cheated us in his dealings; and it
+was always a stubborn bullock to drive. We put marigold flowers for the
+Gods upon the neck of the bullock, and upon the great grinding-beam that
+rose through the roof; but we gained nothing thereby, and Surjun Dass
+was a hard man.'
+
+'Bapri-bap,' muttered the grooms' wives, 'to cheat a child so! But WE
+know what the bunnia-folk are, sisters.'
+
+'The press was an old press, and we were not strong men--my brother and
+I; nor could we fix the neck of the beam firmly in the shackle.'
+
+'Nay, indeed,' said the gorgeously-clad wife of the Head Groom, joining
+the circle. 'That is a strong man's work. When I was a maid in my
+father's house----'
+
+'Peace, woman,' said the Head Groom. 'Go on, boy.'
+
+'It is nothing,' said Little Tobrah. 'The big beam tore down the roof
+upon a day which is not in my memory, and with the roof fell much of the
+hinder wall, and both together upon our bullock, whose back was broken.
+Thus we had neither home, nor press, nor bullock--my brother, myself,
+and the sister who was blind. We went crying away from that place,
+hand-in-hand, across the fields; and our money was seven annas and six
+pie. There was a famine in the land. I do not know the name of the land.
+So, on a night when we were sleeping, my brother took the five annas
+that remained to us and ran away. I do not know whither he went. The
+curse of my father be upon him. But I and the sister begged food in
+the villages, and there was none to give. Only all men said--"Go to the
+Englishmen and they will give." I did not know what the Englishmen were;
+but they said that they were white, living in tents. I went forward; but
+I cannot say whither I went, and there was no more food for myself or
+the sister. And upon a hot night, she weeping and calling for food, we
+came to a well, and I bade her sit upon the kerb, and thrust her in,
+for, in truth, she could not see; and it is better to die than to
+starve.'
+
+'Ai! Ahi!' wailed the grooms' wives in chorus; 'he thrust her in, for it
+is better to die than to starve!'
+
+'I would have thrown myself in also, but that she was not dead and
+called to me from the bottom of the well, and I was afraid and ran. And
+one came out of the crops saying that I had killed her and defiled the
+well, and they took me before an Englishman, white and terrible, living
+in a tent, and me he sent here. But there were no witnesses, and it is
+better to die than to starve. She, furthermore, could not see with her
+eyes, and was but a little child.'
+
+'Was but a little child,' echoed the Head Groom's wife. 'But who art
+thou, weak as a fowl and small as a day-old colt, what art THOU?'
+
+'I who was empty am now full,' said Little Tobrah, stretching himself
+upon the dust. 'And I would sleep.'
+
+The groom's wife spread a cloth over him while Little Tobrah slept the
+sleep of the just.
+
+
+
+
+BUBBLING WELL ROAD
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN & Co.]
+
+
+Look out on a large scale map the place where the Chenab river falls
+into the Indus fifteen miles or so above the hamlet of Chachuran. Five
+miles west of Chachuran lies Bubbling Well Road, and the house of the
+gosain or priest of Arti-goth. It was the priest who showed me the road,
+but it is no thanks to him that I am able to tell this story.
+
+Five miles west of Chachuran is a patch of the plumed jungle-grass, that
+turns over in silver when the wind blows, from ten to twenty feet high
+and from three to four miles square. In the heart of the patch hides the
+gosain of Bubbling Well Road. The villagers stone him when he peers
+into the daylight, although he is a priest, and he runs back again as
+a strayed wolf turns into tall crops. He is a one-eyed man and carries,
+burnt between his brows, the impress of two copper coins. Some say that
+he was tortured by a native prince in the old days; for he is so old
+that he must have been capable of mischief in the days of Runjit Singh.
+His most pressing need at present is a halter, and the care of the
+British Government.
+
+These things happened when the jungle-grass was tall; and the villagers
+of Chachuran told me that a sounder of pig had gone into the Arti-goth
+patch. To enter jungle-grass is always an unwise proceeding, but I went,
+partly because I knew nothing of pig-hunting, and partly because the
+villagers said that the big boar of the sounder owned foot long tushes.
+Therefore I wished to shoot him, in order to produce the tushes in after
+years, and say that I had ridden him down in fair chase. I took a gun
+and went into the hot, close patch, believing that it would be an easy
+thing to unearth one pig in ten square miles of jungle. Mr. Wardle,
+the terrier, went with me because he believed that I was incapable of
+existing for an hour without his advice and countenance. He managed to
+slip in and out between the grass clumps, but I had to force my way,
+and in twenty minutes was as completely lost as though I had been in the
+heart of Central Africa. I did not notice this at first till I had grown
+wearied of stumbling and pushing through the grass, and Mr. Wardle was
+beginning to sit down very often and hang out his tongue very far. There
+was nothing but grass everywhere, and it was impossible to see two yards
+in any direction. The grass-stems held the heat exactly as boiler-tubes
+do.
+
+In half-an-hour, when I was devoutly wishing that I had left the big
+boar alone, I came to a narrow path which seemed to be a compromise
+between a native foot-path and a pig-run. It was barely six inches wide,
+but I could sidle along it in comfort. The grass was extremely thick
+here, and where the path was ill defined it was necessary to crush into
+the tussocks either with both hands before the face, or to back into
+it, leaving both hands free to manage the rifle. None the less it was a
+path, and valuable because it might lead to a place.
+
+At the end of nearly fifty yards of fair way, just when I was preparing
+to back into an unusually stiff tussock, I missed Mr. Wardle, who for
+his girth is an unusually frivolous dog and never keeps to heel. I
+called him three times and said aloud, 'Where has the little beast gone
+to?' Then I stepped backwards several paces, for almost under my feet a
+deep voice repeated, 'Where has the little beast gone?' To appreciate an
+unseen voice thoroughly you should hear it when you are lost in stifling
+jungle-grass. I called Mr. Wardle again and the underground echo
+assisted me. At that I ceased calling and listened very attentively,
+because I thought I heard a man laughing in a peculiarly offensive
+manner. The heat made me sweat, but the laughter made me shake. There is
+no earthly need for laughter in high grass. It is indecent, as well as
+impolite. The chuckling stopped, and I took courage and continued to
+call till I thought that I had located the echo somewhere behind and
+below the tussock into which I was preparing to back just before I lost
+Mr. Wardle. I drove my rifle up to the triggers, between the grass-stems
+in a downward and forward direction. Then I waggled it to and fro, but
+it did not seem to touch ground on the far side of the tussock as it
+should have done. Every time that I grunted with the exertion of driving
+a heavy rifle through thick grass, the grunt was faithfully repeated
+from below, and when I stopped to wipe my face the sound of low laughter
+was distinct beyond doubting.
+
+I went into the tussock, face first, an inch at a time, my mouth
+open and my eyes fine, full, and prominent. When I had overcome the
+resistance of the grass I found that I was looking straight across a
+black gap in the ground--that I was actually lying on my chest leaning
+over the mouth of a well so deep I could scarcely see the water in it.
+
+There were things in the water,--black things,--and the water was as
+black as pitch with blue scum atop. The laughing sound came from the
+noise of a little spring, spouting half-way down one side of the well.
+Sometimes as the black things circled round, the trickle from the spring
+fell upon their tightly-stretched skins, and then the laughter changed
+into a sputter of mirth. One thing turned over on its back, as I
+watched, and drifted round and round the circle of the mossy brickwork
+with a hand and half an arm held clear of the water in a stiff and
+horrible flourish, as though it were a very wearied guide paid to
+exhibit the beauties of the place.
+
+I did not spend more than half-an-hour in creeping round that well
+and finding the path on the other side. The remainder of the journey
+I accomplished by feeling every foot of ground in front of me, and
+crawling like a snail through every tussock. I carried Mr. Wardle in my
+arms and he licked my nose. He was not frightened in the least, nor was
+I, but we wished to reach open ground in order to enjoy the view. My
+knees were loose, and the apple in my throat refused to slide up and
+down. The path on the far side of the well was a very good one, though
+boxed in on all sides by grass, and it led me in time to a priest's hut
+in the centre of a little clearing. When that priest saw my very white
+face coming through the grass he howled with terror and embraced my
+boots; but when I reached the bedstead set outside his door I sat down
+quickly and Mr. Wardle mounted guard over me. I was not in a condition
+to take care of myself.
+
+When I awoke I told the priest to lead me into the open, out of the
+Arti-goth patch, and to walk slowly in front of me. Mr. Wardle hates
+natives, and the priest was more afraid of Mr. Wardle than of me, though
+we were both angry. He walked very slowly down a narrow little path from
+his hut. That path crossed three paths, such as the one I had come by
+in the first instance, and every one of the three headed towards the
+Bubbling Well. Once when we stopped to draw breath, I heard the Well
+laughing to itself alone in the thick grass, and only my need for his
+services prevented my firing both barrels into the priest's back.
+
+When we came to the open the priest crashed back into cover, and I went
+to the village of Arti-goth for a drink. It was pleasant to be able to
+see the horizon all round, as well as the ground underfoot.
+
+The villagers told me that the patch of grass was full of devils and
+ghosts, all in the service of the priest, and that men and women and
+children had entered it and had never returned. They said the priest
+used their livers for purposes of witchcraft. When I asked why they had
+not told me of this at the outset, they said that they were afraid they
+would lose their reward for bringing news of the pig.
+
+Before I left I did my best to set the patch alight, but the grass was
+too green. Some fine summer day, however, if the wind is favourable, a
+file of old newspapers and a box of matches will make clear the mystery
+of Bubbling Well Road.
+
+
+
+
+'THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT'
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &
+Co.]
+
+
+The dense wet heat that hung over the face of land, like a blanket,
+prevented all hope of sleep in the first instance. The cicalas helped
+the heat; and the yelling jackals the cicalas. It was impossible to sit
+still in the dark, empty, echoing house and watch the punkah beat the
+dead air. So, at ten o'clock of the night, I set my walking-stick on
+end in the middle of the garden, and waited to see how it would fall.
+It pointed directly down the moonlit road that leads to the City of
+Dreadful Night. The sound of its fall disturbed a hare. She limped from
+her form and ran across to a disused Mahomedan burial-ground, where the
+jawless skulls and rough-butted shank-bones, heartlessly exposed by the
+July rains, glimmered like mother o' pearl on the rain-channelled soil.
+The heated air and the heavy earth had driven the very dead upward for
+coolness' sake. The hare limped on; snuffed curiously at a fragment of
+a smoke-stained lamp-shard, and died out, in the shadow of a clump of
+tamarisk trees.
+
+The mat-weaver's hut under the lee of the Hindu temple was full of
+sleeping men who lay like sheeted corpses. Overhead blazed the unwinking
+eye of the Moon. Darkness gives at least a false impression of coolness.
+It was hard not to believe that the flood of light from above was warm.
+Not so hot as the Sun, but still sickly warm, and heating the heavy air
+beyond what was our due. Straight as a bar of polished steel ran the
+road to the City of Dreadful Night; and on either side of the road lay
+corpses disposed on beds in fantastic attitudes--one hundred and seventy
+bodies of men. Some shrouded all in white with bound-up mouths; some
+naked and black as ebony in the strong light; and one--that lay face
+upwards with dropped jaw, far away from the others--silvery white and
+ashen gray.
+
+'A leper asleep; and the remainder wearied coolies, servants, small
+shopkeepers, and drivers from the hackstand hard by. The scene--a main
+approach to Lahore city, and the night a warm one in August.' This was
+all that there was to be seen; but by no means all that one could see.
+The witchery of the moonlight was everywhere; and the world was horribly
+changed. The long line of the naked dead, flanked by the rigid silver
+statue, was not pleasant to look upon. It was made up of men alone.
+Were the womenkind, then, forced to sleep in the shelter of the stifling
+mud-huts as best they might? The fretful wail of a child from a low
+mud-roof answered the question. Where the children are the mothers must
+be also to look after them. They need care on these sweltering nights. A
+black little bullet-head peeped over the coping, and a thin--a painfully
+thin--brown leg was slid over on to the gutter pipe. There was a sharp
+clink of glass bracelets; a woman's arm showed for an instant above the
+parapet, twined itself round the lean little neck, and the child was
+dragged back, protesting, to the shelter of the bedstead. His thin,
+high-pitched shriek died out in the thick air almost as soon as it was
+raised; for even the children of the soil found it too hot to weep.
+
+More corpses; more stretches of moonlit, white road, a string of
+sleeping camels at rest by the wayside; a vision of scudding jackals;
+ekka-ponies asleep--the harness still on their backs, and the
+brass-studded country carts, winking in the moonlight--and again more
+corpses. Wherever a grain cart atilt, a tree trunk, a sawn log, a couple
+of bamboos and a few handfuls of thatch cast a shadow, the ground is
+covered with them. They lie--some face downwards, arms folded, in the
+dust; some with clasped hands flung up above their heads; some curled
+up dog-wise; some thrown like limp gunny-bags over the side of the grain
+carts; and some bowed with their brows on their knees in the full glare
+of the Moon. It would be a comfort if they were only given to snoring;
+but they are not, and the likeness to corpses is unbroken in all
+respects save one. The lean dogs snuff at them and turn away. Here and
+there a tiny child lies on his father's bedstead, and a protecting
+arm is thrown round it in every instance. But, for the most part, the
+children sleep with their mothers on the house-tops. Yellow-skinned
+white-toothed pariahs are not to be trusted within reach of brown
+bodies.
+
+A stifling hot blast from the mouth of the Delhi Gate nearly ends my
+resolution of entering the City of Dreadful Night at this hour. It is a
+compound of all evil savours, animal and vegetable, that a walled city
+can brew in a day and a night. The temperature within the motionless
+groves of plantain and orange-trees outside the city walls seems chilly
+by comparison. Heaven help all sick persons and young children within
+the city to-night! The high house-walls are still radiating heat
+savagely, and from obscure side gullies fetid breezes eddy that ought
+to poison a buffalo. But the buffaloes do not heed. A drove of them
+are parading the vacant main street; stopping now and then to lay their
+ponderous muzzles against the closed shutters of a grain-dealer's shops
+and to blow thereon like grampuses.
+
+Then silence follows--the silence that is full of the night noises of a
+great city. A stringed instrument of some kind is just, and only just,
+audible. High overhead some one throws open a window, and the rattle
+of the wood-work echoes down the empty street. On one of the roofs,
+a hookah is in full blast; and the men are talking softly as the
+pipe gutters. A little farther on, the noise of conversation is more
+distinct. A slit of light shows itself between the sliding shutters of
+a shop. Inside, a stubble-bearded, weary-eyed trader is balancing his
+account-books among the bales of cotton prints that surround him. Three
+sheeted figures bear him company, and throw in a remark from time to
+time. First he makes an entry, then a remark; then passes the back of
+his hand across his streaming forehead. The heat in the built-in street
+is fearful. Inside the shops it must be almost unendurable. But the
+work goes on steadily; entry, guttural growl, and uplifted hand-stroke
+succeeding each other with the precision of clock-work.
+
+A policeman--turbanless and fast asleep--lies across the road on the
+way to the Mosque of Wazir Khan. A bar of moonlight falls across the
+forehead and eyes of the sleeper, but he never stirs. It is close upon
+midnight, and the heat seems to be increasing. The open square in front
+of the Mosque is crowded with corpses; and a man must pick his way
+carefully for fear of treading on them. The moonlight stripes the
+Mosque's high front of coloured enamel work in broad diagonal bands; and
+each separate dreaming pigeon in the niches and corners of the masonry
+throws a squab little shadow. Sheeted ghosts rise up wearily from their
+pallets, and flit into the dark depths of the building. Is it possible
+to climb to the top of the great Minars, and thence to look down on the
+city? At all events the attempt is worth making, and the chances are
+that the door of the staircase will be unlocked. Unlocked it is; but a
+deeply sleeping janitor lies across the threshold, face turned to
+the Moon. A rat dashes out of his turban at the sound of approaching
+footsteps. The man grunts, opens his eyes for a minute, turns round, and
+goes to sleep again. All the heat of a decade of fierce Indian summers
+is stored in the pitch-black, polished walls of the corkscrew staircase.
+Half-way up, there is something alive, warm, and feathery; and it
+snores. Driven from step to step as it catches the sound of my advance,
+it flutters to the top and reveals itself as a yellow-eyed, angry kite.
+Dozens of kites are asleep on this and the other Minars, and on the
+domes below. There is the shadow of a cool, or at least a less sultry
+breeze at this height; and, refreshed thereby, turn to look on the City
+of Dreadful Night.
+
+Dore might have drawn it! Zola could describe it--this spectacle of
+sleeping thousands in the moonlight and in the shadow of the Moon. The
+roof-tops are crammed with men, women, and children; and the air is full
+of undistinguishable noises. They are restless in the City of Dreadful
+Night; and small wonder. The marvel is that they can even breathe. If
+you gaze intently at the multitude, you can see that they are almost as
+uneasy as a daylight crowd; but the tumult is subdued. Everywhere,
+in the strong light, you can watch the sleepers turning to and
+fro; shifting their beds and again resettling them. In the pit-like
+court-yards of the houses there is the same movement.
+
+The pitiless Moon shows it all. Shows, too, the plains outside the city,
+and here and there a hand's-breadth of the Ravee without the walls.
+Shows lastly, a splash of glittering silver on a house-top almost
+directly below the mosque Minar. Some poor soul has risen to throw a jar
+of water over his fevered body; the tinkle of the falling water strikes
+faintly on the ear. Two or three other men, in far-off corners of the
+City of Dreadful Night, follow his example, and the water flashes like
+heliographic signals. A small cloud passes over the face of the Moon,
+and the city and its inhabitants--clear drawn in black and white
+before--fade into masses of black and deeper black. Still the unrestful
+noise continues, the sigh of a great city overwhelmed with the heat, and
+of a people seeking in vain for rest. It is only the lower-class women
+who sleep on the house-tops. What must the torment be in the latticed
+zenanas, where a few lamps are still twinkling? There are footfalls in
+the court below. It is the Muezzin--faithful minister; but he ought to
+have been here an hour ago to tell the Faithful that prayer is better
+than sleep--the sleep that will not come to the city.
+
+The Muezzin fumbles for a moment with the door of one of the
+Minars, disappears awhile, and a bull-like roar--a magnificent bass
+thunder--tells that he has reached the top of the Minar. They must
+hear the cry to the banks of the shrunken Ravee itself! Even across the
+courtyard it is almost overpowering. The cloud drifts by and shows him
+outlined in black against the sky, hands laid upon his ears, and broad
+chest heaving with the play of his lungs--'Allah ho Akbar'; then a pause
+while another Muezzin somewhere in the direction of the Golden Temple
+takes up the call--'Allah ho Akbar.' Again and again; four times in
+all; and from the bedsteads a dozen men have risen up already.--'I bear
+witness that there is no God but God.' What a splendid cry it is, the
+proclamation of the creed that brings men out of their beds by scores at
+midnight! Once again he thunders through the same phrase, shaking with
+the vehemence of his own voice; and then, far and near, the night air
+rings with 'Mahomed is the Prophet of God.' It is as though he were
+flinging his defiance to the far-off horizon, where the summer lightning
+plays and leaps like a bared sword. Every Muezzin in the city is in full
+cry, and some men on the roof-tops are beginning to kneel. A long pause
+precedes the last cry, 'La ilaha Illallah,' and the silence closes up on
+it, as the ram on the head of a cotton-bale.
+
+The Muezzin stumbles down the dark stairway grumbling in his beard.
+He passes the arch of the entrance and disappears. Then the stifling
+silence settles down over the City of Dreadful Night. The kites on the
+Minar sleep again, snoring more loudly, the hot breeze comes up in puffs
+and lazy eddies, and the Moon slides down towards the horizon. Seated
+with both elbows on the parapet of the tower, one can watch and wonder
+over that heat-tortured hive till the dawn. 'How do they live down
+there? What do they think of? When will they awake?' More tinkling of
+sluiced water-pots; faint jarring of wooden bedsteads moved into or
+out of the shadows; uncouth music of stringed instruments softened by
+distance into a plaintive wail, and one low grumble of far-off thunder.
+In the courtyard of the mosque the janitor, who lay across the threshold
+of the Minar when I came up, starts wildly in his sleep, throws his
+hands above his head, mutters something, and falls back again. Lulled by
+the snoring of the kites--they snore like over-gorged humans--I drop off
+into an uneasy doze, conscious that three o'clock has struck, and that
+there is a slight--a very slight--coolness in the atmosphere. The city
+is absolutely quiet now, but for some vagrant dog's love-song. Nothing
+save dead heavy sleep.
+
+Several weeks of darkness pass after this. For the Moon has gone out.
+The very dogs are still, and I watch for the first light of the dawn
+before making my way homeward. Again the noise of shuffling feet. The
+morning call is about to begin, and my night watch is over. 'Allah ho
+Akbar! Allah ho Akbar!' The east grows gray, and presently saffron; the
+dawn wind comes up as though the Muezzin had summoned it; and, as one
+man, the City of Dreadful Night rises from its bed and turns its face
+towards the dawning day. With return of life comes return of sound.
+First a low whisper, then a deep bass hum; for it must be remembered
+that the entire city is on the house-tops. My eyelids weighed down with
+the arrears of long deferred sleep, I escape from the Minar through the
+courtyard and out into the square beyond, where the sleepers have risen,
+stowed away the bedsteads, and are discussing the morning hookah. The
+minute's freshness of the air has gone, and it is as hot as at first.
+
+'Will the Sahib, out of his kindness, make room?' What is it? Something
+borne on men's shoulders comes by in the half-light, and I stand back.
+A woman's corpse going down to the burning-ghat, and a bystander says,
+'She died at midnight from the heat.' So the city was of Death as well
+as Night after all.
+
+
+
+
+GEORGIE PORGIE
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN & Co.]
+
+
+     Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie,
+     Kissed the girls and made them cry.
+     When the girls came out to play
+     Georgie Porgie ran away.
+
+If you will admit that a man has no right to enter his drawing-room
+early in the morning, when the housemaid is setting things right and
+clearing away the dust, you will concede that civilised people who eat
+out of china and own card-cases have no right to apply their standard
+of right and wrong to an unsettled land. When the place is made fit for
+their reception, by those men who are told off to the work, they can
+come up, bringing in their trunks their own society and the Decalogue,
+and all the other apparatus. Where the Queen's Law does not carry, it
+is irrational to expect an observance of other and weaker rules. The men
+who run ahead of the cars of Decency and Propriety, and make the jungle
+ways straight, cannot be judged in the same manner as the stay-at-home
+folk of the ranks of the regular Tchin.
+
+Not many months ago the Queen's Law stopped a few miles north of
+Thayetmyo on the Irrawaddy. There was no very strong Public Opinion up
+to that limit, but it existed to keep men in order. When the Government
+said that the Queen's Law must carry up to Bhamo and the Chinese border
+the order was given, and some men whose desire was to be ever a little
+in advance of the rush of Respectability flocked forward with the
+troops. These were the men who could never pass examinations, and
+would have been too pronounced in their ideas for the administration of
+bureau-worked Provinces. The Supreme Government stepped in as soon as
+might be, with codes and regulations, and all but reduced New Burma to
+the dead Indian level; but there was a short time during which strong
+men were necessary and ploughed a field for themselves.
+
+Among the fore-runners of Civilisation was Georgie Porgie, reckoned by
+all who knew him a strong man. He held an appointment in Lower Burma
+when the order came to break the Frontier, and his friends called him
+Georgie Porgie because of the singularly Burmese-like manner in which
+he sang a song whose first line is something like the words 'Georgie
+Porgie.' Most men who have been in Burma will know the song. It means:
+'Puff, puff, puff, puff, great steamboat!' Georgie sang it to his banjo,
+and his friends shouted with delight, so that you could hear them far
+away in the teak-forest.
+
+When he went to Upper Burma he had no special regard for God or Man,
+but he knew how to make himself respected, and to carry out the mixed
+Military-Civil duties that fell to most men's share in those months. He
+did his office work and entertained, now and again, the detachments of
+fever-shaken soldiers who blundered through his part of the world in
+search of a flying party of dacoits. Sometimes he turned out and dressed
+down dacoits on his own account; for the country was still smouldering
+and would blaze when least expected. He enjoyed these charivaris, but
+the dacoits were not so amused. All the officials who came in contact
+with him departed with the idea that Georgie Porgie was a valuable
+person, well able to take care of himself, and, on that belief, he was
+left to his own devices.
+
+At the end of a few months he wearied of his solitude, and cast about
+for company and refinement. The Queen's Law had hardly begun to be felt
+in the country, and Public Opinion, which is more powerful than the
+Queen's Law, had yet to come. Also, there was a custom in the country
+which allowed a white man to take to himself a wife of the Daughters of
+Heth upon due payment. The marriage was not quite so binding as is the
+nikkah ceremony among Mahomedans, but the wife was very pleasant.
+
+When all our troops are back from Burma there will be a proverb in their
+mouths, 'As thrifty as a Burmese wife,' and pretty English ladies will
+wonder what in the world it means.
+
+The headman of the village next to Georgie Porgie's post had a fair
+daughter who had seen Georgie Porgie and loved him from afar. When news
+went abroad that the Englishman with the heavy hand who lived in
+the stockade was looking for a housekeeper, the headman came in and
+explained that, for five hundred rupees down, he would entrust his
+daughter to Georgie Porgie's keeping, to be maintained in all honour,
+respect, and comfort, with pretty dresses, according to the custom of
+the country. This thing was done, and Georgie Porgie never repented it.
+
+He found his rough-and-tumble house put straight and made comfortable,
+his hitherto unchecked expenses cut down by one half, and himself petted
+and made much of by his new acquisition, who sat at the head of his
+table and sang songs to him and ordered his Madrassee servants about,
+and was in every way as sweet and merry and honest and winning a little
+woman as the most exacting of bachelors could have desired. No race, men
+say who know, produces such good wives and heads of households as
+the Burmese. When the next detachment tramped by on the war-path the
+Subaltern in Command found at Georgie Porgie's table a hostess to be
+deferential to, a woman to be treated in every way as one occupying
+an assured position. When he gathered his men together next dawn and
+replunged into the jungle he thought regretfully of the nice little
+dinner and the pretty face, and envied Georgie Porgie from the bottom
+of his heart. Yet HE was engaged to a girl at Home, and that is how some
+men are constructed.
+
+The Burmese girl's name was not a pretty one; but as she was promptly
+christened Georgina by Georgie Porgie, the blemish did not matter.
+Georgie Porgie thought well of the petting and the general comfort, and
+vowed that he had never spent five hundred rupees to a better end.
+
+After three months of domestic life, a great idea struck him.
+Matrimony--English matrimony--could not be such a bad thing after all.
+If he were so thoroughly comfortable at the Back of Beyond with this
+Burmese girl who smoked cheroots, how much more comfortable would he be
+with a sweet English maiden who would not smoke cheroots, and would play
+upon a piano instead of a banjo? Also he had a desire to return to
+his kind, to hear a Band once more, and to feel how it felt to wear a
+dress-suit again. Decidedly, Matrimony would be a very good thing. He
+thought the matter out at length of evenings, while Georgina sang
+to him, or asked him why he was so silent, and whether she had done
+anything to offend him. As he thought, he smoked, and as he smoked he
+looked at Georgina, and in his fancy turned her into a fair, thrifty,
+amusing, merry, little English girl, with hair coming low down on her
+forehead, and perhaps a cigarette between her lips. Certainly, not a
+big, thick, Burma cheroot, of the brand that Georgina smoked. He would
+wed a girl with Georgina's eyes and most of her ways. But not all. She
+could be improved upon. Then he blew thick smoke-wreaths through his
+nostrils and stretched himself. He would taste marriage. Georgina had
+helped him to save money, and there were six months' leave due to him.
+
+'See here, little woman,' he said, 'we must put by more money for these
+next three months. I want it.' That was a direct slur on Georgina's
+housekeeping; for she prided herself on her thrift; but since her God
+wanted money she would do her best.
+
+'You want money?' she said with a little laugh. 'I HAVE money. Look!'
+She ran to her own room and fetched out a small bag of rupees. 'Of all
+that you give me, I keep back some. See! One hundred and seven rupees.
+Can you want more money than that? Take it. It is my pleasure if you use
+it.' She spread out the money on the table and pushed it towards him,
+with her quick, little, pale yellow fingers.
+
+Georgie Porgie never referred to economy in the household again.
+
+Three months later, after the dispatch and receipt of several mysterious
+letters which Georgina could not understand, and hated for that reason,
+Georgie Porgie said that he was going away and she must return to her
+father's house and stay there.
+
+Georgina wept. She would go with her God from the world's end to the
+world's end. Why should she leave him? She loved him.
+
+'I am only going to Rangoon,' said Georgie Porgie. 'I shall be back in
+a month, but it is safer to stay with your father. I will leave you two
+hundred rupees.'
+
+'If you go for a month, what need of two hundred? Fifty are more than
+enough. There is some evil here. Do not go, or at least let me go with
+you.'
+
+Georgie Porgie does not like to remember that scene even at this date.
+In the end he got rid of Georgina by a compromise of seventy-five
+rupees. She would not take more. Then he went by steamer and rail to
+Rangoon.
+
+The mysterious letters had granted him six months' leave. The actual
+flight and an idea that he might have been treacherous hurt severely
+at the time, but as soon as the big steamer was well out into the blue,
+things were easier, and Georgina's face, and the queer little stockaded
+house, and the memory of the rushes of shouting dacoits by night, the
+cry and struggle of the first man that he had ever killed with his own
+hand, and a hundred other more intimate things, faded and faded out of
+Georgie Porgie's heart, and the vision of approaching England took its
+place. The steamer was full of men on leave, all rampantly jovial souls
+who had shaken off the dust and sweat of Upper Burma and were as merry
+as schoolboys. They helped Georgie Porgie to forget.
+
+Then came England with its luxuries and decencies and comforts, and
+Georgie Porgie walked in a pleasant dream upon pavements of which he had
+nearly forgotten the ring, wondering why men in their senses ever left
+Town. He accepted his keen delight in his furlough as the reward of
+his services. Providence further arranged for him another and greater
+delight--all the pleasures of a quiet English wooing, quite different
+from the brazen businesses of the East, when half the community
+stand back and bet on the result, and the other half wonder what Mrs.
+So-and-So will say to it.
+
+It was a pleasant girl and a perfect summer, and a big country-house
+near Petworth where there are acres and acres of purple heather and
+high-grassed water-meadows to wander through. Georgie Porgie felt that
+he had at last found something worth the living for, and naturally
+assumed that the next thing to do was to ask the girl to share his life
+in India. She, in her ignorance, was willing to go. On this occasion
+there was no bartering with a village headman. There was a fine
+middle-class wedding in the country, with a stout Papa and a weeping
+Mamma, and a best-man in purple and fine linen, and six snub-nosed girls
+from the Sunday School to throw roses on the path between the tombstones
+up to the Church door. The local paper described the affair at great
+length, even down to giving the hymns in full. But that was because the
+Direction were starving for want of material.
+
+Then came a honeymoon at Arundel, and the Mamma wept copiously before
+she allowed her one daughter to sail away to India under the care of
+Georgie Porgie the Bridegroom. Beyond any question, Georgie Porgie was
+immensely fond of his wife, and she was devoted to him as the best and
+greatest man in the world. When he reported himself at Bombay he felt
+justified in demanding a good station for his wife's sake; and, because
+he had made a little mark in Burma and was beginning to be appreciated,
+they allowed him nearly all that he asked for, and posted him to a
+station which we will call Sutrain. It stood upon several hills, and was
+styled officially a 'Sanitarium,' for the good reason that the drainage
+was utterly neglected. Here Georgie Porgie settled down, and found
+married life come very naturally to him. He did not rave, as do many
+bridegrooms, over the strangeness and delight of seeing his own true
+love sitting down to breakfast with him every morning 'as though it were
+the most natural thing in the world.'
+
+'He had been there before,' as the Americans say, and, checking the
+merits of his own present Grace by those of Georgina, he was more and
+more inclined to think that he had done well.
+
+But there was no peace or comfort across the Bay of Bengal, under the
+teak-trees where Georgina lived with her father, waiting for Georgie
+Porgie to return. The headman was old, and remembered the war of '51.
+He had been to Rangoon, and knew something of the ways of the Kullahs.
+Sitting in front of his door in the evenings, he taught Georgina a dry
+philosophy which did not console her in the least.
+
+The trouble was that she loved Georgie Porgie just as much as the French
+girl in the English History books loved the priest whose head was broken
+by the king's bullies. One day she disappeared from the village with
+all the rupees that Georgie Porgie had given her, and a very small
+smattering of English--also gained from Georgie Porgie.
+
+The headman was angry at first, but lit a fresh cheroot and said
+something uncomplimentary about the sex in general. Georgina had started
+on a search for Georgie Porgie, who might be in Rangoon, or across the
+Black Water, or dead, for aught that she knew. Chance favoured her. An
+old Sikh policeman told her that Georgie Porgie had crossed the Black
+Water. She took a steerage-passage from Rangoon and went to Calcutta;
+keeping the secret of her search to herself.
+
+In India every trace of her was lost for six weeks, and no one knows
+what trouble of heart she must have undergone.
+
+She reappeared, four hundred miles north of Calcutta, steadily heading
+northwards, very worn and haggard, but very fixed in her determination
+to find Georgie Porgie. She could not understand the language of the
+people; but India is infinitely charitable, and the women-folk along
+the Grand Trunk gave her food. Something made her believe that Georgie
+Porgie was to be found at the end of that pitiless road. She may have
+seen a sepoy who knew him in Burma, but of this no one can be certain.
+At last, she found a regiment on the line of march, and met there one
+of the many subalterns whom Georgie Porgie had invited to dinner in the
+far-off, old days of the dacoit-hunting. There was a certain amount of
+amusement among the tents when Georgina threw herself at the man's feet
+and began to cry. There was no amusement when her story was told; but
+a collection was made, and that was more to the point. One of the
+subalterns knew of Georgie Porgie's whereabouts, but not of his
+marriage. So he told Georgina and she went her way joyfully to the
+north, in a railway carriage where there was rest for tired feet and
+shade for a dusty little head. The marches from the train through the
+hills into Sutrain were trying, but Georgina had money, and families
+journeying in bullock-carts gave her help. It was an almost miraculous
+journey, and Georgina felt sure that the good spirits of Burma were
+looking after her. The hill-road to Sutrain is a chilly stretch, and
+Georgina caught a bad cold. Still there was Georgie Porgie at the end of
+all the trouble to take her up in his arms and pet her, as he used to
+do in the old days when the stockade was shut for the night and he
+had approved of the evening meal. Georgina went forward as fast as she
+could; and her good spirits did her one last favour.
+
+An Englishman stopped her, in the twilight, just at the turn of the road
+into Sutrain, saying, 'Good Heavens! What are you doing here?'
+
+He was Gillis, the man who had been Georgie Porgie's assistant in Upper
+Burma, and who occupied the next post to Georgie Porgie's in the jungle.
+Georgie Porgie had applied to have him to work with at Sutrain because
+he liked him.
+
+'I have come,' said Georgina simply. 'It was such a long way, and I have
+been months in coming. Where is his house?'
+
+Gillis gasped. He had seen enough of Georgina in the old times to know
+that explanations would be useless. You cannot explain things to the
+Oriental. You must show.
+
+'I'll take you there,' said Gillis, and he led Georgina off the road, up
+the cliff, by a little pathway, to the back of a house set on a platform
+cut into the hillside.
+
+The lamps were just lit, but the curtains were not drawn. 'Now look,'
+said Gillis, stopping in front of the drawing-room window. Georgina
+looked and saw Georgie Porgie and the Bride.
+
+She put her hand up to her hair, which had come out of its top-knot
+and was straggling about her face. She tried to set her ragged dress in
+order, but the dress was past pulling straight, and she coughed a queer
+little cough, for she really had taken a very bad cold. Gillis looked,
+too, but while Georgina only looked at the Bride once, turning her eyes
+always on Georgie Porgie, Gillis looked at the Bride all the time.
+
+'What are you going to do?' said Gillis, who held Georgina by the wrist,
+in case of any unexpected rush into the lamplight. 'Will you go in and
+tell that English woman that you lived with her husband?'
+
+'No,' said Georgina faintly. 'Let me go. I am going away. I swear that I
+am going away.' She twisted herself free and ran off into the dark.
+
+'Poor little beast!' said Gillis, dropping on to the main road. 'I'd
+ha' given her something to get back to Burma with. What a narrow shave
+though! And that angel would never have forgiven it.'
+
+This seems to prove that the devotion of Gillis was not entirely due to
+his affection for Georgie Porgie.
+
+The Bride and the Bridegroom came out into the verandah after dinner, in
+order that the smoke of Georgie Porgie's cheroots might not hang in the
+new drawing-room curtains.
+
+'What is that noise down there?' said the Bride. Both listened.
+
+'Oh,' said Georgie Porgie, 'I suppose some brute of a hillman has been
+beating his wife.'
+
+'Beating--his--wife! How ghastly!' said the Bride. 'Fancy YOUR beating
+ME!' She slipped an arm round her husband's waist, and, leaning her head
+against his shoulder, looked out across the cloud-filled valley in deep
+content and security.
+
+But it was Georgina crying, all by herself, down the hillside, among the
+stones of the water-course where the washermen wash the clothes.
+
+
+
+
+NABOTH
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN & Co.]
+
+
+This was how it happened; and the truth is also an allegory of Empire.
+
+I met him at the corner of my garden, an empty basket on his head, and
+an unclean cloth round his loins. That was all the property to which
+Naboth had the shadow of a claim when I first saw him. He opened our
+acquaintance by begging. He was very thin and showed nearly as many ribs
+as his basket; and he told me a long story about fever and a lawsuit,
+and an iron cauldron that had been seized by the court in execution of
+a decree. I put my hand into my pocket to help Naboth, as kings of the
+East have helped alien adventurers to the loss of their kingdoms. A
+rupee had hidden in my waistcoat lining. I never knew it was there, and
+gave the trove to Naboth as a direct gift from Heaven. He replied that I
+was the only legitimate Protector of the Poor he had ever known.
+
+Next morning he reappeared, a little fatter in the round, and curled
+himself into knots in the front verandah. He said I was his father and
+his mother, and the direct descendant of all the gods in his Pantheon,
+besides controlling the destinies of the universe. He himself was but a
+sweetmeat-seller, and much less important than the dirt under my feet.
+I had heard this sort of thing before, so I asked him what he wanted. My
+rupee, quoth Naboth, had raised him to the ever-lasting heavens, and
+he wished to prefer a request. He wished to establish a sweetmeat-pitch
+near the house of his benefactor, to gaze on my revered countenance as
+I went to and fro illumining the world. I was graciously pleased to give
+permission, and he went away with his head between his knees.
+
+Now at the far end of my garden, the ground slopes toward the public
+road, and the slope is crowned with a thick shrubbery. There is a short
+carriage-road from the house to the Mall, which passes close to the
+shrubbery. Next afternoon I saw that Naboth had seated himself at the
+bottom of the slope, down in the dust of the public road, and in the
+full glare of the sun, with a starved basket of greasy sweets in
+front of him. He had gone into trade once more on the strength of my
+munificent donation, and the ground was as Paradise by my honoured
+favour. Remember, there was only Naboth, his basket, the sunshine, and
+the gray dust when the sap of my Empire first began.
+
+Next day he had moved himself up the slope nearer to my shrubbery, and
+waved a palm-leaf fan to keep the flies off the sweets. So I judged that
+he must have done a fair trade.
+
+Four days later I noticed that he had backed himself and his basket
+under the shadow of the shrubbery, and had tied an Isabella-coloured rag
+between two branches in order to make more shade. There were plenty of
+sweets in his basket. I thought that trade must certainly be looking up.
+
+Seven weeks later the Government took up a plot of ground for a Chief
+Court close to the end of my compound, and employed nearly four hundred
+coolies on the foundations. Naboth bought a blue and white striped
+blanket, a brass lamp-stand, and a small boy, to cope with the rush of
+trade, which was tremendous.
+
+Five days later he bought a huge, fat, red-backed account-book, and a
+glass inkstand. Thus I saw that the coolies had been getting into his
+debt, and that commerce was increasing on legitimate lines of credit.
+Also I saw that the one basket had grown into three, and that Naboth
+had backed and hacked into the shrubbery, and made himself a nice little
+clearing for the proper display of the basket, the blanket, the books,
+and the boy.
+
+One week and five days later he had built a mud fire-place in the
+clearing, and the fat account-book was overflowing. He said that God
+created few Englishmen of my kind, and that I was the incarnation of
+all human virtues. He offered me some of his sweets as tribute, and by
+accepting these I acknowledged him as my feudatory under the skirt of my
+protection.
+
+Three weeks later I noticed that the boy was in the habit of cooking
+Naboth's mid-day meal for him, and Naboth was beginning to grow a
+stomach. He had hacked away more of my shrubbery and owned another and a
+fatter account-book.
+
+Eleven weeks later Naboth had eaten his way nearly through that
+shrubbery, and there was a reed hut with a bedstead outside it, standing
+in the little glade that he had eroded. Two dogs and a baby slept on the
+bedstead. So I fancied Naboth had taken a wife. He said that he had,
+by my favour, done this thing, and that I was several times finer than
+Krishna. Six weeks and two days later a mud wall had grown up at the
+back of the hut. There were fowls in front and it smelt a little. The
+Municipal Secretary said that a cess-pool was forming in the public road
+from the drainage of my compound, and that I must take steps to clear
+it away. I spoke to Naboth. He said I was Lord Paramount of his earthly
+concerns, and the garden was all my own property, and sent me some more
+sweets in a second-hand duster.
+
+Two months later a coolie bricklayer was killed in a scuffle that took
+place opposite Naboth's Vineyard. The Inspector of Police said it was
+a serious case; went into my servants' quarters; insulted my butler's
+wife, and wanted to arrest my butler. The curious thing about the murder
+was that most of the coolies were drunk at the time. Naboth pointed out
+that my name was a strong shield between him and his enemies, and he
+expected that another baby would be born to him shortly.
+
+Four months later the hut was ALL mud walls, very solidly built, and
+Naboth had used most of my shrubbery for his five goats. A silver watch
+and an aluminium chain shone upon his very round stomach. My servants
+were alarmingly drunk several times, and used to waste the day with
+Naboth when they got the chance. I spoke to Naboth. He said, by my
+favour and the glory of my countenance, he would make all his women-folk
+ladies, and that if any one hinted that he was running an illicit
+still under the shadow of the tamarisks, why, I, his Suzerain, was to
+prosecute.
+
+A week later he hired a man to make several dozen square yards of
+trellis-work to put around the back of his hut, that his women-folk
+might be screened from the public gaze. The man went away in the
+evening, and left his day's work to pave the short cut from the public
+road to my house. I was driving home in the dusk, and turned the corner
+by Naboth's Vineyard quickly. The next thing I knew was that the horses
+of the phaeton were stamping and plunging in the strongest sort of
+bamboo net-work. Both beasts came down. One rose with nothing more than
+chipped knees. The other was so badly kicked that I was forced to shoot
+him.
+
+Naboth is gone now, and his hut is ploughed into its native mud with
+sweetmeats instead of salt for a sign that the place is accursed. I have
+built a summer-house to overlook the end of the garden, and it is as a
+fort on my frontier whence I guard my Empire.
+
+I know exactly how Ahab felt. He has been shamefully misrepresented in
+the Scriptures.
+
+
+
+
+THE DREAM OF DUNCAN PARRENNESS
+
+
+[Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN
+& Co.]
+
+
+Like Mr. Bunyan of old, I, Duncan Parrenness, Writer to the Most
+Honourable the East India Company, in this God-forgotten city of
+Calcutta, have dreamed a dream, and never since that Kitty my mare fell
+lame have I been so troubled. Therefore, lest I should forget my dream,
+I have made shift to set it down here. Though Heaven knows how unhandy
+the pen is to me who was always readier with sword than ink-horn when I
+left London two long years since.
+
+When the Governor-General's great dance (that he gives yearly at the
+latter end of November) was finisht, I had gone to mine own room which
+looks over that sullen, un-English stream, the Hoogly, scarce so sober
+as I might have been. Now, roaring drunk in the West is but fuddled in
+the East, and I was drunk Nor'-Nor' Easterly as Mr. Shakespeare might
+have said. Yet, in spite of my liquor, the cool night winds (though I
+have heard that they breed chills and fluxes innumerable) sobered me
+somewhat; and I remembered that I had been but a little wrung and wasted
+by all the sicknesses of the past four months, whereas those young
+bloods that came eastward with me in the same ship had been all, a month
+back, planted to Eternity in the foul soil north of Writers' Buildings.
+So then, I thanked God mistily (though, to my shame, I never kneeled
+down to do so) for license to live, at least till March should be upon
+us again.
+
+Indeed, we that were alive (and our number was less by far than those
+who had gone to their last account in the hot weather late past) had
+made very merry that evening, by the ramparts of the Fort, over this
+kindness of Providence; though our jests were neither witty nor such as
+I should have liked my Mother to hear.
+
+When I had lain down (or rather thrown me on my bed) and the fumes of my
+drink had a little cleared away, I found that I could get no sleep for
+thinking of a thousand things that were better left alone. First, and
+it was a long time since I had thought of her, the sweet face of Kitty
+Somerset, drifted, as it might have been drawn in a picture, across the
+foot of my bed, so plainly, that I almost thought she had been present
+in the body. Then I remembered how she drove me to this accursed country
+to get rich, that I might the more quickly marry her, our parents on
+both sides giving their consent; and then how she thought better (or
+worse may be) of her troth, and wed Tom Sanderson but a short
+three months after I had sailed. From Kitty I fell a-musing on Mrs.
+Vansuythen, a tall pale woman with violet eyes that had come to Calcutta
+from the Dutch Factory at Chinsura, and had set all our young men, and
+not a few of the factors, by the ears. Some of our ladies, it is true,
+said that she had never a husband or marriage-lines at all; but women,
+and specially those who have led only indifferent good lives themselves,
+are cruel hard one on another. Besides, Mrs. Vansuythen was far
+prettier than them all. She had been most gracious to me at the
+Governor-General's rout, and indeed I was looked upon by all as her
+preux chevalier--which is French for a much worse word. Now, whether
+I cared so much as the scratch of a pin for this same Mrs. Vansuythen
+(albeit I had vowed eternal love three days after we met) I knew not
+then nor did till later on; but mine own pride, and a skill in the small
+sword that no man in Calcutta could equal, kept me in her affections. So
+that I believed I worshipt her.
+
+When I had dismist her violet eyes from my thoughts, my reason reproacht
+me for ever having followed her at all; and I saw how the one year that
+I had lived in this land had so burnt and seared my mind with the flames
+of a thousand bad passions and desires, that I had aged ten months for
+each one in the Devil's school. Whereat I thought of my Mother for a
+while, and was very penitent: making in my sinful tipsy mood a thousand
+vows of reformation--all since broken, I fear me, again and again.
+To-morrow, says I to myself, I will live cleanly for ever. And I smiled
+dizzily (the liquor being still strong in me) to think of the dangers
+I had escaped; and built all manner of fine Castles in Spain, whereof
+a shadowy Kitty Somerset that had the violet eyes and the sweet slow
+speech of Mrs. Vansuythen, was always Queen.
+
+Lastly, a very fine and magnificent courage (that doubtless had its
+birth in Mr. Hastings' Madeira) grew upon me, till it seemed that I
+could become Governor-General, Nawab, Prince, ay, even the Great Mogul
+himself, by the mere wishing of it. Wherefore, taking my first steps,
+random and unstable enough, towards my new kingdom, I kickt my servants
+sleeping without till they howled and ran from me, and called Heaven and
+Earth to witness that I, Duncan Parrenness, was a Writer in the service
+of the Company and afraid of no man. Then, seeing that neither the Moon
+nor the Great Bear were minded to accept my challenge, I lay down again
+and must have fallen asleep.
+
+I was waked presently by my last words repeated two or three times, and
+I saw that there had come into the room a drunken man, as I thought,
+from Mr. Hastings' rout. He sate down at the foot of my bed in all the
+world as it belonged to him, and I took note, as well as I could, that
+his face was somewhat like mine own grown older, save when it changed
+to the face of the Governor-General or my father, dead these six months.
+But this seemed to me only natural, and the due result of too much wine;
+and I was so angered at his entry all unannounced, that I told him, not
+over civilly, to go. To all my words he made no answer whatever, only
+saying slowly, as though it were some sweet morsel: 'Writer in the
+Company's service and afraid of no man.' Then he stops short, and
+turning round sharp upon me, says that one of my kidney need fear
+neither man nor devil; that I was a brave young man, and like enough,
+should I live so long, to be Governor-General. But for all these things
+(and I suppose that he meant thereby the changes and chances of our
+shifty life in these parts) I must pay my price. By this time I had
+sobered somewhat, and being well waked out of my first sleep, was
+disposed to look upon the matter as a tipsy man's jest. So, says I
+merrily: 'And what price shall I pay for this palace of mine, which is
+but twelve feet square, and my five poor pagodas a month? The Devil take
+you and your jesting: I have paid my price twice over in sickness.' At
+that moment my man turns full towards me: so that by the moonlight I
+could see every line and wrinkle of his face. Then my drunken mirth died
+out of me, as I have seen the waters of our great rivers die away in
+one night; and I, Duncan Parrenness, who was afraid of no man, was taken
+with a more deadly terror than I hold it has ever been the lot of mortal
+man to know. For I saw that his face was my very own, but marked and
+lined and scarred with the furrows of disease and much evil living--as
+I once, when I was (Lord help me) very drunk indeed, have seen mine own
+face, all white and drawn and grown old, in a mirror. I take it that any
+man would have been even more greatly feared than I. For I am in no way
+wanting in courage.
+
+After I had lain still for a little, sweating in my agony and waiting
+until I should awake from this terrible dream (for dream I knew it to
+be) he says again, that I must pay my price, and a little after, as
+though it were to be given in pagodas and sicca rupees: 'What price will
+you pay?' Says I, very softly: 'For God's sake let me be, whoever you
+are, and I will mend my ways from to-night.' Says he, laughing a little
+at my words, but otherwise making no motion of having heard them: 'Nay,
+I would only rid so brave a young ruffler as yourself of much that will
+be a great hindrance to you on your way through life in the Indies;
+for believe me,' and here he looks full on me once more, 'there is no
+return.' At all this rigmarole, which I could not then understand, I was
+a good deal put aback and waited for what should come next. Says he very
+calmly, 'Give me your trust in man.' At that I saw how heavy would be
+my price, for I never doubted but that he could take from me all that
+he asked, and my head was, through terror and wakefulness, altogether
+cleared of the wine I had drunk. So I takes him up very short, crying
+that I was not so wholly bad as he would make believe, and that I
+trusted my fellows to the full as much as they were worthy of it. 'It
+was none of my fault,' says I, 'if one half of them were liars and the
+other half deserved to be burnt in the hand, and I would once more ask
+him to have done with his questions.' Then I stopped, a little afraid,
+it is true, to have let my tongue so run away with me, but he took no
+notice of this, and only laid his hand lightly on my left breast and I
+felt very cold there for a while. Then he says, laughing more: 'Give me
+your faith in women.' At that I started in my bed as though I had been
+stung, for I thought of my sweet mother in England, and for a while
+fancied that my faith in God's best creatures could neither be shaken
+nor stolen from me. But later, Myself's hard eyes being upon me, I fell
+to thinking, for the second time that night, of Kitty (she that jilted
+me and married Tom Sanderson) and of Mistress Vansuythen, whom only my
+devilish pride made me follow, and how she was even worse than Kitty,
+and I worst of them all--seeing that with my life's work to be done,
+I must needs go dancing down the Devil's swept and garnished causeway,
+because, forsooth, there was a light woman's smile at the end of it. And
+I thought that all women in the world were either like Kitty or Mistress
+Vansuythen (as indeed they have ever since been to me) and this put me
+to such an extremity of rage and sorrow, that I was beyond word glad
+when Myself's hand fell again on my left breast, and I was no more
+troubled by these follies.
+
+After this he was silent for a little, and I made sure that he must go
+or I awake ere long: but presently he speaks again (and very softly)
+that I was a fool to care for such follies as those he had taken from
+me, and that ere he went he would only ask me for a few other trifles
+such as no man, or for matter of that boy either, would keep about him
+in this country. And so it happened that he took from out of my very
+heart as it were, looking all the time into my face with my own eyes, as
+much as remained to me of my boy's soul and conscience. This was to me
+a far more terrible loss than the two that I had suffered before. For
+though, Lord help me, I had travelled far enough from all paths of
+decent or godly living, yet there was in me, though I myself write it, a
+certain goodness of heart which, when I was sober (or sick) made me very
+sorry of all that I had done before the fit came on me. And this I lost
+wholly: having in place thereof another deadly coldness at the heart. I
+am not, as I have before said, ready with my pen, so I fear that what
+I have just written may not be readily understood. Yet there be certain
+times in a young man's life, when, through great sorrow or sin, all the
+boy in him is burnt and seared away so that he passes at one step to the
+more sorrowful state of manhood: as our staring Indian day changes
+into night with never so much as the gray of twilight to temper the
+two extremes. This shall perhaps make my state more clear, if it be
+remembered that my torment was ten times as great as comes in the
+natural course of nature to any man. At that time I dared not think of
+the change that had come over me, and all in one night: though I have
+often thought of it since. 'I have paid the price,' says I, my teeth
+chattering, for I was deadly cold, 'and what is my return?' At this time
+it was nearly dawn, and Myself had begun to grow pale and thin against
+the white light in the east, as my mother used to tell me is the custom
+of ghosts and devils and the like. He made as if he would go, but my
+words stopt him and he laughed--as I remember that I laughed when I ran
+Angus Macalister through the sword-arm last August, because he said that
+Mrs. Vansuythen was no better than she should be. 'What return?'--says
+he, catching up my last words--'Why, strength to live as long as God or
+the Devil pleases, and so long as you live my young master, my gift.'
+With that he puts something into my hand, though it was still too dark
+to see what it was, and when next I lookt up he was gone.
+
+When the light came I made shift to behold his gift, and saw that it was
+a little piece of dry bread.
+
+
+
+
+THE INCARNATION OF KRISHNA MULVANEY
+
+
+ Wohl auf, my bully cavaliers,
+   We ride to church to-day,
+ The man that hasn't got a horse
+   Must steal one straight away.
+
+ Be reverent, men, remember
+   This is a Gottes haus.
+ Du, Conrad, cut along der aisle
+   And schenck der whiskey aus.
+                  HANS BREITMANN'S RIDE TO CHURCH.
+
+Once upon a time, very far from England, there lived three men who loved
+each other so greatly that neither man nor woman could come between
+them. They were in no sense refined, nor to be admitted to the
+outer-door mats of decent folk, because they happened to be private
+soldiers in Her Majesty's Army; and private soldiers of our service have
+small time for self-culture. Their duty is to keep themselves and their
+accoutrements specklessly clean, to refrain from getting drunk more
+often than is necessary, to obey their superiors, and to pray for a war.
+All these things my friends accomplished; and of their own motion threw
+in some fighting-work for which the Army Regulations did not call. Their
+fate sent them to serve in India, which is not a golden country, though
+poets have sung otherwise. There men die with great swiftness, and those
+who live suffer many and curious things. I do not think that my friends
+concerned themselves much with the social or political aspects of the
+East. They attended a not unimportant war on the northern frontier,
+another one on our western boundary, and a third in Upper Burma. Then
+their regiment sat still to recruit, and the boundless monotony of
+cantonment life was their portion. They were drilled morning and evening
+on the same dusty parade-ground. They wandered up and down the same
+stretch of dusty white road, attended the same church and the same
+grog-shop, and slept in the same lime-washed barn of a barrack for two
+long years. There was Mulvaney, the father in the craft, who had served
+with various regiments from Bermuda to Halifax, old in war, scarred,
+reckless, resourceful, and in his pious hours an unequalled soldier.
+To him turned for help and comfort six and a half feet of slow-moving,
+heavy-footed Yorkshireman, born on the wolds, bred in the dales,
+and educated chiefly among the carriers' carts at the back of York
+railway-station. His name was Learoyd, and his chief virtue an
+unmitigated patience which helped him to win fights. How Ortheris, a
+fox-terrier of a Cockney, ever came to be one of the trio, is a mystery
+which even to-day I cannot explain. 'There was always three av us,'
+Mulvaney used to say. 'An' by the grace av God, so long as our service
+lasts, three av us they'll always be. 'Tis betther so.'
+
+They desired no companionship beyond their own, and it was evil for any
+man of the regiment who attempted dispute with them. Physical argument
+was out of the question as regarded Mulvaney and the Yorkshireman; and
+assault on Ortheris meant a combined attack from these twain--a business
+which no five men were anxious to have on their hands. Therefore they
+flourished, sharing their drinks, their tobacco, and their money; good
+luck and evil; battle and the chances of death; life and the chances of
+happiness from Calicut in southern, to Peshawur in northern India.
+
+Through no merit of my own it was my good fortune to be in a measure
+admitted to their friendship--frankly by Mulvaney from the beginning,
+sullenly and with reluctance by Learoyd, and suspiciously by Ortheris,
+who held to it that no man not in the Army could fraternise with a
+red-coat. 'Like to like,' said he. 'I'm a bloomin' sodger--he's a
+bloomin' civilian. 'Tain't natural--that's all.'
+
+But that was not all. They thawed progressively, and in the thawing told
+me more of their lives and adventures than I am ever likely to write.
+
+Omitting all else, this tale begins with the Lamentable Thirst that was
+at the beginning of First Causes. Never was such a thirst--Mulvaney told
+me so. They kicked against their compulsory virtue, but the attempt was
+only successful in the case of Ortheris. He, whose talents were
+many, went forth into the highways and stole a dog from a
+'civilian'--videlicet, some one, he knew not who, not in the Army. Now
+that civilian was but newly connected by marriage with the colonel of
+the regiment, and outcry was made from quarters least anticipated by
+Ortheris, and, in the end, he was forced, lest a worse thing should
+happen, to dispose at ridiculously unremunerative rates of as promising
+a small terrier as ever graced one end of a leading string. The
+purchase-money was barely sufficient for one small outbreak which led
+him to the guard-room. He escaped, however, with nothing worse than a
+severe reprimand, and a few hours of punishment drill. Not for nothing
+had he acquired the reputation of being 'the best soldier of his inches'
+in the regiment. Mulvaney had taught personal cleanliness and efficiency
+as the first articles of his companions' creed. 'A dhirty man,' he was
+used to say, in the speech of his kind, 'goes to Clink for a weakness
+in the knees, an' is coort-martialled for a pair av socks missin'; but
+a clane man, such as is an ornament to his service--a man whose buttons
+are gold, whose coat is wax upon him, an' whose 'coutrements are widout
+a speck--THAT man may, spakin' in reason, do fwhat he likes an' dhrink
+from day to divil. That's the pride av bein' dacint.'
+
+We sat together, upon a day, in the shade of a ravine far from the
+barracks, where a watercourse used to run in rainy weather. Behind us
+was the scrub jungle, in which jackals, peacocks, the gray wolves of the
+North-Western Provinces, and occasionally a tiger estrayed from Central
+India, were supposed to dwell. In front lay the cantonment, glaring
+white under a glaring sun; and on either side ran the broad road that
+led to Delhi.
+
+It was the scrub that suggested to my mind the wisdom of Mulvaney taking
+a day's leave and going upon a shooting-tour. The peacock is a holy bird
+throughout India, and he who slays one is in danger of being mobbed by
+the nearest villagers; but on the last occasion that Mulvaney had gone
+forth, he had contrived, without in the least offending local religious
+susceptibilities, to return with six beautiful peacock skins which he
+sold to profit. It seemed just possible then--
+
+'But fwhat manner av use is ut to me goin' out widout a dhrink? The
+ground's powdher-dhry underfoot, an' ut gets unto the throat fit to
+kill,' wailed Mulvaney, looking at me reproachfully. 'An' a peacock is
+not a bird you can catch the tail av onless ye run. Can a man run on
+wather--an' jungle-wather too?'
+
+Ortheris had considered the question in all its bearings. He spoke,
+chewing his pipe-stem meditatively the while:
+
+'Go forth, return in glory, To Clusium's royal 'ome:
+ An' round these bloomin' temples 'ang
+ The bloomin' shields o' Rome.
+
+You better go. You ain't like to shoot yourself--not while there's a
+chanst of liquor. Me an' Learoyd'll stay at 'ome an' keep shop--'case
+o' anythin' turnin' up. But you go out with a gas-pipe gun an' ketch
+the little peacockses or somethin'. You kin get one day's leave easy as
+winkin'. Go along an' get it, an' get peacockses or somethin'.'
+
+'Jock,' said Mulvaney, turning to Learoyd, who was half asleep under the
+shadow of the bank. He roused slowly.
+
+'Sitha, Mulvaaney, go,' said he.
+
+And Mulvaney went; cursing his allies with Irish fluency and
+barrack-room point.
+
+'Take note,' said he, when he had won his holiday, and appeared dressed
+in his roughest clothes with the only other regimental fowling-piece in
+his hand. 'Take note, Jock, an' you Orth'ris, I am goin' in the face
+av my own will--all for to please you. I misdoubt anythin' will come av
+permiscuous huntin' afther peacockses in a desolit lan'; an' I know that
+I will lie down an' die wid thirrrst. Me catch peacockses for you, ye
+lazy scutts--an' be sacrificed by the peasanthry--Ugh!'
+
+He waved a huge paw and went away.
+
+At twilight, long before the appointed hour, he returned empty-handed,
+much begrimed with dirt.
+
+'Peacockses?' queried Ortheris from the safe rest of a barrack-room
+table whereon he was smoking cross-legged, Learoyd fast asleep on a
+bench.
+
+'Jock,' said Mulvaney without answering, as he stirred up the sleeper.
+'Jock, can ye fight? Will ye fight?'
+
+Very slowly the meaning of the words communicated itself to the
+half-roused man. He understood--and again--what might these things mean?
+Mulvaney was shaking him savagely. Meantime the men in the room howled
+with delight. There was war in the confederacy at last--war and the
+breaking of bonds.
+
+Barrack-room etiquette is stringent. On the direct challenge must
+follow the direct reply. This is more binding than the ties of tried
+friendship. Once again Mulvaney repeated the question. Learoyd answered
+by the only means in his power, and so swiftly that the Irishman had
+barely time to avoid the blow. The laughter around increased. Learoyd
+looked bewilderedly at his friend--himself as greatly bewildered.
+Ortheris dropped from the table because his world was falling.
+
+'Come outside,' said Mulvaney, and as the occupants of the barrack-room
+prepared joyously to follow, he turned and said furiously, 'There will
+be no fight this night--onless any wan av you is wishful to assist. The
+man that does, follows on.'
+
+No man moved. The three passed out into the moonlight, Learoyd fumbling
+with the buttons of his coat. The parade-ground was deserted except for
+the scurrying jackals. Mulvaney's impetuous rush carried his companions
+far into the open ere Learoyd attempted to turn round and continue the
+discussion.
+
+'Be still now. 'Twas my fault for beginnin' things in the middle av an
+end, Jock. I should ha' comminst wid an explanation; but Jock, dear,
+on your sowl are ye fit, think you, for the finest fight that iver
+was--betther than fightin' me? Considher before ye answer.'
+
+More than ever puzzled, Learoyd turned round two or three times, felt an
+arm, kicked tentatively, and answered, 'Ah'm fit.' He was accustomed to
+fight blindly at the bidding of the superior mind.
+
+They sat them down, the men looking on from afar, and Mulvaney untangled
+himself in mighty words.
+
+'Followin' your fools' scheme I wint out into the thrackless desert
+beyond the barricks. An' there I met a pious Hindu dhriving a
+bullock-kyart. I tuk ut for granted he wud be delighted for to convoy me
+a piece, an' I jumped in--'
+
+'You long, lazy, black-haired swine,' drawled Ortheris, who would have
+done the same thing under similar circumstances.
+
+''Twas the height av policy. That naygur-man dhruv miles an' miles--as
+far as the new railway line they're buildin' now back av the Tavi river.
+"'Tis a kyart for dhirt only," says he now an' again timoreously, to
+get me out av ut. "Dhirt I am," sez I, "an' the dhryest that you iver
+kyarted. Dhrive on, me son, an glory be wid you." At that I wint to
+slape, an' took no heed till he pulled up on the embankmint av the line
+where the coolies were pilin' mud. There was a matther av two thousand
+coolies on that line--you remimber that. Prisintly a bell rang, an' they
+throops off to a big pay-shed. "Where's the white man in charge?" sez I
+to my kyart-dhriver. "In the shed," sez he, "engaged on a riffle."--"A
+fwhat?" sez I. "Riffle," sez he. "You take ticket. He take money. You
+get nothin'."--
+
+"Oho!" sez I, "that's fwhat the shuperior an' cultivated man calls
+a raffle, me misbeguided child av darkness an' sin. Lead on to that
+raffle, though fwhat the mischief 'tis doin' so far away from uts
+home--which is the charity-bazaar at Christmas, an' the colonel's wife
+grinnin' behind the tea-table--is more than I know." Wid that I wint to
+the shed an' found 'twas pay-day among the coolies. Their wages was on a
+table forninst a big, fine, red buck av a man--sivun fut high, four fut
+wide, an' three fut thick, wid a fist on him like a corn-sack. He was
+payin' the coolies fair an' easy, but he wud ask each man if he wud
+raffle that month, an' each man sez? "Yes," av course. Thin he wud
+deduct from their wages accordin'. Whin all was paid, he filled an ould
+cigar-box full av gun-wads an' scatthered ut among the coolies. They did
+not take much joy av that performince, an' small wondher. A man close to
+me picks up a black gun-wad an' sings out, "I have ut."--"Good may ut
+do you," sez I. The coolie wint forward to this big, fine, red man, who
+threw a cloth off av the most sumpshus, jooled, enamelled an' variously
+bedivilled sedan-chair I iver saw.'
+
+'Sedan-chair! Put your 'ead in a bag. That was a palanquin. Don't yer
+know a palanquin when you see it?' said Ortheris with great scorn.
+
+'I chuse to call ut sedan-chair, an' chair ut shall be, little man,'
+continued the Irishman. ''Twas a most amazin' chair--all lined wid pink
+silk an' fitted wid red silk curtains. "Here ut is," sez the red man.
+"Here ut is," sez the coolie, an' he grinned weakly-ways. "Is ut any
+use to you?" sez the red man. "No," sez the coolie; "I'd like to make a
+presint av ut to you."--"I am graciously pleased to accept that same,"
+sez the red man; an' at that all the coolies cried aloud in fwhat was
+mint for cheerful notes, an' wint back to their diggin', lavin' me alone
+in the shed. The red man saw me, an' his face grew blue on his big, fat
+neck. "Fwhat d'you want here?" sez he. "Standin'-room an' no more," sez
+I, "onless it may be fwhat ye niver had, an' that's manners, ye rafflin'
+ruffian," for I was not goin' to have the Service throd upon. "Out of
+this," sez he. "I'm in charge av this section av construction."--"I'm
+in charge av mesilf," sez I, "an' it's like I will stay a while. D'ye
+raffle much in these parts?"--"Fwhat's that to you?" sez he. "Nothin',"
+sez I, "but a great dale to you, for begad I'm thinkin' you get the full
+half av your revenue from that sedan-chair. Is ut always raffled so?" I
+sez, an' wid that I wint to a coolie to ask questions. Bhoys, that man's
+name is Dearsley, an' he's been rafflin' that ould sedan-chair monthly
+this matther av nine months. Ivry coolie on the section takes a
+ticket--or he gives 'em the go--wanst a month on pay-day. Ivry coolie
+that wins ut gives ut back to him, for 'tis too big to carry away, an'
+he'd sack the man that thried to sell ut. That Dearsley has been makin'
+the rowlin' wealth av Roshus by nefarious rafflin'. Think av the burnin'
+shame to the sufferin' coolie-man that the army in Injia are bound to
+protect an' nourish in their bosoms! Two thousand coolies defrauded
+wanst a month!'
+
+'Dom t' coolies. Has't gotten t' cheer, man?' said Learoyd.
+
+'Hould on. Havin' onearthed this amazin' an' stupenjus fraud committed
+by the man Dearsley, I hild a council av war; he thryin' all the time to
+sejuce me into a fight with opprobrious language. That sedan-chair niver
+belonged by right to any foreman av coolies. 'Tis a king's chair or a
+quane's. There's gold on ut an' silk an' all manner av trapesemints.
+Bhoys, 'tis not for me to countenance any sort av wrong-doin'--me bein'
+the ould man--but--anyway he has had ut nine months, an' he dare not
+make throuble av ut was taken from him. Five miles away, or ut may be
+six--'
+
+There was a long pause, and the jackals howled merrily. Learoyd bared
+one arm, and contemplated it in the moonlight. Then he nodded partly
+to himself and partly to his friends. Ortheris wriggled with suppressed
+emotion.
+
+'I thought ye wud see the reasonableness av ut,' said Mulvaney. 'I
+made bould to say as much to the man before. He was for a direct front
+attack--fut, horse, an' guns--an' all for nothin', seein' that I had no
+thransport to convey the machine away. "I will not argue wid you," sez
+I, "this day, but subsequently, Mister Dearsley, me rafflin' jool, we
+talk ut out lengthways. 'Tis no good policy to swindle the naygur av his
+hard-earned emolumints, an' by presint informashin'"--'twas the kyart
+man that tould me--"ye've been perpethrating that same for nine months.
+But I'm a just man," sez I, "an' overlookin' the presumpshin that
+yondher settee wid the gilt top was not come by honust"--at that he
+turned sky-green, so I knew things was more thrue than tellable--"not
+come by honust, I'm willin' to compound the felony for this month's
+winnin's."'
+
+'Ah! Ho!' from Learoyd and Ortheris.
+
+'That man Dearsley's rushin' on his fate,' continued Mulvaney, solemnly
+wagging his head. 'All Hell had no name bad enough for me that tide.
+Faith, he called me a robber! Me! that was savin' him from continuin'
+in his evil ways widout a remonstrince--an' to a man av conscience
+a remonstrince may change the chune av his life. "'Tis not for me to
+argue," sez I, "fwhatever ye are, Mister Dearsley, but, by my hand, I'll
+take away the temptation for you that lies in that sedan-chair."--"You
+will have to fight me for ut," sez he, "for well I know you will never
+dare make report to any one."--"Fight I will," sez I, "but not this day,
+for I'm rejuced for want av nourishment."--"Ye're an ould bould hand,"
+sez he, sizin' me up an' down; "an' a jool av a fight we will have.
+Eat now an' dhrink, an' go your way." Wid that he gave me some hump an'
+whisky--good whisky--an' we talked av this an' that the while. "It goes
+hard on me now," sez I, wipin' my mouth, "to confiscate that piece av
+furniture, but justice is justice."--"Ye've not got ut yet," sez he;
+"there's the fight between."--"There is," sez I, "an' a good fight. Ye
+shall have the pick av the best quality in my rigimint for the dinner
+you have given this day." Thin I came hot-foot to you two. Hould your
+tongue, the both. 'Tis this way. To-morrow we three will go there an' he
+shall have his pick betune me an' Jock. Jock's a deceivin' fighter, for
+he is all fat to the eye, an' he moves slow. Now, I'm all beef to the
+look, an' I move quick. By my reckonin' the Dearsley man won't take me;
+so me an' Orth'ris 'll see fair play. Jock, I tell you,'twill be big
+fightin'--whipped, wid the cream above the jam. Afther the business
+'twill take a good three av us--Jock 'll be very hurt--to haul away that
+sedan-chair.'
+
+'Palanquin.' This from Ortheris.
+
+'Fwhatever ut is, we must have ut. 'Tis the only sellin' piece av
+property widin reach that we can get so cheap. An' fwhat's a fight
+afther all? He has robbed the naygur-man, dishonust. We rob him honust
+for the sake av the whisky he gave me.'
+
+'But wot'll we do with the bloomin' article when we've got it? Them
+palanquins are as big as 'ouses, an' uncommon 'ard to sell, as McCleary
+said when ye stole the sentry-box from the Curragh.'
+
+'Who's goin' to do t' fightin'?' said Learoyd, and Ortheris subsided.
+The three returned to barracks without a word. Mulvaney's last argument
+clinched the matter. This palanquin was property, vendible, and to
+be attained in the simplest and least embarrassing fashion. It would
+eventually become beer. Great was Mulvaney.
+
+Next afternoon a procession of three formed itself and disappeared into
+the scrub in the direction of the new railway line. Learoyd alone was
+without care, for Mulvaney dived darkly into the future, and little
+Ortheris feared the unknown. What befell at that interview in the lonely
+pay-shed by the side of the half-built embankment, only a few hundred
+coolies know, and their tale is confusing one, running thus--
+
+'We were at work. Three men in red coats came. They saw the
+Sahib--Dearsley Sahib. They made oration; and noticeably the small man
+among the red-coats. Dearsley Sahib also made oration, and used many
+very strong words. Upon this talk they departed together to an open
+space, and there the fat man in the red coat fought with Dearsley Sahib
+after the custom of white men--with his hands, making no noise, and
+never at all pulling Dearsley Sahib's hair. Such of us as were not
+afraid beheld these things for just so long a time as a man needs to
+cook the mid-day meal. The small man in the red coat had possessed
+himself of Dearsley Sahib's watch. No, he did not steal that watch. He
+held it in his hand, and at certain seasons made outcry, and the twain
+ceased their combat, which was like the combat of young bulls in spring.
+Both men were soon all red, but Dearsley Sahib was much more red than
+the other. Seeing this, and fearing for his life--because we greatly
+loved him--some fifty of us made shift to rush upon the red-coats. But
+a certain man--very black as to the hair, and in no way to be confused
+with the small man, or the fat man who fought--that man, we affirm, ran
+upon us, and of us he embraced some ten or fifty in both arms, and beat
+our heads together, so that our livers turned to water, and we ran away.
+It is not good to interfere in the fightings of white men. After that
+Dearsley Sahib fell and did not rise, these men jumped upon his stomach
+and despoiled him of all his money, and attempted to fire the pay-shed,
+and departed. Is it true that Dearsley Sahib makes no complaint of these
+latter things having been done? We were senseless with fear, and do not
+at all remember. There was no palanquin near the pay-shed. What do we
+know about palanquins? Is it true that Dearsley Sahib does not return to
+this place, on account of his sickness, for ten days? This is the fault
+of those bad men in the red coats, who should be severely punished; for
+Dearsley Sahib is both our father and mother, and we love him much. Yet,
+if Dearsley Sahib does not return to this place at all, we will speak
+the truth. There was a palanquin, for the up-keep of which we were
+forced to pay nine-tenths of our monthly wage. On such mulctings
+Dearsley Sahib allowed us to make obeisance to him before the palanquin.
+What could we do? We were poor men. He took a full half of our wages.
+Will the Government repay us those moneys? Those three men in red coats
+bore the palanquin upon their shoulders and departed. All the money that
+Dearsley Sahib had taken from us was in the cushions of that palanquin.
+Therefore they stole it. Thousands of rupees were there--all our money.
+It was our bank-box, to fill which we cheerfully contributed to Dearsley
+Sahib three-sevenths of our monthly wage. Why does the white man look
+upon us with the eye of disfavour? Before God, there was a palanquin,
+and now there is no palanquin; and if they send the police here to make
+inquisition, we can only say that there never has been any palanquin.
+Why should a palanquin be near these works? We are poor men, and we know
+nothing.'
+
+Such is the simplest version of the simplest story connected with the
+descent upon Dearsley. From the lips of the coolies I received it.
+Dearsley himself was in no condition to say anything, and Mulvaney
+preserved a massive silence, broken only by the occasional licking of
+the lips. He had seen a fight so gorgeous that even his power of speech
+was taken from him. I respected that reserve until, three days after the
+affair, I discovered in a disused stable in my quarters a palanquin of
+unchastened splendour--evidently in past days the litter of a queen. The
+pole whereby it swung between the shoulders of the bearers was rich with
+the painted papier-mache of Cashmere. The shoulder-pads were of yellow
+silk. The panels of the litter itself were ablaze with the loves of
+all the gods and goddesses of the Hindu Pantheon--lacquer on cedar. The
+cedar sliding doors were fitted with hasps of translucent Jaipur enamel
+and ran in grooves shod with silver. The cushions were of brocaded Delhi
+silk, and the curtains which once hid any glimpse of the beauty of the
+king's palace were stiff with gold. Closer investigation showed that the
+entire fabric was everywhere rubbed and discoloured by time and wear;
+but even thus it was sufficiently gorgeous to deserve housing on the
+threshold of a royal zenana. I found no fault with it, except that
+it was in my stable. Then, trying to lift it by the silver-shod
+shoulder-pole, I laughed. The road from Dearsley's pay-shed to the
+cantonment was a narrow and uneven one, and, traversed by three very
+inexperienced palanquin-bearers, one of whom was sorely battered about
+the head, must have been a path of torment. Still I did not quite
+recognise the right of the three musketeers to turn me into a 'fence'
+for stolen property.
+
+'I'm askin' you to warehouse ut,' said Mulvaney when he was brought to
+consider the question. 'There's no steal in ut. Dearsley tould us we cud
+have ut if we fought. Jock fought--an', oh, sorr, when the throuble
+was at uts finest an' Jock was bleedin' like a stuck pig, an' little
+Orth'ris was shquealin' on one leg chewin' big bites out av Dearsley's
+watch, I wud ha' given my place at the fight to have had you see wan
+round. He tuk Jock, as I suspicioned he would, an' Jock was deceptive.
+Nine roun's they were even matched, an' at the tenth--About that
+palanquin now. There's not the least throuble in the world, or we wud
+not ha' brought ut here. You will ondherstand that the Queen--God
+bless her!--does not reckon for a privit soldier to kape elephints an'
+palanquins an' sich in barricks. Afther we had dhragged ut down from
+Dearsley's through that cruel scrub that near broke Orth'ris's heart,
+we set ut in the ravine for a night; an' a thief av a porcupine an' a
+civet-cat av a jackal roosted in ut, as well we knew in the mornin'. I
+put ut to you, sorr, is an elegint palanquin, fit for the princess, the
+natural abidin' place av all the vermin in cantonmints? We brought ut
+to you, afther dhark, and put ut in your shtable. Do not let
+your conscience prick. Think av the rejoicin' men in the pay-shed
+yonder--lookin' at Dearsley wid his head tied up in a towel--an' well
+knowin' that they can dhraw their pay ivry month widout stoppages for
+riffles. Indirectly, sorr, you have rescued from an onprincipled son av
+a night-hawk the peasanthry av a numerous village. An' besides, will I
+let that sedan-chair rot on our hands? Not I. 'Tis not every day a piece
+av pure joolry comes into the market. There's not a king widin these
+forty miles'--he waved his hand round the dusty horizon--'not a king wud
+not be glad to buy ut. Some day meself, whin I have leisure, I'll take
+ut up along the road an' dishpose av ut.'
+
+'How?' said I, for I knew the man was capable of anything.
+
+'Get into ut, av coorse, and keep wan eye open through the curtains.
+Whin I see a likely man av the native persuasion, I will descind
+blushin' from my canopy and say, "Buy a palanquin, ye black scutt?"
+I will have to hire four men to carry me first, though; and that's
+impossible till next pay-day.'
+
+Curiously enough, Learoyd, who had fought for the prize, and in
+the winning secured the highest pleasure life had to offer him, was
+altogether disposed to undervalue it, while Ortheris openly said it
+would be better to break the thing up. Dearsley, he argued, might be a
+many-sided man, capable, despite his magnificent fighting qualities, of
+setting in motion the machinery of the civil law--a thing much abhorred
+by the soldier. Under any circumstances their fun had come and passed;
+the next pay-day was close at hand, when there would be beer for all.
+Wherefore longer conserve the painted palanquin?
+
+'A first-class rifle-shot an' a good little man av your inches you are,'
+said Mulvaney. 'But you niver had a head worth a soft-boiled egg. 'Tis
+me has to lie awake av nights schamin' an' plottin' for the three av
+us. Orth'ris, me son, 'tis no matther av a few gallons av beer--no, nor
+twenty gallons--but tubs an' vats an' firkins in that sedan-chair. Who
+ut was, an' what ut was, an' how ut got there, we do not know; but I
+know in my bones that you an' me an' Jock wid his sprained thumb will
+get a fortune thereby. Lave me alone, an' let me think.'
+
+Meantime the palanquin stayed in my stall, the key of which was in
+Mulvaney's hands.
+
+Pay-day came, and with it beer. It was not in experience to hope that
+Mulvaney, dried by four weeks' drought, would avoid excess. Next morning
+he and the palanquin had disappeared. He had taken the precaution of
+getting three days' leave 'to see a friend on the railway,' and the
+colonel, well knowing that the seasonal outburst was near, and hoping it
+would spend its force beyond the limits of his jurisdiction, cheerfully
+gave him all he demanded. At this point Mulvaney's history, as recorded
+in the mess-room, stopped.
+
+Ortheris carried it not much further. 'No, 'e wasn't drunk,' said the
+little man loyally, 'the liquor was no more than feelin' its way round
+inside of 'im; but 'e went an' filled that 'ole bloomin' palanquin with
+bottles 'fore 'e went off. 'E's gone an' 'ired six men to carry 'im,
+an' I 'ad to 'elp 'im into 'is nupshal couch, 'cause 'e wouldn't
+'ear reason. 'E's gone off in 'is shirt an' trousies, swearin'
+tremenjus--gone down the road in the palanquin, wavin' 'is legs out o'
+windy.'
+
+'Yes,' said I, 'but where?'
+
+'Now you arx me a question. 'E said 'e was goin' to sell that palanquin,
+but from observations what happened when I was stuffin' 'im through the
+door, I fancy 'e's gone to the new embankment to mock at Dearsley. 'Soon
+as Jock's off duty I'm goin' there to see if 'e's safe--not Mulvaney,
+but t'other man. My saints, but I pity 'im as 'elps Terence out o' the
+palanquin when 'e's once fair drunk!'
+
+'He'll come back without harm,' I said.
+
+''Corse 'e will. On'y question is, what 'll 'e be doin' on the road?
+Killing Dearsley, like as not. 'E shouldn't 'a gone without Jock or me.'
+
+Reinforced by Learoyd, Ortheris sought the foreman of the coolie-gang.
+Dearsley's head was still embellished with towels. Mulvaney, drunk
+or sober, would have struck no man in that condition, and Dearsley
+indignantly denied that he would have taken advantage of the intoxicated
+brave.
+
+'I had my pick o' you two,' he explained to Learoyd, 'and you got my
+palanquin--not before I'd made my profit on it. Why'd I do harm when
+everything's settled? Your man DID come here--drunk as Davy's sow on a
+frosty night--came a-purpose to mock me--stuck his head out of the
+door an' called me a crucified hodman. I made him drunker, an' sent him
+along. But I never touched him.'
+
+To these things, Learoyd, slow to perceive the evidences of sincerity,
+answered only, 'If owt comes to Mulvaaney 'long o' you, I'll gripple
+you, clouts or no clouts on your ugly head, an' I'll draw t' throat
+twistyways, man. See there now.'
+
+The embassy removed itself, and Dearsley, the battered, laughed alone
+over his supper that evening.
+
+Three days passed--a fourth and a fifth. The week drew to a close
+and Mulvaney did not return. He, his royal palanquin, and his six
+attendants, had vanished into air. A very large and very tipsy soldier,
+his feet sticking out of the litter of a reigning princess, is not a
+thing to travel along the ways without comment. Yet no man of all the
+country round had seen any such wonder. He was, and he was not; and
+Learoyd suggested the immediate smashment of Dearsley as a sacrifice to
+his ghost. Ortheris insisted that all was well, and in the light of past
+experience his hopes seemed reasonable.
+
+'When Mulvaney goes up the road,' said he, ''e's like to go a very long
+ways up, specially when 'e's so blue drunk as 'e is now. But what gits
+me is 'is not bein' 'eard of pullin' wool off the niggers somewheres
+about. That don't look good. The drink must ha' died out in 'im by this,
+unless 'e's broke a bank, an' then--Why don't 'e come back? 'E didn't
+ought to ha' gone off without us.'
+
+Even Ortheris's heart sank at the end of the seventh day, for half the
+regiment were out scouring the country-side, and Learoyd had been forced
+to fight two men who hinted openly that Mulvaney had deserted. To do him
+justice, the colonel laughed at the notion, even when it was put forward
+by his much-trusted adjutant.
+
+'Mulvaney would as soon think of deserting as you would,' said he. 'No;
+he's either fallen into a mischief among the villagers--and yet that
+isn't likely, for he'd blarney himself out of the Pit; or else he is
+engaged on urgent private affairs--some stupendous devilment that we
+shall hear of at mess after it has been the round of the barrack-rooms.
+The worst of it is that I shall have to give him twenty-eight days'
+confinement at least for being absent without leave, just when I most
+want him to lick the new batch of recruits into shape. I never knew a
+man who could put a polish on young soldiers as quickly as Mulvaney can.
+How does he do it?'
+
+'With blarney and the buckle-end of a belt, sir,' said the adjutant. 'He
+is worth a couple of non-commissioned officers when we are dealing with
+an Irish draft, and the London lads seem to adore him. The worst of it
+is that if he goes to the cells the other two are neither to hold nor
+to bind till he comes out again. I believe Ortheris preaches mutiny on
+those occasions, and I know that the mere presence of Learoyd mourning
+for Mulvaney kills all the cheerfulness of his room. The sergeants tell
+me that he allows no man to laugh when he feels unhappy. They are a
+queer gang.'
+
+'For all that, I wish we had a few more of them. I like a well-conducted
+regiment, but these pasty-faced, shifty-eyed, mealy-mouthed young
+slouchers from the depot worry me sometimes with their offensive virtue.
+They don't seem to have backbone enough to do anything but play cards
+and prowl round the married quarters. I believe I'd forgive that old
+villain on the spot if he turned up with any sort of explanation that I
+could in decency accept.'
+
+'Not likely to be much difficulty about that, sir,' said the adjutant.
+'Mulvaney's explanations are only one degree less wonderful than his
+performances. They say that when he was in the Black Tyrone, before he
+came to us, he was discovered on the banks of the Liffey trying to sell
+his colonel's charger to a Donegal dealer as a perfect lady's hack.
+Shackbolt commanded the Tyrone then.'
+
+'Shackbolt must have had apoplexy at the thought of his ramping
+war-horses answering to that description. He used to buy unbacked
+devils, and tame them on some pet theory of starvation. What did
+Mulvaney say?'
+
+'That he was a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
+Animals, anxious to "sell the poor baste where he would get something
+to fill out his dimples." Shackbolt laughed, but I fancy that was why
+Mulvaney exchanged to ours.'
+
+'I wish he were back,' said the colonel; 'for I like him and believe he
+likes me.'
+
+That evening, to cheer our souls, Learoyd, Ortheris, and I went into the
+waste to smoke out a porcupine. All the dogs attended, but even their
+clamour--and they began to discuss the shortcomings of porcupines before
+they left cantonments--could not take us out of ourselves. A large,
+low moon turned the tops of the plume-grass to silver, and the stunted
+camelthorn bushes and sour tamarisks into the likenesses of trooping
+devils. The smell of the sun had not left the earth, and little aimless
+winds blowing across the rose-gardens to the southward brought the scent
+of dried roses and water. Our fire once started, and the dogs craftily
+disposed to wait the dash of the porcupine, we climbed to the top of a
+rain-scarred hillock of earth, and looked across the scrub seamed with
+cattle paths, white with the long grass, and dotted with spots of level
+pond-bottom, where the snipe would gather in winter.
+
+'This,' said Ortheris, with a sigh, as he took in the unkempt desolation
+of it all, 'this is sanguinary. This is unusually sanguinary. Sort o'
+mad country. Like a grate when the fire's put out by the sun.' He shaded
+his eyes against the moonlight. 'An' there's a loony dancin' in the
+middle of it all. Quite right. I'd dance too if I wasn't so downheart.'
+
+There pranced a Portent in the face of the moon--a huge and ragged
+spirit of the waste, that flapped its wings from afar. It had risen out
+of the earth; it was coming towards us, and its outline was never twice
+the same. The toga, table-cloth, or dressing-gown, whatever the creature
+wore, took a hundred shapes. Once it stopped on a neighbouring mound and
+flung all its legs and arms to the winds.
+
+'My, but that scarecrow 'as got 'em bad!' said Ortheris. 'Seems like if
+'e comes any furder we'll 'ave to argify with 'im.'
+
+Learoyd raised himself from the dirt as a bull clears his flanks of the
+wallow. And as a bull bellows, so he, after a short minute at gaze, gave
+tongue to the stars.
+
+'MULVAANEY! MULVAANEY! A-hoo!'
+
+Oh then it was that we yelled, and the figure dipped into the hollow,
+till, with a crash of rending grass, the lost one strode up to the light
+of the fire and disappeared to the waist in a wave of joyous dogs! Then
+Learoyd and Ortheris gave greeting, bass and falsetto together, both
+swallowing a lump in the throat.
+
+'You damned fool!' said they, and severally pounded him with their
+fists.
+
+'Go easy!' he answered; wrapping a huge arm round each. 'I would have
+you to know that I am a god, to be treated as such--tho', by my faith, I
+fancy I've got to go to the guard-room just like a privit soldier.'
+
+The latter part of the sentence destroyed the suspicions raised by the
+former. Any one would have been justified in regarding Mulvaney as mad.
+He was hatless and shoeless, and his shirt and trousers were dropping
+off him. But he wore one wondrous garment--a gigantic cloak that
+fell from collar-bone to heel--of pale pink silk, wrought all over in
+cunningest needlework of hands long since dead, with the loves of the
+Hindu gods. The monstrous figures leaped in and out of the light of the
+fire as he settled the folds round him.
+
+Ortheris handled the stuff respectfully for a moment while I was trying
+to remember where I had seen it before. Then he screamed, 'What 'AVE you
+done with the palanquin? You're wearin' the linin'.'
+
+'I am,' said the Irishman, 'an' by the same token the 'broidery is
+scrapin' my hide off. I've lived in this sumpshus counterpane for four
+days. Me son, I begin to ondherstand why the naygur is no use. Widout me
+boots, an' me trousies like an openwork stocking on a gyurl's leg at
+a dance, I begin to feel like a naygur-man--all fearful an' timoreous.
+Give me a pipe an' I'll tell on.'
+
+He lit a pipe, resumed his grip of his two friends, and rocked to and
+fro in a gale of laughter.
+
+'Mulvaney,' said Ortheris sternly, ''tain't no time for laughin'. You've
+given Jock an' me more trouble than you're worth. You 'ave been absent
+without leave an' you'll go into cells for that; an' you 'ave come back
+disgustin'ly dressed an' most improper in the linin' o' that bloomin'
+palanquin. Instid of which you laugh. An' WE thought you was dead all
+the time.'
+
+'Bhoys,' said the culprit, still shaking gently, 'whin I've done my tale
+you may cry if you like, an' little Orth'ris here can thrample my inside
+out. Ha' done an' listen. My performances have been stupenjus: my luck
+has been the blessed luck av the British Army--an' there's no betther
+than that. I went out dhrunk an' dhrinkin' in the palanquin, and I have
+come back a pink god. Did any of you go to Dearsley afther my time was
+up? He was at the bottom of ut all.'
+
+'Ah said so,' murmured Learoyd. 'To-morrow ah'll smash t' face in upon
+his heead.'
+
+'Ye will not. Dearsley's a jool av a man. Afther Ortheris had put me
+into the palanquin an' the six bearer-men were gruntin' down the road, I
+tuk thought to mock Dearsley for that fight. So I tould thim, "Go to the
+embankmint," and there, bein' most amazin' full, I shtuck my head out
+av the concern an' passed compliments wid Dearsley. I must ha' miscalled
+him outrageous, for whin I am that way the power av the tongue comes on
+me. I can bare remimber tellin' him that his mouth opened endways like
+the mouth av a skate, which was thrue afther Learoyd had handled ut; an'
+I clear remimber his takin' no manner nor matter av offence, but givin'
+me a big dhrink of beer. 'Twas the beer did the thrick, for I crawled
+back into the palanquin, steppin' on me right ear wid me left foot, an'
+thin I slept like the dead. Wanst I half-roused, an' begad the noise
+in my head was tremenjus--roarin' and rattlin' an' poundin' such as was
+quite new to me. "Mother av Mercy," thinks I, "phwat a concertina I will
+have on my shoulders whin I wake!" An' wid that I curls mysilf up
+to sleep before ut should get hould on me. Bhoys, that noise was not
+dhrink, 'twas the rattle av a thrain!'
+
+There followed an impressive pause.
+
+'Yes, he had put me on a thrain--put me, palanquin an' all, an' six
+black assassins av his own coolies that was in his nefarious confidence,
+on the flat av a ballast-thruck, and we were rowlin' an' bowlin' along
+to Benares. Glory be that I did not wake up thin an' introjuce mysilf to
+the coolies. As I was sayin', I slept for the betther part av a day an'
+a night. But remimber you, that that man Dearsley had packed me off on
+wan av his material-thrains to Benares, all for to make me overstay my
+leave an' get me into the cells.'
+
+The explanation was an eminently rational one. Benares lay at least ten
+hours by rail from the cantonments, and nothing in the world could have
+saved Mulvaney from arrest as a deserter had he appeared there in the
+apparel of his orgies. Dearsley had not forgotten to take revenge.
+Learoyd, drawing back a little, began to place soft blows over selected
+portions of Mulvaney's body. His thoughts were away on the embankment,
+and they meditated evil for Dearsley. Mulvaney continued--
+
+'Whin I was full awake the palanquin was set down in a street, I
+suspicioned, for I cud hear people passin' an' talkin'. But I knew well
+I was far from home. There is a queer smell upon our cantonments--a
+smell av dried earth and brick-kilns wid whiffs av cavalry
+stable-litter. This place smelt marigold flowers an' bad water, an'
+wanst somethin' alive came an' blew heavy with his muzzle at the chink
+av the shutter. "It's in a village I am," thinks I to mysilf, "an' the
+parochial buffalo is investigatin' the palanquin." But anyways I had
+no desire to move. Only lie still whin you're in foreign parts an' the
+standin' luck av the British Army will carry ye through. That is an
+epigram. I made ut.
+
+'Thin a lot av whishperin' divils surrounded the palanquin. "Take ut
+up," sez wan man. "But who'll pay us?" sez another. "The Maharanee's
+minister, av coorse," sez the man. "Oho!" sez I to mysilf, "I'm a quane
+in me own right, wid a minister to pay me expenses. I'll be an emperor
+if I lie still long enough; but this is no village I've found." I lay
+quiet, but I gummed me right eye to a crack av the shutters, an' I
+saw that the whole street was crammed wid palanquins an' horses, an' a
+sprinklin' av naked priests all yellow powder an' tigers' tails. But
+I may tell you, Orth'ris, an' you, Learoyd, that av all the palanquins
+ours was the most imperial an' magnificent. Now a palanquin means a
+native lady all the world over, except whin a soldier av the Quane
+happens to be takin' a ride. "Women an' priests!" sez I. "Your father's
+son is in the right pew this time, Terence. There will be proceedin's."
+Six black divils in pink muslin tuk up the palanquin, an' oh! but the
+rowlin' an' the rockin' made me sick. Thin we got fair jammed among the
+palanquins--not more than fifty av them--an' we grated an' bumped
+like Queenstown potato-smacks in a runnin' tide. I cud hear the women
+gigglin' and squirkin' in their palanquins, but mine was the royal
+equipage. They made way for ut, an', begad, the pink muslin men o' mine
+were howlin', "Room for the Maharanee av Gokral-Seetarun." Do you know
+aught av the lady, sorr?'
+
+'Yes,' said I. 'She is a very estimable old queen of the Central Indian
+States, and they say she is fat. How on earth could she go to Benares
+without all the city knowing her palanquin?'
+
+''Twas the eternal foolishness av the naygur-man. They saw the palanquin
+lying loneful an' forlornsome, an' the beauty av ut, after Dearsley's
+men had dhropped ut and gone away, an' they gave ut the best name that
+occurred to thim. Quite right too. For aught we know the ould lady was
+thravellin' incog--like me. I'm glad to hear she's fat. I was no light
+weight mysilf, an' my men were mortial anxious to dhrop me under a great
+big archway promiscuously ornamented wid the most improper carvin's
+an' cuttin's I iver saw. Begad! they made me blush--like a--like a
+Maharanee.'
+
+'The temple of Prithi-Devi,' I murmured, remembering the monstrous
+horrors of that sculptured archway at Benares.
+
+'Pretty Devilskins, savin' your presence, sorr! There was nothin' pretty
+about ut, except me. 'Twas all half dhark, an' whin the coolies left
+they shut a big black gate behind av us, an' half a company av fat
+yellow priests began pully-haulin' the palanquins into a dharker place
+yet--a big stone hall full av pillars, an' gods, an' incense, an' all
+manner av similar thruck. The gate disconcerted me, for I perceived I
+wud have to go forward to get out, my retreat bein' cut off. By the same
+token a good priest makes a bad palanquin-coolie. Begad! they nearly
+turned me inside out draggin' the palanquin to the temple. Now the
+disposishin av the forces inside was this way. The Maharanee av
+Gokral-Seetarun--that was me--lay by the favour av Providence on the far
+left flank behind the dhark av a pillar carved with elephints' heads.
+The remainder av the palanquins was in a big half circle facing in to
+the biggest, fattest, an' most amazin' she-god that iver I dreamed av.
+Her head ran up into the black above us, an' her feet stuck out in the
+light av a little fire av melted butter that a priest was feedin' out
+av a butter-dish. Thin a man began to sing an' play on somethin' back in
+the dhark, an 'twas a queer song. Ut made my hair lift on the back av
+my neck. Thin the doors av all the palanquins slid back, an' the women
+bundled out. I saw what I'll niver see again. 'Twas more glorious than
+thransformations at a pantomime, for they was in pink an' blue an'
+silver an' red an' grass green, wid di'monds an' im'ralds an' great red
+rubies all over thim. But that was the least part av the glory. O bhoys,
+they were more lovely than the like av any loveliness in hiven; ay,
+their little bare feet were betther than the white hands av a lord's
+lady, an' their mouths were like puckered roses, an' their eyes were
+bigger an' dharker than the eyes av any livin' women I've seen. Ye may
+laugh, but I'm speakin' truth. I niver saw the like, an' niver I will
+again.'
+
+'Seeing that in all probability you were watching the wives and
+daughters of most of the Kings of India, the chances are that you
+won't,' I said, for it was dawning on me that Mulvaney had stumbled upon
+a big Queens' Praying at Benares.
+
+'I niver will,' he said mournfully. 'That sight doesn't come twist to
+any man. It made me ashamed to watch. A fat priest knocked at my door.
+I didn't think he'd have the insolince to disturb the Maharanee av
+Gokral-Seetarun, so I lay still. "The old cow's asleep," sez he to
+another. "Let her be," sez that. "'Twill be long before she has a
+calf!" I might ha' known before he spoke that all a woman prays for in
+Injia--an' for matter o' that in England too--is childher. That made me
+more sorry I'd come, me bein', as you well know, a childless man.'
+
+He was silent for a moment, thinking of his little son, dead many years
+ago.
+
+'They prayed, an' the butter-fires blazed up an' the incense turned
+everything blue, an' between that an' the fires the women looked as
+tho' they were all ablaze an' twinklin'. They took hold av the she-god's
+knees, they cried out an' they threw themselves about, an' that
+world-without-end-amen music was dhrivin' thim mad. Mother av Hiven! how
+they cried, an' the ould she-god grinnin' above thim all so scornful!
+The dhrink was dyin' out in me fast, an' I was thinkin' harder than the
+thoughts wud go through my head--thinkin' how to get out, an' all manner
+of nonsense as well. The women were rockin' in rows, their di'mond belts
+clickin', an' the tears runnin' out betune their hands, an' the lights
+were goin' lower an' dharker. Thin there was a blaze like lightnin' from
+the roof, an' that showed me the inside av the palanquin, an' at the end
+where my foot was, stood the livin' spit an' image o' mysilf worked on
+the linin'. This man here, ut was.'
+
+He hunted in the folds of his pink cloak, ran a hand under one, and
+thrust into the firelight a foot-long embroidered presentment of the
+great god Krishna, playing on a flute. The heavy jowl, the staring eye,
+and the blue-black moustache of the god made up a far-off resemblance to
+Mulvaney.
+
+'The blaze was gone in a wink, but the whole schame came to me thin. I
+believe I was mad too. I slid the off-shutter open an' rowled out into
+the dhark behind the elephint-head pillar, tucked up my trousies to
+my knees, slipped off my boots an' tuk a general hould av all the pink
+linin' av the palanquin. Glory be, ut ripped out like a woman's dhriss
+whin you tread on ut at a sergeants' ball, an' a bottle came with ut. I
+tuk the bottle an' the next minut I was out av the dhark av the pillar,
+the pink linin' wrapped round me most graceful, the music thunderin'
+like kettledrums, an' a could draft blowin' round my bare legs. By this
+hand that did ut, I was Khrishna tootlin' on the flute--the god that the
+rig'mental chaplain talks about. A sweet sight I must ha' looked. I knew
+my eyes were big, and my face was wax-white, an' at the worst I must
+ha' looked like a ghost. But they took me for the livin' god. The music
+stopped, and the women were dead dumb an' I crooked my legs like a
+shepherd on a china basin, an' I did the ghost-waggle with my feet as I
+had done ut at the rig'mental theatre many times, an' I slid acrost
+the width av that temple in front av the she-god tootlin' on the beer
+bottle.'
+
+'Wot did you toot?' demanded Ortheris the practical.
+
+'Me? Oh!' Mulvaney sprang up, suiting the action to the word, and
+sliding gravely in front of us, a dilapidated but imposing deity in the
+half light. 'I sang--
+
+    'Only say
+     You'll be Mrs. Brallaghan.
+     Don't say nay,
+     Charmin' Judy Callaghan.
+
+I didn't know me own voice when I sang. An' oh! 'twas pitiful to see the
+women. The darlin's were down on their faces. Whin I passed the last
+wan I cud see her poor little fingers workin' one in another as if she
+wanted to touch my feet. So I dhrew the tail av this pink overcoat over
+her head for the greater honour, an' I slid into the dhark on the other
+side av the temple, and fetched up in the arms av a big fat priest. All
+I wanted was to get away clear. So I tuk him by his greasy throat
+an' shut the speech out av him. "Out!" sez I. "Which way, ye fat
+heathen?"--"Oh!" sez he. "Man," sez I. "White man, soldier man, common
+soldier man. Where in the name av confusion is the back door?" The women
+in the temple were still on their faces, an' a young priest was holdin'
+out his arms above their heads.
+
+'"This way," sez my fat friend, duckin' behind a big bull-god an' divin'
+into a passage. Thin I remimbered that I must ha' made the miraculous
+reputation av that temple for the next fifty years. "Not so fast," I
+sez, an' I held out both my hands wid a wink. That ould thief smiled
+like a father. I tuk him by the back av the neck in case he should be
+wishful to put a knife into me unbeknownst, an' I ran him up an' down
+the passage twice to collect his sensibilities! "Be quiet," sez he, in
+English. "Now you talk sense," I sez. "Fwhat 'll you give me for the
+use av that most iligant palanquin I have no time to take away?"--"Don't
+tell," sez he. "Is ut like?" sez I. "But ye might give me my railway
+fare. I'm far from my home an' I've done you a service." Bhoys, 'tis a
+good thing to be a priest. The ould man niver throubled himself to dhraw
+from a bank. As I will prove to you subsequint, he philandered all round
+the slack av his clothes an' began dribblin' ten-rupee notes, old gold
+mohurs, and rupees into my hand till I could hould no more.'
+
+'You lie!' said Ortheris. 'You're mad or sunstrook. A native don't give
+coin unless you cut it out o' 'im. 'Tain't nature.'
+
+'Then my lie an' my sunstroke is concealed under that lump av sod
+yonder,' retorted Mulvaney unruffled, nodding across the scrub. 'An'
+there's a dale more in nature than your squidgy little legs have iver
+taken you to, Orth'ris, me son. Four hundred an' thirty-four rupees
+by my reckonin', AN' a big fat gold necklace that I took from him as a
+remimbrancer, was our share in that business.'
+
+'An' 'e give it you for love?' said Ortheris.
+
+'We were alone in that passage. Maybe I was a trifle too pressin',
+but considher fwhat I had done for the good av the temple and the
+iverlastin' joy av those women. 'Twas cheap at the price. I wud ha'
+taken more if I cud ha' found ut. I turned the ould man upside down
+at the last, but he was milked dhry. Thin he opened a door in another
+passage an' I found mysilf up to my knees in Benares river-water, an'
+bad smellin' ut is. More by token I had come out on the river-line close
+to the burnin' ghat and contagious to a cracklin' corpse. This was in
+the heart av the night, for I had been four hours in the temple. There
+was a crowd av boats tied up, so I tuk wan an' wint across the river.
+Thin I came home acrost country, lyin' up by day.'
+
+'How on earth did you manage?' I said.
+
+'How did Sir Frederick Roberts get from Cabul to Candahar? He marched
+an' he niver tould how near he was to breakin' down. That's why he is
+fwhat he is. An' now--' Mulvaney yawned portentously. 'Now I will go an'
+give myself up for absince widout leave. It's eight an' twenty days an'
+the rough end of the colonel's tongue in orderly room, any way you look
+at ut. But 'tis cheap at the price.'
+
+'Mulvaney,' said I softly. 'If there happens to be any sort of excuse
+that the colonel can in any way accept, I have a notion that you'll get
+nothing more than the dressing-gown. The new recruits are in, and--'
+
+'Not a word more, sorr. Is ut excuses the old man wants? 'Tis not my
+way, but he shall have thim. I'll tell him I was engaged in financial
+operations connected wid a church,' and he flapped his way to
+cantonments and the cells, singing lustily--
+
+    'So they sent a corp'ril's file,
+     And they put me in the gyard-room
+     For conduck unbecomin' of a soldier.'
+
+And when he was lost in the midst of the moonlight we could hear the
+refrain--
+
+     Bang upon the big drum, bash upon the cymbals,
+     As we go marchin' along, boys, oh!
+     For although in this campaign
+     There's no whisky nor champagne,
+     We'll keep our spirits goin' with a song, boys!'
+
+Therewith he surrendered himself to the joyful and almost weeping guard,
+and was made much of by his fellows. But to the colonel he said that he
+had been smitten with sunstroke and had lain insensible on a villager's
+cot for untold hours; and between laughter and goodwill the affair was
+smoothed over, so that he could, next day, teach the new recruits how to
+'Fear God, Honour the Queen, Shoot Straight, and Keep Clean.'
+
+
+
+
+THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD
+
+
+     What did the colonel's lady think?
+       Nobody never knew.
+     Somebody asked the sergeant's wife
+       An' she told 'em true.
+     When you git to a man in the case
+       They're like a row o' pins,
+     For the colonel's lady an' Judy O'Grady
+       Are sisters under their skins.
+                          BARRACK-ROOM BALLAD.
+
+Al day I had followed at the heels of a pursuing army engaged on one of
+the finest battles that ever camp of exercise beheld. Thirty thousand
+troops had by the wisdom of the Government of India been turned loose
+over a few thousand square miles of country to practise in peace what
+they would never attempt in war. Consequently cavalry charged unshaken
+infantry at the trot. Infantry captured artillery by frontal attacks
+delivered in line of quarter columns, and mounted infantry skirmished
+up to the wheels of an armoured train which carried nothing more deadly
+than a twenty-five pounder Armstrong, two Nordenfeldts, and a few score
+volunteers all cased in three-eighths-inch boiler-plate. Yet it was a
+very lifelike camp. Operations did not cease at sundown; nobody knew
+the country and nobody spared man or horse. There was unending cavalry
+scouting and almost unending forced work over broken ground. The Army of
+the South had finally pierced the centre of the Army of the North, and
+was pouring through the gap hot-foot to capture a city of strategic
+importance. Its front extended fanwise, the sticks being represented by
+regiments strung out along the line of route backwards to the divisional
+transport columns and all the lumber that trails behind an army on the
+move. On its right the broken left of the Army of the North was flying
+in mass, chased by the Southern horse and hammered by the Southern guns
+till these had been pushed far beyond the limits of their last support.
+Then the flying sat down to rest, while the elated commandant of the
+pursuing force telegraphed that he held all in check and observation.
+
+Unluckily he did not observe that three miles to his right flank a
+flying column of Northern horse with a detachment of Ghoorkhas and
+British troops had been pushed round, as fast as the failing light
+allowed, to cut across the entire rear of the Southern Army, to break,
+as it were, all the ribs of the fan where they converged by striking
+at the transport, reserve ammunition, and artillery supplies. Their
+instructions were to go in, avoiding the few scouts who might not have
+been drawn off by the pursuit, and create sufficient excitement to
+impress the Southern Army with the wisdom of guarding their own flank
+and rear before they captured cities. It was a pretty manoeuvre, neatly
+carried out.
+
+Speaking for the second division of the Southern Army, our first
+intimation of the attack was at twilight, when the artillery were
+labouring in deep sand, most of the escort were trying to help them
+out, and the main body of the infantry had gone on. A Noah's Ark of
+elephants, camels, and the mixed menagerie of an Indian transport-train
+bubbled and squealed behind the guns when there appeared from nowhere in
+particular British infantry to the extent of three companies, who sprang
+to the heads of the gun-horses and brought all to a standstill amid
+oaths and cheers.
+
+'How's that, umpire?' said the major commanding the attack, and with one
+voice the drivers and limber gunners answered 'Hout!' while the colonel
+of artillery sputtered.
+
+'All your scouts are charging our main body,' said the major. 'Your
+flanks are unprotected for two miles. I think we've broken the back of
+this division. And listen,--there go the Ghoorkhas!'
+
+A weak fire broke from the rear-guard more than a mile away, and was
+answered by cheerful howlings. The Ghoorkhas, who should have swung
+clear of the second division, had stepped on its tail in the dark, but
+drawing off hastened to reach the next line of attack, which lay almost
+parallel to us five or six miles away.
+
+Our column swayed and surged irresolutely,--three batteries, the
+divisional ammunition reserve, the baggage, and a section of the
+hospital and bearer corps. The commandant ruefully promised to report
+himself 'cut up' to the nearest umpire, and commending his cavalry and
+all other cavalry to the special care of Eblis, toiled on to resume
+touch with the rest of the division.
+
+'We'll bivouac here to-night,' said the major, 'I have a notion that the
+Ghoorkhas will get caught. They may want us to re-form on. Stand easy
+till the transport gets away.'
+
+A hand caught my beast's bridle and led him out of the choking dust; a
+larger hand deftly canted me out of the saddle; and two of the hugest
+hands in the world received me sliding. Pleasant is the lot of the
+special correspondent who falls into such hands as those of Privates
+Mulvaney, Ortheris, and Learoyd.
+
+'An' that's all right,' said the Irishman calmly. 'We thought we'd find
+you somewheres here by. Is there anything av yours in the transport?
+Orth'ris 'll fetch ut out.'
+
+Ortheris did 'fetch ut out,' from under the trunk of an elephant, in the
+shape of a servant and an animal both laden with medical comforts. The
+little man's eyes sparkled.
+
+'If the brutil an' licentious soldiery av these parts gets sight av the
+thruck,' said Mulvaney, making practised investigations, 'they'll loot
+ev'rything. They're bein' fed on iron-filin's an' dog-biscuit these
+days, but glory's no compensation for a belly-ache. Praise be, we're
+here to protect you, sorr. Beer, sausage, bread (soft an' that's a
+cur'osity), soup in a tin, whisky by the smell av ut, an' fowls! Mother
+av Moses, but ye take the field like a confectioner! 'Tis scand'lus.'
+
+'Ere's a orficer,' said Ortheris significantly. 'When the sergent's done
+lushin' the privit may clean the pot.'
+
+I bundled several things into Mulvaney's haversack before the major's
+hand fell on my shoulder and he said tenderly, 'Requisitioned for the
+Queen's service. Wolseley was quite wrong about special correspondents:
+they are the soldier's best friends. Come and take pot-luck with us
+to-night.'
+
+And so it happened amid laughter and shoutings that my well-considered
+commissariat melted away to reappear later at the mess-table, which was
+a waterproof sheet spread on the ground. The flying column had taken
+three days' rations with it, and there be few things nastier than
+government rations--especially when government is experimenting
+with German toys. Erbsenwurst, tinned beef of surpassing tinniness,
+compressed vegetables, and meat-biscuits may be nourishing, but what
+Thomas Atkins needs is bulk in his inside. The major, assisted by
+his brother officers, purchased goats for the camp and so made the
+experiment of no effect. Long before the fatigue-party sent to collect
+brushwood had returned, the men were settled down by their valises,
+kettles and pots had appeared from the surrounding country and were
+dangling over fires as the kid and the compressed vegetable bubbled
+together; there rose a cheerful clinking of mess-tins; outrageous
+demands for 'a little more stuffin' with that there liver-wing;' and
+gust on gust of chaff as pointed as a bayonet and as delicate as a
+gun-butt.
+
+'The boys are in a good temper,' said the major. 'They'll be singing
+presently. Well, a night like this is enough to keep them happy.'
+
+Over our heads burned the wonderful Indian stars, which are not all
+pricked in on one plane, but, preserving an orderly perspective, draw
+the eye through the velvet darkness of the void up to the barred doors
+of heaven itself. The earth was a gray shadow more unreal than the sky.
+We could hear her breathing lightly in the pauses between the howling of
+the jackals, the movement of the wind in the tamarisks, and the fitful
+mutter of musketry-fire leagues away to the left. A native woman from
+some unseen hut began to sing, the mail-train thundered past on its
+way to Delhi, and a roosting crow cawed drowsily. Then there was a
+belt-loosening silence about the fires, and the even breathing of the
+crowded earth took up the story.
+
+The men, full fed, turned to tobacco and song,--their officers with
+them. The subaltern is happy who can win the approval of the musical
+critics in his regiment, and is honoured among the more intricate
+step-dancers. By him, as by him who plays cricket cleverly, Thomas
+Atkins will stand in time of need, when he will let a better officer
+go on alone. The ruined tombs of forgotten Mussulman saints heard the
+ballad of Agra Town, The Buffalo Battery, Marching to Kabul, The long,
+long Indian Day, The Place where the Punkah-coolie died, and that
+crashing chorus which announces,
+
+     Youth's daring spirit, manhood's fire,
+       Firm hand and eagle eye,
+     Must he acquire who would aspire
+       To see the gray boar die.
+
+To-day, of all those jovial thieves who appropriated my commissariat and
+lay and laughed round that water-proof sheet, not one remains. They went
+to camps that were not of exercise and battles without umpires. Burmah,
+the Soudan, and the frontier,--fever and fight,--took them in their
+time.
+
+I drifted across to the men's fires in search of Mulvaney, whom I
+found strategically greasing his feet by the blaze. There is nothing
+particularly lovely in the sight of a private thus engaged after a long
+day's march, but when you reflect on the exact proportion of the 'might,
+majesty, dominion, and power' of the British Empire which stands on
+those feet you take an interest in the proceedings.
+
+'There's a blister, bad luck to ut, on the heel,' said Mulvaney. 'I
+can't touch ut. Prick ut out, little man.'
+
+Ortheris took out his house-wife, eased the trouble with a needle,
+stabbed Mulvaney in the calf with the same weapon, and was swiftly
+kicked into the fire.
+
+'I've bruk the best av my toes over you, ye grinnin' child av
+disruption,' said Mulvaney, sitting cross-legged and nursing his feet;
+then seeing me, 'Oh, ut's you, sorr! Be welkim, an' take that maraudin'
+scutt's place. Jock, hold him down on the cindhers for a bit.'
+
+But Ortheris escaped and went elsewhere, as I took possession of the
+hollow he had scraped for himself and lined with his greatcoat. Learoyd
+on the other side of the fire grinned affably and in a minute fell fast
+asleep.
+
+'There's the height av politeness for you,' said Mulvaney, lighting
+his pipe with a flaming branch. 'But Jock's eaten half a box av your
+sardines at wan gulp, an' I think the tin too. What's the best wid you,
+sorr, an' how did you happen to be on the losin' side this day whin we
+captured you?'
+
+'The Army of the South is winning all along the line,' I said.
+
+'Then that line's the hangman's rope, savin' your presence. You'll
+learn to-morrow how we rethreated to dhraw thim on before we made thim
+trouble, an' that's what a woman does. By the same tokin, we'll be
+attacked before the dawnin' an' ut would be betther not to slip your
+boots. How do I know that? By the light av pure reason. Here are three
+companies av us ever so far inside av the enemy's flank an' a crowd av
+roarin', tarin', squealin' cavalry gone on just to turn out the whole
+hornet's nest av them. Av course the enemy will pursue, by brigades like
+as not, an' thin we'll have to run for ut. Mark my words. I am av the
+opinion av Polonius whin he said, "Don't fight wid ivry scutt for the
+pure joy av fightin', but if you do, knock the nose av him first an'
+frequint." We ought to ha' gone on an' helped the Ghoorkhas.'
+
+'But what do you know about Polonius?' I demanded. This was a new side
+of Mulvaney's character.
+
+'All that Shakespeare iver wrote an' a dale more that the gallery
+shouted,' said the man of war, carefully lacing his boots. 'Did I not
+tell you av Silver's theatre in Dublin, whin I was younger than I am now
+an' a patron av the drama? Ould Silver wud never pay actor-man or woman
+their just dues, an' by consequince his comp'nies was collapsible at the
+last minut. Thin the bhoys wud clamour to take a part, an' oft as not
+ould Silver made them pay for the fun. Faith, I've seen Hamlut played
+wid a new black eye an' the queen as full as a cornucopia. I remimber
+wanst Hogin that 'listed in the Black Tyrone an' was shot in South
+Africa, he sejuced ould Silver into givin' him Hamlut's part instid av
+me that had a fine fancy for rhetoric in those days. Av course I wint
+into the gallery an' began to fill the pit wid other people's hats,
+an' I passed the time av day to Hogin walkin' through Denmark like a
+hamstrung mule wid a pall on his back. "Hamlut," sez I, "there's a hole
+in your heel. Pull up your shtockin's, Hamlut," sez I, "Hamlut, Hamlut,
+for the love av decincy dhrop that skull an' pull up your shtockin's."
+The whole house begun to tell him that. He stopped his soliloquishms
+mid-between. "My shtockin's may be comin' down or they may not," sez
+he, screwin' his eye into the gallery, for well he knew who I was. "But
+afther this performince is over me an' the Ghost 'll trample the tripes
+out av you, Terence, wid your ass's bray!" An' that's how I come to know
+about Hamlut. Eyah! Those days, those days! Did you iver have onendin'
+devilmint an' nothin' to pay for it in your life, sorr?'
+
+'Never, without having to pay,' I said.
+
+'That's thrue! 'Tis mane whin you considher on ut; but ut's the same wid
+horse or fut. A headache if you dhrink, an' a belly-ache if you eat too
+much, an' a heart-ache to kape all down. Faith, the beast only gets the
+colic, an' he's the lucky man.'
+
+He dropped his head and stared into the fire, fingering his moustache
+the while. From the far side of the bivouac the voice of Corbet-Nolan,
+senior subaltern of B company, uplifted itself in an ancient and much
+appreciated song of sentiment, the men moaning melodiously behind him.
+
+     The north wind blew coldly, she drooped from that hour,
+     My own little Kathleen, my sweet little Kathleen,
+     Kathleen, my Kathleen, Kathleen O'Moore!
+
+With forty-five O's in the last word: even at that distance you might
+have cut the soft South Irish accent with a shovel.
+
+'For all we take we must pay, but the price is cruel high,' murmured
+Mulvaney when the chorus had ceased.
+
+'What's the trouble?' I said gently, for I knew that he was a man of an
+inextinguishable sorrow.
+
+'Hear now,' said he. 'Ye know what I am now. _I_ know what I mint to be
+at the beginnin' av my service. I've tould you time an' again, an' what
+I have not Dinah Shadd has. An' what am I? Oh, Mary Mother av Hiven, an
+ould dhrunken, untrustable baste av a privit that has seen the reg'ment
+change out from colonel to drummer-boy, not wanst or twice, but scores
+av times! Ay, scores! An' me not so near gettin' promotion as in the
+first! An' me livin' on an' kapin' clear av clink, not by my own good
+conduck, but the kindness av some orf'cer-bhoy young enough to be son
+to me! Do I not know ut? Can I not tell whin I'm passed over at p'rade,
+tho' I'm rockin' full av liquor an' ready to fall all in wan piece,
+such as even a suckin' child might see, bekaze, "Oh, 'tis only ould
+Mulvaney!" An' whin I'm let off in ord'ly-room through some thrick of
+the tongue an' a ready answer an' the ould man's mercy, is ut smilin'
+I feel whin I fall away an' go back to Dinah Shadd, thryin' to carry ut
+all off as a joke? Not I! 'Tis hell to me, dumb hell through ut all;
+an' next time whin the fit comes I will be as bad again. Good cause the
+reg'ment has to know me for the best soldier in ut. Better cause have I
+to know mesilf for the worst man. I'm only fit to tache the new drafts
+what I'll niver learn mesilf; an' I am sure, as tho' I heard ut, that
+the minut wan av these pink-eyed recruities gets away from my "Mind
+ye now," an' "Listen to this, Jim, bhoy,"--sure I am that the
+sergint houlds me up to him for a warnin'. So I tache, as they say at
+musketry-instruction, by direct and ricochet fire. Lord be good to me,
+for I have stud some throuble!'
+
+'Lie down and go to sleep,' said I, not being able to comfort or advise.
+'You're the best man in the regiment, and, next to Ortheris, the biggest
+fool. Lie down and wait till we're attacked. What force will they turn
+out? Guns, think you?'
+
+'Try that wid your lorrds an' ladies, twistin' an' turnin' the talk,
+tho' you mint ut well. Ye cud say nothin' to help me, an' yet ye niver
+knew what cause I had to be what I am.'
+
+'Begin at the beginning and go on to the end,' I said royally. 'But rake
+up the fire a bit first.'
+
+I passed Ortheris's bayonet for a poker.
+
+'That shows how little we know what we do,' said Mulvaney, putting it
+aside. 'Fire takes all the heart out av the steel, an' the next time,
+may be, that our little man is fighting for his life his bradawl
+'ll break, an' so you'll ha' killed him, manin' no more than to kape
+yourself warm. 'Tis a recruity's thrick that. Pass the clanin'-rod,
+sorr.'
+
+I snuggled down abased; and after an interval the voice of Mulvaney
+began.
+
+'Did I iver tell you how Dinah Shadd came to be wife av mine?'
+
+I dissembled a burning anxiety that I had felt for some months--ever
+since Dinah Shadd, the strong, the patient, and the infinitely tender,
+had of her own good love and free will washed a shirt for me, moving in
+a barren land where washing was not.
+
+'I can't remember,' I said casually. 'Was it before or after you made
+love to Annie Bragin, and got no satisfaction?'
+
+The story of Annie Bragin is written in another place. It is one of the
+many less respectable episodes in Mulvaney's chequered career.
+
+'Before--before--long before, was that business av Annie Bragin an' the
+corp'ril's ghost. Niver woman was the worse for me whin I had married
+Dinah. There's a time for all things, an' I know how to kape all things
+in place--barrin' the dhrink, that kapes me in my place wid no hope av
+comin' to be aught else.'
+
+'Begin at the beginning,' I insisted. 'Mrs. Mulvaney told me that you
+married her when you were quartered in Krab Bokhar barracks.'
+
+'An' the same is a cess-pit,' said Mulvaney piously. 'She spoke thrue,
+did Dinah. 'Twas this way. Talkin' av that, have ye iver fallen in love,
+sorr?'
+
+I preserved the silence of the damned. Mulvaney continued--
+
+'Thin I will assume that ye have not. _I_ did. In the days av my youth,
+as I have more than wanst tould you, I was a man that filled the eye an'
+delighted the sowl av women. Niver man was hated as I have bin. Niver
+man was loved as I--no, not within half a day's march av ut! For the
+first five years av my service, whin I was what I wud give my sowl to be
+now, I tuk whatever was within my reach an' digested ut--an that's
+more than most men can say. Dhrink I tuk, an' ut did me no harm. By the
+Hollow av Hiven, I cud play wid four women at wanst, an' kape them from
+findin' out anythin' about the other three, an' smile like a full-blown
+marigold through ut all. Dick Coulhan, av the battery we'll have down on
+us to-night, could drive his team no betther than I mine, an' I hild
+the worser cattle! An' so I lived, an' so I was happy till afther
+that business wid Annie Bragin--she that turned me off as cool as a
+meat-safe, an' taught me where I stud in the mind av an honest woman.
+'Twas no sweet dose to swallow.
+
+'Afther that I sickened awhile an' tuk thought to my reg'mental work;
+conceiting mesilf I wud study an' be a sergint, an' a major-gineral
+twinty minutes afther that. But on top av my ambitiousness there was an
+empty place in my sowl, an' me own opinion av mesilf cud not fill ut.
+Sez I to mesilf, "Terence, you're a great man an' the best set-up in the
+reg'mint. Go on an' get promotion." Sez mesilf to me, "What for?" Sez
+I to mesilf, "For the glory av ut!" Sez mesilf to me, "Will that fill
+these two strong arrums av yours, Terence?" "Go to the devil," sez I
+to mesilf. "Go to the married lines," sez mesilf to me. "'Tis the same
+thing," sez I to mesilf. "Av you're the same man, ut is," said mesilf
+to me; an' wid that I considhered on ut a long while. Did you iver feel
+that way, sorr?'
+
+I snored gently, knowing that if Mulvaney were uninterrupted he would
+go on. The clamour from the bivouac fires beat up to the stars, as the
+rival singers of the companies were pitted against each other.
+
+'So I felt that way an' a bad time ut was. Wanst, bein' a fool, I
+wint into the married lines more for the sake av spakin' to our ould
+colour-sergint Shadd than for any thruck wid women-folk. I was a
+corp'ril then--rejuced aftherwards, but a corp'ril then. I've got a
+photograft av mesilf to prove ut. "You'll take a cup av tay wid us?" sez
+Shadd. "I will that," I sez, "tho' tay is not my divarsion."
+
+'"'Twud be better for you if ut were," sez ould Mother Shadd, an'
+she had ought to know, for Shadd, in the ind av his service, dhrank
+bung-full each night.
+
+'Wid that I tuk off my gloves--there was pipe-clay in thim, so that they
+stud alone--an' pulled up my chair, lookin' round at the china ornaments
+an' bits av things in the Shadds' quarters. They were things that
+belonged to a man, an' no camp-kit, here to-day an' dishipated next.
+"You're comfortable in this place, sergint," sez I. "'Tis the wife
+that did ut, boy," sez he, pointin' the stem av his pipe to ould Mother
+Shadd, an' she smacked the top av his bald head apon the compliment.
+"That manes you want money," sez she.
+
+'An' thin--an' thin whin the kettle was to be filled, Dinah came in--my
+Dinah--her sleeves rowled up to the elbow an' her hair in a winkin'
+glory over her forehead, the big blue eyes beneath twinklin' like
+stars on a frosty night, an' the tread av her two feet lighter than
+waste-paper from the colonel's basket in ord'ly-room whin ut's emptied.
+Bein' but a shlip av a girl she went pink at seein' me, an' I twisted me
+moustache an' looked at a picture forninst the wall. Niver show a
+woman that ye care the snap av a finger for her, an' begad she'll come
+bleatin' to your boot-heels!'
+
+'I suppose that's why you followed Annie Bragin till everybody in the
+married quarters laughed at you,' said I, remembering that unhallowed
+wooing and casting off the disguise of drowsiness.
+
+'I'm layin' down the gin'ral theory av the attack,' said Mulvaney,
+driving his boot into the dying fire. 'If you read the Soldier's
+Pocket Book, which niver any soldier reads, you'll see that there
+are exceptions. Whin Dinah was out av the door (an' 'twas as tho' the
+sunlight had shut too)--"Mother av Hiven, sergint," sez I, "but is that
+your daughter?"--"I've believed that way these eighteen years," sez ould
+Shadd, his eyes twinklin'; "but Mrs. Shadd has her own opinion, like
+iv'ry woman,"--"'Tis wid yours this time, for a mericle," sez Mother
+Shadd. "Thin why in the name av fortune did I niver see her before?"
+sez I. "Bekaze you've been thrapesin' round wid the married women these
+three years past. She was a bit av a child till last year, an' she shot
+up wid the spring," sez ould Mother Shadd. "I'll thrapese no more," sez
+I. "D'you mane that?" sez ould Mother Shadd, lookin' at me side-ways
+like a hen looks at a hawk whin the chickens are runnin' free. "Try me,
+an' tell," sez I. Wid that I pulled on my gloves, dhrank off the tay,
+an' went out av the house as stiff as at gin'ral p'rade, for well I knew
+that Dinah Shadd's eyes were in the small av my back out av the scullery
+window. Faith! that was the only time I mourned I was not a cav'lry-man
+for the pride av the spurs to jingle.
+
+'I wint out to think, an' I did a powerful lot av thinkin', but ut all
+came round to that shlip av a girl in the dotted blue dhress, wid the
+blue eyes an' the sparkil in them. Thin I kept off canteen, an' I kept
+to the married quarthers, or near by, on the chanst av meetin' Dinah.
+Did I meet her? Oh, my time past, did I not; wid a lump in my throat as
+big as my valise an' my heart goin' like a farrier's forge on a Saturday
+morning? 'Twas "Good day to ye, Miss Dinah," an' "Good day t'you,
+corp'ril," for a week or two, and divil a bit further could I get bekaze
+av the respect I had to that girl that I cud ha' broken betune finger
+an' thumb.'
+
+Here I giggled as I recalled the gigantic figure of Dinah Shadd when she
+handed me my shirt.
+
+'Ye may laugh,' grunted Mulvaney. 'But I'm speakin' the trut', an
+'tis you that are in fault. Dinah was a girl that wud ha' taken the
+imperiousness out av the Duchess av Clonmel in those days. Flower hand,
+foot av shod air, an' the eyes av the livin' mornin' she had that is my
+wife to-day--ould Dinah, and niver aught else than Dinah Shadd to me.
+
+''Twas after three weeks standin' off an' on, an' niver makin' headway
+excipt through the eyes, that a little drummer-boy grinned in me face
+whin I had admonished him wid the buckle av my belt for riotin' all over
+the place. "An' I'm not the only wan that doesn't kape to barricks,"
+sez he. I tuk him by the scruff av his neck,--my heart was hung on a
+hair-thrigger those days, you will onderstand--an' "Out wid ut," sez I,
+"or I'll lave no bone av you unbreakable."--"Speak to Dempsey," sez he
+howlin'. "Dempsey which?" sez I, "ye unwashed limb av Satan."--"Av the
+Bob-tailed Dhragoons," sez he. "He's seen her home from her aunt's
+house in the civil lines four times this fortnight."--"Child!" sez
+I, dhroppin' him, "your tongue's stronger than your body. Go to your
+quarters. I'm sorry I dhressed you down."
+
+'At that I went four ways to wanst huntin' Dempsey. I was mad to think
+that wid all my airs among women I shud ha' been chated by a basin-faced
+fool av a cav'lry-man not fit to trust on a trunk. Presintly I found
+him in our lines--the Bobtails was quartered next us--an' a tallowy,
+topheavy son av a she-mule he was wid his big brass spurs an' his
+plastrons on his epigastrons an' all. But he niver flinched a hair.
+
+'"A word wid you, Dempsey," sez I. "You've walked wid Dinah Shadd four
+times this fortnight gone."
+
+'"What's that to you?" sez he. "I'll walk forty times more, an' forty on
+top av that, ye shovel-futted clod-breakin' infantry lance-corp'ril."
+
+'Before I cud gyard he had his gloved fist home on my cheek an' down
+I went full-sprawl. "Will that content you?" sez he, blowin' on his
+knuckles for all the world like a Scots Greys orf'cer. "Content!" sez
+I. "For your own sake, man, take off your spurs, peel your jackut, an'
+onglove. 'Tis the beginnin' av the overture; stand up!"
+
+'He stud all he know, but he niver peeled his jackut, an' his shoulders
+had no fair play. I was fightin' for Dinah Shadd an' that cut on my
+cheek. What hope had he forninst me? "Stand up," sez I, time an' again
+whin he was beginnin' to quarter the ground an' gyard high an' go large.
+"This isn't ridin'-school," I sez. "O man, stand up an' let me get in
+at ye." But whin I saw he wud be runnin' about, I grup his shtock in
+my left an' his waist-belt in my right an' swung him clear to my right
+front, head undher, he hammerin' my nose till the wind was knocked out
+av him on the bare ground. "Stand up," sez I, "or I'll kick your head
+into your chest!" and I wud ha' done ut too, so ragin' mad I was.
+
+'"My collar-bone's bruk," sez he. "Help me back to lines. I'll walk wid
+her no more." So I helped him back.'
+
+'And was his collar-bone broken?' I asked, for I fancied that only
+Learoyd could neatly accomplish that terrible throw.
+
+'He pitched on his left shoulder-point. Ut was. Next day the news was in
+both barricks, an' whin I met Dinah Shadd wid a cheek on me like all the
+reg'mintal tailor's samples there was no "Good mornin', corp'ril,"
+or aught else. "An' what have I done, Miss Shadd," sez I, very bould,
+plantin' mesilf forninst her, "that ye should not pass the time of day?"
+
+'"Ye've half-killed rough-rider Dempsey," sez she, her dear blue eyes
+fillin' up.
+
+'"May be," sez I. "Was he a friend av yours that saw ye home four times
+in the fortnight?"
+
+'"Yes," sez she, but her mouth was down at the corners. "An'--an' what's
+that to you?" she sez.
+
+'"Ask Dempsey," sez I, purtendin' to go away.
+
+'"Did you fight for me then, ye silly man?" she sez, tho' she knew ut
+all along.
+
+'"Who else?" sez I, an' I tuk wan pace to the front.
+
+'"I wasn't worth ut," sez she, fingerin' in her apron,
+
+'"That's for me to say," sez I. "Shall I say ut?"
+
+'"Yes," sez she in a saint's whisper, an' at that I explained mesilf;
+and she tould me what ivry man that is a man, an' many that is a woman,
+hears wanst in his life.
+
+'"But what made ye cry at startin', Dinah, darlin'?'" sez I.
+
+'"Your--your bloody cheek," sez she, duckin' her little head down on my
+sash (I was on duty for the day) an' whimperin' like a sorrowful angil.
+
+'Now a man cud take that two ways. I tuk ut as pleased me best an' my
+first kiss wid ut. Mother av Innocence! but I kissed her on the tip
+av the nose an' undher the eye; an' a girl that let's a kiss come
+tumble-ways like that has never been kissed before. Take note av that,
+sorr. Thin we wint hand in hand to ould Mother Shadd like two little
+childher, an' she said 'twas no bad thing, an' ould Shadd nodded behind
+his pipe, an' Dinah ran away to her own room. That day I throd on
+rollin' clouds. All earth was too small to hould me. Begad, I cud ha'
+hiked the sun out av the sky for a live coal to my pipe, so magnificent
+I was. But I tuk recruities at squad-drill instid, an' began wid general
+battalion advance whin I shud ha' been balance-steppin' them. Eyah! that
+day! that day!'
+
+A very long pause. 'Well?' said I.
+
+''Twas all wrong,' said Mulvaney, with an enormous sigh. 'An' I know
+that ev'ry bit av ut was my own foolishness. That night I tuk maybe the
+half av three pints--not enough to turn the hair of a man in his natural
+senses. But I was more than half drunk wid pure joy, an' that canteen
+beer was so much whisky to me. I can't tell how it came about, but
+BEKAZE I had no thought for anywan except Dinah, BEKAZE I hadn't slipped
+her little white arms from my neck five minuts, BEKAZE the breath of her
+kiss was not gone from my mouth, I must go through the married lines
+on my way to quarters an' I must stay talkin' to a red-headed Mullingar
+heifer av a girl, Judy Sheehy, that was daughter to Mother Sheehy, the
+wife of Nick Sheehy, the canteen-sergint--the Black Curse av Shielygh be
+on the whole brood that are above groun' this day!
+
+"'An' what are ye houldin' your head that high for, corp'ril?" sez Judy.
+"Come in an' thry a cup av tay," she sez, standin' in the doorway. Bein'
+an ontrustable fool, an' thinkin' av anything but tay, I wint.
+
+'"Mother's at canteen," sez Judy, smoothin' the hair av hers that was
+like red snakes, an' lookin' at me cornerways out av her green cats'
+eyes. "Ye will not mind, corp'ril?"
+
+'"I can endure," sez I; ould Mother Sheehy bein' no divarsion av mine,
+nor her daughter too. Judy fetched the tea things an' put thim on the
+table, leanin' over me very close to get thim square. I dhrew back,
+thinkin' av Dinah.
+
+'"Is ut afraid you are av a girl alone?" sez Judy.
+
+'"No," sez I. "Why should I be?"
+
+'"That rests wid the girl," sez Judy, dhrawin' her chair next to mine.
+
+'"Thin there let ut rest," sez I; an' thinkin' I'd been a trifle
+onpolite, I sez, "The tay's not quite sweet enough for my taste. Put
+your little finger in the cup, Judy. 'Twill make ut necthar."
+
+'"What's necthar?" sez she.
+
+"'Somethin' very sweet," sez I; an' for the sinful life av me I cud not
+help lookin' at her out av the corner av my eye, as I was used to look
+at a woman.
+
+'"Go on wid ye, corp'ril," sez she. "You're a flirrt."
+
+'"On me sowl I'm not," sez I.
+
+'"Then you're a cruel handsome man, an' that's worse," sez she, heaving
+big sighs an' lookin' crossways.
+
+'"You know your own mind," sez I.
+
+'"'Twud be better for me if I did not," she sez.
+
+'"There's a dale to be said on both sides av that," sez I, unthinkin'.
+
+'"Say your own part av ut, then, Terence, darlin'," sez she; "for begad
+I'm thinkin' I've said too much or too little for an honest girl," an'
+wid that she put her arms round my neck an' kissed me.
+
+'"There's no more to be said afther that," sez I, kissin' her back
+again--Oh the mane scutt that I was, my head ringin' wid Dinah Shadd!
+How does ut come about, sorr, that when a man has put the comether on
+wan woman, he's sure bound to put it on another? 'Tis the same thing at
+musketry. Wan day ivry shot goes wide or into the bank, an' the next,
+lay high lay low, sight or snap, ye can't get off the bull's-eye for ten
+shots runnin'.'
+
+'That only happens to a man who has had a good deal of experience. He
+does it without thinking,' I replied.
+
+'Thankin' you for the complimint, sorr, ut may be so. But I'm doubtful
+whether you mint ut for a complimint. Hear now; I sat there wid Judy
+on my knee tellin' me all manner av nonsinse an' only sayin' "yes" an'
+"no," when I'd much better ha' kept tongue betune teeth. An' that was
+not an hour afther I had left Dinah! What I was thinkin' av I
+cannot say. Presintly, quiet as a cat, ould Mother Sheehy came in
+velvet-dhrunk. She had her daughter's red hair, but 'twas bald in
+patches, an' I cud see in her wicked ould face, clear as lightnin', what
+Judy wud be twenty years to come. I was for jumpin' up, but Judy niver
+moved.
+
+'"Terence has promust, mother," sez she, an' the could sweat bruk out
+all over me. Ould Mother Sheehy sat down of a heap an' began playin' wid
+the cups. "Thin you're a well-matched pair," she sez very thick. "For
+he's the biggest rogue that iver spoiled the queen's shoe-leather" an'--
+
+'"I'm off, Judy," sez I. "Ye should not talk nonsinse to your mother.
+Get her to bed, girl."
+
+'"Nonsinse!" sez the ould woman, prickin' up her ears like a cat an'
+grippin' the table-edge. "'Twill be the most nonsinsical nonsinse for
+you, ye grinnin' badger, if nonsinse 'tis. Git clear, you. I'm goin' to
+bed."
+
+'I ran out into the dhark, my head in a stew an' my heart sick, but I
+had sinse enough to see that I'd brought ut all on mysilf. "It's this to
+pass the time av day to a panjandhrum av hell-cats," sez I. "What I've
+said, an' what I've not said do not matther. Judy an' her dam will hould
+me for a promust man, an' Dinah will give me the go, an' I desarve ut. I
+will go an' get dhrunk," sez I, "an' forget about ut, for 'tis plain I'm
+not a marrin' man."
+
+'On my way to canteen I ran against Lascelles, colour-sergint that was
+av E Comp'ny, a hard, hard man, wid a torment av a wife. "You've the
+head av a drowned man on your shoulders," sez he; "an' you're goin'
+where you'll get a worse wan. Come back," sez he. "Let me go," sez I.
+"I've thrown my luck over the wall wid my own hand!"--"Then that's not
+the way to get ut back again," sez he. "Have out wid your throuble, ye
+fool-bhoy." An' I tould him how the matther was.
+
+'He sucked in his lower lip. "You've been thrapped," sez he. "Ju Sheehy
+wud be the betther for a man's name to hers as soon as can. An' we
+thought ye'd put the comether on her,--that's the natural vanity of the
+baste, Terence, you're a big born fool, but you're not bad enough
+to marry into that comp'ny. If you said anythin', an' for all your
+protestations I'm sure ye did--or did not, which is worse,--eat ut
+all--lie like the father of all lies, but come out av ut free av Judy.
+Do I not know what ut is to marry a woman that was the very spit
+an' image av Judy whin she was young? I'm gettin' old an' I've larnt
+patience, but you, Terence, you'd raise hand on Judy an' kill her in a
+year. Never mind if Dinah gives you the go, you've desarved ut; never
+mind if the whole reg'mint laughs you all day. Get shut av Judy an' her
+mother. They can't dhrag you to church, but if they do, they'll dhrag
+you to hell. Go back to your quarters and lie down," sez he. Thin over
+his shoulder, "You MUST ha' done with thim."
+
+'Next day I wint to see Dinah, but there was no tucker in me as I
+walked. I knew the throuble wud come soon enough widout any handlin' av
+mine, an' I dreaded ut sore.
+
+'I heard Judy callin' me, but I hild straight on to the Shadds'
+quarthers, an' Dinah wud ha' kissed me but I put her back.
+
+'"Whin all's said, darlin'," sez I, "you can give ut me if ye will, tho'
+I misdoubt 'twill be so easy to come by then."
+
+'I had scarce begun to put the explanation into shape before Judy an'
+her mother came to the door. I think there was a verandah, but I'm
+forgettin'.
+
+'"Will ye not step in?" sez Dinah, pretty and polite, though the Shadds
+had no dealin's with the Sheehys. Ould Mother Shadd looked up quick, an'
+she was the fust to see the throuble; for Dinah was her daughter.
+
+'"I'm pressed for time to-day," sez Judy as bould as brass; "an' I've
+only come for Terence,--my promust man. 'Tis strange to find him here
+the day afther the day."
+
+'Dinah looked at me as though I had hit her, an' I answered straight.
+
+'"There was some nonsinse last night at the Sheehys' quarthers, an'
+Judy's carryin' on the joke, darlin'," sez I.
+
+'"At the Sheehys' quarthers?" sez Dinah very slow, an' Judy cut in wid:
+"He was there from nine till ten, Dinah Shadd, an' the betther half av
+that time I was sittin' on his knee, Dinah Shadd. Ye may look and ye may
+look an' ye may look me up an' down, but ye won't look away that Terence
+is my promust man. Terence, darlin', 'tis time for us to be comin'
+home."
+
+'Dinah Shadd niver said word to Judy. "Ye left me at half-past
+eight," she sez to me, "an I niver thought that ye'd leave me for
+Judy,--promises or no promises. Go back wid her, you that have to be
+fetched by a girl! I'm done with you," sez she, and she ran into her own
+room, her mother followin'. So I was alone wid those two women and at
+liberty to spake my sentiments.
+
+'"Judy Sheehy," sez I, "if you made a fool av me betune the lights you
+shall not do ut in the day. I niver promised you words or lines."
+
+'"You lie," sez ould Mother Sheehy, "an' may ut choke you where you
+stand!" She was far gone in dhrink.
+
+'"An' tho' ut choked me where I stud I'd not change," sez I. "Go home,
+Judy. I take shame for a decent girl like you dhraggin' your mother out
+bare-headed on this errand. Hear now, and have ut for an answer. I gave
+my word to Dinah Shadd yesterday, an', more blame to me, I was wid you
+last night talkin' nonsinse but nothin' more. You've chosen to thry to
+hould me on ut. I will not be held thereby for anythin' in the world. Is
+that enough?"
+
+'Judy wint pink all over. "An' I wish you joy av the perjury," sez she,
+duckin' a curtsey. "You've lost a woman that would ha' wore her hand to
+the bone for your pleasure; an' 'deed, Terence, ye were not thrapped..."
+Lascelles must ha' spoken plain to her. "I am such as Dinah is--'deed
+I am! Ye've lost a fool av a girl that'll niver look at you again, an'
+ye've lost what he niver had,--your common honesty. If you manage your
+men as you manage your love-makin', small wondher they call you the
+worst corp'ril in the comp'ny. Come away, mother," sez she.
+
+'But divil a fut would the ould woman budge! "D'you hould by that?" sez
+she, peerin' up under her thick gray eyebrows.
+
+'"Ay, an' wud," sez I, "tho' Dinah give me the go twinty times. I'll
+have no thruck with you or yours," sez I. "Take your child away, ye
+shameless woman."
+
+"'An' am I shameless?" sez she, bringin' her hands up above her head.
+"Thin what are you, ye lyin', schamin', weak-kneed, dhirty-souled son
+av a sutler? Am _I_ shameless? Who put the open shame on me an' my child
+that we shud go beggin' through the lines in the broad daylight for
+the broken word of a man? Double portion of my shame be on you, Terence
+Mulvaney, that think yourself so strong! By Mary and the saints, by
+blood and water an' by ivry sorrow that came into the world since the
+beginnin', the black blight fall on you and yours, so that you may niver
+be free from pain for another when ut's not your own! May your heart
+bleed in your breast drop by drop wid all your friends laughin' at the
+bleedin'! Strong you think yourself? May your strength be a curse to you
+to dhrive you into the divil's hands against your own will! Clear-eyed
+you are? May your eyes see clear ivry step av the dark path you take
+till the hot cindhers av hell put thim out! May the ragin' dry thirst
+in my own ould bones go to you that you shall niver pass bottle full
+nor glass empty. God preserve the light av your onderstandin' to you,
+my jewel av a bhoy, that ye may niver forget what you mint to be an' do,
+whin you're wallowin' in the muck! May ye see the betther and follow the
+worse as long as there's breath in your body; an' may ye die quick in
+a strange land, watchin' your death before ut takes you, an' enable to
+stir hand or foot!"
+
+'I heard a scufflin' in the room behind, and thin Dinah Shadd's hand
+dhropped into mine like a rose-leaf into a muddy road.
+
+'"The half av that I'll take," sez she, "an' more too if I can. Go home,
+ye silly talkin' woman,--go home an' confess."
+
+'"Come away! Come away!" sez Judy, pullin' her mother by the shawl.
+"'Twas none av Terence's fault. For the love av Mary stop the talkin'!"
+
+"'An' you!" said ould Mother Sheehy, spinnin' round forninst Dinah.
+"Will ye take the half av that man's load? Stand off from him,
+Dinah Shadd, before he takes you down too--you that look to be a
+quarther-master-sergeant's wife in five years. You look too high, child.
+You shall WASH for the quarther-master-sergeant, whin he plases to give
+you the job out av charity; but a privit's wife you shall be to the end,
+an' ivry sorrow of a privit's wife you shall know and niver a joy but
+wan, that shall go from you like the running tide from a rock. The pain
+av bearin' you shall know but niver the pleasure av giving the breast;
+an' you shall put away a man-child into the common ground wid niver a
+priest to say a prayer over him, an' on that man-child ye shall think
+ivry day av your life. Think long, Dinah Shadd, for you'll niver have
+another tho' you pray till your knees are bleedin'. The mothers av
+childher shall mock you behind your back when you're wringing over the
+wash-tub. You shall know what ut is to help a dhrunken husband home an'
+see him go to the gyard-room. Will that plase you, Dinah Shadd, that
+won't be seen talkin' to my daughter? You shall talk to worse than
+Judy before all's over. The sergints' wives shall look down on you
+contemptuous, daughter av a sergint, an' you shall cover ut all up wid a
+smiling face when your heart's burstin'. Stand off av him, Dinah Shadd,
+for I've put the Black Curse of Shielygh upon him an' his own mouth
+shall make ut good."
+
+'She pitched forward on her head an' began foamin' at the mouth. Dinah
+Shadd ran out wid water, an' Judy dhragged the ould woman into the
+verandah till she sat up.
+
+'"I'm old an' forlore," she sez, thremblin' an' cryin', "and 'tis like I
+say a dale more than I mane."
+
+'"When you're able to walk,--go," says ould Mother Shadd. "This house
+has no place for the likes av you that have cursed my daughter."
+
+'"Eyah!" said the ould woman. "Hard words break no bones, an' Dinah
+Shadd'll kape the love av her husband till my bones are green corn. Judy
+darlin', I misremember what I came here for. Can you lend us the bottom
+av a taycup av tay, Mrs. Shadd?"
+
+'But Judy dhragged her off cryin' as tho' her heart wud break. An' Dinah
+Shadd an' I, in ten minutes we had forgot ut all.'
+
+'Then why do you remember it now?' said I.
+
+'Is ut like I'd forget? Ivry word that wicked ould woman spoke fell
+thrue in my life aftherwards, an' I cud ha' stud ut all--stud ut
+all--excipt when my little Shadd was born. That was on the line av march
+three months afther the regiment was taken with cholera. We were betune
+Umballa an' Kalka thin, an' I was on picket. Whin I came off duty the
+women showed me the child, an' ut turned on uts side an' died as I
+looked. We buried him by the road, an' Father Victor was a day's march
+behind wid the heavy baggage, so the comp'ny captain read a prayer.
+An' since then I've been a childless man, an' all else that ould Mother
+Sheehy put upon me an' Dinah Shadd. What do you think, sorr?'
+
+I thought a good deal, but it seemed better then to reach out for
+Mulvaney's hand. The demonstration nearly cost me the use of three
+fingers. Whatever he knows of his weaknesses, Mulvaney is entirely
+ignorant of his strength.
+
+'But what do you think?' he repeated, as I was straightening out the
+crushed fingers.
+
+My reply was drowned in yells and outcries from the next fire, where
+ten men were shouting for 'Orth'ris,' 'Privit Orth'ris,' 'Mistah
+Or--ther--ris!' 'Deah boy,' 'Cap'n Orth'ris,' 'Field-Marshal Orth'ris,'
+'Stanley, you pen'north o' pop, come 'ere to your own comp'ny!' And the
+cockney, who had been delighting another audience with recondite and
+Rabelaisian yarns, was shot down among his admirers by the major force.
+
+'You've crumpled my dress-shirt 'orrid,' said he, 'an' I shan't sing no
+more to this 'ere bloomin' drawin'-room.'
+
+Learoyd, roused by the confusion, uncoiled himself, crept behind
+Ortheris, and slung him aloft on his shoulders.
+
+'Sing, ye bloomin' hummin' bird!' said he, and Ortheris, beating time
+on Learoyd's skull, delivered himself, in the raucous voice of the
+Ratcliffe Highway, of this song:--
+
+    My girl she give me the go onst,
+      When I was a London lad,
+    An' I went on the drink for a fortnight,
+      An' then I went to the bad.
+    The Queen she give me a shillin'
+      To fight for 'er over the seas;
+    But Guv'ment built me a fever-trap,
+      An' Injia give me disease.
+
+Chorus.
+
+    Ho! don't you 'eed what a girl says,
+      An' don't you go for the beer;
+    But I was an ass when I was at grass,
+      An' that is why I'm 'ere.
+
+   I fired a shot at a Afghan,
+      The beggar 'e fired again,
+    An' I lay on my bed with a 'ole in my 'ed;
+      An' missed the next campaign!
+    I up with my gun at a Burman
+      Who carried a bloomin' dah,
+    But the cartridge stuck and the bay'nit bruk,
+      An' all I got was the scar.
+
+Chorus.
+
+    Ho! don't you aim at a Afghan
+       When you stand on the sky-line clear;
+    An' don't you go for a Burman
+      If none o' your friends is near.
+
+    I served my time for a corp'ral,
+      An' wetted my stripes with pop,
+    For I went on the bend with a intimate friend,
+      An' finished the night in the 'shop.'
+    I served my time for a sergeant;
+      The colonel 'e sez 'No!
+    The most you'll see is a full C. B.'
+
+
+[Footnote: Confined to barracks.]
+      An'...very next night 'twas so.
+
+Chorus.
+
+    Ho! don't you go for a corp'ral
+      Unless your 'ed is clear;
+    But I was an ass when I was at grass,
+      An' that is why I'm 'ere.
+
+    I've tasted the luck o' the army
+      In barrack an' camp an' clink,
+    An' I lost my tip through the bloomin' trip
+      Along o' the women an' drink.
+    I'm down at the heel o' my service
+      An' when I am laid on the shelf,
+    My very wust friend from beginning to end
+      By the blood of a mouse was myself!
+
+Chorus.
+
+    Ho! don't you 'eed what a girl says,
+      An' don't you go for the beer;
+    But I was an ass when I was at grass,
+      An' that is why I'm 'ere.
+
+'Ay, listen to our little man now, singin' an' shoutin' as tho'
+trouble had niver touched him. D'you remember when he went mad with the
+home-sickness?' said Mulvaney, recalling a never-to-be-forgotten season
+when Ortheris waded through the deep waters of affliction and behaved
+abominably. 'But he's talkin' bitter truth, though. Eyah!
+
+   'My very worst frind from beginnin' to ind
+    By the blood av a mouse was mesilf!'
+
+When I woke I saw Mulvaney, the night-dew gemming his moustache, leaning
+on his rifle at picket, lonely as Prometheus on his rock, with I know
+not what vultures tearing his liver.
+
+
+
+
+ON GREENHOW HILL
+
+
+ To Love's low voice she lent a careless ear;
+ Her hand within his rosy fingers lay,
+ A chilling weight. She would not turn or hear;
+ But with averted face went on her way.
+ But when pale Death, all featureless and grim,
+ Lifted his bony hand, and beckoning
+ Held out his cypress-wreath, she followed him,
+ And Love was left forlorn and wondering,
+ That she who for his bidding would not stay,
+ At Death's first whisper rose and went away.
+                                 RIVALS.
+
+'Ohe, Ahmed Din! Shafiz Ullah ahoo! Bahadur Khan, where are you? Come
+out of the tents, as I have done, and fight against the English. Don't
+kill your own kin! Come out to me!'
+
+The deserter from a native corps was crawling round the outskirts of the
+camp, firing at intervals, and shouting invitations to his old comrades.
+Misled by the rain and the darkness, he came to the English wing of the
+camp, and with his yelping and rifle-practice disturbed the men. They
+had been making roads all day, and were tired.
+
+Ortheris was sleeping at Learoyd's feet. 'Wot's all that?' he said
+thickly. Learoyd snored, and a Snider bullet ripped its way through
+the tent wall. The men swore. 'It's that bloomin' deserter from the
+Aurangabadis,' said Ortheris. 'Git up, some one, an' tell 'im 'e's come
+to the wrong shop.'
+
+'Go to sleep, little man,' said Mulvaney, who was steaming nearest the
+door. 'I can't arise an' expaytiate with him. 'Tis rainin' entrenchin'
+tools outside.'
+
+''Tain't because you bloomin' can't. It's 'cause you bloomin' won't, ye
+long, limp, lousy, lazy beggar, you. 'Ark to'im 'owlin'!'
+
+'Wot's the good of argifying? Put a bullet into the swine! 'E's keepin'
+us awake!' said another voice.
+
+A subaltern shouted angrily, and a dripping sentry whined from the
+darkness--
+
+''Tain't no good, sir. I can't see 'im. 'E's 'idin' somewhere down
+'ill.'
+
+Ortheris tumbled out of his blanket. 'Shall I try to get 'im, sir?' said
+he.
+
+'No,' was the answer. 'Lie down. I won't have the whole camp shooting
+all round the clock. Tell him to go and pot his friends.'
+
+Ortheris considered for a moment. Then, putting his head under the
+tent wall, he called, as a 'bus conductor calls in a block, ''Igher up,
+there! 'Igher up!'
+
+The men laughed, and the laughter was carried down wind to the deserter,
+who, hearing that he had made a mistake, went off to worry his own
+regiment half a mile away. He was received with shots; the Aurangabadis
+were very angry with him for disgracing their colours.
+
+'An' that's all right,' said Ortheris, withdrawing his head as he heard
+the hiccough of the Sniders in the distance. 'S'elp me Gawd, tho', that
+man's not fit to live--messin' with my beauty-sleep this way.'
+
+'Go out and shoot him in the morning, then,' said the subaltern
+incautiously. 'Silence in the tents now. Get your rest, men.'
+
+Ortheris lay down with a happy little sigh, and in two minutes there
+was no sound except the rain on the canvas and the all-embracing and
+elemental snoring of Learoyd.
+
+The camp lay on a bare ridge of the Himalayas, and for a week had been
+waiting for a flying column to make connection. The nightly rounds of
+the deserter and his friends had become a nuisance.
+
+In the morning the men dried themselves in hot sunshine and cleaned
+their grimy accoutrements. The native regiment was to take its turn of
+road-making that day while the Old Regiment loafed.
+
+'I'm goin' to lay for a shot at that man,' said Ortheris, when he had
+finished washing out his rifle. ''E comes up the watercourse every
+evenin' about five o'clock. If we go and lie out on the north 'ill a bit
+this afternoon we'll get 'im.'
+
+'You're a bloodthirsty little mosquito,' said Mulvaney, blowing blue
+clouds into the air. 'But I suppose I will have to come wid you.
+Fwhere's Jock?'
+
+'Gone out with the Mixed Pickles, 'cause 'e thinks 'isself a bloomin'
+marksman,' said Ortheris with scorn.
+
+The 'Mixed Pickles' were a detachment of picked shots, generally
+employed in clearing spurs of hills when the enemy were too impertinent.
+This taught the young officers how to handle men, and did not do the
+enemy much harm. Mulvaney and Ortheris strolled out of camp, and passed
+the Aurangabadis going to their road-making.
+
+'You've got to sweat to-day,' said Ortheris genially. 'We're going to
+get your man. You didn't knock 'im out last night by any chance, any of
+you?'
+
+'No. The pig went away mocking us. I had one shot at him,' said a
+private. 'He's my cousin, and _I_ ought to have cleared our dishonour.
+But good luck to you.'
+
+They went cautiously to the north hill, Ortheris leading, because, as he
+explained,'this is a long-range show, an' I've got to do it.' His was an
+almost passionate devotion to his rifle, which, by barrack-room report,
+he was supposed to kiss every night before turning in. Charges and
+scuffles he held in contempt, and, when they were inevitable, slipped
+between Mulvaney and Learoyd, bidding them to fight for his skin as well
+as their own. They never failed him. He trotted along, questing like a
+hound on a broken trail, through the wood of the north hill. At last
+he was satisfied, and threw himself down on the soft pine-needled
+slope that commanded a clear view of the watercourse and a brown, bare
+hillside beyond it. The trees made a scented darkness in which an army
+corps could have hidden from the sun-glare without.
+
+''Ere's the tail o' the wood,' said Ortheris. ''E's got to come up the
+watercourse, 'cause it gives 'im cover. We'll lay 'ere. 'Tain't not arf
+so bloomin' dusty neither.'
+
+He buried his nose in a clump of scentless white violets. No one had
+come to tell the flowers that the season of their strength was long
+past, and they had bloomed merrily in the twilight of the pines.
+
+'This is something like,' he said luxuriously. 'Wot a 'evinly clear drop
+for a bullet acrost! How much d'you make it, Mulvaney?'
+
+'Seven hunder. Maybe a trifle less, bekaze the air's so thin.'
+
+WOP! WOP! WOP! went a volley of musketry on the rear face of the north
+hill.
+
+'Curse them Mixed Pickles firin' at nothin'! They'll scare arf the
+country.'
+
+'Thry a sightin' shot in the middle of the row,' said Mulvaney, the man
+of many wiles. 'There's a red rock yonder he'll be sure to pass. Quick!'
+
+Ortheris ran his sight up to six hundred yards and fired. The bullet
+threw up a feather of dust by a clump of gentians at the base of the
+rock.
+
+'Good enough!' said Ortheris, snapping the scale down. 'You snick
+your sights to mine or a little lower. You're always firin' high. But
+remember, first shot to me. O Lordy! but it's a lovely afternoon.'
+
+The noise of the firing grew louder, and there was a tramping of men in
+the wood. The two lay very quiet, for they knew that the British soldier
+is desperately prone to fire at anything that moves or calls. Then
+Learoyd appeared, his tunic ripped across the breast by a bullet,
+looking ashamed of himself. He flung down on the pine-needles, breathing
+in snorts.
+
+'One o' them damned gardeners o' th' Pickles,' said he, fingering the
+rent. 'Firin' to th' right flank, when he knowed I was there. If I knew
+who he was I'd 'a' rippen the hide offan him. Look at ma tunic!'
+
+'That's the spishil trustability av a marksman. Train him to hit a fly
+wid a stiddy rest at seven hunder, an' he loose on anythin' he sees or
+hears up to th' mile. You're well out av that fancy-firin' gang, Jock.
+Stay here.'
+
+'Bin firin' at the bloomin' wind in the bloomin' tree-tops,' said
+Ortheris with a chuckle. 'I'll show you some firin' later on.'
+
+They wallowed in the pine-needles, and the sun warmed them where they
+lay. The Mixed Pickles ceased firing, and returned to camp, and left the
+wood to a few scared apes. The watercourse lifted up its voice in the
+silence, and talked foolishly to the rocks. Now and again the dull thump
+of a blasting charge three miles away told that the Aurangabadis were in
+difficulties with their road-making. The men smiled as they listened and
+lay still, soaking in the warm leisure. Presently Learoyd, between the
+whiffs of his pipe--
+
+'Seems queer--about 'im yonder--desertin' at all.'
+
+''E'll be a bloomin' side queerer when I've done with 'im,' said
+Ortheris. They were talking in whispers, for the stillness of the wood
+and the desire of slaughter lay heavy upon them.
+
+'I make no doubt he had his reasons for desertin'; but, my faith! I make
+less doubt ivry man has good reason for killin' him,' said Mulvaney.
+
+'Happen there was a lass tewed up wi' it. Men do more than more for th'
+sake of a lass.'
+
+'They make most av us 'list. They've no manner av right to make us
+desert.'
+
+'Ah; they make us 'list, or their fathers do,' said Learoyd softly,
+his helmet over his eyes. Ortheris's brows contracted savagely. He was
+watching the valley. 'If it's a girl I'll shoot the beggar twice over,
+an' second time for bein' a fool. You're blasted sentimental all of a
+sudden. Thinkin' o' your last near shave?'
+
+'Nay, lad; ah was but thinkin' o' what had happened.'
+
+'An' fwhat has happened, ye lumberin' child av calamity, that you're
+lowing like a cow-calf at the back av the pasture, an' suggestin'
+invidious excuses for the man Stanley's goin' to kill. Ye'll have to
+wait another hour yet, little man. Spit it out, Jock, an' bellow melojus
+to the moon. It takes an earthquake or a bullet graze to fetch aught out
+av you. Discourse, Don Juan! The a-moors av Lotharius Learoyd! Stanley,
+kape a rowlin' rig'mental eye on the valley.'
+
+'It's along o' yon hill there,' said Learoyd, watching the bare
+sub-Himalayan spur that reminded him of his Yorkshire moors. He was
+speaking more to himself than his fellows. 'Ay,' said he, 'Rumbolds Moor
+stands up ower Skipton town, an' Greenhow Hill stands up ower Pately
+Brig. I reckon you've never heeard tell o' Greenhow Hill, but you bit
+o' bare stuff if there was nobbut a white road windin' is like ut;
+strangely like. Moors an' moors an' moors, wi' never a tree for shelter,
+an' gray houses wi' flagstone rooves, and pewits cryin', an' a windhover
+goin' to and fro just like these kites. And cold! A wind that cuts you
+like a knife. You could tell Greenhow Hill folk by the red-apple
+colour o' their cheeks an' nose tips, and their blue eyes, driven
+into pinpoints by the wind. Miners mostly, burrowin' for lead i' th'
+hillsides, followin' the trail of th' ore vein same as a field-rat. It
+was the roughest minin' I ever seen. Yo'd come on a bit o' creakin' wood
+windlass like a well-head, an' you was let down i' th' bight of a rope,
+fendin' yoursen off the side wi' one hand, carryin' a candle stuck in
+a lump o' clay with t'other, an' clickin' hold of a rope with t'other
+hand.'
+
+'An' that's three of them,' said Mulvaney. 'Must be a good climate in
+those parts.'
+
+Learoyd took no heed.
+
+'An' then yo' came to a level, where you crept on your hands and knees
+through a mile o' windin' drift, an' you come out into a cave-place as
+big as Leeds Townhall, with a engine pumpin' water from workin's 'at
+went deeper still. It's a queer country, let alone minin', for the hill
+is full of those natural caves, an' the rivers an' the becks drops into
+what they call pot-holes, an' come out again miles away.'
+
+'Wot was you doin' there?' said Ortheris.
+
+'I was a young chap then, an' mostly went wi' 'osses, leadin' coal and
+lead ore; but at th' time I'm tellin' on I was drivin' the waggon-team
+i' th' big sumph. I didn't belong to that country-side by rights. I went
+there because of a little difference at home, an' at fust I took up wi'
+a rough lot. One night we'd been drinkin', an' I must ha' hed more than
+I could stand, or happen th' ale was none so good. Though i' them days,
+By for God, I never seed bad ale.' He flung his arms over his head, and
+gripped a vast handful of white violets. 'Nah,' said he, 'I never seed
+the ale I could not drink, the bacca I could not smoke, nor the lass I
+could not kiss. Well, we mun have a race home, the lot on us. I lost
+all th' others, an' when I was climbin' ower one of them walls built o'
+loose stones, I comes down into the ditch, stones and all, an' broke my
+arm. Not as I knawed much about it, for I fell on th' back of my head,
+an' was knocked stupid like. An' when I come to mysen it were mornin',
+an' I were lyin' on the settle i' Jesse Roantree's houseplace, an' 'Liza
+Roantree was settin' sewin', I ached all ovver, and my mouth were like
+a lime-kiln. She gave me a drink out of a china mug wi' gold letters--"A
+Present from Leeds"--as I looked at many and many a time at after.
+"Yo're to lie still while Dr. Warbottom comes, because your arm's
+broken, and father has sent a lad to fetch him. He found yo' when he was
+goin' to work, an' carried you here on his back," sez she. "Oa!" sez I;
+an' I shet my eyes, for I felt ashamed o' mysen. "Father's gone to his
+work these three hours, an' he said he'd tell 'em to get somebody to
+drive the tram." The clock ticked, an' a bee comed in the house, an'
+they rung i' my head like mill-wheels. An' she give me another drink
+an' settled the pillow. "Eh, but yo're young to be getten drunk an' such
+like, but yo' won't do it again, will yo'?"--"Noa," sez I, "I wouldn't
+if she'd not but stop they mill-wheels clatterin'."'
+
+'Faith, it's a good thing to be nursed by a woman when you're sick!'
+said Mulvaney. 'Dir' cheap at the price av twenty broken heads.'
+
+Ortheris turned to frown across the valley. He had not been nursed by
+many women in his life.
+
+'An' then Dr. Warbottom comes ridin' up, an' Jesse Roantree along with
+'im. He was a high-larned doctor, but he talked wi' poor folk same as
+theirsens. "What's ta big agaate on naa?" he sings out. "Brekkin' tha
+thick head?" An' he felt me all ovver. "That's none broken. Tha' nobbut
+knocked a bit sillier than ordinary, an' that's daaft eneaf." An' soa he
+went on, callin' me all the names he could think on, but settin' my arm,
+wi' Jesse's help, as careful as could be. "Yo' mun let the big oaf bide
+here a bit, Jesse," he says, when he hed strapped me up an' given me a
+dose o' physic; "an' you an' Liza will tend him, though he's scarcelins
+worth the trouble. An' tha'll lose tha work," sez he, "an' tha'll be
+upon th' Sick Club for a couple o' months an' more. Doesn't tha think
+tha's a fool?"'
+
+'But whin was a young man, high or low, the other av a fool, I'd like
+to know?' said Mulvaney. 'Sure, folly's the only safe way to wisdom, for
+I've thried it.'
+
+'Wisdom!' grinned Ortheris, scanning his comrades with uplifted chin.
+'You're bloomin' Solomons, you two, ain't you?'
+
+Learoyd went calmly on, with a steady eye like an ox chewing the cud.
+
+'And that was how I come to know 'Liza Roantree. There's some tunes as
+she used to sing--aw, she were always singin'--that fetches Greenhow
+Hill before my eyes as fair as yon brow across there. And she would
+learn me to sing bass, an' I was to go to th' chapel wi' 'em where
+Jesse and she led the singin', th' old man playin' the fiddle. He was a
+strange chap, old Jesse, fair mad wi' music, an' he made me promise to
+learn the big fiddle when my arm was better. It belonged to him, and
+it stood up in a big case alongside o' th' eight-day clock, but
+Willie Satterthwaite, as played it in the chapel, had getten deaf as a
+door-post, and it vexed Jesse, as he had to rap him ower his head wi'
+th' fiddle-stick to make him give ower sawin' at th' right time.
+
+'But there was a black drop in it all, an' it was a man in a black coat
+that brought it. When th' Primitive Methodist preacher came to Greenhow,
+he would always stop wi' Jesse Roantree, an' he laid hold of me from th'
+beginning. It seemed I wor a soul to be saved, and he meaned to do it.
+At th' same time I jealoused 'at he were keen o' savin' 'Liza Roantree's
+soul as well, and I could ha' killed him many a time. An' this went on
+till one day I broke out, an' borrowed th' brass for a drink from 'Liza.
+After fower days I come back, wi' my tail between my legs, just to see
+'Liza again. But Jesse were at home an' th' preacher--th' Reverend Amos
+Barraclough. 'Liza said naught, but a bit o' red come into her face as
+were white of a regular thing. Says Jesse, tryin' his best to be civil,
+"Nay, lad, it's like this. You've getten to choose which way it's
+goin' to be. I'll ha' nobody across ma doorstep as goes a-drinkin',
+an' borrows my lass's money to spend i' their drink. Ho'd tha tongue,
+'Liza," sez he, when she wanted to put in a word 'at I were welcome to
+th' brass, and she were none afraid that I wouldn't pay it back. Then
+the Reverend cuts in, seein' as Jesse were losin' his temper, an' they
+fair beat me among them. But it were 'Liza, as looked an' said naught,
+as did more than either o' their tongues, an' soa I concluded to get
+converted.'
+
+'Fwhat?' shouted Mulvaney. Then, checking himself, he said softly, 'Let
+be! Let be! Sure the Blessed Virgin is the mother of all religion an'
+most women; an' there's a dale av piety in a girl if the men would
+only let ut stay there. I'd ha' been converted myself under the
+circumstances.'
+
+'Nay, but,' pursued Learoyd with a blush, 'I meaned it.'
+
+Ortheris laughed as loudly as he dared, having regard to his business at
+the time.
+
+'Ay, Ortheris, you may laugh, but you didn't know yon preacher
+Barraclough--a little white-faced chap, wi' a voice as 'ud wile a bird
+off an a bush, and a way o' layin' hold of folks as made them think
+they'd never had a live man for a friend before. You never saw him,
+an'--an'--you never seed 'Liza Roantree--never seed 'Liza Roantree....
+Happen it was as much 'Liza as th' preacher and her father, but anyways
+they all meaned it, an' I was fair shamed o' mysen, an' so I become what
+they call a changed character. And when I think on, it's hard to believe
+as yon chap going to prayer-meetin's, chapel, and class-meetin's were
+me. But I never had naught to say for mysen, though there was a deal o'
+shoutin', and old Sammy Strother, as were almost clemmed to death and
+doubled up with the rheumatics, would sing out, "Joyful! Joyful!" and
+'at it were better to go up to heaven in a coal-basket than down to hell
+i' a coach an' six. And he would put his poor old claw on my shoulder,
+sayin', "Doesn't tha feel it, tha great lump? Doesn't tha feel it?" An'
+sometimes I thought I did, and then again I thought I didn't, an' how
+was that?'
+
+'The iverlastin' nature av mankind,' said Mulvaney. 'An', furthermore,
+I misdoubt you were built for the Primitive Methodians. They're a new
+corps anyways. I hold by the Ould Church, for she's the mother of them
+all--ay, an' the father, too. I like her bekaze she's most remarkable
+regimental in her fittings. I may die in Honolulu, Nova Zambra, or Cape
+Cayenne, but wherever I die, me bein' fwhat I am, an' a priest handy, I
+go under the same orders an' the same words an' the same unction as tho'
+the Pope himself come down from the roof av St. Peter's to see me
+off. There's neither high nor low, nor broad nor deep, nor betwixt nor
+between wid her, an' that's what I like. But mark you, she's no manner
+av Church for a wake man, bekaze she takes the body and the soul av him,
+onless he has his proper work to do. I remember when my father died that
+was three months comin' to his grave; begad he'd ha' sold the shebeen
+above our heads for ten minutes' quittance of purgathory. An' he did all
+he could. That's why I say ut takes a strong man to deal with the Ould
+Church, an' for that reason you'll find so many women go there. An' that
+same's a conundrum.'
+
+'Wot's the use o' worritin' 'bout these things?' said Ortheris. 'You're
+bound to find all out quicker nor you want to, any'ow.' He jerked the
+cartridge out of the breech-block into the palm of his hand. ''Ere's my
+chaplain,' he said, and made the venomous black-headed bullet bow like
+a marionette. ''E's goin' to teach a man all about which is which, an'
+wot's true, after all, before sundown. But wot 'appened after that,
+Jock?'
+
+'There was one thing they boggled at, and almost shut th' gate i' my
+face for, and that were my dog Blast, th' only one saved out o' a litter
+o' pups as was blowed up when a keg o' minin' powder loosed off in th'
+store-keeper's hut. They liked his name no better than his business,
+which were fightin' every dog he comed across; a rare good dog, wi'
+spots o' black and pink on his face, one ear gone, and lame o' one side
+wi' being driven in a basket through an iron roof, a matter of half a
+mile.
+
+'They said I mun give him up 'cause he were worldly and low; and would
+I let mysen be shut out of heaven for the sake on a dog? "Nay," says I,
+"if th' door isn't wide enough for th' pair on us, we'll stop outside,
+for we'll none be parted." And th' preacher spoke up for Blast, as had a
+likin' for him from th' first--I reckon that was why I come to like th'
+preacher--and wouldn't hear o' changin' his name to Bless, as some o'
+them wanted. So th' pair on us became reg'lar chapel-members. But it's
+hard for a young chap o' my build to cut traces from the world, th'
+flesh, an' the devil all uv a heap. Yet I stuck to it for a long time,
+while th' lads as used to stand about th' town-end an' lean ower th'
+bridge, spittin' into th' beck o' a Sunday, would call after me,
+"Sitha, Learoyd, when's ta bean to preach, 'cause we're comin' to hear
+tha."--"Ho'd tha jaw. He hasn't getten th' white choaker on ta morn,"
+another lad would say, and I had to double my fists hard i' th' bottom
+of my Sunday coat, and say to mysen, "If 'twere Monday and I warn't a
+member o' the Primitive Methodists, I'd leather all th' lot of yond'."
+That was th' hardest of all--to know that I could fight and I mustn't
+fight.'
+
+Sympathetic grunts from Mulvaney.
+
+'So what wi' singin', practising and class-meetin's, and th' big fiddle,
+as he made me take between my knees, I spent a deal o' time i' Jesse
+Roantree's house-place. But often as I was there, th' preacher fared to
+me to go oftener, and both th' old man an' th' young woman were pleased
+to have him. He lived i' Pately Brig, as were a goodish step off, but he
+come. He come all the same. I liked him as well or better as any man I'd
+ever seen i' one way, and yet I hated him wi' all my heart i' t'other,
+and we watched each other like cat and mouse, but civil as you please,
+for I was on my best behaviour, and he was that fair and open that I was
+bound to be fair with him. Rare good company he was, if I hadn't wanted
+to wring his cliver little neck half of the time. Often and often when
+he was goin' from Jesse's I'd set him a bit on the road.'
+
+'See 'im 'ome, you mean?' said Ortheris.
+
+'Ay. It's a way we have i' Yorkshire o' seein' friends off. You was a
+friend as I didn't want to come back, and he didn't want me to come back
+neither, and so we'd walk together towards Pately, and then he'd set
+me back again, and there we'd be wal two o'clock i' the mornin' settin'
+each other to an' fro like a blasted pair o' pendulums twixt hill and
+valley, long after th' light had gone out i' 'Liza's window, as both on
+us had been looking at, pretending to watch the moon.'
+
+'Ah!' broke in Mulvaney, 'ye'd no chanst against the maraudin'
+psalm-singer. They'll take the airs an' the graces instid av the
+man nine times out av ten, an' they only find the blunder later--the
+wimmen.'
+
+'That's just where yo're wrong,' said Learoyd, reddening under the
+freckled tan of his cheeks. 'I was th' first wi' 'Liza, an' yo'd think
+that were enough. But th' parson were a steady-gaited sort o' chap, and
+Jesse were strong o' his side, and all th' women i' the congregation
+dinned it to 'Liza 'at she were fair fond to take up wi' a wastrel
+ne'er-do-weel like me, as was scarcelins respectable an' a fighting
+dog at his heels. It was all very well for her to be doing me good and
+saving my soul, but she must mind as she didn't do herself harm. They
+talk o' rich folk bein' stuck up an' genteel, but for cast-iron pride o'
+respectability there's naught like poor chapel folk. It's as cold as th'
+wind o' Greenhow Hill--ay, and colder, for 'twill never change. And
+now I come to think on it, one at strangest things I know is 'at they
+couldn't abide th' thought o' soldiering. There's a vast o' fightin'
+i' th' Bible, and there's a deal of Methodists i' th' army; but to hear
+chapel folk talk yo'd think that soldierin' were next door, an' t'other
+side, to hangin'. I' their meetin's all their talk is o' fightin'. When
+Sammy Strother were stuck for summat to say in his prayers, he'd sing
+out, "Th' sword o' th' Lord and o' Gideon." They were allus at it about
+puttin' on th' whole armour o' righteousness, an' fightin' the good
+fight o' faith. And then, atop o' 't all, they held a prayer-meetin'
+ower a young chap as wanted to 'list, and nearly deafened him, till
+he picked up his hat and fair ran away. And they'd tell tales in
+th' Sunday-school o' bad lads as had been thumped and brayed for
+bird-nesting o' Sundays and playin' truant o' week-days, and how they
+took to wrestlin', dog-fightin', rabbit-runnin', and drinkin', till at
+last, as if 'twere a hepitaph on a gravestone, they damned him across
+th' moors wi', "an' then he went and 'listed for a soldier," an' they'd
+all fetch a deep breath, and throw up their eyes like a hen drinkin'.'
+
+'Fwhy is ut?' said Mulvaney, bringing down his hand on his thigh with a
+crack.' In the name av God, fwhy is ut? I've seen ut, tu. They cheat an'
+they swindle an' they lie an' they slander, an' fifty things fifty times
+worse; but the last an' the worst by their reckonin' is to serve the
+Widdy honest. It's like the talk av childher--seein' things all round.'
+
+'Plucky lot of fightin' good fights of whatsername they'd do if we
+didn't see they had a quiet place to fight in. And such fightin' as
+theirs is! Cats on the tiles. T'other callin' to which to come on. I'd
+give a month's pay to get some o' them broad-backed beggars in London
+sweatin' through a day's road-makin' an' a night's rain. They'd carry on
+a deal afterwards--same as we're supposed to carry on. I've bin turned
+out of a measly arf-license pub down Lambeth way, full o' greasy kebmen,
+'fore now,' said Ortheris with an oath.
+
+'Maybe you were dhrunk,' said Mulvaney soothingly.
+
+'Worse nor that. The Forders were drunk. _I_ was wearin' the Queen's
+uniform.'
+
+'I'd no particular thought to be a soldier i' them days,' said Learoyd,
+still keeping his eye on the bare hill opposite, 'but this sort o' talk
+put it i' my head. They was so good, th' chapel folk, that they tumbled
+ower t'other side. But I stuck to it for 'Liza's sake, specially as
+she was learning me to sing the bass part in a horotorio as Jesse were
+gettin' up. She sung like a throstle hersen, and we had practisin's
+night after night for a matter of three months.'
+
+'I know what a horotorio is,' said Ortheris pertly. 'It's a sort of
+chaplain's sing-song--words all out of the Bible, and hullabaloojah
+choruses.'
+
+'Most Greenhow Hill folks played some instrument or t'other, an' they
+all sung so you might have heard them miles away, and they were so
+pleased wi' the noise they made they didn't fair to want anybody to
+listen. The preacher sung high seconds when he wasn't playin' the
+flute, an' they set me, as hadn't got far with big fiddle, again Willie
+Satterthwaite, to jog his elbow when he had to get a' gate playin'. Old
+Jesse was happy if ever a man was, for he were th' conductor an' th'
+first fiddle an' th' leadin' singer, beatin' time wi' his fiddle-stick,
+till at times he'd rap with it on the table, and cry out, "Now, you mun
+all stop; it's my turn." And he'd face round to his front, fair
+sweating wi' pride, to sing th' tenor solos. But he were grandest i' th'
+choruses, waggin' his head, flinging his arms round like a windmill, and
+singin' hisself black in the face. A rare singer were Jesse.
+
+'Yo' see, I was not o' much account wi' 'em all exceptin' to 'Liza
+Roantree, and I had a deal o' time settin' quiet at meetings and
+horotorio practises to hearken their talk, and if it were strange to me
+at beginnin', it got stranger still at after, when I was shut on it, and
+could study what it meaned.
+
+'Just after th' horotorios come off, 'Liza, as had allus been weakly
+like, was took very bad. I walked Dr. Warbottom's horse up and down
+a deal of times while he were inside, where they wouldn't let me go,
+though I fair ached to see her.
+
+'"She'll be better i' noo, lad--better i' noo," he used to say. "Tha
+mun ha' patience." Then they said if I was quiet I might go in, and th'
+Reverend Amos Barraclough used to read to her lyin' propped up among th'
+pillows. Then she began to mend a bit, and they let me carry her on to
+th' settle, and when it got warm again she went about same as afore. Th'
+preacher and me and Blast was a deal together i' them days, and i' one
+way we was rare good comrades. But I could ha' stretched him time and
+again with a good will. I mind one day he said he would like to go
+down into th' bowels o' th' earth, and see how th' Lord had builded th'
+framework o' th' everlastin' hills. He were one of them chaps as had
+a gift o' sayin' things. They rolled off the tip of his clever tongue,
+same as Mulvaney here, as would ha' made a rare good preacher if he had
+nobbut given his mind to it. I lent him a suit o' miner's kit as almost
+buried th' little man, and his white face down i' th' coat-collar and
+hat-flap looked like the face of a boggart, and he cowered down i' th'
+bottom o' the waggon. I was drivin' a tram as led up a bit of an incline
+up to th' cave where the engine was pumpin', and where th' ore was
+brought up and put into th' waggons as went down o' themselves, me
+puttin' th' brake on and th' horses a-trottin' after. Long as it was
+daylight we were good friends, but when we got fair into th' dark,
+and could nobbut see th' day shinin' at the hole like a lamp at a
+street-end, I feeled downright wicked. Ma religion dropped all away from
+me when I looked back at him as were always comin' between me and 'Liza.
+The talk was 'at they were to be wed when she got better, an' I couldn't
+get her to say yes or nay to it. He began to sing a hymn in his thin
+voice, and I came out wi' a chorus that was all cussin' an' swearin' at
+my horses, an' I began to know how I hated him. He were such a little
+chap, too. I could drop him wi' one hand down Garstang's Copper-hole--a
+place where th' beck slithered ower th' edge on a rock, and fell wi' a
+bit of a whisper into a pit as no rope i' Greenhow could plump.'
+
+Again Learoyd rooted up the innocent violets. 'Ay, he should see th'
+bowels o' th' earth an' never naught else. I could take him a mile
+or two along th' drift, and leave him wi' his candle doused to cry
+hallelujah, wi' none to hear him and say amen. I was to lead him down
+th' ladder-way to th' drift where Jesse Roantree was workin', and why
+shouldn't he slip on th' ladder, wi' my feet on his fingers till they
+loosed grip, and I put him down wi' my heel? If I went fust down th'
+ladder I could click hold on him and chuck him over my head, so as he
+should go squshin' down the shaft, breakin' his bones at ev'ry timberin'
+as Bill Appleton did when he was fresh, and hadn't a bone left when he
+wrought to th' bottom. Niver a blasted leg to walk from Pately. Niver an
+arm to put round 'Liza Roantree's waist. Niver no more--niver no more.'
+
+The thick lips curled back over the yellow teeth, and that flushed face
+was not pretty to look upon. Mulvaney nodded sympathy, and Ortheris,
+moved by his comrade's passion, brought up the rifle to his shoulder,
+and searched the hillside for his quarry, muttering ribaldry about a
+sparrow, a spout, and a thunder-storm. The voice of the watercourse
+supplied the necessary small talk till Learoyd picked up his story.
+
+'But it's none so easy to kill a man like you. When I'd given up my
+horses to th' lad as took my place and I was showin' th' preacher th'
+workin's, shoutin' into his ear across th' clang o' th' pumpin' engines,
+I saw he were afraid o' naught; and when the lamplight showed his black
+eyes, I could feel as he was masterin' me again. I were no better nor
+Blast chained up short and growlin' i' the depths of him while a strange
+dog went safe past.
+
+'"Th'art a coward and a fool," I said to mysen; an' I wrestled i' my
+mind again' him till, when we come to Garstang's Copper-hole, I laid
+hold o' the preacher and lifted him up over my head and held him into
+the darkest on it. "Now, lad," I says "it's to be one or t'other on
+us--thee or me--for 'Liza Roantree. Why, isn't thee afraid for thysen?"
+I says, for he were still i' my arms as a sack. "Nay; I'm but afraid
+for thee, my poor lad, as knows naught," says he. I set him down on th'
+edge, an' th' beck run stiller, an' there was no more buzzin' in my head
+like when th' bee come through th' window o' Jesse's house. "What dost
+tha mean?" says I.
+
+'"I've often thought as thou ought to know," says he, "but 'twas hard
+to tell thee. 'Liza Roantree's for neither on us, nor for nobody o'
+this earth. Dr. Warbottom says--and he knows her, and her mother before
+her--that she is in a decline, and she cannot live six months longer.
+He's known it for many a day. Steady, John! Steady!" says he. And that
+weak little man pulled me further back and set me again' him, and talked
+it all over quiet and still, me turnin' a bunch o' candles in my hand,
+and counting them ower and ower again as I listened. A deal on it were
+th' regular preachin' talk, but there were a vast lot as made me begin
+to think as he were more of a man than I'd ever given him credit for,
+till I were cut as deep for him as I were for mysen.
+
+'Six candles we had, and we crawled and climbed all that day while they
+lasted, and I said to mysen, "'Liza Roantree hasn't six months to live."
+And when we came into th' daylight again we were like dead men to look
+at, an' Blast come behind us without so much as waggin' his tail. When
+I saw 'Liza again she looked at me a minute and says, "Who's telled tha?
+For I see tha knows." And she tried to smile as she kissed me, and I
+fair broke down.
+
+'Yo' see, I was a young chap i' them days, and had seen naught o' life,
+let alone death, as is allus a-waitin'. She telled me as Dr. Warbottom
+said as Greenhow air was too keen, and they were goin' to Bradford, to
+Jesse's brother David, as worked i' a mill, and I mun hold up like a man
+and a Christian, and she'd pray for me. Well, and they went away, and
+the preacher that same back end o' th' year were appointed to another
+circuit, as they call it, and I were left alone on Greenhow Hill.
+
+'I tried, and I tried hard, to stick to th' chapel, but 'tweren't th'
+same thing at after. I hadn't 'Liza's voice to follow i' th' singin',
+nor her eyes a-shinin' acrost their heads. And i' th' class-meetings
+they said as I mun have some experiences to tell, and I hadn't a word to
+say for mysen.
+
+'Blast and me moped a good deal, and happen we didn't behave ourselves
+over well, for they dropped us and wondered however they'd come to take
+us up. I can't tell how we got through th' time, while i' th' winter I
+gave up my job and went to Bradford. Old Jesse were at th' door o' th'
+house, in a long street o' little houses. He'd been sendin' th' children
+'way as were clatterin' their clogs in th' causeway, for she were
+asleep.
+
+'"Is it thee?" he says; "but you're not to see her. I'll none have her
+wakened for a nowt like thee. She's goin' fast, and she mun go in peace.
+Thou'lt never be good for naught i' th' world, and as long as thou lives
+thou'll never play the big fiddle. Get away, lad, get away!" So he shut
+the door softly i' my face.
+
+'Nobody never made Jesse my master, but it seemed to me he was about
+right, and I went away into the town and knocked up against a recruiting
+sergeant. The old tales o' th' chapel folk came buzzin' into my head. I
+was to get away, and this were th' regular road for the likes o' me. I
+'listed there and then, took th' Widow's shillin', and had a bunch o'
+ribbons pinned i' my hat.
+
+'But next day I found my way to David Roantree's door, and Jesse came
+to open it. Says he, "Thou's come back again wi' th' devil's colours
+flyin'--thy true colours, as I always telled thee."
+
+'But I begged and prayed of him to let me see her nobbut to say
+good-bye, till a woman calls down th' stairway, "She says John Learoyd's
+to come up." Th' old man shifts aside in a flash, and lays his hand on
+my arm, quite gentle like. "But thou'lt be quiet, John," says he, "for
+she's rare and weak. Thou was allus a good lad."
+
+'Her eyes were all alive wi' light, and her hair was thick on the pillow
+round her, but her cheeks were thin--thin to frighten a man that's
+strong. "Nay, father, yo mayn't say th' devil's colours. Them ribbons
+is pretty." An' she held out her hands for th' hat, an' she put all
+straight as a woman will wi' ribbons. "Nay, but what they're pretty,"
+she says. "Eh, but I'd ha' liked to see thee i' thy red coat, John, for
+thou was allus my own lad--my very own lad, and none else."
+
+'She lifted up her arms, and they come round my neck i' a gentle grip,
+and they slacked away, and she seemed fainting. "Now yo' mun get away,
+lad," says Jesse, and I picked up my hat and I came downstairs.
+
+'Th' recruiting sergeant were waitin' for me at th' corner public-house.
+"Yo've seen your sweetheart?" says he. "Yes, I've seen her," says I.
+"Well, we'll have a quart now, and you'll do your best to forget her,"
+says he, bein' one o' them smart, bustlin' chaps. "Ay, sergeant," says
+I. "Forget her." And I've been forgettin' her ever since.'
+
+He threw away the wilted clump of white violets as he spoke. Ortheris
+suddenly rose to his knees, his rifle at his shoulder, and peered across
+the valley in the clear afternoon light. His chin cuddled the stock, and
+there was a twitching of the muscles of the right cheek as he sighted;
+Private Stanley Ortheris was engaged on his business. A speck of white
+crawled up the watercourse.
+
+'See that beggar? . . . Got 'im.'
+
+Seven hundred yards away, and a full two hundred down the hillside, the
+deserter of the Aurangabadis pitched forward, rolled down a red rock,
+and lay very still, with his face in a clump of blue gentians, while a
+big raven flapped out of the pine wood to make investigation.
+
+'That's a clean shot, little man,' said Mulvaney.
+
+Learoyd thoughtfully watched the smoke clear away.
+
+'Happen there was a lass tewed up wi' him, too,' said he.
+
+Ortheris did not reply. He was staring across the valley, with the smile
+of the artist who looks on the completed work.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO WAS
+
+
+ The Earth gave up her dead that tide,
+      Into our camp he came,
+ And said his say, and went his way,
+      And left our hearts aflame.
+
+ Keep tally--on the gun-butt score
+      The vengeance we must take,
+ When God shall bring full reckoning,
+      For our dead comrade's sake.
+                        BALLAD.
+
+Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person
+till he tucks in his shirt. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only
+when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of western
+peoples instead of the most westerly of easterns that he becomes a
+racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows which
+side of his nature is going to turn up next.
+
+Dirkovitch was a Russian--a Russian of the Russians--who appeared to get
+his bread by serving the Czar as an officer in a Cossack regiment, and
+corresponding for a Russian newspaper with a name that was never twice
+alike. He was a handsome young Oriental, fond of wandering through
+unexplored portions of the earth, and he arrived in India from nowhere
+in particular. At least no living man could ascertain whether it was by
+way of Balkh, Badakshan, Chitral, Beluchistan, or Nepaul, or anywhere
+else. The Indian Government, being in an unusually affable mood, gave
+orders that he was to be civilly treated and shown everything that was
+to be seen. So he drifted, talking bad English and worse French, from
+one city to another, till he foregathered with Her Majesty's White
+Hussars in the city of Peshawur, which stands at the mouth of that
+narrow swordcut in the hills that men call the Khyber Pass. He was
+undoubtedly an officer, and he was decorated after the manner of the
+Russians with little enamelled crosses, and he could talk, and (though
+this has nothing to do with his merits) he had been given up as a
+hopeless task, or cask, by the Black Tyrone, who individually and
+collectively, with hot whisky and honey, mulled brandy, and mixed
+spirits of every kind, had striven in all hospitality to make him drunk.
+And when the Black Tyrone, who are exclusively Irish, fail to disturb
+the peace of head of a foreigner--that foreigner is certain to be a
+superior man.
+
+The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in
+charging the enemy. All that they possessed, including some wondrous
+brandy, was placed at the absolute disposition of Dirkovitch, and he
+enjoyed himself hugely--even more than among the Black Tyrones.
+
+But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White Hussars
+were 'My dear true friends,' 'Fellow-soldiers glorious,' and 'Brothers
+inseparable.' He would unburden himself by the hour on the glorious
+future that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia when their
+hearts and their territories should run side by side and the great
+mission of civilising Asia should begin. That was unsatisfactory,
+because Asia is not going to be civilised after the methods of the West.
+There is too much Asia and she is too old. You cannot reform a lady of
+many lovers, and Asia has been insatiable in her flirtations aforetime.
+She will never attend Sunday-school or learn to vote save with swords
+for tickets.
+
+Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to talk
+special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he could. Now
+and then he volunteered a little, a very little, information about
+his own sotnia of Cossacks, left apparently to look after themselves
+somewhere at the back of beyond. He had done rough work in Central Asia,
+and had seen rather more help-yourself fighting than most men of his
+years. But he was careful never to betray his superiority, and more than
+careful to praise on all occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and
+organisation of Her Majesty's White Hussars. And indeed they were a
+regiment to be admired. When Lady Durgan, widow of the late Sir John
+Durgan, arrived in their station, and after a short time had been
+proposed to by every single man at mess, she put the public sentiment
+very neatly when she explained that they were all so nice that unless
+she could marry them all, including the colonel and some majors already
+married, she was not going to content herself with one hussar.
+Wherefore she wedded a little man in a rifle regiment, being by nature
+contradictious; and the White Hussars were going to wear crape on their
+arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in full force, and lining
+the aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted them all--from
+Basset-Holmer the senior captain to little Mildred the junior subaltern,
+who could have given her four thousand a year and a title.
+
+The only persons who did not share the general regard for the White
+Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived
+across the border, and answered to the name of Pathan. They had once met
+the regiment officially and for something less than twenty minutes, but
+the interview, which was complicated with many casualties, had filled
+them with prejudice. They even called the White Hussars children of the
+devil and sons of persons whom it would be perfectly impossible to meet
+in decent society. Yet they were not above making their aversion
+fill their money-belts. The regiment possessed carbines--beautiful
+Martini-Henri carbines that would lob a bullet into an enemy's camp at
+one thousand yards, and were even handier than the long rifle. Therefore
+they were coveted all along the border, and since demand inevitably
+breeds supply, they were supplied at the risk of life and limb for
+exactly their weight in coined silver--seven and one-half pounds weight
+of rupees, or sixteen pounds sterling reckoning the rupee at par.
+They were stolen at night by snaky-haired thieves who crawled on their
+stomachs under the nose of the sentries; they disappeared mysteriously
+from locked arm-racks, and in the hot weather, when all the barrack
+doors and windows were open, they vanished like puffs of their
+own smoke. The border people desired them for family vendettas and
+contingencies. But in the long cold nights of the northern Indian winter
+they were stolen most extensively. The traffic of murder was liveliest
+among the hills at that season, and prices ruled high. The regimental
+guards were first doubled and then trebled. A trooper does not much
+care if he loses a weapon--Government must make it good--but he deeply
+resents the loss of his sleep. The regiment grew very angry, and one
+rifle-thief bears the visible marks of their anger upon him to this
+hour. That incident stopped the burglaries for a time, and the guards
+were reduced accordingly, and the regiment devoted itself to polo with
+unexpected results; for it beat by two goals to one that very terrible
+polo corps the Lushkar Light Horse, though the latter had four ponies
+apiece for a short hour's fight, as well as a native officer who played
+like a lambent flame across the ground.
+
+They gave a dinner to celebrate the event. The Lushkar team came, and
+Dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform of a Cossack officer, which
+is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced to the Lushkars, and
+opened his eyes as he regarded. They were lighter men than the Hussars,
+and they carried themselves with the swing that is the peculiar right of
+the Punjab Frontier Force and all Irregular Horse. Like everything else
+in the Service it has to be learnt, but, unlike many things, it is never
+forgotten, and remains on the body till death.
+
+The great beam-roofed mess-room of the White Hussars was a sight to be
+remembered. All the mess plate was out on the long table--the same table
+that had served up the bodies of five officers after a forgotten fight
+long and long ago--the dingy, battered standards faced the door of
+entrance, clumps of winter-roses lay between the silver candlesticks,
+and the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked down on their
+successors from between the heads of sambhur, nilghai, markhor,
+and, pride of all the mess, two grinning snow-leopards that had cost
+Basset-Holmer four months' leave that he might have spent in England,
+instead of on the road to Thibet and the daily risk of his life by
+ledge, snow-slide, and grassy slope.
+
+The servants in spotless white muslin and the crest of their regiments
+on the brow of their turbans waited behind their masters, who were clad
+in the scarlet and gold of the White Hussars, and the cream and silver
+of the Lushkar Light Horse. Dirkovitch's dull green uniform was the only
+dark spot at the board, but his big onyx eyes made up for it. He was
+fraternising effusively with the captain of the Lushkar team, who
+was wondering how many of Dirkovitch's Cossacks his own dark wiry
+down-countrymen could account for in a fair charge. But one does not
+speak of these things openly.
+
+The talk rose higher and higher, and the regimental band played between
+the courses, as is the immemorial custom, till all tongues ceased for
+a moment with the removal of the dinner-slips and the first toast of
+obligation, when an officer rising said, 'Mr. Vice, the Queen,' and
+little Mildred from the bottom of the table answered, 'The Queen, God
+bless her,' and the big spurs clanked as the big men heaved themselves
+up and drank the Queen upon whose pay they were falsely supposed to
+settle their mess-bills. That Sacrament of the Mess never grows old, and
+never ceases to bring a lump into the throat of the listener wherever he
+be by sea or by land. Dirkovitch rose with his 'brothers glorious,' but
+he could not understand. No one but an officer can tell what the toast
+means; and the bulk have more sentiment than comprehension. Immediately
+after the little silence that follows on the ceremony there entered the
+native officer who had played for the Lushkar team. He could not, of
+course, eat with the mess, but he came in at dessert, all six feet
+of him, with the blue and silver turban atop, and the big black boots
+below. The mess rose joyously as he thrust forward the hilt of his sabre
+in token of fealty for the colonel of the White Hussars to touch, and
+dropped into a vacant chair amid shouts of: 'Rung ho, Hira Singh!'
+(which being translated means 'Go in and win'). 'Did I whack you over
+the knee, old man?' 'Ressaidar Sahib, what the devil made you play that
+kicking pig of a pony in the last ten minutes?' 'Shabash, Ressaidar
+Sahib!' Then the voice of the colonel, 'The health of Ressaidar Hira
+Singh!'
+
+After the shouting had died away Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was
+the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king's son, and knew what was
+due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular:--'Colonel Sahib
+and officers of this regiment. Much honour have you done me. This will I
+remember. We came down from afar to play you. But we were beaten.' ('No
+fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own ground y'know. Your
+ponies were cramped from the railway. Don't apologise!') 'Therefore
+perhaps we will come again if it be so ordained.' ('Hear! Hear! Hear,
+indeed! Bravo! Hsh!') 'Then we will play you afresh' ('Happy to meet
+you.') 'till there are left no feet upon our ponies. Thus far for
+sport.' He dropped one hand on his sword-hilt and his eye wandered to
+Dirkovitch lolling back in his chair. 'But if by the will of God there
+arises any other game which is not the polo game, then be assured,
+Colonel Sahib and officers, that we will play it out side by side,
+though THEY,' again his eye sought Dirkovitch,'though THEY I say have
+fifty ponies to our one horse.' And with a deep-mouthed Rung ho! that
+sounded like a musket-butt on flagstones he sat down amid leaping
+glasses.
+
+Dirkovitch, who had devoted himself steadily to the brandy--the terrible
+brandy aforementioned--did not understand, nor did the expurgated
+translations offered to him at all convey the point. Decidedly Hira
+Singh's was the speech of the evening, and the clamour might have
+continued to the dawn had it not been broken by the noise of a shot
+without that sent every man feeling at his defenceless left side. Then
+there was a scuffle and a yell of pain.
+
+'Carbine-stealing again!' said the adjutant, calmly sinking back in
+his chair. 'This comes of reducing the guards. I hope the sentries have
+killed him.'
+
+The feet of armed men pounded on the verandah flags, and it was as
+though something was being dragged.
+
+'Why don't they put him in the cells till the morning?' said the colonel
+testily. 'See if they've damaged him, sergeant.'
+
+The mess sergeant fled out into the darkness and returned with two
+troopers and a corporal, all very much perplexed.
+
+'Caught a man stealin' carbines, sir,' said the corporal. 'Leastways 'e
+was crawlin' towards the barricks, sir, past the main road sentries, an'
+the sentry 'e sez, sir--'
+
+The limp heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. Never was seen so
+destitute and demoralised an Afghan. He was turbanless, shoeless, caked
+with dirt, and all but dead with rough handling. Hira Singh started
+slightly at the sound of the man's pain. Dirkovitch took another glass
+of brandy.
+
+'WHAT does the sentry say?' said the colonel.
+
+'Sez 'e speaks English, sir,' said the corporal.
+
+'So you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the
+sergeant! If he spoke all the Tongues of the Pentecost you've no
+business--'
+
+Again the bundle groaned and muttered. Little Mildred had risen from his
+place to inspect. He jumped back as though he had been shot.
+
+'Perhaps it would be better, sir, to send the men away,' said he to the
+colonel, for he was a much privileged subaltern. He put his arms round
+the ragbound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair. It may
+not have been explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in his being
+six feet four and big in proportion. The corporal seeing that an officer
+was disposed to look after the capture, and that the colonel's eye was
+beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and his men. The mess was
+left alone with the carbine-thief, who laid his head on the table and
+wept bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably, as little children weep.
+
+Hira Singh leapt to his feet. 'Colonel Sahib,' said he, 'that man is no
+Afghan, for they weep Ai! Ai! Nor is he of Hindustan, for they weep Oh!
+Ho! He weeps after the fashion of the white men, who say Ow! Ow!'
+
+'Now where the dickens did you get that knowledge, Hira Singh?' said the
+captain of the Lushkar team.
+
+'Hear him!' said Hira Singh simply, pointing at the crumpled figure that
+wept as though it would never cease.
+
+'He said, "My God!"' said little Mildred. 'I heard him say it.'
+
+The colonel and the mess-room looked at the man in silence. It is a
+horrible thing to hear a man cry. A woman can sob from the top of her
+palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man must cry from his
+diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces.
+
+'Poor devil!' said the colonel, coughing tremendously. 'We ought to send
+him to hospital. He's been man-handled.'
+
+Now the adjutant loved his carbines. They were to him as his
+grandchildren, the men standing in the first place. He grunted
+rebelliously: 'I can understand an Afghan stealing, because he's built
+that way. But I can't understand his crying. That makes it worse.'
+
+The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair
+and stared at the ceiling. There was nothing special in the ceiling
+beyond a shadow as of a huge black coffin. Owing to some peculiarity in
+the construction of the mess-room this shadow was always thrown when
+the candles were lighted. It never disturbed the digestion of the White
+Hussars. They were in fact rather proud of it.
+
+'Is he going to cry all night?' said the colonel, 'or are we supposed to
+sit up with little Mildred's guest until he feels better?'
+
+The man in the chair threw up his head and stared at the mess. 'Oh, my
+God!' he said, and every soul in the mess rose to his feet. Then the
+Lushkar captain did a deed for which he ought to have been given the
+Victoria Cross--distinguished gallantry in a fight against overwhelming
+curiosity. He picked up his team with his eyes as the hostess picks up
+the ladies at the opportune moment, and pausing only by the colonel's
+chair to say, 'This isn't OUR affair, you know, sir,' led them into the
+verandah and the gardens. Hira Singh was the last to go, and he looked
+at Dirkovitch. But Dirkovitch had departed into a brandy-paradise of his
+own. His lips moved without sound and he was studying the coffin on the
+ceiling.
+
+'White--white all over,' said Basset-Holmer, the adjutant. 'What a
+pernicious renegade he must be! I wonder where he came from?'
+
+The colonel shook the man gently by the arm, and 'Who are you?' said he.
+
+There was no answer. The man stared round the mess-room and smiled in
+the colonel's face. Little Mildred, who was always more of a woman than
+a man till 'Boot and saddle' was sounded, repeated the question in a
+voice that would have drawn confidences from a geyser. The man only
+smiled. Dirkovitch at the far end of the table slid gently from his
+chair to the floor.
+
+No son of Adam in this present imperfect world can mix the Hussars'
+champagne with the Hussars' brandy by five and eight glasses of each
+without remembering the pit whence he was digged and descending thither.
+The band began to play the tune with which the White Hussars from the
+date of their formation have concluded all their functions. They would
+sooner be disbanded than abandon that tune; it is a part of their
+system. The man straightened himself in his chair and drummed on the
+table with his fingers.
+
+'I don't see why we should entertain lunatics,' said the colonel. 'Call
+a guard and send him off to the cells. We'll look into the business in
+the morning. Give him a glass of wine first though.'
+
+Little Mildred filled a sherry-glass with the brandy and thrust it over
+to the man. He drank, and the tune rose louder, and he straightened
+himself yet more. Then he put out his long-taloned hands to a piece of
+plate opposite and fingered it lovingly. There was a mystery connected
+with that piece of plate, in the shape of a spring which converted what
+was a seven-branched candlestick, three springs on each side and one in
+the middle, into a sort of wheel-spoke candelabrum. He found the spring,
+pressed it, and laughed weakly. He rose from his chair and inspected a
+picture on the wall, then moved on to another picture, the mess watching
+him without a word. When he came to the mantelpiece he shook his head
+and seemed distressed. A piece of plate representing a mounted hussar
+in full uniform caught his eye. He pointed to it, and then to the
+mantelpiece with inquiry in his eyes.
+
+'What is it--Oh what is it?' said little Mildred. Then as a mother might
+speak to a child, 'That is a horse. Yes, a horse.'
+
+Very slowly came the answer in a thick, passionless guttural--'Yes,
+I--have seen. But--where is THE horse?'
+
+You could have heard the hearts of the mess beating as the men drew back
+to give the stranger full room in his wanderings. There was no question
+of calling the guard.
+
+Again he spoke--very slowly, 'Where is OUR horse?'
+
+There is but one horse in the White Hussars, and his portrait hangs
+outside the door of the mess-room. He is the piebald drum-horse,
+the king of the regimental band, that served the regiment for
+seven-and-thirty years, and in the end was shot for old age. Half the
+mess tore the thing down from its place and thrust it into the man's
+hands. He placed it above the mantel-piece, it clattered on the ledge
+as his poor hands dropped it, and he staggered towards the bottom of
+the table, falling into Mildred's chair. Then all the men spoke to one
+another something after this fashion, 'The drum-horse hasn't hung over
+the mantelpiece since '67.' 'How does he know?' 'Mildred, go and speak
+to him again.' 'Colonel, what are you going to do?' 'Oh, dry up, and
+give the poor devil a chance to pull himself together.' 'It isn't
+possible anyhow. The man's a lunatic.'
+
+Little Mildred stood at the colonel's side talking in his ear. 'Will you
+be good enough to take your seats please, gentlemen!' he said, and the
+mess dropped into the chairs. Only Dirkovitch's seat, next to little
+Mildred's, was blank, and little Mildred himself had found Hira Singh's
+place. The wide-eyed mess-sergeant filled the glasses in deep silence.
+Once more the colonel rose, but his hand shook and the port spilled on
+the table as he looked straight at the man in little Mildred's chair and
+said hoarsely, 'Mr. Vice, the Queen.' There was a little pause, but the
+man sprung to his feet and answered without hesitation, 'The Queen,
+God bless her!' and as he emptied the thin glass he snapped the shank
+between his fingers.
+
+Long and long ago, when the Empress of India was a young woman and there
+were no unclean ideals in the land, it was the custom of a few messes
+to drink the Queen's toast in broken glass, to the vast delight of the
+mess-contractors. The custom is now dead, because there is nothing to
+break anything for, except now and again the word of a Government, and
+that has been broken already.
+
+'That settles it,' said the colonel, with a gasp. 'He's not a sergeant.
+What in the world is he?'
+
+The entire mess echoed the word, and the volley of questions would have
+scared any man. It was no wonder that the ragged, filthy invader could
+only smile and shake his head.
+
+From under the table, calm and smiling, rose Dirkovitch, who had been
+roused from healthful slumber by feet upon his body. By the side of the
+man he rose, and the man shrieked and grovelled. It was a horrible sight
+coming so swiftly upon the pride and glory of the toast that had brought
+the strayed wits together.
+
+Dirkovitch made no offer to raise him, but little Mildred heaved him
+up in an instant. It is not good that a gentleman who can answer to the
+Queen's toast should lie at the feet of a subaltern of Cossacks.
+
+The hasty action tore the wretch's upper clothing nearly to the waist,
+and his body was seamed with dry black scars. There is only one weapon
+in the world that cuts: in parallel lines, and it is neither the cane
+nor the cat. Dirkovitch saw the marks, and the pupils of his eyes
+dilated. Also his face changed. He said something that sounded like Shto
+ve takete, and the man fawning answered, Chetyre.
+
+'What's that?' said everybody together.
+
+'His number. That is number four, you know.' Dirkovitch spoke very
+thickly.
+
+'What has a Queen's officer to do with a qualified number?' said the
+Colonel, and an unpleasant growl ran round the table.
+
+'How can I tell?' said the affable Oriental with a sweet smile. 'He
+is a--how you have it?--escape--run-a-way, from over there.' He nodded
+towards the darkness of the night.
+
+'Speak to him if he'll answer you, and speak to him gently,' said little
+Mildred, settling the man in a chair. It seemed most improper to all
+present that Dirkovitch should sip brandy as he talked in purring,
+spitting Russian to the creature who answered so feebly and with such
+evident dread. But since Dirkovitch appeared to understand no one said
+a word. All breathed heavily, leaning forward, in the long gaps of the
+conversation. The next time that they have no engagements on hand the
+White Hussars intend to go to St. Petersburg in a body to learn Russian.
+
+'He does not know how many years ago,' said Dirkovitch, facing the mess,
+'but he says it was very long ago in a war. I think that there was an
+accident. He says he was of this glorious and distinguished regiment in
+the war.'
+
+'The rolls! The rolls! Holmer, get the rolls!' said little Mildred,
+and the adjutant dashed off bare-headed to the orderly-room, where the
+muster-rolls of the regiment were kept. He returned just in time to hear
+Dirkovitch conclude, 'Therefore, my dear friends, I am most sorry to
+say there was an accident which would have been reparable if he had
+apologised to that our colonel, which he had insulted.'
+
+Then followed another growl which the colonel tried to beat down. The
+mess was in no mood just then to weigh insults to Russian colonels.
+
+'He does not remember, but I think that there was an accident, and so
+he was not exchanged among the prisoners, but he was sent to another
+place--how do you say?--the country. SO, he says, he came here. He does
+not know how he came. Eh? He was at Chepany'--the man caught the word,
+nodded, and shivered--'at Zhigansk and Irkutsk. I cannot understand how
+he escaped. He says, too, that he was in the forests for many years,
+but how many years he has forgotten--that with many things. It was an
+accident; done because he did not apologise to that our colonel. Ah!'
+
+Instead of echoing Dirkovitch's sigh of regret, it is sad to record
+that the White Hussars livelily exhibited un-Christian delight and other
+emotions, hardly restrained by their sense of hospitality. Holmer flung
+the frayed and yellow regimental rolls on the table, and the men flung
+themselves at these.
+
+'Steady! Fifty-six--fifty-five--fifty-four,' said Holmer. 'Here we are.
+"Lieutenant Austin Limmason. MISSING." That was before Sebastopol.
+What an infernal shame! Insulted one of their colonels, and was quietly
+shipped off. Thirty years of his life wiped out.'
+
+'But he never apologised. Said he'd see him damned first,' chorused the
+mess.
+
+'Poor chap! I suppose he never had the chance afterwards. How did he
+come here?' said the colonel.
+
+The dingy heap in the chair could give no answer.
+
+'Do you know who you are?'
+
+It laughed weakly.
+
+'Do you know that you are Limmason--Lieutenant Limmason of the White
+Hussars?'
+
+Swiftly as a shot came the answer, in a slightly surprised tone, 'Yes,
+I'm Limmason, of course.' The light died out in his eyes, and the man
+collapsed, watching every motion of Dirkovitch with terror. A flight
+from Siberia may fix a few elementary facts in the mind, but it does not
+seem to lead to continuity of thought. The man could not explain how,
+like a homing pigeon, he had found his way to his own old mess again.
+Of what he had suffered or seen he knew nothing. He cringed before
+Dirkovitch as instinctively as he had pressed the spring of the
+candlestick, sought the picture of the drum-horse, and answered to the
+toast of the Queen. The rest was a blank that the dreaded Russian tongue
+could only in part remove. His head bowed on his breast, and he giggled
+and cowered alternately.
+
+The devil that lived in the brandy prompted Dirkovitch at this extremely
+inopportune moment to make a speech. He rose, swaying slightly, gripped
+the table-edge, while his eyes glowed like opals, and began:
+
+'Fellow-soldiers glorious--true friends and hospitables. It was an
+accident, and deplorable--most deplorable.' Here he smiled sweetly all
+round the mess. 'But you will think of this little, little thing. So
+little, is it not? The Czar! Posh! I slap my fingers--I snap my fingers
+at him. Do I believe in him? No! But in us Slav who has done nothing,
+HIM I believe. Seventy--how much--millions peoples that have done
+nothing--not one thing. Posh! Napoleon was an episode.' He banged a
+hand on the table. 'Hear you, old peoples, we have done nothing in
+the world--out here. All our work is to do; and it shall be done, old
+peoples. Get a-way!' He waved his hand imperiously, and pointed to the
+man. 'You see him. He is not good to see. He was just one little--oh,
+so little--accident, that no one remembered. Now he is THAT! So will you
+be, brother-soldiers so brave--so will you be. But you will never come
+back. You will all go where he is gone, or'--he pointed to the great
+coffin-shadow on the ceiling, and muttering, 'Seventy millions--get
+a-way, you old peoples,' fell asleep.
+
+'Sweet, and to the point,' said little Mildred. 'What's the use of
+getting wroth? Let's make this poor devil comfortable.'
+
+But that was a matter suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands
+of the White Hussars. The lieutenant had returned only to go away again
+three days later, when the wail of the Dead March, and the tramp of the
+squadrons, told the wondering Station, who saw no gap in the mess-table,
+that an officer of the regiment had resigned his new-found commission.
+
+And Dirkovitch, bland, supple, and always genial, went away too by a
+night train. Little Mildred and another man saw him off, for he was the
+guest of the mess, and even had he smitten the colonel with the open
+hand, the law of that mess allowed no relaxation of hospitality.
+
+'Good-bye, Dirkovitch, and a pleasant journey,' said little Mildred.
+
+'Au revoir,' said the Russian.
+
+'Indeed! But we thought you were going home?'
+
+'Yes, but I will come again. My dear friends, is that road shut?' He
+pointed to where the North Star burned over the Khyber Pass.
+
+'By Jove! I forgot. Of course. Happy to meet you, old man, any time you
+like. Got everything you want? Cheroots, ice, bedding? That's all right.
+Well, au revoir, Dirkovitch.'
+
+'Um,' said the other man, as the tail-lights of the train grew small.
+'Of--all--the--unmitigated--!'
+
+Little Mildred answered nothing, but watched the North Star and hummed
+a selection from a recent Simla burlesque that had much delighted the
+White Hussars. It ran--
+
+     I'm sorry for Mister Bluebeard,
+     I'm sorry to cause him pain;
+     But a terrible spree there's sure to be
+     When he comes back again.
+
+
+
+
+THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT
+
+
+    There's a convict more in the Central Jail,
+       Behind the old mud wall;
+     There's a lifter less on the Border trail,
+       And the Queen's Peace over all,
+                                    Dear boys
+     The Queen's Peace over all.
+
+    For we must bear our leader's blame,
+       On us the shame will fall,
+     If we lift our hand from a fettered land
+       And the Queen's Peace over all,
+                                    Dear boys,
+     The Queen's Peace over all!
+                      THE RUNNING OF SHINDAND.
+
+I
+
+The Indus had risen in flood without warning. Last night it was a
+fordable shallow; to-night five miles of raving muddy water parted bank
+and caving bank, and the river was still rising under the moon. A litter
+borne by six bearded men, all unused to the work, stopped in the white
+sand that bordered the whiter plain.
+
+'It's God's will,' they said. 'We dare not cross to-night, even in a
+boat. Let us light a fire and cook food. We be tired men.'
+
+They looked at the litter inquiringly. Within, the Deputy Commissioner
+of the Kot-Kumharsen district lay dying of fever. They had brought him
+across country, six fighting-men of a frontier clan that he had won over
+to the paths of a moderate righteousness, when he had broken down at the
+foot of their inhospitable hills. And Tallantire, his assistant, rode
+with them, heavy-hearted as heavy-eyed with sorrow and lack of sleep. He
+had served under the sick man for three years, and had learned to love
+him as men associated in toil of the hardest learn to love--or hate.
+Dropping from his horse he parted the curtains of the litter and peered
+inside.
+
+'Orde--Orde, old man, can you hear? We have to wait till the river goes
+down, worse luck.'
+
+'I hear,' returned a dry whisper. 'Wait till the river goes down. I
+thought we should reach camp before the dawn. Polly knows. She'll meet
+me.'
+
+One of the litter-men stared across the river and caught a faint twinkle
+of light on the far side. He whispered to Tallantire, 'There are his
+camp-fires, and his wife. They will cross in the morning, for they have
+better boats. Can he live so long?'
+
+Tallantire shook his head. Yardley-Orde was very near to death. What
+need to vex his soul with hopes of a meeting that could not be? The
+river gulped at the banks, brought down a cliff of sand, and snarled
+the more hungrily. The litter-men sought for fuel in the waste-dried
+camel-thorn and refuse of the camps that had waited at the ford. Their
+sword-belts clinked as they moved softly in the haze of the moonlight,
+and Tallantire's horse coughed to explain that he would like a blanket.
+
+'I'm cold too,' said the voice from the litter. 'I fancy this is the
+end. Poor Polly!'
+
+Tallantire rearranged the blankets. Khoda Dad Khan, seeing this,
+stripped off his own heavy-wadded sheepskin coat and added it to the
+pile. 'I shall be warm by the fire presently,' said he. Tallantire
+took the wasted body of his chief into his arms and held it against his
+breast. Perhaps if they kept him very warm Orde might live to see his
+wife once more. If only blind Providence would send a three-foot fall in
+the river!
+
+'That's better,' said Orde faintly. 'Sorry to be a nuisance, but is--is
+there anything to drink?'
+
+They gave him milk and whisky, and Tallantire felt a little warmth
+against his own breast. Orde began to mutter.
+
+'It isn't that I mind dying,' he said. 'It's leaving Polly and
+the district. Thank God! we have no children. Dick, you know, I'm
+dipped--awfully dipped--debts in my first five years' service. It isn't
+much of a pension, but enough for her. She has her mother at home.
+Getting there is the difficulty. And--and--you see, not being a
+soldier's wife--'
+
+'We'll arrange the passage home, of course,' said Tallantire quietly.
+
+'It's not nice to think of sending round the hat; but, good Lord! how
+many men I lie here and remember that had to do it! Morten's dead--he
+was of my year. Shaughnessy is dead, and he had children; I remember he
+used to read us their school-letters; what a bore we thought him! Evans
+is dead--Kot-Kumharsen killed him! Ricketts of Myndonie is dead--and I'm
+going too. "Man that is born of a woman is small potatoes and few in
+the hill." That reminds me, Dick; the four Khusru Kheyl villages in our
+border want a one-third remittance this spring. That's fair; their crops
+are bad. See that they get it, and speak to Ferris about the canal. I
+should like to have lived till that was finished; it means so much for
+the North-Indus villages--but Ferris is an idle beggar--wake him up.
+You'll have charge of the district till my successor comes. I wish they
+would appoint you permanently; you know the folk. I suppose it will
+be Bullows, though. 'Good man, but too weak for frontier work; and he
+doesn't understand the priests. The blind priest at Jagai will bear
+watching. You'll find it in my papers,--in the uniform-case, I think.
+Call the Khusru Kheyl men up; I'll hold my last public audience. Khoda
+Dad Khan!'
+
+The leader of the men sprang to the side of the litter, his companions
+following.
+
+'Men, I'm dying,' said Orde quickly, in the vernacular; 'and soon there
+will be no more Orde Sahib to twist your tails and prevent you from
+raiding cattle.'
+
+'God forbid this thing!' broke out the deep bass chorus. 'The Sahib is
+not going to die.'
+
+'Yes, he is; and then he will know whether Mahomed speaks truth, or
+Moses. But you must be good men, when I am not here. Such of you as live
+in our borders must pay your taxes quietly as before. I have spoken of
+the villages to be gently treated this year. Such of you as live in the
+hills must refrain from cattle-lifting, and burn no more thatch, and
+turn a deaf ear to the voice of the priests, who, not knowing the
+strength of the Government, would lead you into foolish wars, wherein
+you will surely die and your crops be eaten by strangers. And you must
+not sack any caravans, and must leave your arms at the police-post when
+you come in; as has been your custom, and my order. And Tallantire Sahib
+will be with you, but I do not know who takes my place. I speak now true
+talk, for I am as it were already dead, my children,--for though ye be
+strong men, ye are children.'
+
+'And thou art our father and our mother,' broke in Khoda Dad Khan with
+an oath. 'What shall we do, now there is no one to speak for us, or to
+teach us to go wisely!'
+
+'There remains Tallantire Sahib. Go to him; he knows your talk and your
+heart. Keep the young men quiet, listen to the old men, and obey. Khoda
+Dad Khan, take my ring. The watch and chain go to thy brother. Keep
+those things for my sake, and I will speak to whatever God I may
+encounter and tell him that the Khusru Kheyl are good men. Ye have my
+leave to go.'
+
+Khoda Dad Khan, the ring upon his finger, choked audibly as he caught
+the well-known formula that closed an interview. His brother turned
+to look across the river. The dawn was breaking, and a speck of white
+showed on the dull silver of the stream. 'She comes,' said the man
+under his breath. 'Can he live for another two hours?' And he pulled the
+newly-acquired watch out of his belt and looked uncomprehendingly at the
+dial, as he had seen Englishmen do.
+
+For two hours the bellying sail tacked and blundered up and down the
+river, Tallantire still clasping Orde in his arms, and Khoda Dad Khan
+chafing his feet. He spoke now and again of the district and his wife,
+but, as the end neared, more frequently of the latter. They hoped he did
+not know that she was even then risking her life in a crazy native boat
+to regain him. But the awful foreknowledge of the dying deceived them.
+Wrenching himself forward, Orde looked through the curtains and saw how
+near was the sail. 'That's Polly,' he said simply, though his mouth was
+wried with agony. 'Polly and--the grimmest practical joke ever played on
+a man. Dick--you'll--have--to--explain.'
+
+And an hour later Tallantire met on the bank a woman in a gingham
+riding-habit and a sun-hat who cried out to him for her husband--her
+boy and her darling--while Khoda Dad Khan threw himself face-down on the
+sand and covered his eyes.
+
+II
+
+The very simplicity of the notion was its charm. What more easy to win
+a reputation for far-seeing statesmanship, originality, and, above all,
+deference to the desires of the people, than by appointing a child of
+the country to the rule of that country? Two hundred millions of the
+most loving and grateful folk under Her Majesty's dominion would laud
+the fact, and their praise would endure for ever. Yet he was indifferent
+to praise or blame, as befitted the Very Greatest of All the Viceroys.
+His administration was based upon principle, and the principle must be
+enforced in season and out of season. His pen and tongue had created the
+New India, teeming with possibilities--loud-voiced, insistent, a nation
+among nations--all his very own. Wherefore the Very Greatest of All the
+Viceroys took another step in advance, and with it counsel of those
+who should have advised him on the appointment of a successor to
+Yardley-Orde. There was a gentleman and a member of the Bengal Civil
+Service who had won his place and a university degree to boot in fair
+and open competition with the sons of the English. He was cultured,
+of the world, and, if report spoke truly, had wisely and, above all,
+sympathetically ruled a crowded district in South-Eastern Bengal. He had
+been to England and charmed many drawing-rooms there. His name, if the
+Viceroy recollected aright, was Mr. Grish Chunder De, M. A. In short,
+did anybody see any objection to the appointment, always on principle,
+of a man of the people to rule the people? The district in South-Eastern
+Bengal might with advantage, he apprehended, pass over to a younger
+civilian of Mr. G. C. De's nationality (who had written a remarkably
+clever pamphlet on the political value of sympathy in administration);
+and Mr. G. C. De could be transferred northward to Kot-Kumharsen. The
+Viceroy was averse, on principle, to interfering with appointments under
+control of the Provincial Governments. He wished it to be understood
+that he merely recommended and advised in this instance. As regarded the
+mere question of race, Mr. Grish Chunder De was more English than the
+English, and yet possessed of that peculiar sympathy and insight which
+the best among the best Service in the world could only win to at the
+end of their service.
+
+The stern, black-bearded kings who sit about the Council-board of India
+divided on the step, with the inevitable result of driving the Very
+Greatest of All the Viceroys into the borders of hysteria, and a
+bewildered obstinacy pathetic as that of a child.
+
+'The principle is sound enough,' said the weary-eyed Head of the Red
+Provinces in which Kot-Kumharsen lay, for he too held theories. 'The
+only difficulty is--'
+
+'Put the screw on the District officials; brigade De with a very strong
+Deputy Commissioner on each side of him; give him the best assistant
+in the Province; rub the fear of God into the people beforehand; and
+if anything goes wrong, say that his colleagues didn't back him up. All
+these lovely little experiments recoil on the District-Officer in the
+end,' said the Knight of the Drawn Sword with a truthful brutality that
+made the Head of the Red Provinces shudder. And on a tacit understanding
+of this kind the transfer was accomplished, as quietly as might be for
+many reasons.
+
+It is sad to think that what goes for public opinion in India did not
+generally see the wisdom of the Viceroy's appointment. There were not
+lacking indeed hireling organs, notoriously in the pay of a tyrannous
+bureaucracy, who more than hinted that His Excellency was a fool, a
+dreamer of dreams, a doctrinaire, and, worst of all, a trifler with the
+lives of men. 'The Viceroy's Excellence Gazette,' published in Calcutta,
+was at pains to thank 'Our beloved Viceroy for once more and again thus
+gloriously vindicating the potentialities of the Bengali nations for
+extended executive and administrative duties in foreign parts beyond
+our ken. We do not at all doubt that our excellent fellow-townsman, Mr.
+Grish Chunder De, Esq., M. A., will uphold the prestige of the Bengali,
+notwithstanding what underhand intrigue and peshbundi may be set on
+foot to insidiously nip his fame and blast his prospects among the proud
+civilians, some of which will now have to serve under a despised native
+and take orders too. How will you like that, Misters? We entreat
+our beloved Viceroy still to substantiate himself superiorly to
+race-prejudice and colour-blindness, and to allow the flower of this now
+OUR Civil Service all the full pays and allowances granted to his more
+fortunate brethren.'
+
+III
+
+'When does this man take over charge? I'm alone just now, and I gather
+that I'm to stand fast under him.'
+
+'Would you have cared for a transfer?' said Bullows keenly. Then, laying
+his hand on Tallantire's shoulder: 'We're all in the same boat; don't
+desert us. And yet, why the devil should you stay, if you can get
+another charge?'
+
+'It was Orde's,' said Tallantire simply.
+
+'Well, it's De's now. He's a Bengali of the Bengalis, crammed with code
+and case law; a beautiful man so far as routine and deskwork go, and
+pleasant to talk to. They naturally have always kept him in his own home
+district, where all his sisters and his cousins and his aunts lived,
+somewhere south of Dacca. He did no more than turn the place into a
+pleasant little family preserve, allowed his subordinates to do what
+they liked, and let everybody have a chance at the shekels. Consequently
+he's immensely popular down there.'
+
+'I've nothing to do with that. How on earth am I to explain to the
+district that they are going to be governed by a Bengali? Do you--does
+the Government, I mean--suppose that the Khusru Kheyl will sit quiet
+when they once know? What will the Mahomedan heads of villages say? How
+will the police--Muzbi Sikhs and Pathans--how will THEY work under him?
+We couldn't say anything if the Government appointed a sweeper; but
+my people will say a good deal, you know that. It's a piece of cruel
+folly!'
+
+'My dear boy, I know all that, and more. I've represented it, and have
+been told that I am exhibiting "culpable and puerile prejudice." By
+Jove, if the Khusru Kheyl don't exhibit something worse than that I
+don't know the Border! The chances are that you will have the district
+alight on your hands, and I shall have to leave my work and help you
+pull through. I needn't ask you to stand by the Bengali man in every
+possible way. You'll do that for your own sake.'
+
+'For Orde's. I can't say that I care twopence personally.'
+
+'Don't be an ass. It's grievous enough, God knows, and the Government
+will know later on; but that's no reason for your sulking. YOU must try
+to run the district, YOU must stand between him and as much insult as
+possible; YOU must show him the ropes; YOU must pacify the Khusru Kheyl,
+and just warn Curbar of the Police to look out for trouble by the way.
+I'm always at the end of a telegraph-wire, and willing to peril my
+reputation to hold the district together. You'll lose yours, of course,
+If you keep things straight, and he isn't actually beaten with a stick
+when he's on tour, he'll get all the credit. If anything goes wrong,
+you'll be told that you didn't support him loyally.'
+
+'I know what I've got to do,' said Tallantire wearily, 'and I'm going to
+do it. But it's hard.'
+
+'The work is with us, the event is with Allah,--as Orde used to say when
+he was more than usually in hot water.' And Bullows rode away.
+
+That two gentlemen in Her Majesty's Bengal Civil Service should thus
+discuss a third, also in that service, and a cultured and affable man
+withal, seems strange and saddening. Yet listen to the artless babble of
+the Blind Mullah of Jagai, the priest of the Khusru Kheyl, sitting upon
+a rock overlooking the Border. Five years before, a chance-hurled shell
+from a screw-gun battery had dashed earth in the face of the Mullah,
+then urging a rush of Ghazis against half a dozen British bayonets.
+So he became blind, and hated the English none the less for the little
+accident. Yardley-Orde knew his failing, and had many times laughed at
+him therefor.
+
+'Dogs you are,' said the Blind Mullah to the listening tribesmen round
+the fire. 'Whipped dogs! Because you listened to Orde Sahib and called
+him father and behaved as his children, the British Government have
+proven how they regard you. Orde Sahib ye know is dead.'
+
+'Ai! ai! ai!' said half a dozen voices.
+
+'He was a man. Comes now in his stead, whom think ye? A Bengali of
+Bengal--an eater of fish from the South.'
+
+'A lie!' said Khoda Dad Khan. 'And but for the small matter of thy
+priesthood, I'd drive my gun butt-first down thy throat.'
+
+'Oho, art thou there, lickspittle of the English? Go in to-morrow across
+the Border to pay service to Orde Sahib's successor, and thou shalt slip
+thy shoes at the tent-door of a Bengali, as thou shalt hand thy offering
+to a Bengali's black fist. This I know; and in my youth, when a young
+man spoke evil to a Mullah holding the doors of Heaven and Hell, the
+gun-butt was not rammed down the Mullah's gullet. No!'
+
+The Blind Mullah hated Khoda Dad Khan with Afghan hatred; both being
+rivals for the headship of the tribe; but the latter was feared for
+bodily as the other for spiritual gifts. Khoda Dad Khan looked at Orde's
+ring and grunted, 'I go in to-morrow because I am not an old fool,
+preaching war against the English. If the Government, smitten with
+madness, have done this, then...'
+
+'Then,' croaked the Mullah, 'thou wilt take out the young men and strike
+at the four villages within the Border?'
+
+'Or wring thy neck, black raven of Jehannum, for a bearer of
+ill-tidings.'
+
+Khoda Dad Khan oiled his long locks with great care, put on his best
+Bokhara belt, a new turban-cap and fine green shoes, and accompanied by
+a few friends came down from the hills to pay a visit to the new Deputy
+Commissioner of Kot-Kumharsen. Also he bore tribute--four or five
+priceless gold mohurs of Akbar's time in a white handkerchief. These the
+Deputy Commissioner would touch and remit. The little ceremony used to
+be a sign that, so far as Khoda Dad Khan's personal influence went,
+the Khusru Kheyl would be good boys,--till the next time; especially
+if Khoda Dad Khan happened to like the new Deputy Commissioner. In
+Yardley-Orde's consulship his visit concluded with a sumptuous dinner
+and perhaps forbidden liquors; certainly with some wonderful tales and
+great good-fellowship. Then Khoda Dad Khan would swagger back to
+his hold, vowing that Orde Sahib was one prince and Tallantire Sahib
+another, and that whosoever went a-raiding into British territory would
+be flayed alive. On this occasion he found the Deputy Commissioner's
+tents looking much as usual. Regarding himself as privileged he strode
+through the open door to confont a suave, portly Bengali in English
+costume writing at a table. Unversed in the elevating influence of
+education, and not in the least caring for university degrees, Khoda
+Dad Khan promptly set the man down for a Babu--the native clerk of the
+Deputy Commissioner--a hated and despised animal.
+
+'Ugh!' said he cheerfully. 'Where's your master, Babujee?'
+
+'I am the Deputy Commissioner,' said the gentleman in English. Now he
+overvalued the effects of university degrees, and stared Khoda Dad Khan
+in the face. But if from your earliest infancy you have been accustomed
+to look on battle, murder, and sudden death, if spilt blood affects
+your nerves as much as red paint, and, above all, if you have faithfully
+believed that the Bengali was the servant of all Hindustan, and that all
+Hindustan was vastly inferior to your own large, lustful self, you can
+endure, even though uneducated, a very large amount of looking over. You
+can even stare down a graduate of an Oxford college if the latter
+has been born in a hothouse, of stock bred in a hothouse, and fearing
+physical pain as some men fear sin; especially if your opponent's mother
+has frightened him to sleep in his youth with horrible stories of devils
+inhabiting Afghanistan, and dismal legends of the black North. The eyes
+behind the gold spectacles sought the floor. Khoda Dad Khan chuckled,
+and swung out to find Tallantire hard by. 'Here,' said he roughly,
+thrusting the coins before him, 'touch and remit. That answers for MY
+good behaviour. But, O Sahib, has the Government gone mad to send a
+black Bengali dog to us? And am I to pay service to such an one? And
+are you to work under him? What does it mean?' 'It is an order,' said
+Tallantire. He had expected something of this kind. 'He is a very clever
+S-sahib.'
+
+'He a Sahib! He's a kala admi--a black man--unfit to run at the tail of
+a potter's donkey. All the peoples of the earth have harried Bengal. It
+is written. Thou knowest when we of the North wanted women or plunder
+whither went we? To Bengal--where else? What child's talk is this of
+Sahibdom--after Orde Sahib too! Of a truth the Blind Mullah was right.'
+
+'What of him?' asked Tallantire uneasily. He mistrusted that old man
+with his dead eyes and his deadly tongue.
+
+'Nay, now, because of the oath that I sware to Orde Sahib when we
+watched him die by the river yonder, I will tell. In the first place, is
+it true that the English have set the heel of the Bengali on their own
+neck, and that there is no more English rule in the land?'
+
+'I am here,' said Tallantire, 'and I serve the Maharanee of England.'
+
+'The Mullah said otherwise, and further that because we loved Orde Sahib
+the Government sent us a pig to show that we were dogs, who till now
+have been held by the strong hand. Also that they were taking away
+the white soldiers, that more Hindustanis might come, and that all was
+changing.'
+
+This is the worst of ill-considered handling of a very large country.
+What looks so feasible in Calcutta, so right in Bombay, so unassailable
+in Madras, is misunderstood by the North and entirely changes its
+complexion on the banks of the Indus. Khoda Dad Khan explained as
+clearly as he could that, though he himself intended to be good, he
+really could not answer for the more reckless members of his tribe under
+the leadership of the Blind Mullah. They might or they might not give
+trouble, but they certainly had no intention whatever of obeying the new
+Deputy Commissioner. Was Tallantire perfectly sure that in the event
+of any systematic border-raiding the force in the district could put it
+down promptly?
+
+'Tell the Mullah if he talks any more fool's talk,' said Tallantire
+curtly, 'that he takes his men on to certain death, and his tribe to
+blockade, trespass-fine, and blood-money. But why do I talk to one who
+no longer carries weight in the counsels of the tribe?'
+
+Khoda Dad Khan pocketed that insult. He had learned something that
+he much wanted to know, and returned to his hills to be sarcastically
+complimented by the Mullah, whose tongue raging round the camp-fires was
+deadlier flame than ever dung-cake fed.
+
+IV
+
+Be pleased to consider here for a moment the unknown district of
+Kot-Kumharsen. It lay cut lengthways by the Indus under the line of
+the Khusru hills--ramparts of useless earth and tumbled stone. It was
+seventy miles long by fifty broad, maintained a population of something
+less than two hundred thousand, and paid taxes to the extent of forty
+thousand pounds a year on an area that was by rather more than half
+sheer, hopeless waste. The cultivators were not gentle people, the
+miners for salt were less gentle still, and the cattle-breeders least
+gentle of all. A police-post in the top right-hand corner and a tiny mud
+fort in the top left-hand corner prevented as much salt-smuggling and
+cattle-lifting as the influence of the civilians could not put down; and
+in the bottom right-hand corner lay Jumala, the district headquarters--a
+pitiful knot of lime-washed barns facetiously rented as houses, reeking
+with frontier fever, leaking in the rain, and ovens in the summer.
+
+It was to this place that Grish Chunder De was travelling, there
+formally to take over charge of the district. But the news of his coming
+had gone before. Bengalis were as scarce as poodles among the simple
+Borderers, who cut each other's heads open with their long spades and
+worshipped impartially at Hindu and Mahomedan shrines. They crowded
+to see him, pointing at him, and diversely comparing him to a gravid
+milch-buffalo, or a broken-down horse, as their limited range of
+metaphor prompted. They laughed at his police-guard, and wished to know
+how long the burly Sikhs were going to lead Bengali apes. They inquired
+whether he had brought his women with him, and advised him explicitly
+not to tamper with theirs. It remained for a wrinkled hag by the
+roadside to slap her lean breasts as he passed, crying, 'I have suckled
+six that could have eaten six thousand of HIM. The Government shot
+them, and made this That a king!' Whereat a blue-turbaned huge-boned
+plough-mender shouted, 'Have hope, mother o' mine! He may yet go the
+way of thy wastrels.' And the children, the little brown puff-balls,
+regarded curiously. It was generally a good thing for infancy to stray
+into Orde Sahib's tent, where copper coins were to be won for the mere
+wishing, and tales of the most authentic, such as even their mothers
+knew but the first half of. No! This fat black man could never tell them
+how Pir Prith hauled the eye-teeth out of ten devils; how the big stones
+came to lie all in a row on top of the Khusru hills, and what happened
+if you shouted through the village-gate to the gray wolf at even 'Badl
+Khas is dead.' Meantime Grish Chunder De talked hastily and much to
+Tallantire, after the manner of those who are 'more English than the
+English,'--of Oxford and 'home,' with much curious book-knowledge of
+bump-suppers, cricket-matches, hunting-runs, and other unholy sports of
+the alien. 'We must get these fellows in hand,' he said once or twice
+uneasily; 'get them well in hand, and drive them on a tight rein. No
+use, you know, being slack with your district.'
+
+And a moment later Tallantire heard Debendra Nath De, who brotherliwise
+had followed his kinsman's fortune and hoped for the shadow of his
+protection as a pleader, whisper in Bengali, 'Better are dried fish at
+Dacca than drawn swords at Delhi. Brother of mine, these men are devils,
+as our mother said. And you will always have to ride upon a horse!'
+
+That night there was a public audience in a broken-down little town
+thirty miles from Jumala, when the new Deputy Commissioner, in reply to
+the greetings of the subordinate native officials, delivered a speech.
+It was a carefully thought-out speech, which would have been very
+valuable had not his third sentence begun with three innocent words,
+'Hamara hookum hai--It is my order.' Then there was a laugh, clear and
+bell-like, from the back of the big tent, where a few border landholders
+sat, and the laugh grew and scorn mingled with it, and the lean, keen
+face of Debendra Nath De paled, and Grish Chunder turning to Tallantire
+spake: 'YOU--you put up this arrangement.' Upon that instant the
+noise of hoofs rang without, and there entered Curbar, the District
+Superintendent of Police, sweating and dusty. The State had tossed him
+into a corner of the province for seventeen weary years, there to check
+smuggling of salt, and to hope for promotion that never came. He had
+forgotten how to keep his white uniform clean, had screwed rusty spurs
+into patent-leather shoes, and clothed his head indifferently with a
+helmet or a turban. Soured, old, worn with heat and cold, he waited till
+he should be entitled to sufficient pension to keep him from starving.
+
+'Tallantire,' said he, disregarding Grish Chunder De, 'come outside.
+I want to speak to you.' They withdrew. 'It's this,' continued Curbar.
+'The Khusru Kheyl have rushed and cut up half a dozen of the coolies on
+Ferris's new canal-embankment; killed a couple of men and carried off
+a woman. I wouldn't trouble you about that--Ferris is after them and
+Hugonin, my assistant, with ten mounted police. But that's only the
+beginning, I fancy. Their fires are out on the Hassan Ardeb heights, and
+unless we're pretty quick there'll be a flare-up all along our Border.
+They are sure to raid the four Khusru villages on our side of the line;
+there's been bad blood between them for years; and you know the Blind
+Mullah has been preaching a holy war since Orde went out. What's your
+notion?'
+
+'Damn!' said Tallantire thoughtfully. 'They've begun quick. Well, it
+seems to me I'd better ride off to Fort Ziar and get what men I can
+there to picket among the lowland villages, if it's not too late. Tommy
+Dodd commands at Fort Ziar, I think. Ferris and Hugonin ought to teach
+the canal-thieves a lesson, and--No, we can't have the Head of the
+Police ostentatiously guarding the Treasury. You go back to the canal.
+I'll wire Bullows to come into Jumala with a strong police-guard, and
+sit on the Treasury. They won't touch the place, but it looks well.'
+
+'I--I--I insist upon knowing what this means,' said the voice of the
+Deputy Commissioner, who had followed the speakers.
+
+'Oh!' said Curbar, who being in the Police could not understand that
+fifteen years of education must, on principle, change the Bengali into
+a Briton. 'There has been a fight on the Border, and heaps of men
+are killed. There's going to be another fight, and heaps more will be
+killed.'
+
+'What for?'
+
+'Because the teeming millions of this district don't exactly approve of
+you, and think that under your benign rule they are going to have a good
+time. It strikes me that you had better make arrangements. I act, as you
+know, by your orders. What do you advise?'
+
+'I--I take you all to witness that I have not yet assumed charge of the
+district,' stammered the Deputy Commissioner, not in the tones of the
+'more English.'
+
+'Ah, I thought so. Well, as I was saying, Tallantire, your plan is
+sound. Carry it out. Do you want an escort?'
+
+'No; only a decent horse. But how about wiring to headquarters?'
+
+'I fancy, from the colour of his cheeks, that your superior officer will
+send some wonderful telegrams before the night's over. Let him do that,
+and we shall have half the troops of the province coming up to see
+what's the trouble. Well, run along, and take care of yourself--the
+Khusru Kheyl jab upwards from below, remember. Ho! Mir Khan, give
+Tallantire Sahib the best of the horses, and tell five men to ride to
+Jumala with the Deputy Commissioner Sahib Bahadur. There is a hurry
+toward.'
+
+There was; and it was not in the least bettered by Debendra Nath De
+clinging to a policeman's bridle and demanding the shortest, the
+very shortest way to Jumala. Now originality is fatal to the Bengali.
+Debendra Nath should have stayed with his brother, who rode steadfastly
+for Jumala on the railway-line, thanking gods entirely unknown to
+the most catholic of universities that he had not taken charge of the
+district, and could still--happy resource of a fertile race!--fall sick.
+
+And I grieve to say that when he reached his goal two policemen, not
+devoid of rude wit, who had been conferring together as they bumped in
+their saddles, arranged an entertainment for his behoof. It consisted of
+first one and then the other entering his room with prodigious details
+of war, the massing of bloodthirsty and devilish tribes, and the burning
+of towns. It was almost as good, said these scamps, as riding with
+Curbar after evasive Afghans. Each invention kept the hearer at work
+for half an hour on telegrams which the sack of Delhi would hardly
+have justified. To every power that could move a bayonet or transfer a
+terrified man, Grish Chunder De appealed telegraphically. He was alone,
+his assistants had fled, and in truth he had not taken over charge of
+the district. Had the telegrams been despatched many things would have
+occurred; but since the only signaller in Jumala had gone to bed, and
+the station-master, after one look at the tremendous pile of paper,
+discovered that railway regulations forbade the forwarding of imperial
+messages, policemen Ram Singh and Nihal Singh were fain to turn the
+stuff into a pillow and slept on it very comfortably.
+
+Tallantire drove his spurs into a rampant skewbald stallion with
+china-blue eyes, and settled himself for the forty-mile ride to Fort
+Ziar. Knowing his district blindfold, he wasted no time hunting for
+short cuts, but headed across the richer grazing-ground to the ford
+where Orde had died and been buried. The dusty ground deadened the noise
+of his horse's hoofs, the moon threw his shadow, a restless goblin,
+before him, and the heavy dew drenched him to the skin. Hillock, scrub
+that brushed against the horse's belly, unmetalled road where the
+whip-like foliage of the tamarisks lashed his forehead, illimitable
+levels of lowland furred with bent and speckled with drowsing cattle,
+waste, and hillock anew, dragged themselves past, and the skewbald was
+labouring in the deep sand of the Indus-ford. Tallantire was conscious
+of no distinct thought till the nose of the dawdling ferry-boat grounded
+on the farther side, and his horse shied snorting at the white headstone
+of Orde's grave. Then he uncovered, and shouted that the dead might
+hear, 'They're out, old man! Wish me luck.' In the chill of the dawn he
+was hammering with a stirrup-iron at the gate of Fort Ziar, where fifty
+sabres of that tattered regiment, the Belooch Beshaklis were supposed to
+guard Her Majesty's interests along a few hundred miles of Border. This
+particular fort was commanded by a subaltern, who, born of the ancient
+family of the Derouletts, naturally answered to the name of Tommy Dodd.
+Him Tallantire found robed in a sheepskin coat, shaking with fever like
+an aspen, and trying to read the native apothecary's list of invalids.
+
+'So you've come, too,' said he. 'Well, we're all sick here, and I don't
+think I can horse thirty men; but we're bub--bub--bub blessed willing.
+Stop, does this impress you as a trap or a lie?' He tossed a scrap of
+paper to Tallantire, on which was written painfully in crabbed Gurmukhi,
+'We cannot hold young horses. They will feed after the moon goes down in
+the four border villages issuing from the Jagai pass on the next night.'
+Then in English round hand--'Your sincere friend.'
+
+'Good man!' said Tallantire. 'That's Khoda Dad Khan's work, I know.
+It's the only piece of English he could ever keep in his head, and he
+is immensely proud of it. He is playing against the Blind Mullah for his
+own hand--the treacherous young ruffian!'
+
+'Don't know the politics of the Khusru Kheyl, but if you're satisfied, I
+am. That was pitched in over the gate-head last night, and I thought we
+might pull ourselves together and see what was on. Oh, but we're sick
+with fever here and no mistake! Is this going to be a big business,
+think you?' said Tommy Dodd.
+
+Tallantire gave him briefly the outlines of the case, and Tommy Dodd
+whistled and shook with fever alternately. That day he devoted to
+strategy, the art of war, and the enlivenment of the invalids, till at
+dusk there stood ready forty-two troopers, lean, worn, and dishevelled,
+whom Tommy Dodd surveyed with pride, and addressed thus: 'O men! If you
+die you will go to Hell. Therefore endeavour to keep alive. But if you
+go to Hell that place cannot be hotter than this place, and we are not
+told that we shall there suffer from fever. Consequently be not afraid
+of dying. File out there!' They grinned, and went.
+
+V
+
+It will be long ere the Khusru Kheyl forget their night attack on the
+lowland villages. The Mullah had promised an easy victory and unlimited
+plunder; but behold, armed troopers of the Queen had risen out of the
+very earth, cutting, slashing, and riding down under the stars, so that
+no man knew where to turn, and all feared that they had brought an army
+about their ears, and ran back to the hills. In the panic of that flight
+more men were seen to drop from wounds inflicted by an Afghan knife
+jabbed upwards, and yet more from long-range carbine-fire. Then there
+rose a cry of treachery, and when they reached their own guarded
+heights, they had left, with some forty dead and sixty wounded,
+all their confidence in the Blind Mullah on the plains below. They
+clamoured, swore, and argued round the fires; the women wailing for the
+lost, and the Mullah shrieking curses on the returned.
+
+Then Khoda Dad Khan, eloquent and unbreathed, for he had taken no part
+in the fight, rose to improve the occasion. He pointed out that the
+tribe owed every item of its present misfortune to the Blind Mullah, who
+had lied in every possible particular and talked them into a trap. It
+was undoubtedly an insult that a Bengali, the son of a Bengali, should
+presume to administer the Border, but that fact did not, as the Mullah
+pretended, herald a general time of license and lifting; and the
+inexplicable madness of the English had not in the least impaired
+their power of guarding their marches. On the contrary, the baffled and
+out-generalled tribe would now, just when their food-stock was lowest,
+be blockaded from any trade with Hindustan until they had sent hostages
+for good behaviour, paid compensation for disturbance, and blood-money
+at the rate of thirty-six English pounds per head for every villager
+that they might have slain. 'And ye know that those lowland dogs will
+make oath that we have slain scores. Will the Mullah pay the fines or
+must we sell our guns?' A low growl ran round the fires. 'Now, seeing
+that all this is the Mullah's work, and that we have gained nothing but
+promises of Paradise thereby, it is in my heart that we of the Khusru
+Kheyl lack a shrine whereat to pray. We are weakened, and henceforth
+how shall we dare to cross into the Madar Kheyl border, as has been our
+custom, to kneel to Pir Sajji's tomb? The Madar men will fall upon us,
+and rightly. But our Mullah is a holy man. He has helped two score of us
+into Paradise this night. Let him therefore accompany his flock, and we
+will build over his body a dome of the blue tiles of Mooltan, and burn
+lamps at his feet every Friday night. He shall be a saint: we shall have
+a shrine; and there our women shall pray for fresh seed to fill the gaps
+in our fighting-tale. How think you?'
+
+A grim chuckle followed the suggestion, and the soft wheep, wheep of
+unscabbarded knives followed the chuckle. It was an excellent notion,
+and met a long felt want of the tribe. The Mullah sprang to his feet,
+glaring with withered eyeballs at the drawn death he could not see, and
+calling down the curses of God and Mahomed on the tribe. Then began a
+game of blind man's buff round and between the fires, whereof Khuruk
+Shah, the tribal poet, has sung in verse that will not die.
+
+They tickled him gently under the armpit with the knife-point. He leaped
+aside screaming, only to feel a cold blade drawn lightly over the back
+of his neck, or a rifle-muzzle rubbing his beard. He called on his
+adherents to aid him, but most of these lay dead on the plains, for
+Khoda Dad Khan had been at some pains to arrange their decease. Men
+described to him the glories of the shrine they would build, and the
+little children clapping their hands cried, 'Run, Mullah, run! There's
+a man behind you!' In the end, when the sport wearied, Khoda Dad Khan's
+brother sent a knife home between his ribs. 'Wherefore,' said Khoda Dad
+Khan with charming simplicity, 'I am now Chief of the Khusru Kheyl!' No
+man gainsaid him; and they all went to sleep very stiff and sore.
+
+On the plain below Tommy Dodd was lecturing on the beauties of a cavalry
+charge by night, and Tallantire, bowed on his saddle, was gasping
+hysterically because there was a sword dangling from his wrist flecked
+with the blood of the Khusru Kheyl, the tribe that Orde had kept in
+leash so well. When a Rajpoot trooper pointed out that the skewbald's
+right ear had been taken off at the root by some blind slash of its
+unskilled rider, Tallantire broke down altogether, and laughed and
+sobbed till Tommy Dodd made him lie down and rest.
+
+'We must wait about till the morning,' said he. 'I wired to the Colonel
+just before we left, to send a wing of the Beshaklis after us. He'll be
+furious with me for monopolising the fun, though. Those beggars in the
+hills won't give us any more trouble.'
+
+'Then tell the Beshaklis to go on and see what has happened to Curbar
+on the canal. We must patrol the whole line of the Border. You're quite
+sure, Tommy, that--that stuff was--was only the skewbald's ear?'
+
+'Oh, quite,' said Tommy. 'You just missed cutting off his head. _I_ saw
+you when we went into the mess. Sleep, old man.'
+
+Noon brought two squadrons of Beshaklis and a knot of furious brother
+officers demanding the court-martial of Tommy Dodd for 'spoiling the
+picnic,' and a gallop across country to the canal-works where Ferris,
+Curbar, and Hugonin were haranguing the terror-stricken coolies on the
+enormity of abandoning good work and high pay, merely because half a
+dozen of their fellows had been cut down. The sight of a troop of the
+Beshaklis restored wavering confidence, and the police-hunted section
+of the Khusru Kheyl had the joy of watching the canal-bank humming
+with life as usual, while such of their men as had taken refuge in
+the watercourses and ravines were being driven out by the troopers.
+By sundown began the remorseless patrol of the Border by police and
+trooper, most like the cow-boys' eternal ride round restless cattle.
+
+'Now,' said Khoda Dad Khan to his fellows, pointing out a line of
+twinkling fires below, 'ye may see how far the old order changes. After
+their horse will come the little devil-guns that they can drag up to the
+tops of the hills, and, for aught I know, to the clouds when we crown
+the hills. If the tribe-council thinks good, I will go to Tallantire
+Sahib--who loves me--and see if I can stave off at least the blockade.
+Do I speak for the tribe?'
+
+'Ay, speak for the tribe in God's name. How those accursed fires wink!
+Do the English send their troops on the wire--or is this the work of the
+Bengali?'
+
+As Khoda Dad Khan went down the hill he was delayed by an interview
+with a hard-pressed tribesman, which caused him to return hastily
+for something he had forgotten. Then, handing himself over to the
+two troopers who had been chasing his friend, he claimed escort to
+Tallantire Sahib, then with Bullows at Jumala. The Border was safe, and
+the time for reasons in writing had begun.
+
+'Thank Heaven!' said Bullows, 'that the trouble came at once. Of course
+we can never put down the reason in black and white, but all India will
+understand. And it is better to have a sharp short outbreak than five
+years of impotent administration inside the Border. It costs less. Grish
+Chunder De has reported himself sick, and has been transferred to his
+own province without any sort of reprimand. He was strong on not having
+taken over the district.'
+
+'Of course,' said Tallantire bitterly. 'Well, what am I supposed to have
+done that was wrong?'
+
+'Oh, you will be told that you exceeded all your powers, and should
+have reported, and written, and advised for three weeks until the Khusru
+Kheyl could really come down in force. But I don't think the authorities
+will dare to make a fuss about it. They've had their lesson. Have you
+seen Curbar's version of the affair? He can't write a report, but he can
+speak the truth.'
+
+'What's the use of the truth? He'd much better tear up the report. I'm
+sick and heartbroken over it all. It was so utterly unnecessary--except
+in that it rid us of that Babu.'
+
+Entered unabashed Khoda Dad Khan, a stuffed forage-net in his hand, and
+the troopers behind him.
+
+'May you never be tired!' said he cheerily. 'Well, Sahibs, that was a
+good fight, and Naim Shah's mother is in debt to you, Tallantire Sahib.
+A clean cut, they tell me, through jaw, wadded coat, and deep into the
+collar-bone. Well done! But I speak for the tribe. There has been a
+fault--a great fault. Thou knowest that I and mine, Tallantire Sahib,
+kept the oath we sware to Orde Sahib on the banks of the Indus.'
+
+'As an Afghan keeps his knife--sharp on one side, blunt on the other,'
+said Tallantire.
+
+'The better swing in the blow, then. But I speak God's truth. Only the
+Blind Mullah carried the young men on the tip of his tongue, and said
+that there was no more Border-law because a Bengali had been sent, and
+we need not fear the English at all. So they came down to avenge that
+insult and get plunder. Ye know what befell, and how far I helped. Now
+five score of us are dead or wounded, and we are all shamed and sorry,
+and desire no further war. Moreover, that ye may better listen to us,
+we have taken off the head of the Blind Mullah, whose evil counsels have
+led us to folly. I bring it for proof,'--and he heaved on the floor the
+head. 'He will give no more trouble, for I am chief now, and so I sit
+in a higher place at all audiences. Yet there is an offset to this head.
+That was another fault. One of the men found that black Bengali beast,
+through whom this trouble arose, wandering on horseback and weeping.
+Reflecting that he had caused loss of much good life, Alla Dad Khan,
+whom, if you choose, I will to-morrow shoot, whipped off this head, and
+I bring it to you to cover your shame, that ye may bury it. See, no man
+kept the spectacles, though they were of gold.'
+
+Slowly rolled to Tallantire's feet the crop-haired head of a spectacled
+Bengali gentleman, open-eyed, open-mouthed--the head of Terror
+incarnate. Bullows bent down. 'Yet another blood-fine and a heavy
+one, Khoda Dad Khan, for this is the head of Debendra Nath, the man's
+brother. The Babu is safe long since. All but the fools of the Khusru
+Kheyl know that.'
+
+'Well, I care not for carrion. Quick meat for me. The thing was under
+our hills asking the road to Jumala and Alla Dad Khan showed him the
+road to Jehannum, being, as thou sayest, but a fool. Remains now what
+the Government will do to us. As to the blockade--'
+
+'Who art thou, seller of dog's flesh,' thundered Tallantire, 'to speak
+of terms and treaties? Get hence to the hills--go, and wait there
+starving, till it shall please the Government to call thy people out
+for punishment--children and fools that ye be! Count your dead, and be
+still. Best assured that the Government will send you a MAN!'
+
+'Ay,' returned Khoda Dad Khan, 'for we also be men.'
+
+As he looked Tallantire between the eyes, he added, 'And by God, Sahib,
+may thou be that man!'
+
+
+
+
+WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY
+
+
+     Before my Spring I garnered Autumn's gain,
+     Out of her time my field was white with grain,
+       The year gave up her secrets to my woe.
+     Forced and deflowered each sick season lay,
+     In mystery of increase and decay;
+     I saw the sunset ere men saw the day,
+       Who am too wise in that I should not know.
+                             BITTER WATERS.
+
+I
+
+'But if it be a girl?'
+
+'Lord of my life, it cannot be. I have prayed for so many nights, and
+sent gifts to Sheikh Badl's shrine so often, that I know God will give
+us a son--a man-child that shall grow into a man. Think of this and be
+glad. My mother shall be his mother till I can take him again, and the
+mullah of the Pattan mosque shall cast his nativity--God send he be born
+in an auspicious hour!--and then, and then thou wilt never weary of me,
+thy slave.'
+
+'Since when hast thou been a slave, my queen?'
+
+'Since the beginning--till this mercy came to me. How could I be sure of
+thy love when I knew that I had been bought with silver?'
+
+'Nay, that was the dowry. I paid it to thy mother.'
+
+'And she has buried it, and sits upon it all day long like a hen. What
+talk is yours of dower! I was bought as though I had been a Lucknow
+dancing-girl instead of a child.'
+
+'Art thou sorry for the sale?'
+
+'I have sorrowed; but to-day I am glad. Thou wilt never cease to love me
+now?--answer, my king.'
+
+'Never--never. No.'
+
+'Not even though the mem-log--the white women of thy own blood--love
+thee? And remember, I have watched them driving in the evening; they are
+very fair.'
+
+'I have seen fire-balloons by the hundred. I have seen the moon,
+and--then I saw no more fire-balloons.'
+
+Ameera clapped her hands and laughed. 'Very good talk,' she said. Then
+with an assumption of great stateliness, 'It is enough. Thou hast my
+permission to depart,--if thou wilt.'
+
+The man did not move. He was sitting on a low red-lacquered couch in a
+room furnished only with a blue and white floor-cloth, some rugs, and a
+very complete collection of native cushions. At his feet sat a woman of
+sixteen, and she was all but all the world in his eyes. By every rule
+and law she should have been otherwise, for he was an Englishman, and
+she a Mussulman's daughter bought two years before from her mother, who,
+being left without money, would have sold Ameera shrieking to the Prince
+of Darkness if the price had been sufficient.
+
+It was a contract entered into with a light heart; but even before the
+girl had reached her bloom she came to fill the greater portion of John
+Holden's life. For her, and the withered hag her mother, he had taken a
+little house overlooking the great red-walled city, and found,--when
+the marigolds had sprung up by the well in the courtyard and Ameera
+had established herself according to her own ideas of comfort, and her
+mother had ceased grumbling at the inadequacy of the cooking-places,
+the distance from the daily market, and at matters of house-keeping in
+general,--that the house was to him his home. Any one could enter his
+bachelor's bungalow by day or night, and the life that he led there
+was an unlovely one. In the house in the city his feet only could pass
+beyond the outer courtyard to the women's rooms; and when the big wooden
+gate was bolted behind him he was king in his own territory, with Ameera
+for queen. And there was going to be added to this kingdom a third
+person whose arrival Holden felt inclined to resent. It interfered with
+his perfect happiness. It disarranged the orderly peace of the house
+that was his own. But Ameera was wild with delight at the thought of it,
+and her mother not less so. The love of a man, and particularly a white
+man, was at the best an inconstant affair, but it might, both women
+argued, be held fast by a baby's hands. 'And then,' Ameera would always
+say, 'then he will never care for the white mem-log. I hate them all--I
+hate them all.'
+
+'He will go back to his own people in time,' said the mother; 'but by
+the blessing of God that time is yet afar off.'
+
+Holden sat silent on the couch thinking of the future, and his thoughts
+were not pleasant. The drawbacks of a double life are manifold. The
+Government, with singular care, had ordered him out of the station for a
+fortnight on special duty in the place of a man who was watching by the
+bedside of a sick wife. The verbal notification of the transfer had been
+edged by a cheerful remark that Holden ought to think himself lucky in
+being a bachelor and a free man. He came to break the news to Ameera.
+
+'It is not good,' she said slowly, 'but it is not all bad. There is my
+mother here, and no harm will come to me--unless indeed I die of pure
+joy. Go thou to thy work and think no troublesome thoughts. When the
+days are done I believe... nay, I am sure. And--and then I shall lay HIM
+in thy arms, and thou wilt love me for ever. The train goes to-night, at
+midnight is it not? Go now, and do not let thy heart be heavy by cause
+of me. But thou wilt not delay in returning? Thou wilt not stay on the
+road to talk to the bold white mem-log. Come back to me swiftly, my
+life.'
+
+As he left the courtyard to reach his horse that was tethered to the
+gate-post, Holden spoke to the white-haired old watchman who guarded the
+house, and bade him under certain contingencies despatch the filled-up
+telegraph-form that Holden gave him. It was all that could be done, and
+with the sensations of a man who has attended his own funeral Holden
+went away by the night mail to his exile. Every hour of the day he
+dreaded the arrival of the telegram, and every hour of the night he
+pictured to himself the death of Ameera. In consequence his work for
+the State was not of first-rate quality, nor was his temper towards his
+colleagues of the most amiable. The fortnight ended without a sign from
+his home, and, torn to pieces by his anxieties, Holden returned to be
+swallowed up for two precious hours by a dinner at the club, wherein he
+heard, as a man hears in a swoon, voices telling him how execrably he
+had performed the other man's duties, and how he had endeared himself to
+all his associates. Then he fled on horseback through the night with
+his heart in his mouth. There was no answer at first to his blows on
+the gate, and he had just wheeled his horse round to kick it in when Pir
+Khan appeared with a lantern and held his stirrup.
+
+'Has aught occurred?' said Holden.
+
+'The news does not come from my mouth, Protector of the Poor, but--'
+He held out his shaking hand as befitted the bearer of good news who is
+entitled to a reward.
+
+Holden hurried through the courtyard. A light burned in the upper room.
+His horse neighed in the gateway, and he heard a shrill little wail that
+sent all the blood into the apple of his throat. It was a new voice, but
+it did not prove that Ameera was alive.
+
+'Who is there?' he called up the narrow brick staircase.
+
+There was a cry of delight from Ameera, and then the voice of
+the mother, tremulous with old age and pride--'We be two women
+and--the--man--thy--son.'
+
+On the threshold of the room Holden stepped on a naked dagger, that
+was laid there to avert ill-luck, and it broke at the hilt under his
+impatient heel.
+
+'God is great!' cooed Ameera in the half-light. 'Thou hast taken his
+misfortunes on thy head.'
+
+'Ay, but how is it with thee, life of my life? Old woman, how is it with
+her?'
+
+'She has forgotten her sufferings for joy that the child is born. There
+is no harm; but speak softly,' said the mother.
+
+'It only needed thy presence to make me all well,' said Ameera. 'My
+king, thou hast been very long away. What gifts hast thou for me? Ah,
+ah! It is I that bring gifts this time. Look, my life, look. Was there
+ever such a babe? Nay, I am too weak even to clear my arm from him.'
+
+'Rest then, and do not talk. I am here, bachari [little woman].'
+
+'Well said, for there is a bond and a heel-rope [peecharee] between us
+now that nothing can break. Look--canst thou see in this light? He is
+without spot or blemish. Never was such a man-child. Ya illah! he shall
+be a pundit--no, a trooper of the Queen. And, my life, dost thou love me
+as well as ever, though I am faint and sick and worn? Answer truly.'
+
+'Yea. I love as I have loved, with all my soul. Lie still, pearl, and
+rest.'
+
+'Then do not go. Sit by my side here--so. Mother, the lord of this house
+needs a cushion. Bring it.' There was an almost imperceptible movement
+on the part of the new life that lay in the hollow of Ameera's arm.
+'Aho!' she said, her voice breaking with love. 'The babe is a champion
+from his birth. He is kicking me in the side with mighty kicks. Was
+there ever such a babe! And he is ours to us--thine and mine. Put thy
+hand on his head, but carefully, for he is very young, and men are
+unskilled in such matters.'
+
+Very cautiously Holden touched with the tips of his fingers the downy
+head.
+
+'He is of the faith,' said Ameera; 'for lying here in the night-watches
+I whispered the call to prayer and the profession of faith into his
+ears. And it is most marvellous that he was born upon a Friday, as I
+was born. Be careful of him, my life; but he can almost grip with his
+hands.'
+
+Holden found one helpless little hand that closed feebly on his finger.
+And the clutch ran through his body till it settled about his heart.
+Till then his sole thought had been for Ameera. He began to realise that
+there was some one else in the world, but he could not feel that it
+was a veritable son with a soul. He sat down to think, and Ameera dozed
+lightly.
+
+'Get hence, sahib,' said her mother under her breath. 'It is not good
+that she should find you here on waking. She must be still.'
+
+'I go,' said Holden submissively. 'Here be rupees. See that my baba gets
+fat and finds all that he needs.'
+
+The chink of the silver roused Ameera. 'I am his mother, and no
+hireling,' she said weakly. 'Shall I look to him more or less for the
+sake of money? Mother, give it back. I have born my lord a son.'
+
+The deep sleep of weakness came upon her almost before the sentence was
+completed. Holden went down to the courtyard very softly with his heart
+at ease. Pir Khan, the old watchman, was chuckling with delight. 'This
+house is now complete,' he said, and without further comment thrust
+into Holden's hands the hilt of a sabre worn many years ago when he, Pir
+Khan, served the Queen in the police. The bleat of a tethered goat came
+from the well-kerb.
+
+'There be two,' said Pir Khan, 'two goats of the best. I bought them,
+and they cost much money; and since there is no birth-party assembled
+their flesh will be all mine. Strike craftily, sahib! 'Tis an
+ill-balanced sabre at the best. Wait till they raise their heads from
+cropping the marigolds.'
+
+'And why?' said Holden, bewildered.
+
+'For the birth-sacrifice. What else? Otherwise the child being unguarded
+from fate may die. The Protector of the Poor knows the fitting words to
+be said.'
+
+Holden had learned them once with little thought that he would ever
+speak them in earnest. The touch of the cold sabre-hilt in his palm
+turned suddenly to the clinging grip of the child upstairs--the child
+that was his own son--and a dread of loss filled him.
+
+'Strike!' said Pir Khan. 'Never life came into the world but life was
+paid for it. See, the goats have raised their heads. Now! With a drawing
+cut!'
+
+Hardly knowing what he did Holden cut twice as he muttered the Mahomedan
+prayer that runs: 'Almighty! In place of this my son I offer life for
+life, blood for blood, head for head, bone for bone, hair for hair, skin
+for skin.' The waiting horse snorted and bounded in his pickets at the
+smell of the raw blood that spirted over Holden's riding-boots.
+
+'Well smitten!' said Pir Khan, wiping the sabre. 'A swordsman was lost
+in thee. Go with a light heart, Heaven-born. I am thy servant, and the
+servant of thy son. May the Presence live a thousand years and... the
+flesh of the goats is all mine?' Pir Khan drew back richer by a month's
+pay. Holden swung himself into the saddle and rode off through
+the low-hanging wood-smoke of the evening. He was full of riotous
+exultation, alternating with a vast vague tenderness directed towards no
+particular object, that made him choke as he bent over the neck of his
+uneasy horse. 'I never felt like this in my life,' he thought. 'I'll go
+to the club and pull myself together.'
+
+A game of pool was beginning, and the room was full of men. Holden
+entered, eager to get to the light and the company of his fellows,
+singing at the top of his voice--
+
+    In Baltimore a-walking, a lady I did meet!
+
+'Did you?' said the club-secretary from his corner. 'Did she happen to
+tell you that your boots were wringing wet? Great goodness, man, it's
+blood!'
+
+'Bosh!' said Holden, picking his cue from the rack. 'May I cut in? It's
+dew. I've been riding through high crops. My faith! my boots are in a
+mess though!
+
+    'And if it be a girl she shall wear a wedding-ring,
+     And if it be a boy he shall fight for his king,
+     With his dirk, and his cap, and his little jacket blue,
+     He shall walk the quarter-deck--'
+
+'Yellow on blue--green next player,' said the marker monotonously.
+
+'He shall walk the quarter-deck,--Am I green, marker? He shall walk the
+quarter-deck,--eh! that's a bad shot,--As his daddy used to do!'
+
+'I don't see that you have anything to crow about,' said a zealous
+junior civilian acidly. 'The Government is not exactly pleased with your
+work when you relieved Sanders.'
+
+'Does that mean a wigging from headquarters?' said Holden with an
+abstracted smile. 'I think I can stand it.'
+
+The talk beat up round the ever-fresh subject of each man's work, and
+steadied Holden till it was time to go to his dark empty bungalow, where
+his butler received him as one who knew all his affairs. Holden remained
+awake for the greater part of the night, and his dreams were pleasant
+ones.
+
+II
+
+'How old is he now?'
+
+'Ya illah! What a man's question! He is all but six weeks old; and on
+this night I go up to the housetop with thee, my life, to count the
+stars. For that is auspicious. And he was born on a Friday under the
+sign of the Sun, and it has been told to me that he will outlive us both
+and get wealth. Can we wish for aught better, beloved?'
+
+'There is nothing better. Let us go up to the roof, and thou shalt count
+the stars--but a few only, for the sky is heavy with cloud.'
+
+'The winter rains are late, and maybe they come out of season. Come,
+before all the stars are hid. I have put on my richest jewels.'
+
+'Thou hast forgotten the best of all.'
+
+'Ai! Ours. He comes also. He has never yet seen the skies.'
+
+Ameera climbed the narrow staircase that led to the flat roof. The
+child, placid and unwinking, lay in the hollow of her right arm,
+gorgeous in silver-fringed muslin with a small skull-cap on his head.
+Ameera wore all that she valued most. The diamond nose-stud that takes
+the place of the Western patch in drawing attention to the curve of the
+nostril, the gold ornament in the centre of the forehead studded with
+tallow-drop emeralds and flawed rubies, the heavy circlet of beaten gold
+that was fastened round her neck by the softness of the pure metal, and
+the chinking curb-patterned silver anklets hanging low over the rosy
+ankle-bone. She was dressed in jade-green muslin as befitted a daughter
+of the Faith, and from shoulder to elbow and elbow to wrist ran
+bracelets of silver tied with floss silk, frail glass bangles slipped
+over the wrist in proof of the slenderness of the hand, and certain
+heavy gold bracelets that had no part in her country's ornaments but,
+since they were Holden's gift and fastened with a cunning European snap,
+delighted her immensely.
+
+They sat down by the low white parapet of the roof, overlooking the city
+and its lights.
+
+'They are happy down there,' said Ameera. 'But I do not think that they
+are as happy as we. Nor do I think the white mem-log are as happy. And
+thou?'
+
+'I know they are not.'
+
+'How dost thou know?'
+
+'They give their children over to the nurses.'
+
+'I have never seen that,' said Ameera with a sigh, 'nor do I wish to
+see. Ahi!--she dropped her head on Holden's shoulder,--'I have counted
+forty stars, and I am tired. Look at the child, love of my life, he is
+counting too.'
+
+The baby was staring with round eyes at the dark of the heavens. Ameera
+placed him in Holden's arms, and he lay there without a cry.
+
+'What shall we call him among ourselves?' she said. 'Look! Art thou ever
+tired of looking? He carries thy very eyes. But the mouth--'
+
+'Is thine, most dear. Who should know better than I?'
+
+''Tis such a feeble mouth. Oh, so small! And yet it holds my heart
+between its lips. Give him to me now. He has been too long away.'
+
+'Nay, let him lie; he has not yet begun to cry.'
+
+'When he cries thou wilt give him back--eh? What a man of mankind thou
+art! If he cried he were only the dearer to me. But, my life, what
+little name shall we give him?'
+
+The small body lay close to Holden's heart. It was utterly helpless and
+very soft. He scarcely dared to breathe for fear of crushing it. The
+caged green parrot that is regarded as a sort of guardian-spirit in most
+native households moved on its perch and fluttered a drowsy wing.
+
+'There is the answer,' said Holden. 'Mian Mittu has spoken. He shall be
+the parrot. When he is ready he will talk mightily and run about. Mian
+Mittu is the parrot in thy--in the Mussulman tongue, is it not?'
+
+'Why put me so far off?' said Ameera fretfully. 'Let it be like unto
+some English name--but not wholly. For he is mine.'
+
+'Then call him Tota, for that is likest English.'
+
+'Ay, Tota, and that is still the parrot. Forgive me, my lord, for a
+minute ago, but in truth he is too little to wear all the weight of Mian
+Mittu for name. He shall be Tota--our Tota to us. Hearest thou, O small
+one? Littlest, thou art Tota.' She touched the child's cheek, and he
+waking wailed, and it was necessary to return him to his mother, who
+soothed him with the wonderful rhyme of Are koko, Jare koko! which says:
+
+     Oh crow! Go crow! Baby's sleeping sound,
+     And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound.
+     Only a penny a pound, baba, only a penny a pound.
+
+Reassured many times as to the price of those plums, Tota cuddled
+himself down to sleep. The two sleek, white well-bullocks in the
+courtyard were steadily chewing the cud of their evening meal; old Pir
+Khan squatted at the head of Holden's horse, his police sabre across
+his knees, pulling drowsily at a big water-pipe that croaked like a
+bull-frog in a pond. Ameera's mother sat spinning in the lower
+verandah, and the wooden gate was shut and barred. The music of a
+marriage-procession came to the roof above the gentle hum of the city,
+and a string of flying-foxes crossed the face of the low moon.
+
+'I have prayed,' said Ameera after a long pause, 'I have prayed for two
+things. First, that I may die in thy stead if thy death is demanded, and
+in the second that I may die in the place of the child. I have prayed to
+the Prophet and to Beebee Miriam [the Virgin Mary]. Thinkest thou either
+will hear?'
+
+'From thy lips who would not hear the lightest word?'
+
+'I asked for straight talk, and thou hast given me sweet talk. Will my
+prayers be heard?'
+
+'How can I say? God is very good.'
+
+'Of that I am not sure. Listen now. When I die, or the child dies, what
+is thy fate? Living, thou wilt return to the bold white mem-log, for
+kind calls to kind.'
+
+'Not always.'
+
+'With a woman, no; with a man it is otherwise. Thou wilt in this life,
+later on, go back to thine own folk. That I could almost endure, for
+I should be dead. But in thy very death thou wilt be taken away to a
+strange place and a paradise that I do not know.'
+
+'Will it be paradise?'
+
+'Surely, for who would harm thee? But we two--I and the child--shall be
+elsewhere, and we cannot come to thee, nor canst thou come to us. In the
+old days, before the child was born, I did not think of these things;
+but now I think of them always. It is very hard talk.'
+
+'It will fall as it will fall. To-morrow we do not know, but to-day and
+love we know well. Surely we are happy now.'
+
+'So happy that it were well to make our happiness assured. And thy
+Beebee Miriam should listen to me; for she is also a woman. But then she
+would envy me! It is not seemly for men to worship a woman.'
+
+Holden laughed aloud at Ameera's little spasm of jealousy.
+
+'Is it not seemly? Why didst thou not turn me from worship of thee,
+then?'
+
+'Thou a worshipper! And of me? My king, for all thy sweet words, well I
+know that I am thy servant and thy slave, and the dust under thy feet.
+And I would not have it otherwise. See!'
+
+Before Holden could prevent her she stooped forward and touched his
+feet; recovering herself with a little laugh she hugged Tota closer to
+her bosom. Then, almost savagely--
+
+'Is it true that the bold white mem-log live for three times the length
+of my life? Is it true that they make their marriages not before they
+are old women?'
+
+'They marry as do others--when they are women.'
+
+'That I know, but they wed when they are twenty-five. Is that true?'
+
+'That is true.'
+
+'Ya illah! At twenty-five! Who would of his own will take a wife even of
+eighteen? She is a woman--aging every hour. Twenty-five! I shall be an
+old woman at that age, and--Those mem-log remain young for ever. How I
+hate them!' 'What have they to do with us?'
+
+'I cannot tell. I know only that there may now be alive on this earth a
+woman ten years older than I who may come to thee and take thy love ten
+years after I am an old woman, gray-headed, and the nurse of Tota's son.
+That is unjust and evil. They should die too.'
+
+'Now, for all thy years thou art a child, and shalt be picked up and
+carried down the staircase.'
+
+'Tota! Have a care for Tota, my lord! Thou at least art as foolish as
+any babe!' Ameera tucked Tota out of harm's way in the hollow of her
+neck, and was carried downstairs laughing in Holden's arms, while Tota
+opened his eyes and smiled after the manner of the lesser angels.
+
+He was a silent infant, and, almost before Holden could realise that he
+was in the world, developed into a small gold-coloured little god and
+unquestioned despot of the house overlooking the city. Those were months
+of absolute happiness to Holden and Ameera--happiness withdrawn from
+the world, shut in behind the wooden gate that Pir Khan guarded. By
+day Holden did his work with an immense pity for such as were not so
+fortunate as himself, and a sympathy for small children that amazed and
+amused many mothers at the little station-gatherings. At nightfall he
+returned to Ameera,--Ameera, full of the wondrous doings of Tota; how
+he had been seen to clap his hands together and move his fingers with
+intention and purpose--which was manifestly a miracle--how later, he had
+of his own initiative crawled out of his low bedstead on to the floor
+and swayed on both feet for the space of three breaths.
+
+'And they were long breaths, for my heart stood still with delight,'
+said Ameera.
+
+Then Tota took the beasts into his councils--the well-bullocks, the
+little gray squirrels, the mongoose that lived in a hole near the well,
+and especially Mian Mittu, the parrot, whose tail he grievously pulled,
+and Mian Mittu screamed till Ameera and Holden arrived.
+
+'O villain! Child of strength! This to thy brother on the house-top!
+Tobah, tobah! Fie! Fie! But I know a charm to make him wise as Suleiman
+and Aflatoun [Solomon and Plato]. Now look,' said Ameera. She drew from
+an embroidered bag a handful of almonds. 'See! we count seven. In the
+name of God!'
+
+She placed Mian Mittu, very angry and rumpled, on the top of his cage,
+and seating herself between the babe and the bird she cracked and peeled
+an almond less white than her teeth. 'This is a true charm, my life, and
+do not laugh. See! I give the parrot one half and Tota the other.' Mian
+Mittu with careful beak took his share from between Ameera's lips, and
+she kissed the other half into the mouth of the child, who ate it slowly
+with wondering eyes. 'This I will do each day of seven, and without
+doubt he who is ours will be a bold speaker and wise. Eh, Tota, what
+wilt thou be when thou art a man and I am gray-headed?' Tota tucked his
+fat legs into adorable creases. He could crawl, but he was not going
+to waste the spring of his youth in idle speech. He wanted Mian Mittu's
+tail to tweak.
+
+When he was advanced to the dignity of a silver belt--which, with a
+magic square engraved on silver and hung round his neck, made up the
+greater part of his clothing--he staggered on a perilous journey down
+the garden to Pir Khan and proffered him all his jewels in exchange
+for one little ride on Holden's horse, having seen his mother's mother
+chaffering with pedlars in the verandah. Pir Khan wept and set the
+untried feet on his own gray head in sign of fealty, and brought the
+bold adventurer to his mother's arms, vowing that Tota would be a leader
+of men ere his beard was grown.
+
+One hot evening, while he sat on the roof between his father and mother
+watching the never-ending warfare of the kites that the city boys flew,
+he demanded a kite of his own with Pir Khan to fly it, because he had
+a fear of dealing with anything larger than himself, and when Holden
+called him a 'spark,' he rose to his feet and answered slowly in defence
+of his new-found individuality, 'Hum'park nahin hai. Hum admi hai [I am
+no spark, but a man].'
+
+The protest made Holden choke and devote himself very seriously to a
+consideration of Tota's future. He need hardly have taken the trouble.
+The delight of that life was too perfect to endure. Therefore it was
+taken away as many things are taken away in India--suddenly and without
+warning. The little lord of the house, as Pir Khan called him, grew
+sorrowful and complained of pains who had never known the meaning of
+pain. Ameera, wild with terror, watched him through the night, and
+in the dawning of the second day the life was shaken out of him by
+fever--the seasonal autumn fever. It seemed altogether impossible
+that he could die, and neither Ameera nor Holden at first believed the
+evidence of the little body on the bedstead. Then Ameera beat her head
+against the wall and would have flung herself down the well in the
+garden had Holden not restrained her by main force.
+
+One mercy only was granted to Holden. He rode to his office in broad
+daylight and found waiting him an unusually heavy mail that demanded
+concentrated attention and hard work. He was not, however, alive to this
+kindness of the gods.
+
+III
+
+The first shock of a bullet is no more than a brisk pinch. The wrecked
+body does not send in its protest to the soul till ten or fifteen
+seconds later. Holden realised his pain slowly, exactly as he had
+realised his happiness, and with the same imperious necessity for hiding
+all trace of it. In the beginning he only felt that there had been a
+loss, and that Ameera needed comforting, where she sat with her head on
+her knees shivering as Mian Mittu from the house-top called, Tota! Tota!
+Tota! Later all his world and the daily life of it rose up to hurt him.
+It was an outrage that any one of the children at the band-stand in the
+evening should be alive and clamorous, when his own child lay dead. It
+was more than mere pain when one of them touched him, and stories told
+by over-fond fathers of their children's latest performances cut him to
+the quick. He could not declare his pain. He had neither help, comfort,
+nor sympathy; and Ameera at the end of each weary day would lead him
+through the hell of self-questioning reproach which is reserved for
+those who have lost a child, and believe that with a little--just a
+little--more care it might have been saved.
+
+'Perhaps,' Ameera would say, 'I did not take sufficient heed. Did I, or
+did I not? The sun on the roof that day when he played so long alone
+and I was--ahi! braiding my hair--it may be that the sun then bred the
+fever. If I had warned him from the sun he might have lived. But, oh my
+life, say that I am guiltless! Thou knowest that I loved him as I love
+thee. Say that there is no blame on me, or I shall die--I shall die!'
+
+'There is no blame,--before God, none. It was written and how could we
+do aught to save? What has been, has been. Let it go, beloved.'
+
+'He was all my heart to me. How can I let the thought go when my arm
+tells me every night that he is not here? Ahi! Ahi! O Tota, come back to
+me--come back again, and let us be all together as it was before!'
+
+'Peace, peace! For thine own sake, and for mine also, if thou lovest
+me--rest.'
+
+'By this I know thou dost not care; and how shouldst thou? The white men
+have hearts of stone and souls of iron. Oh, that I had married a man of
+mine own people--though he beat me--and had never eaten the bread of an
+alien!'
+
+'Am I an alien--mother of my son?'
+
+'What else--Sahib?... Oh, forgive me--forgive! The death has driven me
+mad. Thou art the life of my heart, and the light of my eyes, and the
+breath of my life, and--and I have put thee from me, though it was but
+for a moment. If thou goest away, to whom shall I look for help? Do not
+be angry. Indeed, it was the pain that spoke and not thy slave.'
+
+'I know, I know. We be two who were three. The greater need therefore
+that we should be one.'
+
+They were sitting on the roof as of custom. The night was a warm one in
+early spring, and sheet-lightning was dancing on the horizon to a broken
+tune played by far-off thunder. Ameera settled herself in Holden's arms.
+
+'The dry earth is lowing like a cow for the rain, and I--I am afraid. It
+was not like this when we counted the stars. But thou lovest me as much
+as before, though a bond is taken away? Answer!'
+
+'I love more because a new bond has come out of the sorrow that we have
+eaten together, and that thou knowest.'
+
+'Yea, I knew,' said Ameera in a very small whisper. 'But it is good to
+hear thee say so, my life, who art so strong to help. I will be a child
+no more, but a woman and an aid to thee. Listen! Give me my sitar and I
+will sing bravely.'
+
+She took the light silver-studded sitar and began a song of the great
+hero Rajah Rasalu. The hand failed on the strings, the tune halted,
+checked, and at a low note turned off to the poor little nursery-rhyme
+about the wicked crow--
+
+     And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound.
+     Only a penny a pound, baba--only . . .
+
+Then came the tears, and the piteous rebellion against fate till she
+slept, moaning a little in her sleep, with the right arm thrown clear
+of the body as though it protected something that was not there. It
+was after this night that life became a little easier for Holden. The
+ever-present pain of loss drove him into his work, and the work repaid
+him by filling up his mind for nine or ten hours a day. Ameera sat alone
+in the house and brooded, but grew happier when she understood that
+Holden was more at ease, according to the custom of women. They touched
+happiness again, but this time with caution.
+
+'It was because we loved Tota that he died. The jealousy of God was upon
+us,' said Ameera. 'I have hung up a large black jar before our window to
+turn the evil eye from us, and we must make no protestations of delight,
+but go softly underneath the stars, lest God find us out. Is that not
+good talk, worthless one?'
+
+She had shifted the accent on the word that means 'beloved,' in proof
+of the sincerity of her purpose. But the kiss that followed the new
+christening was a thing that any deity might have envied. They went
+about henceforward saying, 'It is naught, it is naught;' and hoping that
+all the Powers heard.
+
+The Powers were busy on other things. They had allowed thirty million
+people four years of plenty wherein men fed well and the crops were
+certain, and the birth-rate rose year by year; the districts reported a
+purely agricultural population varying from nine hundred to two thousand
+to the square mile of the overburdened earth; and the Member for Lower
+Tooting, wandering about India in pot-hat and frock-coat, talked largely
+of the benefits of British rule and suggested as the one thing needful
+the establishment of a duly qualified electoral system and a general
+bestowal of the franchise. His long-suffering hosts smiled and made him
+welcome, and when he paused to admire, with pretty picked words, the
+blossom of the blood-red dhak-tree that had flowered untimely for a sign
+of what was coming, they smiled more than ever.
+
+It was the Deputy Commissioner of Kot-Kumharsen, staying at the club for
+a day, who lightly told a tale that made Holden's blood run cold as he
+overheard the end.
+
+'He won't bother any one any more. Never saw a man so astonished in my
+life. By Jove, I thought he meant to ask a question in the House about
+it. Fellow-passenger in his ship--dined next him--bowled over by cholera
+and died in eighteen hours. You needn't laugh, you fellows. The Member
+for Lower Tooting is awfully angry about it; but he's more scared. I
+think he's going to take his enlightened self out of India.'
+
+'I'd give a good deal if he were knocked over. It might keep a few
+vestrymen of his kidney to their own parish. But what's this about
+cholera? It's full early for anything of that kind,' said the warden of
+an unprofitable salt-lick.
+
+'Don't know,' said the Deputy Commissioner reflectively. 'We've got
+locusts with us. There's sporadic cholera all along the north--at least
+we're calling it sporadic for decency's sake. The spring crops are short
+in five districts, and nobody seems to know where the rains are. It's
+nearly March now. I don't want to scare anybody, but it seems to me that
+Nature's going to audit her accounts with a big red pencil this summer.'
+
+'Just when I wanted to take leave, too!' said a voice across the room.
+
+'There won't be much leave this year, but there ought to be a great
+deal of promotion. I've come in to persuade the Government to put my pet
+canal on the list of famine-relief works. It's an ill-wind that blows no
+good. I shall get that canal finished at last.'
+
+'Is it the old programme then,' said Holden; 'famine, fever, and
+cholera?'
+
+'Oh no. Only local scarcity and an unusual prevalence of seasonal
+sickness. You'll find it all in the reports if you live till next year.
+You're a lucky chap. YOU haven't got a wife to send out of harm's way.
+The hill-stations ought to be full of women this year.'
+
+'I think you're inclined to exaggerate the talk in the bazars' said a
+young civilian in the Secretariat. 'Now I have observed--'
+
+'I daresay you have,' said the Deputy Commissioner, 'but you've a great
+deal more to observe, my son. In the meantime, I wish to observe to
+you--' and he drew him aside to discuss the construction of the canal
+that was so dear to his heart. Holden went to his bungalow and began
+to understand that he was not alone in the world, and also that he was
+afraid for the sake of another,--which is the most soul-satisfying fear
+known to man.
+
+Two months later, as the Deputy had foretold, Nature began to audit her
+accounts with a red pencil. On the heels of the spring-reapings came a
+cry for bread, and the Government, which had decreed that no man should
+die of want, sent wheat. Then came the cholera from all four quarters of
+the compass. It struck a pilgrim-gathering of half a million at a sacred
+shrine. Many died at the feet of their god; the others broke and ran
+over the face of the land carrying the pestilence with them. It smote a
+walled city and killed two hundred a day. The people crowded the
+trains, hanging on to the footboards and squatting on the roofs of
+the carriages, and the cholera followed them, for at each station they
+dragged out the dead and the dying. They died by the roadside, and the
+horses of the Englishmen shied at the corpses in the grass. The rains
+did not come, and the earth turned to iron lest man should escape death
+by hiding in her. The English sent their wives away to the hills and
+went about their work, coming forward as they were bidden to fill the
+gaps in the fighting-line. Holden, sick with fear of losing his chiefest
+treasure on earth, had done his best to persuade Ameera to go away with
+her mother to the Himalayas.
+
+'Why should I go?' said she one evening on the roof.
+
+'There is sickness, and people are dying, and all the white mem-log have
+gone.'
+
+'All of them?'
+
+'All--unless perhaps there remain some old scald-head who vexes her
+husband's heart by running risk of death.'
+
+'Nay; who stays is my sister, and thou must not abuse her, for I will be
+a scald-head too. I am glad all the bold mem-log are gone.'
+
+'Do I speak to a woman or a babe? Go to the hills and I will see to
+it that thou goest like a queen's daughter. Think, child. In a
+red-lacquered bullock-cart, veiled and curtained, with brass peacocks
+upon the pole and red cloth hangings. I will send two orderlies for
+guard, and--'
+
+'Peace! Thou art the babe in speaking thus. What use are those toys to
+me? HE would have patted the bullocks and played with the housings. For
+his sake, perhaps,--thou hast made me very English--I might have gone.
+Now, I will not. Let the mem-log run.'
+
+'Their husbands are sending them, beloved.'
+
+'Very good talk. Since when hast thou been my husband to tell me what to
+do? I have but borne thee a son. Thou art only all the desire of my soul
+to me. How shall I depart when I know that if evil befall thee by the
+breadth of so much as my littlest finger-nail--is that not small?--I
+should be aware of it though I were in paradise. And here, this summer
+thou mayest die--ai, janee, die! and in dying they might call to tend
+thee a white woman, and she would rob me in the last of thy love!'
+
+'But love is not born in a moment or on a death-bed!'
+
+'What dost thou know of love, stoneheart? She would take thy thanks at
+least and, by God and the Prophet and Beebee Miriam the mother of thy
+Prophet, that I will never endure. My lord and my love, let there be no
+more foolish talk of going away. Where thou art, I am. It is enough.'
+She put an arm round his neck and a hand on his mouth.
+
+There are not many happinesses so complete as those that are snatched
+under the shadow of the sword. They sat together and laughed, calling
+each other openly by every pet name that could move the wrath of the
+gods. The city below them was locked up in its own torments. Sulphur
+fires blazed in the streets; the conches in the Hindu temples screamed
+and bellowed, for the gods were inattentive in those days. There was a
+service in the great Mahomedan shrine, and the call to prayer from the
+minarets was almost unceasing. They heard the wailing in the houses of
+the dead, and once the shriek of a mother who had lost a child and was
+calling for its return. In the gray dawn they saw the dead borne
+out through the city gates, each litter with its own little knot of
+mourners. Wherefore they kissed each other and shivered.
+
+It was a red and heavy audit, for the land was very sick and needed a
+little breathing-space ere the torrent of cheap life should flood it
+anew. The children of immature fathers and undeveloped mothers made no
+resistance. They were cowed and sat still, waiting till the sword should
+be sheathed in November if it were so willed. There were gaps among
+the English, but the gaps were filled. The work of superintending
+famine-relief, cholera-sheds, medicine-distribution, and what little
+sanitation was possible, went forward because it was so ordered.
+
+Holden had been told to keep himself in readiness to move to replace the
+next man who should fall. There were twelve hours in each day when he
+could not see Ameera, and she might die in three. He was considering
+what his pain would be if he could not see her for three months, or
+if she died out of his sight. He was absolutely certain that her death
+would be demanded--so certain that when he looked up from the telegram
+and saw Pir Khan breathless in the doorway, he laughed aloud. 'And?'
+said he,--
+
+'When there is a cry in the night and the spirit flutters into the
+throat, who has a charm that will restore? Come swiftly, Heaven-born! It
+is the black cholera.'
+
+Holden galloped to his home. The sky was heavy with clouds, for the
+long-deferred rains were near and the heat was stifling. Ameera's mother
+met him in the courtyard, whimpering, 'She is dying. She is nursing
+herself into death. She is all but dead. What shall I do, sahib?'
+
+Ameera was lying in the room in which Tota had been born. She made no
+sign when Holden entered, because the human soul is a very lonely
+thing and, when it is getting ready to go away, hides itself in a misty
+borderland where the living may not follow. The black cholera does its
+work quietly and without explanation. Ameera was being thrust out of
+life as though the Angel of Death had himself put his hand upon her. The
+quick breathing seemed to show that she was either afraid or in pain,
+but neither eyes nor mouth gave any answer to Holden's kisses. There was
+nothing to be said or done. Holden could only wait and suffer. The first
+drops of the rain began to fall on the roof, and he could hear shouts of
+joy in the parched city.
+
+The soul came back a little and the lips moved. Holden bent down to
+listen. 'Keep nothing of mine,' said Ameera. 'Take no hair from my head.
+SHE would make thee burn it later on. That flame I should feel. Lower!
+Stoop lower! Remember only that I was thine and bore thee a son. Though
+thou wed a white woman to-morrow, the pleasure of receiving in thy arms
+thy first son is taken from thee for ever. Remember me when thy son is
+born--the one that shall carry thy name before all men. His misfortunes
+be on my head. I bear witness--I bear witness'--the lips were forming
+the words on his ear--'that there is no God but--thee, beloved!'
+
+Then she died. Holden sat still, and all thought was taken from
+him,--till he heard Ameera's mother lift the curtain.
+
+'Is she dead, sahib?'
+
+'She is dead.'
+
+'Then I will mourn, and afterwards take an inventory of the furniture in
+this house. For that will be mine. The sahib does not mean to resume it?
+It is so little, so very little, sahib, and I am an old woman. I would
+like to lie softly.'
+
+'For the mercy of God be silent a while. Go out and mourn where I cannot
+hear.'
+
+'Sahib, she will be buried in four hours.'
+
+'I know the custom. I shall go ere she is taken away. That matter is in
+thy hands. Look to it, that the bed on which--on which she lies--'
+
+'Aha! That beautiful red-lacquered bed. I have long desired--'
+
+'That the bed is left here untouched for my disposal. All else in the
+house is thine. Hire a cart, take everything, go hence, and before
+sunrise let there be nothing in this house but that which I have ordered
+thee to respect.'
+
+'I am an old woman. I would stay at least for the days of mourning, and
+the rains have just broken. Whither shall I go?'
+
+'What is that to me? My order is that there is a going. The house-gear
+is worth a thousand rupees and my orderly shall bring thee a hundred
+rupees to-night.'
+
+'That is very little. Think of the cart-hire.'
+
+'It shall be nothing unless thou goest, and with speed. O woman, get
+hence and leave me with my dead!'
+
+The mother shuffled down the staircase, and in her anxiety to take stock
+of the house-fittings forgot to mourn. Holden stayed by Ameera's side
+and the rain roared on the roof. He could not think connectedly by
+reason of the noise, though he made many attempts to do so. Then four
+sheeted ghosts glided dripping into the room and stared at him through
+their veils. They were the washers of the dead. Holden left the room
+and went out to his horse. He had come in a dead, stifling calm through
+ankle-deep dust. He found the courtyard a rain-lashed pond alive with
+frogs; a torrent of yellow water ran under the gate, and a roaring wind
+drove the bolts of the rain like buckshot against the mud-walls. Pir
+Khan was shivering in his little hut by the gate, and the horse was
+stamping uneasily in the water.
+
+'I have been told the sahib's order,' said Pir Khan. 'It is well. This
+house is now desolate. I go also, for my monkey-face would be a reminder
+of that which has been. Concerning the bed, I will bring that to thy
+house yonder in the morning; but remember, sahib, it will be to thee a
+knife turning in a green wound. I go upon a pilgrimage, and I will
+take no money. I have grown fat in the protection of the Presence whose
+sorrow is my sorrow. For the last time I hold his stirrup.'
+
+He touched Holden's foot with both hands and the horse sprang out into
+the road, where the creaking bamboos were whipping the sky and all the
+frogs were chuckling. Holden could not see for the rain in his face. He
+put his hands before his eyes and muttered--
+
+'Oh you brute! You utter brute!'
+
+The news of his trouble was already in his bungalow. He read the
+knowledge in his butler's eyes when Ahmed Khan brought in food, and
+for the first and last time in his life laid a hand upon his master's
+shoulder, saying, 'Eat, sahib, eat. Meat is good against sorrow. I also
+have known. Moreover the shadows come and go, sahib; the shadows come
+and go. These be curried eggs.'
+
+Holden could neither eat nor sleep. The heavens sent down eight inches
+of rain in that night and washed the earth clean. The waters tore down
+walls, broke roads, and scoured open the shallow graves on the Mahomedan
+burying-ground. All next day it rained, and Holden sat still in his
+house considering his sorrow. On the morning of the third day he
+received a telegram which said only, 'Ricketts, Myndonie. Dying. Holden
+relieve. Immediate.' Then he thought that before he departed he would
+look at the house wherein he had been master and lord. There was a break
+in the weather, and the rank earth steamed with vapour.
+
+He found that the rains had torn down the mud pillars of the gateway,
+and the heavy wooden gate that had guarded his life hung lazily from one
+hinge. There was grass three inches high in the courtyard; Pir Khan's
+lodge was empty, and the sodden thatch sagged between the beams. A gray
+squirrel was in possession of the verandah, as if the house had been
+untenanted for thirty years instead of three days. Ameera's mother had
+removed everything except some mildewed matting. The tick-tick of the
+little scorpions as they hurried across the floor was the only sound
+in the house. Ameera's room and the other one where Tota had lived were
+heavy with mildew; and the narrow staircase leading to the roof was
+streaked and stained with rain-borne mud. Holden saw all these
+things, and came out again to meet in the road Durga Dass, his
+landlord,--portly, affable, clothed in white muslin, and driving a
+Cee-spring buggy. He was overlooking his property to see how the roofs
+stood the stress of the first rains.
+
+'I have heard,' said he, 'you will not take this place any more, sahib?'
+
+'What are you going to do with it?'
+
+'Perhaps I shall let it again.'
+
+'Then I will keep it on while I am away.'
+
+Durga Dass was silent for some time. 'You shall not take it on, sahib,'
+he said. 'When I was a young man I also--, but to-day I am a member of
+the Municipality. Ho! Ho! No. When the birds have gone what need to keep
+the nest? I will have it pulled down--the timber will sell for something
+always. It shall be pulled down, and the Municipality shall make a road
+across, as they desire, from the burning-ghat to the city wall, so that
+no man may say where this house stood.'
+
+
+
+
+AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE
+
+
+ The sky is lead and our faces are red,
+ And the gates of Hell are opened and riven,
+ And the winds of Hell are loosened and driven,
+ And the dust flies up in the face of Heaven,
+ And the clouds come down in a fiery sheet,
+ Heavy to raise and hard to be borne.
+ And the soul of man is turned from his meat,
+ Turned from the trifles for which he has striven
+ Sick in his body, and heavy hearted,
+ And his soul flies up like the dust in the sheet
+ Breaks from his flesh and is gone and departed,
+ As the blasts they blow on the cholera-horn.
+                            HIMALAYAN.
+
+Four men, each entitled to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of
+happiness,' sat at a table playing whist. The thermometer marked--for
+them--one hundred and one degrees of heat. The room was darkened till it
+was only just possible to distinguish the pips of the cards and the very
+white faces of the players. A tattered, rotten punkah of whitewashed
+calico was puddling the hot air and whining dolefully at each stroke.
+Outside lay gloom of a November day in London. There was neither sky,
+sun, nor horizon,--nothing but a brown purple haze of heat. It was as
+though the earth were dying of apoplexy.
+
+From time to time clouds of tawny dust rose from the ground without
+wind or warning, flung themselves tablecloth-wise among the tops of the
+parched trees, and came down again. Then a whirling dust-devil would
+scutter across the plain for a couple of miles, break, and fall outward,
+though there was nothing to check its flight save a long low line of
+piled railway-sleepers white with the dust, a cluster of huts made of
+mud, condemned rails, and canvas, and the one squat four-roomed bungalow
+that belonged to the assistant engineer in charge of a section of the
+Gaudhari State line then under construction.
+
+The four, stripped to the thinnest of sleeping-suits, played whist
+crossly, with wranglings as to leads and returns. It was not the best
+kind of whist, but they had taken some trouble to arrive at it. Mottram
+of the Indian Survey had ridden thirty and railed one hundred miles from
+his lonely post in the desert since the night before; Lowndes of the
+Civil Service, on special duty in the political department, had come as
+far to escape for an instant the miserable intrigues of an impoverished
+native State whose king alternately fawned and blustered for more
+money from the pitiful revenues contributed by hard-wrung peasants and
+despairing camel-breeders; Spurstow, the doctor of the line, had left
+a cholera-stricken camp of coolies to look after itself for forty-eight
+hours while he associated with white men once more. Hummil, the
+assistant engineer, was the host. He stood fast and received his friends
+thus every Sunday if they could come in. When one of them failed to
+appear, he would send a telegram to his last address, in order that he
+might know whether the defaulter were dead or alive. There are very
+many places in the East where it is not good or kind to let your
+acquaintances drop out of sight even for one short week.
+
+The players were not conscious of any special regard for each other.
+They squabbled whenever they met; but they ardently desired to meet, as
+men without water desire to drink. They were lonely folk who understood
+the dread meaning of loneliness. They were all under thirty years of
+age,--which is too soon for any man to possess that knowledge.
+
+'Pilsener?' said Spurstow, after the second rubber, mopping his
+forehead.
+
+'Beer's out, I'm sorry to say, and there's hardly enough soda-water for
+to-night,' said Hummil.
+
+'What filthy bad management!' Spurstow snarled.
+
+'Can't help it. I've written and wired; but the trains don't come
+through regularly yet. Last week the ice ran out,--as Lowndes knows.'
+
+'Glad I didn't come. I could ha' sent you some if I had known, though.
+Phew! it's too hot to go on playing bumblepuppy.' This with a savage
+scowl at Lowndes, who only laughed. He was a hardened offender.
+
+Mottram rose from the table and looked out of a chink in the shutters.
+
+'What a sweet day!' said he.
+
+The company yawned all together and betook themselves to an aimless
+investigation of all Hummil's possessions,--guns, tattered novels,
+saddlery, spurs, and the like. They had fingered them a score of times
+before, but there was really nothing else to do.
+
+'Got anything fresh?' said Lowndes.
+
+'Last week's Gazette of India, and a cutting from a home paper. My
+father sent it out. It's rather amusing.'
+
+'One of those vestrymen that call 'emselves M.P.'s again, is it?' said
+Spurstow, who read his newspapers when he could get them.
+
+'Yes. Listen to this. It's to your address, Lowndes. The man was making
+a speech to his constituents, and he piled it on. Here's a sample:
+"And I assert unhesitatingly that the Civil Service in India is the
+preserve--the pet preserve--of the aristocracy of England. What does the
+democracy--what do the masses--get from that country, which we have step
+by step fraudulently annexed? I answer, nothing whatever. It is
+farmed with a single eye to their own interests by the scions of the
+aristocracy. They take good care to maintain their lavish scale of
+incomes, to avoid or stifle any inquiries into the nature and conduct of
+their administration, while they themselves force the unhappy peasant
+to pay with the sweat of his brow for all the luxuries in which they are
+lapped."' Hummil waved the cutting above his head. ''Ear! 'ear!' said
+his audience.
+
+Then Lowndes, meditatively: 'I'd give--I'd give three months' pay to
+have that gentleman spend one month with me and see how the free and
+independent native prince works things. Old Timbersides'--this was his
+flippant title for an honoured and decorated feudatory prince--'has
+been wearing my life out this week past for money. By Jove, his latest
+performance was to send me one of his women as a bribe!'
+
+'Good for you! Did you accept it?' said Mottram.
+
+'No. I rather wish I had, now. She was a pretty little person, and
+she yarned away to me about the horrible destitution among the king's
+women-folk. The darlings haven't had any new clothes for nearly a month,
+and the old man wants to buy a new drag from Calcutta,--solid silver
+railings and silver lamps, and trifles of that kind. I've tried to make
+him understand that he has played the deuce with the revenues for the
+last twenty years and must go slow. He can't see it.'
+
+'But he has the ancestral treasure-vaults to draw on. There must be
+three millions at least in jewels and coin under his palace,' said
+Hummil.
+
+'Catch a native king disturbing the family treasure! The priests forbid
+it except as the last resort. Old Timbersides has added something like a
+quarter of a million to the deposit in his reign.'
+
+'Where the mischief does it all come from?' said Mottram.
+
+'The country. The state of the people is enough to make you sick. I've
+known the tax-men wait by a milch-camel till the foal was born and then
+hurry off the mother for arrears. And what can I do? I can't get the
+court clerks to give me any accounts; I can't raise anything more than
+a fat smile from the commander-in-chief when I find out the troops are
+three months in arrears; and old Timbersides begins to weep when I speak
+to him. He has taken to the King's Peg heavily,--liqueur brandy for
+whisky, and Heidsieck for soda-water.'
+
+'That's what the Rao of Jubela took to. Even a native can't last long at
+that,' said Spurstow. 'He'll go out.'
+
+'And a good thing, too. Then I suppose we'll have a council of regency,
+and a tutor for the young prince, and hand him back his kingdom with ten
+years' accumulations.'
+
+'Whereupon that young prince, having been taught all the vices of the
+English, will play ducks and drakes with the money and undo ten years'
+work in eighteen months. I've seen that business before,' said Spurstow.
+'I should tackle the king with a light hand, if I were you, Lowndes.
+They'll hate you quite enough under any circumstances.'
+
+'That's all very well. The man who looks on can talk about the light
+hand; but you can't clean a pig-stye with a pen dipped in rose-water. I
+know my risks; but nothing has happened yet. My servant's an old Pathan,
+and he cooks for me. They are hardly likely to bribe him, and I don't
+accept food from my true friends, as they call themselves. Oh, but it's
+weary work! I'd sooner be with you, Spurstow. There's shooting near your
+camp.'
+
+'Would you? I don't think it. About fifteen deaths a day don't incite a
+man to shoot anything but himself. And the worst of it is that the poor
+devils look at you as though you ought to save them. Lord knows, I've
+tried everything. My last attempt was empirical, but it pulled an old
+man through. He was brought to me apparently past hope, and I gave
+him gin and Worcester sauce with cayenne. It cured him; but I don't
+recommend it.'
+
+'How do the cases run generally?' said Hummil.
+
+'Very simply indeed. Chlorodyne, opium pill, chlorodyne, collapse,
+nitre, bricks to the feet, and then--the burning-ghat. The last seems to
+be the only thing that stops the trouble. It's black cholera, you know.
+Poor devils! But, I will say, little Bunsee Lal, my apothecary, works
+like a demon. I've recommended him for promotion if he comes through it
+all alive.'
+
+'And what are your chances, old man?' said Mottram.
+
+'Don't know; don't care much; but I've sent the letter in. What are you
+doing with yourself generally?'
+
+'Sitting under a table in the tent and spitting on the sextant to
+keep it cool,' said the man of the survey. 'Washing my eyes to
+avoid ophthalmia, which I shall certainly get, and trying to make a
+sub-surveyor understand that an error of five degrees in an angle isn't
+quite so small as it looks. I'm altogether alone, y' know, and shall be
+till the end of the hot weather.'
+
+'Hummil's the lucky man,' said Lowndes, flinging himself into a long
+chair. 'He has an actual roof--torn as to the ceiling-cloth, but still
+a roof--over his head. He sees one train daily. He can get beer and
+soda-water and ice 'em when God is good. He has books, pictures,---they
+were torn from the Graphic,--'and the society of the excellent
+sub-contractor Jevins, besides the pleasure of receiving us weekly.'
+
+Hummil smiled grimly. 'Yes, I'm the lucky man, I suppose. Jevins is
+luckier.'
+
+'How? Not----'
+
+'Yes. Went out. Last Monday.'
+
+'By his own hand?' said Spurstow quickly, hinting the suspicion that was
+in everybody's mind. There was no cholera near Hummil's section. Even
+fever gives a man at least a week's grace, and sudden death generally
+implied self-slaughter.
+
+'I judge no man this weather,' said Hummil. 'He had a touch of the sun,
+I fancy; for last week, after you fellows had left, he came into the
+verandah and told me that he was going home to see his wife, in Market
+Street, Liverpool, that evening.
+
+'I got the apothecary in to look at him, and we tried to make him lie
+down. After an hour or two he rubbed his eyes and said he believed he
+had had a fit,--hoped he hadn't said anything rude. Jevins had a great
+idea of bettering himself socially. He was very like Chucks in his
+language.'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Then he went to his own bungalow and began cleaning a rifle. He told
+the servant that he was going to shoot buck in the morning. Naturally
+he fumbled with the trigger, and shot himself through the
+head--accidentally. The apothecary sent in a report to my chief, and
+Jevins is buried somewhere out there. I'd have wired to you, Spurstow,
+if you could have done anything.'
+
+'You're a queer chap,' said Mottram. 'If you'd killed the man yourself
+you couldn't have been more quiet about the business.'
+
+'Good Lord! what does it matter?' said Hummil calmly. 'I've got to do
+a lot of his overseeing work in addition to my own. I'm the only person
+that suffers. Jevins is out of it,--by pure accident, of course, but out
+of it. The apothecary was going to write a long screed on suicide. Trust
+a babu to drivel when he gets the chance.'
+
+'Why didn't you let it go in as suicide?' said Lowndes.
+
+'No direct proof. A man hasn't many privileges in this country, but he
+might at least be allowed to mishandle his own rifle. Besides, some day
+I may need a man to smother up an accident to myself. Live and let live.
+Die and let die.'
+
+'You take a pill,' said Spurstow, who had been watching Hummil's white
+face narrowly. 'Take a pill, and don't be an ass. That sort of talk is
+skittles. Anyhow, suicide is shirking your work. If I were Job ten times
+over, I should be so interested in what was going to happen next that
+I'd stay on and watch.'
+
+'Ah! I've lost that curiosity,' said Hummil.
+
+'Liver out of order?' said Lowndes feelingly.
+
+'No. Can't sleep. That's worse.'
+
+'By Jove, it is!' said Mottram. 'I'm that way every now and then, and
+the fit has to wear itself out. What do you take for it?'
+
+'Nothing. What's the use? I haven't had ten minutes' sleep since Friday
+morning.'
+
+'Poor chap! Spurstow, you ought to attend to this,' said Mottram. 'Now
+you mention it, your eyes are rather gummy and swollen.'
+
+Spurstow, still watching Hummil, laughed lightly. 'I'll patch him up,
+later on. Is it too hot, do you think, to go for a ride?'
+
+'Where to?' said Lowndes wearily. 'We shall have to go away at eight,
+and there'll be riding enough for us then. I hate a horse, when I have
+to use him as a necessity. Oh, heavens! what is there to do?'
+
+'Begin whist again, at chick points ['a chick' is supposed to be eight
+shillings] and a gold mohur on the rub,' said Spurstow promptly.
+
+'Poker. A month's pay all round for the pool,--no limit,--and
+fifty-rupee raises. Somebody would be broken before we got up,' said
+Lowndes.
+
+'Can't say that it would give me any pleasure to break any man in this
+company,' said Mottram. 'There isn't enough excitement in it, and
+it's foolish.' He crossed over to the worn and battered little
+camp-piano,--wreckage of a married household that had once held the
+bungalow,--and opened the case.
+
+'It's used up long ago,' said Hummil. 'The servants have picked it to
+pieces.'
+
+The piano was indeed hopelessly out of order, but Mottram managed to
+bring the rebellious notes into a sort of agreement, and there rose from
+the ragged keyboard something that might once have been the ghost of a
+popular music-hall song. The men in the long chairs turned with evident
+interest as Mottram banged the more lustily.
+
+'That's good!' said Lowndes. 'By Jove! the last time I heard that song
+was in '79, or thereabouts, just before I came out.'
+
+'Ah!' said Spurstow with pride,' I was home in '80.' And he mentioned a
+song of the streets popular at that date.
+
+Mottram executed it roughly. Lowndes criticised and volunteered
+emendations. Mottram dashed into another ditty, not of the music-hall
+character, and made as if to rise.
+
+'Sit down,' said Hummil. 'I didn't know that you had any music in your
+composition. Go on playing until you can't think of anything more. I'll
+have that piano tuned up before you come again. Play something festive.'
+
+Very simple indeed were the tunes to which Mottram's art and the
+limitations of the piano could give effect, but the men listened with
+pleasure, and in the pauses talked all together of what they had seen or
+heard when they were last at home. A dense dust-storm sprung up outside,
+and swept roaring over the house, enveloping it in the choking darkness
+of midnight, but Mottram continued unheeding, and the crazy tinkle
+reached the ears of the listeners above the flapping of the tattered
+ceiling-cloth.
+
+In the silence after the storm he glided from the more directly personal
+songs of Scotland, half humming them as he played, into the Evening
+Hymn.
+
+'Sunday,' said he, nodding his head.
+
+'Go on. Don't apologise for it,' said Spurstow.
+
+Hummil laughed long and riotously. 'Play it, by all means. You're full
+of surprises to-day. I didn't know you had such a gift of finished
+sarcasm. How does that thing go?'
+
+Mottram took up the tune.
+
+'Too slow by half. You miss the note of gratitude,' said Hummil. 'It
+ought to go to the "Grasshopper's Polka,"--this way.' And he chanted,
+prestissimo,--
+
+'Glory to thee, my God, this night. For all the blessings of the light.
+
+That shows we really feel our blessings. How does it go on?--
+
+'If in the night I sleepless lie, My soul with sacred thoughts supply;
+May no ill dreams disturb my rest.'--
+
+Quicker, Mottram!--
+
+'Or powers of darkness me molest!'
+
+'Bah! what an old hypocrite you are!'
+
+'Don't be an ass,' said Lowndes. 'You are at full liberty to make fun of
+anything else you like, but leave that hymn alone. It's associated in my
+mind with the most sacred recollections----'
+
+'Summer evenings in the country,--stained-glass window,--light going
+out, and you and she jamming your heads together over one hymn-book,'
+said Mottram.
+
+'Yes, and a fat old cockchafer hitting you in the eye when you walked
+home. Smell of hay, and a moon as big as a bandbox sitting on the top of
+a haycock; bats,--roses,--milk and midges,' said Lowndes.
+
+'Also mothers. I can just recollect my mother singing me to sleep with
+that when I was a little chap,' said Spurstow.
+
+The darkness had fallen on the room. They could hear Hummil squirming in
+his chair.
+
+'Consequently,' said he testily, 'you sing it when you are seven fathom
+deep in Hell! It's an insult to the intelligence of the Deity to pretend
+we're anything but tortured rebels.'
+
+'Take TWO pills,' said Spurstow; 'that's tortured liver.'
+
+'The usually placid Hummil is in a vile bad temper. I'm sorry for his
+coolies to-morrow,' said Lowndes, as the servants brought in the lights
+and prepared the table for dinner.
+
+As they were settling into their places about the miserable goat-chops,
+and the smoked tapioca pudding, Spurstow took occasion to whisper to
+Mottram, 'Well done, David!'
+
+'Look after Saul, then,' was the reply.
+
+'What are you two whispering about?' said Hummil suspiciously.
+
+'Only saying that you are a damned poor host. This fowl can't be cut,'
+returned Spurstow with a sweet smile. 'Call this a dinner?'
+
+'I can't help it. You don't expect a banquet, do you?'
+
+Throughout that meal Hummil contrived laboriously to insult directly
+and pointedly all his guests in succession, and at each insult Spurstow
+kicked the aggrieved persons under the table; but he dared not exchange
+a glance of intelligence with either of them. Hummil's face was white
+and pinched, while his eyes were unnaturally large. No man dreamed for
+a moment of resenting his savage personalities, but as soon as the meal
+was over they made haste to get away. 'Don't go. You're just getting
+amusing, you fellows. I hope I haven't said anything that annoyed you.
+You're such touchy devils.' Then, changing the note into one of almost
+abject entreaty, Hummil added, 'I say, you surely aren't going?'
+
+'In the language of the blessed Jorrocks, where I dines I sleeps,' said
+Spurstow. 'I want to have a look at your coolies to-morrow, if you don't
+mind. You can give me a place to lie down in, I suppose?'
+
+The others pleaded the urgency of their several duties next day, and,
+saddling up, departed together, Hummil begging them to come next Sunday.
+As they jogged off, Lowndes unbosomed himself to Mottram--
+
+'... And I never felt so like kicking a man at his own table in my life.
+He said I cheated at whist, and reminded me I was in debt! 'Told you you
+were as good as a liar to your face! You aren't half indignant enough
+over it.'
+
+'Not I,' said Mottram. 'Poor devil! Did you ever know old Hummy behave
+like that before or within a hundred miles of it?'
+
+'That's no excuse. Spurstow was hacking my shin all the time, so I kept
+a hand on myself. Else I should have--'
+
+'No, you wouldn't. You'd have done as Hummy did about Jevins; judge no
+man this weather. By Jove! the buckle of my bridle is hot in my hand!
+Trot out a bit, and 'ware rat-holes.'
+
+Ten minutes' trotting jerked out of Lowndes one very sage remark when he
+pulled up, sweating from every pore--
+
+''Good thing Spurstow's with him to-night.'
+
+'Ye-es. Good man, Spurstow. Our roads turn here. See you again next
+Sunday, if the sun doesn't bowl me over.'
+
+'S'pose so, unless old Timbersides' finance minister manages to dress
+some of my food. Good-night, and--God bless you!'
+
+'What's wrong now?'
+
+'Oh, nothing.' Lowndes gathered up his whip, and, as he flicked
+Mottram's mare on the flank, added, 'You're not a bad little
+chap,--that's all.' And the mare bolted half a mile across the sand, on
+the word.
+
+In the assistant engineer's bungalow Spurstow and Hummil smoked the pipe
+of silence together, each narrowly watching the other. The capacity of a
+bachelor's establishment is as elastic as its arrangements are simple. A
+servant cleared away the dining-room table, brought in a couple of rude
+native bedsteads made of tape strung on a light wood frame, flung a
+square of cool Calcutta matting over each, set them side by side, pinned
+two towels to the punkah so that their fringes should just sweep clear
+of the sleepers' nose and mouth, and announced that the couches were
+ready.
+
+The men flung themselves down, ordering the punkah-coolies by all the
+powers of Hell to pull. Every door and window was shut, for the outside
+air was that of an oven. The atmosphere within was only 104 degrees,
+as the thermometer bore witness, and heavy with the foul smell of
+badly-trimmed kerosene lamps; and this stench, combined with that of
+native tobacco, baked brick, and dried earth, sends the heart of many
+a strong man down to his boots, for it is the smell of the Great Indian
+Empire when she turns herself for six months into a house of torment.
+Spurstow packed his pillows craftily so that he reclined rather than
+lay, his head at a safe elevation above his feet. It is not good
+to sleep on a low pillow in the hot weather if you happen to be of
+thick-necked build, for you may pass with lively snores and gugglings
+from natural sleep into the deep slumber of heat-apoplexy.
+
+'Pack your pillows,' said the doctor sharply, as he saw Hummil preparing
+to lie down at full length.
+
+The night-light was trimmed; the shadow of the punkah wavered across the
+room, and the 'flick' of the punkah-towel and the soft whine of the
+rope through the wall-hole followed it. Then the punkah flagged, almost
+ceased. The sweat poured from Spurstow's brow. Should he go out and
+harangue the coolie? It started forward again with a savage jerk, and
+a pin came out of the towels. When this was replaced, a tomtom in the
+coolie-lines began to beat with the steady throb of a swollen artery
+inside some brain-fevered skull. Spurstow turned on his side and swore
+gently. There was no movement on Hummil's part. The man had composed
+himself as rigidly as a corpse, his hands clinched at his sides. The
+respiration was too hurried for any suspicion of sleep. Spurstow looked
+at the set face. The jaws were clinched, and there was a pucker round
+the quivering eyelids.
+
+'He's holding himself as tightly as ever he can,' thought Spurstow.
+'What in the world is the matter with him?--Hummil!'
+
+'Yes,' in a thick constrained voice.
+
+'Can't you get to sleep?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Head hot? 'Throat feeling bulgy? or how?'
+
+'Neither, thanks. I don't sleep much, you know.'
+
+'Feel pretty bad?'
+
+'Pretty bad, thanks. There is a tomtom outside, isn't there? I thought
+it was my head at first.... Oh, Spurstow, for pity's sake give me
+something that will put me asleep,--sound asleep,--if it's only for six
+hours!' He sprang up, trembling from head to foot. 'I haven't been able
+to sleep naturally for days, and I can't stand it!--I can't stand it!'
+
+'Poor old chap!'
+
+'That's no use. Give me something to make me sleep. I tell you I'm
+nearly mad. I don't know what I say half my time. For three weeks I've
+had to think and spell out every word that has come through my lips
+before I dared say it. Isn't that enough to drive a man mad? I can't see
+things correctly now, and I've lost my sense of touch. My skin aches--my
+skin aches! Make me sleep. Oh, Spurstow, for the love of God make me
+sleep sound. It isn't enough merely to let me dream. Let me sleep!'
+
+'All right, old man, all right. Go slow; you aren't half as bad as you
+think.'
+
+The flood-gates of reserve once broken, Hummil was clinging to him like
+a frightened child. 'You're pinching my arm to pieces.'
+
+'I'll break your neck if you don't do something for me. No, I didn't
+mean that. Don't be angry, old fellow.' He wiped the sweat off himself
+as he fought to regain composure. 'I'm a bit restless and off my oats,
+and perhaps you could recommend some sort of sleeping mixture,--bromide
+of potassium.'
+
+'Bromide of skittles! Why didn't you tell me this before? Let go of my
+arm, and I'll see if there's anything in my cigarette-case to suit your
+complaint.' Spurstow hunted among his day-clothes, turned up the lamp,
+opened a little silver cigarette-case, and advanced on the expectant
+Hummil with the daintiest of fairy squirts.
+
+'The last appeal of civilisation,' said he, 'and a thing I hate to use.
+Hold out your arm. Well, your sleeplessness hasn't ruined your
+muscle; and what a thick hide it is! Might as well inject a buffalo
+subcutaneously. Now in a few minutes the morphia will begin working. Lie
+down and wait.'
+
+A smile of unalloyed and idiotic delight began to creep over Hummil's
+face. 'I think,' he whispered,--'I think I'm going off now. Gad! it's
+positively heavenly! Spurstow, you must give me that case to keep;
+you--' The voice ceased as the head fell back.
+
+'Not for a good deal,' said Spurstow to the unconscious form. 'And now,
+my friend, sleeplessness of your kind being very apt to relax the moral
+fibre in little matters of life and death, I'll just take the liberty of
+spiking your guns.'
+
+He paddled into Hummil's saddle-room in his bare feet and uncased a
+twelve-bore rifle, an express, and a revolver. Of the first he unscrewed
+the nipples and hid them in the bottom of a saddlery-case; of the second
+he abstracted the lever, kicking it behind a big wardrobe. The third he
+merely opened, and knocked the doll-head bolt of the grip up with the
+heel of a riding-boot.
+
+'That's settled,' he said, as he shook the sweat off his hands. 'These
+little precautions will at least give you time to turn. You have too
+much sympathy with gun-room accidents.'
+
+And as he rose from his knees, the thick muffled voice of Hummil cried
+in the doorway, 'You fool!'
+
+Such tones they use who speak in the lucid intervals of delirium to
+their friends a little before they die.
+
+Spurstow started, dropping the pistol. Hummil stood in the doorway,
+rocking with helpless laughter.
+
+'That was awf'ly good of you, I'm sure,' he said, very slowly, feeling
+for his words. 'I don't intend to go out by my own hand at present. I
+say, Spurstow, that stuff won't work. What shall I do? What shall I do?'
+And panic terror stood in his eyes.
+
+'Lie down and give it a chance. Lie down at once.'
+
+'I daren't. It will only take me half-way again, and I shan't be able to
+get away this time. Do you know it was all I could do to come out just
+now? Generally I am as quick as lightning; but you had clogged my feet.
+I was nearly caught.'
+
+'Oh yes, I understand. Go and lie down.'
+
+'No, it isn't delirium; but it was an awfully mean trick to play on me.
+Do you know I might have died?'
+
+As a sponge rubs a slate clean, so some power unknown to Spurstow had
+wiped out of Hummil's face all that stamped it for the face of a man,
+and he stood at the doorway in the expression of his lost innocence. He
+had slept back into terrified childhood.
+
+'Is he going to die on the spot?' thought Spurstow. Then, aloud, 'All
+right, my son. Come back to bed, and tell me all about it. You couldn't
+sleep; but what was all the rest of the nonsense?'
+
+'A place,--a place down there,' said Hummil, with simple sincerity. The
+drug was acting on him by waves, and he was flung from the fear of a
+strong man to the fright of a child as his nerves gathered sense or were
+dulled.
+
+'Good God! I've been afraid of it for months past, Spurstow. It has
+made every night hell to me; and yet I'm not conscious of having done
+anything wrong.'
+
+'Be still, and I'll give you another dose. We'll stop your nightmares,
+you unutterable idiot!'
+
+'Yes, but you must give me so much that I can't get away. You must make
+me quite sleepy,--not just a little sleepy. It's so hard to run then.'
+
+'I know it; I know it. I've felt it myself. The symptoms are exactly as
+you describe.'
+
+'Oh, don't laugh at me, confound you! Before this awful sleeplessness
+came to me I've tried to rest on my elbow and put a spur in the bed to
+sting me when I fell back. Look!'
+
+'By Jove! the man has been rowelled like a horse! Ridden by the
+nightmare with a vengeance! And we all thought him sensible enough.
+Heaven send us understanding! You like to talk, don't you?'
+
+'Yes, sometimes. Not when I'm frightened. THEN I want to run. Don't
+you?'
+
+'Always. Before I give you your second dose try to tell me exactly what
+your trouble is.'
+
+Hummil spoke in broken whispers for nearly ten minutes, whilst Spurstow
+looked into the pupils of his eyes and passed his hand before them once
+or twice.
+
+At the end of the narrative the silver cigarette-case was produced,
+and the last words that Hummil said as he fell back for the second time
+were, 'Put me quite to sleep; for if I'm caught I die,--I die!'
+
+'Yes, yes; we all do that sooner or later,--thank Heaven who has set a
+term to our miseries,' said Spurstow, settling the cushions under the
+head. 'It occurs to me that unless I drink something I shall go out
+before my time. I've stopped sweating, and--I wear a seventeen-inch
+collar.' He brewed himself scalding hot tea, which is an excellent
+remedy against heat-apoplexy if you take three or four cups of it in
+time. Then he watched the sleeper.
+
+'A blind face that cries and can't wipe its eyes, a blind face that
+chases him down corridors! H'm! Decidedly, Hummil ought to go on leave
+as soon as possible; and, sane or otherwise, he undoubtedly did rowel
+himself most cruelly. Well, Heaven send us understanding!'
+
+At mid-day Hummil rose, with an evil taste in his mouth, but an
+unclouded eye and a joyful heart.
+
+'I was pretty bad last night, wasn't I?' said he.
+
+'I have seen healthier men. You must have had a touch of the sun. Look
+here: if I write you a swingeing medical certificate, will you apply for
+leave on the spot?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Why not? You want it.'
+
+'Yes, but I can hold on till the weather's a little cooler.'
+
+'Why should you, if you can get relieved on the spot?'
+
+'Burkett is the only man who could be sent; and he's a born fool.'
+
+'Oh, never mind about the line. You aren't so important as all that.
+Wire for leave, if necessary.'
+
+Hummil looked very uncomfortable.
+
+'I can hold on till the Rains,' he said evasively.
+
+'You can't. Wire to headquarters for Burkett.'
+
+'I won't. If you want to know why, particularly, Burkett is married,
+and his wife's just had a kid, and she's up at Simla, in the cool, and
+Burkett has a very nice billet that takes him into Simla from Saturday
+to Monday. That little woman isn't at all well. If Burkett was
+transferred she'd try to follow him. If she left the baby behind she'd
+fret herself to death. If she came,--and Burkett's one of those selfish
+little beasts who are always talking about a wife's place being with her
+husband,--she'd die. It's murder to bring a woman here just now. Burkett
+hasn't the physique of a rat. If he came here he'd go out; and I know
+she hasn't any money, and I'm pretty sure she'd go out too. I'm salted
+in a sort of way, and I'm not married. Wait till the Rains, and then
+Burkett can get thin down here. It'll do him heaps of good.'
+
+'Do you mean to say that you intend to face--what you have faced, till
+the Rains break?'
+
+'Oh, it won't be so bad, now you've shown me a way out of it. I can
+always wire to you. Besides, now I've once got into the way of sleeping,
+it'll be all right. Anyhow, I shan't put in for leave. That's the long
+and the short of it.'
+
+'My great Scott! I thought all that sort of thing was dead and done
+with.'
+
+'Bosh! You'd do the same yourself. I feel a new man, thanks to that
+cigarette-case. You're going over to camp now, aren't you?'
+
+'Yes; but I'll try to look you up every other day, if I can.'
+
+'I'm not bad enough for that. I don't want you to bother. Give the
+coolies gin and ketchup.'
+
+'Then you feel all right?'
+
+'Fit to fight for my life, but not to stand out in the sun talking to
+you. Go along, old man, and bless you!'
+
+Hummil turned on his heel to face the echoing desolation of his
+bungalow, and the first thing he saw standing in the verandah was the
+figure of himself. He had met a similar apparition once before, when he
+was suffering from overwork and the strain of the hot weather.
+
+'This is bad,--already,' he said, rubbing his eyes. 'If the thing slides
+away from me all in one piece, like a ghost, I shall know it is only my
+eyes and stomach that are out of order. If it walks--my head is going.'
+
+He approached the figure, which naturally kept at an unvarying distance
+from him, as is the use of all spectres that are born of overwork. It
+slid through the house and dissolved into swimming specks within the
+eyeball as soon as it reached the burning light of the garden. Hummil
+went about his business till even. When he came in to dinner he found
+himself sitting at the table. The vision rose and walked out hastily.
+Except that it cast no shadow it was in all respects real.
+
+No living man knows what that week held for Hummil. An increase of the
+epidemic kept Spurstow in camp among the coolies, and all he could do
+was to telegraph to Mottram, bidding him go to the bungalow and sleep
+there. But Mottram was forty miles away from the nearest telegraph, and
+knew nothing of anything save the needs of the survey till he met, early
+on Sunday morning, Lowndes and Spurstow heading towards Hummil's for the
+weekly gathering.
+
+'Hope the poor chap's in a better temper,' said the former, swinging
+himself off his horse at the door. 'I suppose he isn't up yet.'
+
+'I'll just have a look at him,' said the doctor. 'If he's asleep there's
+no need to wake him.'
+
+And an instant later, by the tone of Spurstow's voice calling upon them
+to enter, the men knew what had happened. There was no need to wake him.
+
+The punkah was still being pulled over the bed, but Hummil had departed
+this life at least three hours.
+
+The body lay on its back, hands clinched by the side, as Spurstow had
+seen it lying seven nights previously. In the staring eyes was written
+terror beyond the expression of any pen.
+
+Mottram, who had entered behind Lowndes, bent over the dead and touched
+the forehead lightly with his lips. 'Oh, you lucky, lucky devil!' he
+whispered.
+
+But Lowndes had seen the eyes, and withdrew shuddering to the other side
+of the room.
+
+'Poor chap! poor old chap! And the last time I met him I was angry.
+Spurstow, we should have watched him. Has he--?'
+
+Deftly Spurstow continued his investigations, ending by a search round
+the room.
+
+'No, he hasn't,' he snapped. 'There's no trace of anything. Call the
+servants.'
+
+They came, eight or ten of them, whispering and peering over each
+other's shoulders.
+
+'When did your Sahib go to bed?' said Spurstow.
+
+'At eleven or ten, we think,' said Hummil's personal servant.
+
+'He was well then? But how should you know?'
+
+'He was not ill, as far as our comprehension extended. But he had slept
+very little for three nights. This I know, because I saw him walking
+much, and specially in the heart of the night.'
+
+As Spurstow was arranging the sheet, a big straight-necked hunting-spur
+tumbled on the ground. The doctor groaned. The personal servant peeped
+at the body.
+
+'What do you think, Chuma?' said Spurstow, catching the look on the dark
+face.
+
+'Heaven-born, in my poor opinion, this that was my master has descended
+into the Dark Places, and there has been caught because he was not able
+to escape with sufficient speed. We have the spur for evidence that he
+fought with Fear. Thus have I seen men of my race do with thorns when
+a spell was laid upon them to overtake them in their sleeping hours and
+they dared not sleep.'
+
+'Chuma, you're a mud-head. Go out and prepare seals to be set on the
+Sahib's property.'
+
+'God has made the Heaven-born. God has made me. Who are we, to inquire
+into the dispensations of God? I will bid the other servants hold aloof
+while you are reckoning the tale of the Sahib's property. They are all
+thieves, and would steal.'
+
+'As far as I can make out, he died from--oh, anything; stoppage of the
+heart's action, heat-apoplexy, or some other visitation,' said Spurstow
+to his companions. 'We must make an inventory of his effects, and so
+on.'
+
+'He was scared to death,' insisted Lowndes. 'Look at those eyes! For
+pity's sake don't let him be buried with them open!'
+
+'Whatever it was, he's clear of all the trouble now,' said Mottram
+softly.
+
+Spurstow was peering into the open eyes.
+
+'Come here,' said he. 'Can you see anything there?'
+
+'I can't face it!' whimpered Lowndes. 'Cover up the face! Is there any
+fear on earth that can turn a man into that likeness? It's ghastly. Oh,
+Spurstow, cover it up!'
+
+'No fear--on earth,' said Spurstow. Mottram leaned over his shoulder and
+looked intently.
+
+'I see nothing except some gray blurs in the pupil. There can be nothing
+there, you know.'
+
+'Even so. Well, let's think. It'll take half a day to knock up any sort
+of coffin; and he must have died at midnight. Lowndes, old man, go out
+and tell the coolies to break ground next to Jevins's grave. Mottram,
+go round the house with Chuma and see that the seals are put on things.
+Send a couple of men to me here, and I'll arrange.'
+
+The strong-armed servants when they returned to their own kind told a
+strange story of the doctor Sahib vainly trying to call their master
+back to life by magic arts,--to wit, the holding of a little green
+box that clicked to each of the dead man's eyes, and of a bewildered
+muttering on the part of the doctor Sahib, who took the little green box
+away with him.
+
+The resonant hammering of a coffin-lid is no pleasant thing to hear, but
+those who have experience maintain that much more terrible is the soft
+swish of the bed-linen, the reeving and unreeving of the bed-tapes,
+when he who has fallen by the roadside is apparelled for burial, sinking
+gradually as the tapes are tied over, till the swaddled shape touches
+the floor and there is no protest against the indignity of hasty
+disposal.
+
+At the last moment Lowndes was seized with scruples of conscience.
+'Ought you to read the service,--from beginning to end?' said he to
+Spurstow.
+
+'I intend to. You're my senior as a civilian. You can take it if you
+like.'
+
+'I didn't mean that for a moment. I only thought if we could get a
+chaplain from somewhere,--I'm willing to ride anywhere,--and give poor
+Hummil a better chance. That's all.'
+
+'Bosh!' said Spurstow, as he framed his lips to the tremendous words
+that stand at the head of the burial service.
+
+After breakfast they smoked a pipe in silence to the memory of the dead.
+Then Spurstow said absently--
+
+''Tisn't in medical science.'
+
+'What?'
+
+'Things in a dead man's eye.'
+
+'For goodness' sake leave that horror alone!' said Lowndes. 'I've seen
+a native die of pure fright when a tiger chivied him. I know what killed
+Hummil.'
+
+'The deuce you do! I'm going to try to see.' And the doctor retreated
+into the bath-room with a Kodak camera. After a few minutes there was
+the sound of something being hammered to pieces, and he emerged, very
+white indeed.
+
+'Have you got a picture?' said Mottram. 'What does the thing look like?'
+
+'It was impossible, of course. You needn't look, Mottram. I've torn up
+the films. There was nothing there. It was impossible.'
+
+'That,' said Lowndes, very distinctly, watching the shaking hand
+striving to relight the pipe, 'is a damned lie.'
+
+Mottram laughed uneasily. 'Spurstow's right,' he said. 'We're all in
+such a state now that we'd believe anything. For pity's sake let's try
+to be rational.'
+
+There was no further speech for a long time. The hot wind whistled
+without, and the dry trees sobbed. Presently the daily train, winking
+brass, burnished steel, and spouting steam, pulled up panting in the
+intense glare. 'We'd better go on on that,' said Spurstow. 'Go back to
+work. I've written my certificate. We can't do any more good here, and
+work'll keep our wits together. Come on.'
+
+No one moved. It is not pleasant to face railway journeys at mid-day
+in June. Spurstow gathered up his hat and whip, and, turning in the
+doorway, said--
+
+'There may be Heaven,--there must be Hell. Meantime, there is our life
+here. We-ell?'
+
+Neither Mottram nor Lowndes had any answer to the question.
+
+
+
+
+THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS
+
+
+  Sec. 7.  { Cause       }              { in forces }   Regular forces,
+  (I)      { Consipiring }              { belonging }   Reserve forces,
+           { with other  }   a mutiny   { to Her    }   Auxiliary forces.
+           { persons to  }   sedition   { Majesty's }   Navy.
+           { cause       }
+
+
+When three obscure gentlemen in San Francisco argued on insufficient
+premises they condemned a fellow-creature to a most unpleasant death in
+a far country, which had nothing whatever to do with the United States.
+They foregathered at the top of a tenement-house in Tehama Street, an
+unsavoury quarter of the city, and, there calling for certain drinks,
+they conspired because they were conspirators by trade, officially known
+as the Third Three of the I.A.A.--an institution for the propagation
+of pure light, not to be confounded with any others, though it is
+affiliated to many. The Second Three live in Montreal, and work among
+the poor there; the First Three have their home in New York, not far
+from Castle Garden, and write regularly once a week to a small house
+near one of the big hotels at Boulogne. What happens after that, a
+particular section of Scotland Yard knows too well, and laughs at. A
+conspirator detests ridicule. More men have been stabbed with Lucrezia
+Borgia daggers and dropped into the Thames for laughing at Head Centres
+and Triangles than for betraying secrets; for this is human nature.
+
+The Third Three conspired over whisky cocktails and a clean sheet of
+notepaper against the British Empire and all that lay therein. This work
+is very like what men without discernment call politics before a general
+election. You pick out and discuss, in the company of congenial friends,
+all the weak points in your opponents' organisation, and unconsciously
+dwell upon and exaggerate all their mishaps, till it seems to you a
+miracle that the hated party holds together for an hour.
+
+'Our principle is not so much active demonstration--that we leave to
+others--as passive embarrassment, to weaken and unnerve,' said the first
+man. 'Wherever an organisation is crippled, wherever a confusion is
+thrown into any branch of any department, we gain a step for those
+who take on the work; we are but the forerunners.' He was a German
+enthusiast, and editor of a newspaper, from whose leading articles he
+quoted frequently.
+
+'That cursed Empire makes so many blunders of her own that unless we
+doubled the year's average I guess it wouldn't strike her anything
+special had occurred,' said the second man. 'Are you prepared to
+say that all our resources are equal to blowing off the muzzle of a
+hundred-ton gun or spiking a ten-thousand-ton ship on a plain rock in
+clear daylight? They can beat us at our own game. 'Better join hands
+with the practical branches; we're in funds now. Try a direct scare in a
+crowded street. They value their greasy hides.' He was the drag upon the
+wheel, and an Americanised Irishman of the second generation, despising
+his own race and hating the other. He had learned caution.
+
+The third man drank his cocktail and spoke no word. He was the
+strategist, but unfortunately his knowledge of life was limited. He
+picked a letter from his breast-pocket and threw it across the table.
+That epistle to the heathen contained some very concise directions from
+the First Three in New York. It said--
+
+'The boom in black iron has already affected the eastern markets, where
+our agents have been forcing down the English-held stock among the
+smaller buyers who watch the turn of shares. Any immediate operations,
+such as western bears, would increase their willingness to unload.
+This, however, cannot be expected till they see clearly that foreign
+iron-masters are witting to co-operate. Mulcahy should be dispatched
+to feel the pulse of the market, and act accordingly. Mavericks are at
+present the best for our purpose.--P.D.Q.'
+
+As a message referring to an iron crisis in Pennsylvania, it was
+interesting, if not lucid. As a new departure in organised attack on an
+outlying English dependency, it was more than interesting.
+
+The second man read it through and murmured--
+
+'Already? Surely they are in too great a hurry. All that Dhulip
+Singh could do in India he has done, down to the distribution of his
+photographs among the peasantry. Ho! Ho! The Paris firm arranged that,
+and he has no substantial money backing from the Other Power. Even our
+agents in India know he hasn't. What is the use of our organisation
+wasting men on work that is already done? Of course the Irish regiments
+in India are half mutinous as they stand.'
+
+This shows how near a lie may come to the truth. An Irish regiment, for
+just so long as it stands still, is generally a hard handful to control,
+being reckless and rough. When, however, it is moved in the direction of
+musketry-firing, it becomes strangely and unpatriotically content with
+its lot. It has even been heard to cheer the Queen with enthusiasm on
+these occasions.
+
+But the notion of tampering with the army was, from the point of view of
+Tehama Street, an altogether sound one. There is no shadow of stability
+in the policy of an English Government, and the most sacred oaths of
+England would, even if engrossed on vellum, find very few buyers among
+colonies and dependencies that have suffered from vain beliefs. But
+there remains to England always her army. That cannot change except
+in the matter of uniform and equipment. The officers may write to the
+papers demanding the heads of the Horse Guards in default of cleaner
+redress for grievances; the men may break loose across a country town
+and seriously startle the publicans; but neither officers nor men have
+it in their composition to mutiny after the continental manner. The
+English people, when they trouble to think about the army at all, are,
+and with justice, absolutely assured that it is absolutely trustworthy.
+Imagine for a moment their emotions on realising that such and such
+a regiment was in open revolt from causes directly due to England's
+management of Ireland. They would probably send the regiment to the
+polls forthwith and examine their own consciences as to their duty to
+Erin; but they would never be easy any more. And it was this vague,
+unhappy mistrust that the I. A. A. were labouring to produce.
+
+'Sheer waste of breath,' said the second man after a pause in the
+council, 'I don't see the use of tampering with their fool-army, but
+it has been tried before and we must try it again. It looks well in the
+reports. If we send one man from here you may bet your life that other
+men are going too. Order up Mulcahy.'
+
+They ordered him up--a slim, slight, dark-haired young man, devoured
+with that blind rancorous hatred of England that only reaches its full
+growth across the Atlantic. He had sucked it from his mother's breast in
+the little cabin at the back of the northern avenues of New York; he had
+been taught his rights and his wrongs, in German and Irish, on the canal
+fronts of Chicago; and San Francisco held men who told him strange and
+awful things of the great blind power over the seas. Once, when business
+took him across the Atlantic, he had served in an English regiment, and
+being insubordinate had suffered extremely. He drew all his ideas of
+England that were not bred by the cheaper patriotic prints from one
+iron-fisted colonel and an unbending adjutant. He would go to the mines
+if need be to teach his gospel. And he went as his instructions advised
+p.d.q.--which means 'with speed'--to introduce embarrassment into an
+Irish regiment, 'already half-mutinous, quartered among Sikh peasantry,
+all wearing miniatures of His Highness Dhulip Singh, Maharaja of the
+Punjab, next their hearts, and all eagerly expecting his arrival.' Other
+information equally valuable was given him by his masters. He was to be
+cautious, but never to grudge expense in winning the hearts of the men
+in the regiment. His mother in New York would supply funds, and he
+was to write to her once a month. Life is pleasant for a man who has a
+mother in New York to send him two hundred pounds a year over and above
+his regimental pay.
+
+In process of time, thanks to his intimate knowledge of drill and
+musketry exercise, the excellent Mulcahy, wearing the corporal's stripe,
+went out in a troopship and joined Her Majesty's Royal Loyal Musketeers,
+commonly known as the 'Mavericks,' because they were masterless and
+unbranded cattle-sons of small farmers in County Clare, shoeless
+vagabonds of Kerry, herders of Bally-vegan, much wanted 'moonlighters'
+from the bare rainy headlands of the south coast, officered by O'Mores,
+Bradys, Hills, Kilreas, and the like. Never to outward seeming was there
+more promising material to work on. The First Three had chosen their
+regiment well. It feared nothing that moved or talked save the colonel
+and the regimental Roman Catholic chaplain, the fat Father Dennis, who
+held the keys of heaven and hell, and blared like an angry bull when
+he desired to be convincing. Him also it loved because on occasions of
+stress he was used to tuck up his cassock and charge with the rest into
+the merriest of the fray, where he always found, good man, that the
+saints sent him a revolver when there was a fallen private to be
+protected, or--but this came as an afterthought--his own gray head to be
+guarded.
+
+Cautiously as he had been instructed, tenderly and with much beer,
+Mulcahy opened his projects to such as he deemed fittest to listen.
+And these were, one and all, of that quaint, crooked, sweet, profoundly
+irresponsible and profoundly lovable race that fight like fiends, argue
+like children, reason like women, obey like men, and jest like their own
+goblins of the rath through rebellion, loyalty, want, woe, or war. The
+underground work of a conspiracy is always dull and very much the same
+the world over. At the end of six months--the seed always falling on
+good ground--Mulcahy spoke almost explicitly, hinting darkly in the
+approved fashion at dread powers behind him, and advising nothing more
+nor less than mutiny. Were they not dogs, evilly treated? had they not
+all their own and their national revenges to satisfy? Who in these days
+would do aught to nine hundred men in rebellion? Who, again, could stay
+them if they broke for the sea, licking up on their way other regiments
+only too anxious to join? And afterwards... here followed windy promises
+of gold and preferment, office, and honour, ever dear to a certain type
+of Irishman.
+
+As he finished his speech, in the dusk of a twilight, to his chosen
+associates, there was a sound of a rapidly unslung belt behind him. The
+arm of one Dan Grady flew out in the gloom and arrested something. Then
+said Dan---
+
+'Mulcahy, you're a great man, an' you do credit to whoever sent you.
+Walk about a bit while we think of it.' Mulcahy departed elate. He knew
+his words would sink deep.
+
+'Why the triple-dashed asterisks did ye not let me belt him?' grunted a
+voice.
+
+'Because I'm not a fat-headed fool. Boys,'tis what he's been driving at
+these six months--our superior corpril with his education and his copies
+of the Irish papers and his everlasting beer. He's been sent for the
+purpose and that's where the money comes from. Can ye not see? That
+man's a gold-mine, which Horse Egan here would have destroyed with a
+belt-buckle. It would be throwing away the gifts of Providence not to
+fall in with his little plans. Of coorse we'll mut'ny till all's dry.
+Shoot the colonel on the parade-ground, massacree the company officers,
+ransack the arsenal, and then--Boys, did he tell you what next? He told
+me the other night when he was beginning to talk wild. Then we're to
+join with the niggers, and look for help from Dhulip Singh and the
+Russians!'
+
+'And spoil the best campaign that ever was this side of Hell! Danny, I'd
+have lost the beer to ha' given him the belting he requires.'
+
+'Oh, let him go this awhile, man! He's got no--no constructiveness, but
+that's the egg-meat of his plan, and you must understand that I'm
+in with it, an' so are you. We'll want oceans of beer to convince
+us--firmaments full. We'll give him talk for his money, and one by one
+all the boys 'll come in and he'll have a nest of nine hundred mutineers
+to squat in an' give drink to.'
+
+'What makes me killing-mad is his wanting us to do what the niggers
+did thirty years gone. That an' his pig's cheek in saying that other
+regiments would come along,' said a Kerry man.
+
+'That's not so bad as hintin' we should loose off on the colonel.'
+
+'Colonel be sugared! I'd as soon as not put a shot through his helmet
+to see him jump and clutch his old horse's head. But Mulcahy talks o'
+shootin' our comp'ny orf'cers accidental.'
+
+'He said that, did he?' said Horse Egan.
+
+'Somethin' like that, anyways. Can't ye fancy ould Barber Brady wid a
+bullet in his lungs, coughin' like a sick monkey, an' sayin', "Bhoys,
+I do not mind your gettin' dhrunk, but you must hould your liquor like
+men. The man that shot me is dhrunk. I'll suspend investigations for six
+hours, while I get this bullet cut out, an' then--"'
+
+'An' then,' continued Horse Egan, for the peppery Major's peculiarities
+of speech and manner were as well known as his tanned face; "'an' then,
+ye dissolute, half-baked, putty-faced scum o' Connemara, if I find a
+man so much as lookin' confused, begad, I'll coort-martial the whole
+company. A man that can't get over his liquor in six hours is not fit to
+belong to the Mavericks!"'
+
+A shout of laughter bore witness to the truth of the sketch.
+
+'It's pretty to think of,' said the Kerry man slowly. 'Mulcahy would
+have us do all the devilmint, and get clear himself, someways. He wudn't
+be takin' all this fool's throuble in shpoilin' the reputation of the
+regiment--'
+
+'Reputation of your grandmother's pig!' said Dan.
+
+'Well, an' HE had a good reputation tu; so it's all right. Mulcahy
+must see his way to clear out behind him, or he'd not ha' come so far,
+talkin' powers of darkness.'
+
+'Did you hear anything of a regimental court-martial among the Black
+Boneens, these days? Half a company of 'em took one of the new draft
+an' hanged him by his arms with a tent-rope from a third story verandah.
+They gave no reason for so doin', but he was half dead. I'm thinking
+that the Boneens are short-sighted. It was a friend of Mulcahy's, or
+a man in the same trade. They'd a deal better ha' taken his beer,'
+returned Dan reflectively.
+
+'Better still ha' handed him up to the Colonel,' said Horse Egan,
+'onless--but sure the news wud be all over the counthry an' give the
+reg'ment a bad name.'
+
+'An' there'd be no reward for that man--he but went about talkin',' said
+the Kerry man artlessly.
+
+'You speak by your breed,' said Dan with a laugh. 'There was never a
+Kerry man yet that wudn't sell his brother for a pipe o' tobacco an' a
+pat on the back from a p'liceman.'
+
+'Praise God I'm not a bloomin' Orangeman,' was the answer.
+
+'No, nor never will be,' said Dan. 'They breed MEN in Ulster. Would you
+like to thry the taste of one?'
+
+The Kerry man looked and longed, but forbore. The odds of battle were
+too great.
+
+'Then you'll not even give Mulcahy a--a strike for his money,' said the
+voice of Horse Egan, who regarded what he called 'trouble' of any kind
+as the pinnacle of felicity.
+
+Dan answered not at all, but crept on tip-toe, with large strides, to
+the mess-room, the men following. The room was empty. In a corner, cased
+like the King of Dahomey's state umbrella, stood the regimental Colours.
+Dan lifted them tenderly and unrolled in the light of the candles the
+record of the Mavericks--tattered, worn, and hacked. The white satin
+was darkened everywhere with big brown stains, the gold threads on the
+crowned harp were frayed and discoloured, and the Red Bull, the totem
+of the Mavericks, was coffee-hued. The stiff, embroidered folds, whose
+price is human life, rustled down slowly. The Mavericks keep their
+colours long and guard them very sacredly.
+
+'Vittoria, Salamanca, Toulouse, Waterloo, Moodkee, Ferozshah, an'
+Sobraon--that was fought close next door here, against the very beggars
+he wants us to join. Inkermann, The Alma, Sebastopol! What are those
+little businesses compared to the campaigns of General Mulcahy? The
+Mut'ny, think o' that; the Mut'ny an' some dirty little matters in
+Afghanistan; an' for that an' these an' those'--Dan pointed to the names
+of glorious battles--'that Yankee man with the partin' in his hair comes
+an' says as easy as "have a drink."... Holy Moses, there's the captain!'
+
+But it was the mess-sergeant who came in just as the men clattered out,
+and found the colours uncased.
+
+From that day dated the mutiny of the Mavericks, to the joy of Mulcahy
+and the pride of his mother in New York--the good lady who sent the
+money for the beer. Never, so far as words went, was such a mutiny. The
+conspirators, led by Dan Grady and Horse Egan, poured in daily. They
+were sound men, men to be trusted, and they all wanted blood; but first
+they must have beer. They cursed the Queen, they mourned over Ireland,
+they suggested hideous plunder of the Indian country side, and then,
+alas--some of the younger men would go forth and wallow on the ground in
+spasms of wicked laughter.
+
+The genius of the Irish for conspiracies is remarkable. None the less
+they would swear no oaths but those of their own making, which were rare
+and curious, and they were always at pains to impress Mulcahy with the
+risks they ran. Naturally the flood of beer wrought demoralisation. But
+Mulcahy confused the causes of things, and when a very muzzy Maverick
+smote a sergeant on the nose or called his commanding officer a
+bald-headed old lard-bladder and even worse names, he fancied that
+rebellion and not liquor was at the bottom of the outbreak. Other
+gentlemen who have concerned themselves in larger conspiracies have made
+the same error.
+
+The hot season, in which they protested no man could rebel, came to an
+end, and Mulcahy suggested a visible return for his teachings. As to the
+actual upshot of the mutiny he cared nothing. It would be enough if the
+English, infatuatedly trusting to the integrity of their army, should
+be startled with news of an Irish regiment revolting from political
+considerations. His persistent demands would have ended, at Dan's
+instigation, in a regimental belting which in all probability would
+have killed him and cut off the supply of beer, had not he been sent on
+special duty some fifty miles away from the cantonment to cool his heels
+in a mud fort and dismount obsolete artillery. Then the colonel of
+the Mavericks, reading his newspaper diligently, and scenting Frontier
+trouble from afar, posted to the army headquarters and pled with the
+Commander-in-chief for certain privileges, to be granted under certain
+contingencies; which contingencies came about only a week later, when
+the annual little war on the border developed itself and the colonel
+returned to carry the good news to the Mavericks. He held the promise of
+the Chief for active service, and the men must get ready.
+
+On the evening of the same day, Mulcahy, an unconsidered corporal--yet
+great in conspiracy--returned to cantonments, and heard sounds of strife
+and howlings from afar off. The mutiny had broken out and the barracks
+of the Mavericks were one white-washed pandemonium. A private tearing
+through the barrack-square, gasped in his ear, 'Service! Active service.
+It's a burnin' shame.' Oh joy, the Mavericks had risen on the eve of
+battle! They would not--noble and loyal sons of Ireland--serve the
+Queen longer. The news would flash through the country side and over to
+England, and he--Mulcahy--the trusted of the Third Three, had brought
+about the crash. The private stood in the middle of the square and
+cursed colonel, regiment, officers, and doctor, particularly the doctor,
+by his gods. An orderly of the native cavalry regiment clattered through
+the mob of soldiers. He was half lifted, half dragged from his horse,
+beaten on the back with mighty hand-claps till his eyes watered, and
+called all manner of endearing names. Yes, the Mavericks had fraternised
+with the native troops. Who then was the agent among the latter that had
+blindly wrought with Mulcahy so well?
+
+An officer slunk, almost ran, from the mess to a barrack. He was mobbed
+by the infuriated soldiery, who closed round but did not kill him, for
+he fought his way to shelter, flying for the life. Mulcahy could
+have wept with pure joy and thankfulness. The very prisoners in the
+guard-room were shaking the bars of their cells and howling like wild
+beasts, and from every barrack poured the booming as of a big war-drum.
+
+Mulcahy hastened to his own barrack. He could hardly hear himself
+speak. Eighty men were pounding with fist and heel the tables and
+trestles--eighty men, flushed with mutiny, stripped to their shirt
+sleeves, their knapsacks half-packed for the march to the sea, made the
+two-inch boards thunder again as they chanted to a tune that Mulcahy
+knew well, the Sacred War Song of the Mavericks--
+
+     Listen in the north, my boys, there's trouble on the wind;
+     Tramp o' Cossack hooves in front, gray great-coats behind,
+     Trouble on the Frontier of a most amazin' kind,
+       Trouble on the waters o' the Oxus!
+
+Then, as a table broke under the furious accompaniment--
+
+     Hurrah! hurrah! it's north by west we go;
+     Hurrah! hurrah! the chance we wanted so;
+     Let 'em hear the chorus from Umballa to MosCOW,
+     As we go marchin' to the Kremling.
+
+'Mother of all the saints in bliss and all the devils in cinders,
+where's my fine new sock widout the heel?' howled Horse Egan, ransacking
+everybody's valise but his own. He was engaged in making up deficiencies
+of kit preparatory to a campaign, and in that work he steals best who
+steals last. 'Ah, Mulcahy, you're in good time,' he shouted. 'We've got
+the route, and we're off on Thursday for a pic-nic wid the Lancers next
+door.'
+
+An ambulance orderly appeared with a huge basket full of lint rolls,
+provided by the forethought of the Queen for such as might need
+them later on. Horse Egan unrolled his bandage, and flicked it under
+Mulcahy's nose, chanting--
+
+    'Sheepskin an' bees' wax, thunder, pitch, and plaster,
+     The more you try to pull it off, the more it sticks the faster.
+     As I was goin' to New Orleans--
+
+'You know the rest of it, my Irish American-Jew boy. By gad, ye have to
+fight for the Queen in the inside av a fortnight, my darlin'.'
+
+A roar of laughter interrupted. Mulcahy looked vacantly down the room.
+Bid a boy defy his father when the pantomime-cab is at the door; or
+a girl develop a will of her own when her mother is putting the last
+touches to the first ball-dress; but do not ask an Irish regiment to
+embark upon mutiny on the eve of a campaign; when it has fraternised
+with the native regiment that accompanies it, and driven its officers
+into retirement with ten thousand clamorous questions, and the prisoners
+dance for joy, and the sick men stand in the open, calling down all
+known diseases on the head of the doctor, who has certified that they
+are "medically unfit for active service." At even the Mavericks might
+have been mistaken for mutineers by one so unversed in their natures
+as Mulcahy. At dawn a girls' school might have learned deportment from
+them. They knew that their colonel's hand had closed, and that he who
+broke that iron discipline would not go to the front: nothing in the
+world will persuade one of our soldiers when he is ordered to the north
+on the smallest of affairs that he is not immediately going gloriously
+to slay Cossacks and cook his kettles in the palace of the Czar. A few
+of the younger men mourned for Mulcahy's beer, because the campaign was
+to be conducted on strict temperance principles, but as Dan and Horse
+Egan said sternly, 'We've got the beer-man with us. He shall drink now
+on his own hook.'
+
+Mulcahy had not taken into account the possibility of being sent on
+active service. He had made up his mind that he would not go under any
+circumstances, but fortune was against him.
+
+'Sick--you?' said the doctor, who had served an unholy apprenticeship
+to his trade in Tralee poorhouses. 'You're only home-sick, and what you
+call varicose veins come from over-eating. A little gentle exercise will
+cure that.' And later, 'Mulcahy, my man, everybody is allowed to apply
+for a sick-certificate ONCE. If he tries it twice we call him by an ugly
+name. Go back to your duty, and let's hear no more of your diseases.'
+
+I am ashamed to say that Horse Egan enjoyed the study of Mulcahy's
+soul in those days, and Dan took an equal interest. Together they would
+communicate to their corporal all the dark lore of death which is the
+portion of those who have seen men die. Egan had the larger experience,
+but Dan the finer imagination. Mulcahy shivered when the former spoke of
+the knife as an intimate acquaintance, or the latter dwelt with loving
+particularity on the fate of those who, wounded and helpless, had been
+overlooked by the ambulances, and had fallen into the hands of the
+Afghan women-folk.
+
+Mulcahy knew that the mutiny, for the present at least, was dead; knew,
+too, that a change had come over Dan's usually respectful attitude
+towards him, and Horse Egan's laughter and frequent allusions to
+abortive conspiracies emphasised all that the conspirator had guessed.
+The horrible fascination of the death-stories, however, made him seek
+the men's society. He learnt much more than he had bargained for; and in
+this manner: It was on the last night before the regiment entrained to
+the front. The barracks were stripped of everything movable, and the
+men were too excited to sleep. The bare walls gave out a heavy hospital
+smell of chloride of lime.
+
+'And what,' said Mulcahy in an awe-stricken whisper, after some
+conversation on the eternal subject, 'are you going to do to me, Dan?'
+This might have been the language of an able conspirator conciliating a
+weak spirit.
+
+'You'll see,' said Dan grimly, turning over in his cot, 'or I rather
+shud say you'll not see.'
+
+This was hardly the language of a weak spirit. Mulcahy shook under the
+bed-clothes.
+
+'Be easy with him,' put in Egan from the next cot. 'He has got his
+chanst o' goin' clean. Listen, Mulcahy; all we want is for the good sake
+of the regiment that you take your death standing up, as a man shud.
+There be heaps an' heaps of enemy--plenshus heaps. Go there an' do all
+you can and die decent. You'll die with a good name THERE. 'Tis not a
+hard thing considerin'.'
+
+Again Mulcahy shivered.
+
+'An' how could a man wish to die better than fightin'?' added Dan
+consolingly.
+
+'And if I won't?' said the corporal in a dry whisper.
+
+'There'll be a dale of smoke,' returned Dan, sitting up and ticking off
+the situation on his fingers, 'sure to be, an' the noise of the firin'
+'ll be tremenjus, an' we'll be running about up and down, the regiment
+will. But WE, Horse and I--we'll stay by you, Mulcahy, and never let you
+go. Maybe there'll be an accident.'
+
+'It's playing it low on me. Let me go. For pity's sake let me go. I
+never did you harm, and--and I stood you as much beer as I could. Oh,
+don't be hard on me, Dan! You are--you were in it too. You won't kill me
+up there, will you?'
+
+'I'm not thinkin' of the treason; though you shud be glad any honest
+boys drank with you. It's for the regiment. We can't have the shame o'
+you bringin' shame on us. You went to the doctor quiet as a sick cat
+to get and stay behind an' live with the women at the depot--you that
+wanted us to run to the sea in wolf-packs like the rebels none of your
+black blood dared to be! But WE knew about your goin' to the doctor, for
+he told in mess, and it's all over the regiment. Bein', as we are, your
+best friends, we didn't allow any one to molest you YET. We will see to
+you ourselves. Fight which you will--us or the enemy--you'll never lie
+in that cot again, and there's more glory and maybe less kicks from
+fightin' the enemy. That's fair speakin'.'
+
+'And he told us by word of mouth to go and join with the niggers--you've
+forgotten that, Dan,' said Horse Egan, to justify sentence.
+
+'What's the use of plaguin' the man? One shot pays for all. Sleep ye
+sound, Mulcahy. But you onderstand, do ye not?'
+
+Mulcahy for some weeks understood very little of anything at all save
+that ever at his elbow, in camp, or at parade, stood two big men with
+soft voices adjuring him to commit hari-kari lest a worse thing should
+happen--to die for the honour of the regiment in decency among the
+nearest knives. But Mulcahy dreaded death. He remembered certain things
+that priests had said in his infancy, and his mother--not the one at New
+York--starting from her sleep with shrieks to pray for a husband's soul
+in torment. It is well to be of a cultured intelligence, but in time
+of trouble the weak human mind returns to the creed it sucked in at the
+breast, and if that creed be not a pretty one trouble follows. Also,
+the death he would have to face would be physically painful. Most
+conspirators have large imaginations. Mulcahy could see himself, as he
+lay on the earth in the night, dying by various causes. They were all
+horrible; the mother in New York was very far away, and the Regiment,
+the engine that, once you fall in its grip, moves you forward whether
+you will or won't, was daily coming closer to the enemy!
+
+They were brought to the field of Marzun-Katai, and with the Black
+Boneens to aid, they fought a fight that has never been set down in the
+newspapers. In response, many believe, to the fervent prayers of Father
+Dennis, the enemy not only elected to fight in the open, but made a
+beautiful fight, as many weeping Irish mothers knew later. They gathered
+behind walls or flickered across the open in shouting masses, and were
+pot-valiant in artillery. It was expedient to hold a large reserve
+and wait for the psychological moment that was being prepared by the
+shrieking shrapnel. Therefore the Mavericks lay down in open order on
+the brow of a hill to watch the play till their call should come.
+Father Dennis, whose duty was in the rear, to smooth the trouble of the
+wounded, had naturally managed to make his way to the foremost of his
+boys and lay like a black porpoise, at length on the grass. To him
+crawled Mulcahy, ashen-gray, demanding absolution.
+
+'Wait till you're shot,' said Father Dennis sweetly. 'There's a time for
+everything.'
+
+Dan Grady chuckled as he blew for the fiftieth time into the breech of
+his speckless rifle. Mulcahy groaned and buried his head in his arms
+till a stray shot spoke like a snipe immediately above his head, and a
+general heave and tremour rippled the line. Other shots followed and a
+few took effect, as a shriek or a grunt attested. The officers, who had
+been lying down with the men, rose and began to walk steadily up and
+down the front of their companies.
+
+This manoeuvre, executed, not for publication, but as a guarantee of
+good faith, to soothe men, demands nerve. You must not hurry, you must
+not look nervous, though you know that you are a mark for every rifle
+within extreme range, and above all if you are smitten you must make as
+little noise as possible and roll inwards through the files. It is at
+this hour, when the breeze brings the first salt whiff of the powder
+to noses rather cold at the tip, and the eye can quietly take in the
+appearance of each red casualty, that the strain on the nerves is
+strongest. Scotch regiments can endure for half a day and abate no
+whit of their zeal at the end; English regiments sometimes sulk under
+punishment, while the Irish, like the French, are apt to run forward
+by ones and twos, which is just as bad as running back. The truly wise
+commandant of highly strung troops allows them, in seasons of waiting,
+to hear the sound of their own voices uplifted in song. There is a
+legend of an English regiment that lay by its arms under fire chaunting
+'Sam Hall,' to the horror of its newly appointed and pious colonel. The
+Black Boneens, who were suffering more than the Mavericks, on a hill
+half a mile away, began presently to explain to all who cared to
+listen--
+
+
+We'll sound the jubilee, from the centre to the sea, And Ireland shall
+be free, says the Shan-van Vogh.
+
+'Sing, boys,' said Father Dennis softly. 'It looks as if we cared for
+their Afghan peas.'
+
+Dan Grady raised himself to his knees and opened his mouth in a song
+imparted to him, as to most of his comrades, in the strictest confidence
+by Mulcahy---the Mulcahy then lying limp and fainting on the grass, the
+chill fear of death upon him.
+
+Company after company caught up the words which, the I. A. A. say, are
+to herald the general rising of Erin, and to breathe which, except to
+those duly appointed to hear, is death. Wherefore they are printed in
+this place.
+
+     The Saxon in Heaven's just balance is weighed,
+       His doom like Belshazzar's in death has been cast,
+     And the hand of the venger shall never be stayed
+       Till his race, faith, and speech are a dream of the past.
+
+They were heart-filling lines and they ran with a swirl; the I. A. A.
+are better served by their pens than their petards. Dan clapped Mulcahy
+merrily on the back, asking him to sing up. The officers lay down again.
+There was no need to walk any more. Their men were soothing themselves
+thunderously, thus--
+
+     St. Mary in Heaven has written the vow
+       That the land shall not rest till the heretic blood,
+     From the babe at the breast to the hand at the plough,
+       Has rolled to the ocean like Shannon in flood!
+
+'I'll speak to you after all's over,' said Father Dennis authoritatively
+in Dan's ear. 'What's the use of confessing to me when you do this
+foolishness? Dan, you've been playing with fire! I'll lay you more
+penance in a week than--'
+
+'Come along to Purgatory with us, Father dear. The Boneens are on the
+move; they'll let us go now!'
+
+The regiment rose to the blast of the bugle as one man; but one man
+there was who rose more swiftly than all the others, for half an inch of
+bayonet was in the fleshy part of his leg.
+
+'You've got to do it,' said Dan grimly. 'Do it decent, anyhow;' and
+the roar of the rush drowned his words, for the rear companies thrust
+forward the first, still singing as they swung down the slope---
+
+From the child at the breast to the hand at the plough Shall roll to the
+ocean like Shannon in flood!
+
+They should have sung it in the face of England, not of the Afghans,
+whom, it impressed as much as did the wild Irish yell.
+
+'They came down singing,' said the unofficial report of the enemy, borne
+from village to village the next day. 'They continued to sing, and it
+was written that our men could not abide when they came. It is believed
+that there was magic in the aforesaid song.'
+
+Dan and Horse Egan kept themselves in the neighbourhood of Mulcahy.
+Twice the man would have bolted back in the confusion. Twice he was
+heaved, kicked, and shouldered back again into the unpaintable inferno
+of a hotly contested charge.
+
+At the end, the panic excess of his fear drove him into madness beyond
+all human courage. His eyes staring at nothing, his mouth open and
+frothing, and breathing as one in a cold bath, he went forward demented,
+while Dan toiled after him. The charge checked at a high mud wall. It
+was Mulcahy who scrambled up tooth and nail and hurled down among the
+bayonets the amazed Afghan who barred his way. It was Mulcahy, keeping
+to the straight line of the rabid dog, who led a collection of ardent
+souls at a newly unmasked battery and flung himself on the muzzle of a
+gun as his companions danced among the gunners. It was Mulcahy who ran
+wildly on from that battery into the open plain, where the enemy were
+retiring in sullen groups. His hands were empty, he had lost helmet and
+belt, and he was bleeding from a wound in the neck. Dan and Horse Egan,
+panting and distressed, had thrown themselves down on the ground by the
+captured guns, when they noticed Mulcahy's charge.
+
+'Mad,' said Horse Egan critically. 'Mad with fear! He's going straight
+to his death, an' shouting's no use.'
+
+'Let him go. Watch now! If we fire we'll hit him, maybe.'
+
+The last of a hurrying crowd of Afghans turned at the noise of shod feet
+behind him, and shifted his knife ready to hand. This, he saw, was no
+time to take prisoners. Mulcahy tore on, sobbing; the straight-held
+blade went home through the defenceless breast, and the body pitched
+forward almost before a shot from Dan's rifle brought down the slayer
+and still further hurried the Afghan retreat. The two Irishmen went out
+to bring in their dead.
+
+'He was given the point and that was an easy death,' said Horse Egan,
+viewing the corpse. 'But would you ha' shot him, Danny, if he had
+lived?'
+
+'He didn't live, so there's no sayin'. But I doubt I wud have bekase
+of the fun he gave us--let alone the beer. Hike up his legs, Horse, and
+we'll bring him in. Perhaps 'tis better this way.'
+
+They bore the poor limp body to the mass of the regiment, lolling
+open-mouthed on their rifles; and there was a general snigger when one
+of the younger subalterns said, 'That was a good man!'
+
+'Phew,' said Horse Egan, when a burial-party had taken over the burden.
+'I'm powerful dhry, and this reminds me there'll be no more beer at
+all.'
+
+'Fwhy not?' said Dan, with a twinkle in his eye as he stretched himself
+for rest. 'Are we not conspirin' all we can, an' while we conspire are
+we not entitled to free dhrinks? Sure his ould mother in New York would
+not let her son's comrades perish of drouth--if she can be reached at
+the end of a letter.'
+
+'You're a janius,' said Horse Egan. 'O' coorse she will not. I wish
+this crool war was over an' we'd get back to canteen. Faith, the
+Commander-in-Chief ought to be hanged in his own little sword-belt for
+makin' us work on wather.'
+
+The Mavericks were generally of Horse Egan's opinion. So they made
+haste to get their work done as soon as possible, and their industry was
+rewarded by unexpected peace. 'We can fight the sons of Adam,' said the
+tribesmen, 'but we cannot fight the sons of Eblis, and this regiment
+never stays still in one place. Let us therefore come in.' They came
+in and 'this regiment' withdrew to conspire under the leadership of Dan
+Grady.
+
+Excellent as a subordinate Dan failed altogether as a
+chief-in-command--possibly because he was too much swayed by the advice
+of the only man in the regiment who could manufacture more than one kind
+of handwriting. The same mail that bore to Mulcahy's mother in New York
+a letter from the colonel telling her how valiantly her son had fought
+for the Queen, and how assuredly he would have been recommended for the
+Victoria Cross had he survived, carried a communication signed, I grieve
+to say, by that same colonel and all the officers of the regiment,
+explaining their willingness to do 'anything which is contrary to the
+regulations and all kinds of revolutions' if only a little money could
+be forwarded to cover incidental expenses. Daniel Grady, Esquire, would
+receive funds, vice Mulcahy, who 'was unwell at this present time of
+writing.'
+
+Both letters were forwarded from New York to Tehama Street, San
+Francisco, with marginal comments as brief as they were bitter.
+The Third Three read and looked at each other. Then the Second
+Conspirator-he who believed in 'joining hands with the practical
+branches'---began to laugh, and on recovering his gravity said,
+'Gentlemen, I consider this will be a lesson to us. We're left again.
+Those cursed Irish have let us down. I knew they would, but'-here he
+laughed afresh-'I'd give considerable to know what was at the back of it
+all.'
+
+His curiosity would have been satisfied had he seen Dan Grady,
+discredited regimental conspirator, trying to explain to his thirsty
+comrades in India the non-arrival of funds from New York.
+
+
+
+
+THE MARK OF THE BEAST
+
+
+Your Gods and my Gods-do you or I know which are the stronger? Native
+Proverb.
+
+EAST of Suez, some hold, the direct control of Providence ceases; Man
+being there handed over to the power of the Gods and Devils of Asia,
+and the Church of England Providence only exercising an occasional and
+modified supervision in the case of Englishmen.
+
+This theory accounts for some of the more unnecessary horrors of life in
+India: it may be stretched to explain my story.
+
+My friend Strickland of the Police, who knows as much of natives of
+India as is good for any man, can bear witness to the facts of the case.
+Dumoise, our doctor, also saw what Strickland and I saw. The inference
+which he drew from the evidence was entirely incorrect. He is dead now;
+he died, in a rather curious manner, which has been elsewhere described.
+
+When Fleete came to India he owned a little money and some land in the
+Himalayas, near a place called Dharmsala. Both properties had been left
+him by an uncle, and he came out to finance them. He was a big, heavy,
+genial, and inoffensive man. His knowledge of natives was, of course,
+limited, and he complained of the difficulties of the language.
+
+He rode in from his place in the hills to spend New Year in the station,
+and he stayed with Strickland. On New Year's Eve there was a big dinner
+at the club, and the night was excusably wet. When men foregather from
+the uttermost ends of the Empire, they have a right to be riotous. The
+Frontier had sent down a contingent o' Catch-'em-Alive-O's who had not
+seen twenty white faces for a year, and were used to ride fifteen miles
+to dinner at the next Fort at the risk of a Khyberee bullet where their
+drinks should lie. They profited by their new security, for they tried
+to play pool with a curled-up hedgehog found in the garden, and one
+of them carried the marker round the room in his teeth. Half a dozen
+planters had come in from the south and were talking 'horse' to the
+Biggest Liar in Asia, who was trying to cap all their stories at once.
+Everybody was there, and there was a general closing up of ranks and
+taking stock of our losses in dead or disabled that had fallen during
+the past year. It was a very wet night, and I remember that we sang
+'Auld Lang Syne' with our feet in the Polo Championship Cup, and our
+heads among the stars, and swore that we were all dear friends. Then
+some of us went away and annexed Burma, and some tried to open up the
+Soudan and were opened up by Fuzzies in that cruel scrub outside Suakim,
+and some found stars and medals, and some were married, which was bad,
+and some did other things which were worse, and the others of us stayed
+in our chains and strove to make money on insufficient experiences.
+
+Fleete began the night with sherry and bitters, drank champagne steadily
+up to dessert, then raw, rasping Capri with all the strength of whisky,
+took Benedictine with his coffee, four or five whiskies and sodas to
+improve his pool strokes, beer and bones at half-past two, winding up
+with old brandy. Consequently, when he came out, at half-past three in
+the morning, into fourteen degrees of frost, he was very angry with his
+horse for coughing, and tried to leapfrog into the saddle. The horse
+broke away and went to his stables; so Strickland and I formed a Guard
+of Dishonour to take Fleete home.
+
+Our road lay through the bazaar, close to a little temple of Hanuman,
+the Monkey-god, who is a leading divinity worthy of respect. All gods
+have good points, just as have all priests. Personally, I attach much
+importance to Hanuman, and am kind to his people--the great gray apes of
+the hills. One never knows when one may want a friend.
+
+There was a light in the temple, and as we passed, we could hear voices
+of men chanting hymns. In a native temple, the priests rise at all hours
+of the night to do honour to their god. Before we could stop him, Fleete
+dashed up the steps, patted two priests on the back, and was gravely
+grinding the ashes of his cigar-butt into the forehead of the red stone
+image of Hanuman. Strickland tried to drag him out, but he sat down and
+said solemnly:
+
+'Shee that? 'Mark of the B-beasht! _I_ made it. Ishn't it fine?'
+
+In half a minute the temple was alive and noisy, and Strickland, who
+knew what came of polluting gods, said that things might occur. He,
+by virtue of his official position, long residence in the country, and
+weakness for going among the natives, was known to the priests and he
+felt unhappy. Fleete sat on the ground and refused to move. He said that
+'good old Hanuman' made a very soft pillow.
+
+Then, without any warning, a Silver Man came out of a recess behind the
+image of the god. He was perfectly naked in that bitter, bitter cold,
+and his body shone like frosted silver, for he was what the Bible calls
+'a leper as white as snow.' Also he had no face, because he was a leper
+of some years' standing and his disease was heavy upon him. We two
+stooped to haul Fleete up, and the temple was filling and filling with
+folk who seemed to spring from the earth, when the Silver Man ran in
+under our arms, making a noise exactly like the mewing of an otter,
+caught Fleete round the body and dropped his head on Fleete's breast
+before we could wrench him away. Then he retired to a corner and sat
+mewing while the crowd blocked all the doors.
+
+The priests were very angry until the Silver Man touched Fleete. That
+nuzzling seemed to sober them.
+
+At the end of a few minutes' silence one of the priests came to
+Strickland and said, in perfect English, 'Take your friend away. He has
+done with Hanuman, but Hanurnan has not done with him.' The crowd gave
+room and we carried Fleete into the road.
+
+Strickland was very angry. He said that we might all three have been
+knifed, and that Fleete should thank his stars that he had escaped
+without injury.
+
+Fleete thanked no one. He said that he wanted to go to bed. He was
+gorgeously drunk.
+
+We moved on, Strickland silent and wrathful, until Fleete was taken
+with violent shivering fits and sweating. He said that the smells of
+the bazaar were overpowering, and he wondered why slaughter-houses were
+permitted so near English residences. 'Can't you smell the blood?' said
+Fleete.
+
+We put him to bed at last, just as the dawn was breaking, and Strickland
+invited me to have another whisky and soda. While we were drinking he
+talked of the trouble in the temple, and admitted that it baffled him
+completely. Strickland hates being mystified by natives, because his
+business in life is to overmatch them with their own weapons. He has not
+yet succeeded in doing this, but in fifteen or twenty years he will have
+made some small progress.
+
+'They should have mauled us,' he said, 'instead of mewing at us. I
+wonder what they meant. I don't like it one little bit.'
+
+I said that the Managing Committee of the temple would in all
+probability bring a criminal action against us for insulting their
+religion. There was a section of the Indian Penal Code which exactly
+met Fleete's offence. Strickland said he only hoped and prayed that they
+would do this. Before I left I looked into Fleete's room, and saw him
+lying on his right side, scratching his left breast. Then. I went to bed
+cold, depressed, and unhappy, at seven o'clock in the morning.
+
+At one o'clock I rode over to Strickland's house to inquire after
+Fleete's head. I imagined that it would be a sore one. Fleete was
+breakfasting and seemed unwell. His temper was gone, for he was abusing
+the cook for not supplying him with an underdone chop. A man who can
+eat raw meat after a wet night is a curiosity. I told Fleete this and he
+laughed.
+
+'You breed queer mosquitoes in these parts,' he said. 'I've been bitten
+to pieces, but only in one place.'
+
+'Let's have a look at the bite,' said Strickland. 'It may have gone down
+since this morning.'
+
+While the chops were being cooked, Fleete opened his shirt and showed
+us, just over his left breast, a mark, the perfect double of the black
+rosettes--the five or six irregular blotches arranged in a circle--on
+a leopard's hide. Strickland looked and said, 'It was only pink this
+morning. It's grown black now.'
+
+Fleete ran to a glass.
+
+'By Jove!' he said,' this is nasty. What is it?'
+
+We could not answer. Here the chops came in, all red and juicy, and
+Fleete bolted three in a most offensive manner. He ate on his right
+grinders only, and threw his head over his right shoulder as he snapped
+the meat. When he had finished, it struck him that he had been behaving
+strangely, for he said apologetically, 'I don't think I ever felt so
+hungry in my life. I've bolted like an ostrich.'
+
+After breakfast Strickland said to me, 'Don't go. Stay here, and stay
+for the night.'
+
+Seeing that my house was not three miles from Strickland's, this request
+was absurd. But Strickland insisted, and was going to say something when
+Fleete interrupted by declaring in a shamefaced way that he felt hungry
+again. Strickland sent a man to my house to fetch over my bedding and a
+horse, and we three went down to Strickland's stables to pass the hours
+until it was time to go out for a ride. The man who has a weakness for
+horses never wearies of inspecting them; and when two men are killing
+time in this way they gather knowledge and lies the one from the other.
+
+There were five horses in the stables, and I shall never forget the
+scene as we tried to look them over. They seemed to have gone mad. They
+reared and screamed and nearly tore up their pickets; they sweated and
+shivered and lathered and were distraught with fear. Strickland's
+horses used to know him as well as his dogs; which made the matter more
+curious. We left the stable for fear of the brutes throwing themselves
+in their panic. Then Strickland turned back and called me. The horses
+were still frightened, but they let us 'gentle' and make much of them,
+and put their heads in our bosoms.
+
+'They aren't afraid of US,' said Strickland. 'D'you know, I'd give three
+months' pay if OUTRAGE here could talk.'
+
+But Outrage was dumb, and could only cuddle up to his master and blow
+out his nostrils, as is the custom of horses when they wish to explain
+things but can't. Fleete came up when we were in the stalls, and as soon
+as the horses saw him, their fright broke out afresh. It was all that we
+could do to escape from the place unkicked. Strickland said, 'They don't
+seem to love you, Fleete.'
+
+'Nonsense,' said Fleete;'my mare will follow me like a dog.' He went
+to her; she was in a loose-box; but as he slipped the bars she plunged,
+knocked him down, and broke away into the garden. I laughed, but
+Strickland was not amused. He took his moustache in both fists and
+pulled at it till it nearly came out. Fleete, instead of going off to
+chase his property, yawned, saying that he felt sleepy. He went to the
+house to lie down, which was a foolish way of spending New Year's Day.
+
+Strickland sat with me in the stables and asked if I had noticed
+anything peculiar in Fleete's manner. I said that he ate his food like
+a beast; but that this might have been the result of living alone in the
+hills out of the reach of society as refined and elevating as ours for
+instance. Strickland was not amused. I do not think that he listened to
+me, for his next sentence referred to the mark on Fleete's breast, and
+I said that it might have been caused by blister-flies, or that it was
+possibly a birth-mark newly born and now visible for the first time.
+We both agreed that it was unpleasant to look at, and Strickland found
+occasion to say that I was a fool.
+
+'I can't tell you what I think now,' said he, 'because you would call me
+a madman; but you must stay with me for the next few days, if you can.
+I want you to watch Fleete, but don't tell me what you think till I have
+made up my mind.'
+
+'But I am dining out to-night,' I said. 'So am I,' said Strickland, 'and
+so is Fleete. At least if he doesn't change his mind.'
+
+We walked about the garden smoking, but saying nothing--because we were
+friends, and talking spoils good tobacco--till our pipes were out. Then
+we went to wake up Fleete. He was wide awake and fidgeting about his
+room.
+
+'I say, I want some more chops,' he said. 'Can I get them?'
+
+We laughed and said, 'Go and change. The ponies will be round in a
+minute.'
+
+'All right,' said Fleete. I'll go when I get the chops--underdone ones,
+mind.'
+
+He seemed to be quite in earnest. It was four o'clock, and we had had
+breakfast at one; still, for a long time, he demanded those underdone
+chops. Then he changed into riding clothes and went out into the
+verandah. His pony--the mare had not been caught--would not let him come
+near. All three horses were unmanageable---mad with fear---and finally
+Fleete said that he would stay at home and get something to eat.
+Strickland and I rode out wondering. As we passed the temple of Hanuman,
+the Silver Man came out and mewed at us.
+
+'He is not one of the regular priests of the temple,' said Strickland.
+'I think I should peculiarly like to lay my hands on him.'
+
+There was no spring in our gallop on the racecourse that evening. The
+horses were stale, and moved as though they had been ridden out.
+
+'The fright after breakfast has been too much for them,' said
+Strickland.
+
+That was the only remark he made through the remainder of the ride. Once
+or twice I think he swore to himself; but that did not count.
+
+We came back in the dark at seven o'clock, and saw that there were
+no lights in the bungalow. 'Careless ruffians my servants are!' said
+Strickland.
+
+My horse reared at something on the carriage drive, and Fleete stood up
+under its nose.
+
+'What are you doing, grovelling about the garden?' said Strickland.
+
+But both horses bolted and nearly threw us. We dismounted by the
+stables and returned to Fleete, who was on his hands and knees under the
+orange-bushes.
+
+'What the devil's wrong with you?' said Strickland.
+
+'Nothing, nothing in the world,' said Fleete, speaking very quickly
+and thickly. 'I've been gardening-botanising you know. The smell of
+the earth is delightful. I think I'm going for a walk-a long walk-all
+night.'
+
+Then I saw that there was something excessively out of order somewhere,
+and I said to Strickland, 'I am not dining out.'
+
+'Bless you!' said Strickland. 'Here, Fleete, get up. You'll catch fever
+there. Come in to dinner and let's have the lamps lit. We 'll all dine
+at home.'
+
+Fleete stood up unwillingly, and said, 'No lamps-no lamps. It's much
+nicer here. Let's dine outside and have some more chops-lots of 'em and
+underdone--bloody ones with gristle.'
+
+Now a December evening in Northern India is bitterly cold, and Fleete's
+suggestion was that of a maniac.
+
+'Come in,' said Strickland sternly. 'Come in at once.'
+
+Fleete came, and when the lamps were brought, we saw that he was
+literally plastered with dirt from head to foot. He must have been
+rolling in the garden. He shrank from the light and went to his room.
+His eyes were horrible to look at. There was a green light behind them,
+not in them, if you understand, and the man's lower lip hung down.
+
+Strickland said, 'There is going to be trouble-big trouble-to-night.
+Don't you change your riding-things.'
+
+We waited and waited for Fleete's reappearance, and ordered dinner in
+the meantime. We could hear him moving about his own room, but there was
+no light there. Presently from the room came the long-drawn howl of a
+wolf.
+
+People write and talk lightly of blood running cold and hair standing up
+and things of that kind. Both sensations are too horrible to be trifled
+with. My heart stopped as though a knife had been driven through it, and
+Strickland turned as white as the tablecloth.
+
+The howl was repeated, and was answered by another howl far across the
+fields.
+
+That set the gilded roof on the horror. Strickland dashed into Fleete's
+room. I followed, and we saw Fleete getting out of the window. He made
+beast-noises in the back of his throat. He could not answer us when we
+shouted at him. He spat.
+
+I don't quite remember what followed, but I think that Strickland must
+have stunned him with the long boot-jack or else I should never have
+been able to sit on his chest. Fleete could not speak, he could only
+snarl, and his snarls were those of a wolf, not of a man. The human
+spirit must have been giving way all day and have died out with the
+twilight. We were dealing with a beast that had once been Fleete.
+
+The affair was beyond any human and rational experience. I tried to say
+'Hydrophobia,' but the word wouldn't come, because I knew that I was
+lying.
+
+We bound this beast with leather thongs of the punkah-rope, and tied
+its thumbs and big toes together, and gagged it with a shoe-horn,
+which makes a very efficient gag if you know how to arrange it. Then we
+carried it into the dining-room, and sent a man to Dumoise, the doctor,
+telling him to come over at once. After we had despatched the messenger
+and were drawing breath, Strickland said, 'It's no good. This isn't any
+doctor's work.' I, also, knew that he spoke the truth.
+
+The beast's head was free, and it threw it about from side to side. Any
+one entering the room would have believed that we were curing a wolf's
+pelt. That was the most loathsome accessory of all.
+
+Strickland sat with his chin in the heel of his fist, watching the beast
+as it wriggled on the ground, but saying nothing. The shirt had been
+torn open in the scuffle and showed the black rosette mark on the left
+breast. It stood out like a blister.
+
+In the silence of the watching we heard something without mewing like
+a she-otter. We both rose to our feet, and, I answer for myself, not
+Strickland, felt sick--actually and physically sick. We told each other,
+as did the men in Pinafore, that it was the cat.
+
+Dumoise arrived, and I never saw a little man so unprofessionally
+shocked. He said that it was a heart-rending case of hydrophobia, and
+that nothing could be done. At least any palliative measures would only
+prolong the agony. The beast was foaming at the mouth. Fleete, as we
+told Dumoise, had been bitten by dogs once or twice. Any man who keeps
+half a dozen terriers must expect a nip now and again. Dumoise
+could offer no help. He could only certify that Fleete was dying of
+hydrophobia. The beast was then howling, for it had managed to spit out
+the shoe-horn. Dumoise said that he would be ready to certify to the
+cause of death, and that the end was certain. He was a good little man,
+and he offered to remain with us; but Strickland refused the kindness.
+He did not wish to poison Dumoise's New Year. He would only ask him not
+to give the real cause of Fleete's death to the public.
+
+So Dumoise left, deeply agitated; and as soon as the noise of the
+cart-wheels had died away, Strickland told me, in a whisper, his
+suspicions. They were so wildly improbable that he dared not say them
+out aloud; and I, who entertained all Strickland's beliefs, was so
+ashamed of owning to them that I pretended to disbelieve.
+
+'Even if the Silver Man had bewtiched Fleete for polluting the image of
+Hanuman, the punishment could not have fallen so quickly.'
+
+As I was whispering this the cry outside the house rose again, and the
+beast fell into a fresh paroxysm of struggling till we were afraid that
+the thongs that held it would give way.
+
+'Watch!' said Strickland. 'If this happens six times I shall take the
+law into my own hands. I order you to help me.'
+
+He went into his room and came out in a few minutes with the barrels of
+an old shot-gun, a piece of fishing-line, some thick cord, and his heavy
+wooden bedstead. I reported that the convulsions had followed the cry by
+two seconds in each case, and the beast seemed perceptibly weaker.
+
+Strickland muttered, 'But he can't take away the life! He can't take
+away the life!'
+
+I said, though I knew that I was arguing against myself, 'It may be a
+cat. It must be a cat. If the Silver Man is responsible, why does he
+dare to come here?'
+
+Strickland arranged the wood on the hearth, put the gun-barrels into
+the glow of the fire, spread the twine on the table and broke a walking
+stick in two. There was one yard of fishing line, gut, lapped with wire,
+such as is used for mahseer-fishing, and he tied the two ends together
+in a loop.
+
+Then he said, 'How can we catch him? He must be taken alive and unhurt.'
+
+I said that we must trust in Providence, and go out softly with
+polo-sticks into the shrubbery at the front of the house. The man
+or animal that made the cry was evidently moving round the house as
+regularly as a night-watchman. We could wait in the bushes till he came
+by and knock him over.
+
+Strickland accepted this suggestion, and we slipped out from a bath-room
+window into the front verandah and then across the carriage drive into
+the bushes.
+
+In the moonlight we could see the leper coming round the corner of
+the house. He was perfectly naked, and from time to time he mewed and
+stopped to dance with his shadow. It was an unattractive sight, and
+thinking of poor Fleete, brought to such degradation by so foul a
+creature, I put away all my doubts and resolved to help Strickland from
+the heated gun-barrels to the loop of twine-from the loins to the head
+and back again---with all tortures that might be needful.
+
+The leper halted in the front porch for a moment and we jumped out on
+him with the sticks. He was wonderfully strong, and we were afraid that
+he might escape or be fatally injured before we caught him. We had an
+idea that lepers were frail creatures, but this proved to be incorrect.
+Strickland knocked his legs from under him and I put my foot on his
+neck. He mewed hideously, and even through my riding-boots I could feel
+that his flesh was not the flesh of a clean man.
+
+He struck at us with his hand and feet-stumps. We looped the lash of a
+dog-whip round him, under the armpits, and dragged him backwards into
+the hall and so into the dining-room where the beast lay. There we tied
+him with trunk-straps. He made no attempt to escape, but mewed.
+
+When we confronted him with the beast the scene was beyond description.
+The beast doubled backwards into a bow as though he had been poisoned
+with strychnine, and moaned in the most pitiable fashion. Several other
+things happened also, but they cannot be put down here.
+
+'I think I was right,' said Strickland. 'Now we will ask him to cure
+this case.'
+
+But the leper only mewed. Strickland wrapped a towel round his hand
+and took the gun-barrels out of the fire. I put the half of the broken
+walking stick through the loop of fishing-line and buckled the leper
+comfortably to Strickland's bedstead. I understood then how men and
+women and little children can endure to see a witch burnt alive; for the
+beast was moaning on the floor, and though the Silver Man had no face,
+you could see horrible feelings passing through the slab that took its
+place, exactly as waves of heat play across red-hot iron--gun-barrels
+for instance.
+
+Strickland shaded his eyes with his hands for a moment and we got to
+work. This part is not to be printed.
+
+The dawn was beginning to break when the leper spoke. His mewings had
+not been satisfactory up to that point. The beast had fainted from
+exhaustion and the house was very still. We unstrapped the leper and
+told him to take away the evil spirit. He crawled to the beast and laid
+his hand upon the left breast. That was all. Then he fell face down and
+whined, drawing in his breath as he did so.
+
+We watched the face of the beast, and saw the soul of Fleete coming back
+into the eyes. Then a sweat broke out on the forehead and the eyes-they
+were human eyes---closed. We waited for an hour but Fleete still
+slept. We carried him to his room and bade the leper go, giving him
+the bedstead, and the sheet on the bedstead to cover his nakedness, the
+gloves and the towels with which we had touched him, and the whip that
+had been hooked round his body. He put the sheet about him and went out
+into the early morning without speaking or mewing.
+
+Strickland wiped his face and sat down. A night-gong, far away in the
+city, made seven o'clock.
+
+'Exactly four-and-twenty hours!' said Strickland. 'And I've done enough
+to ensure my dismissal from the service, besides permanent quarters in a
+lunatic asylum. Do you believe that we are awake?'
+
+The red-hot gun-barrel had fallen on the floor and was singeing the
+carpet. The smell was entirely real.
+
+That morning at eleven we two together went to wake up Fleete. We looked
+and saw that the black leopard-rosette on his chest had disappeared.
+He was very drowsy and tired, but as soon as he saw us, he said, 'Oh!
+Confound you fellows. Happy New Year to you. Never mix your liquors. I'm
+nearly dead.'
+
+'Thanks for your kindness, but you're over time,' said Strickland.
+'To-day is the morning of the second. You've slept the clock round with
+a vengeance.'
+
+The door opened, and little Dumoise put his head in. He had come on
+foot, and fancied that we were laving out Fleete.
+
+'I've brought a nurse,' said Dumoise. 'I suppose that she can come in
+for... what is necessary.'
+
+'By all means,' said Fleete cheerily, sitting up in bed. 'Bring on your
+nurses.'
+
+Dumoise was dumb. Strickland led him out and explained that there must
+have been a mistake in the diagnosis. Dumoise remained dumb and left the
+house hastily. He considered that his professional reputation had been
+injured, and was inclined to make a personal matter of the recovery.
+Strickland went out too. When he came back, he said that he had been to
+call on the Temple of Hanuman to offer redress for the pollution of the
+god, and had been solemnly assured that no white man had ever touched
+the idol and that he was an incarnation of all the virtues labouring
+under a delusion.
+
+'What do you think?' said Strickland.
+
+I said, '"There are more things . . ."'
+
+But Strickland hates that quotation. He says that I have worn it
+threadbare.
+
+One other curious thing happened which frightened me as much as anything
+in all the night's work. When Fleete was dressed he came into the
+dining-room and sniffed. He had a quaint trick of moving his nose when
+he sniffed. 'Horrid doggy smell, here,' said he. 'You should really keep
+those terriers of yours in better order. Try sulphur, Strick.'
+
+But Strickland did not answer. He caught hold of the back of a chair,
+and, without warning, went into an amazing fit of hysterics. It is
+terrible to see a strong man overtaken with hysteria. Then it struck me
+that we had fought for Fleete's soul with the Silver Man in that room,
+and had disgraced ourselves as Englishmen for ever, and I laughed
+and gasped and gurgled just as shamefully as Strickland, while Fleete
+thought that we had both gone mad. We never told him what we had done.
+
+Some years later, when Strickland had married and was a church-going
+member of society for his wife's sake, we reviewed the incident
+dispassionately, and Strickland suggested that I should put it before
+the public.
+
+I cannot myself see that this step is likely to clear up the mystery;
+because, in the first place, no one will believe a rather unpleasant
+story, and, in the second, it is well known to every right-minded man
+that the gods of the heathen are stone and brass, and any attempt to
+deal with them otherwise is justly condemned.
+
+
+
+
+THE RETURN OF IMRAY
+
+
+ The doors were wide, the story saith,
+ Out of the night came the patient wraith,
+ He might not speak, and he could not stir
+ A hair of the Baron's minniver--
+ Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin,
+ He roved the castle to seek his kin.
+ And oh,'twas a piteous thing to see
+ The dumb ghost follow his enemy!
+                             THE BARON.
+
+Imray achieved the impossible. Without warning, for no conceivable
+motive, in his youth, at the threshold of his career he chose to
+disappear from the world---which is to say, the little Indian station
+where he lived.
+
+Upon a day he was alive, well, happy, and in great evidence among the
+billiard-tables at his Club. Upon a morning, he was not, and no manner
+of search could make sure where he might be. He had stepped out of his
+place; he had not appeared at his office at the proper time, and his
+dogcart was not upon the public roads. For these reasons, and because
+he was hampering, in a microscopical degree, the administration of the
+Indian Empire, that Empire paused for one microscopical moment to make
+inquiry into the fate of Imray. Ponds were dragged, wells were plumbed,
+telegrams were despatched down the lines of railways and to the nearest
+seaport town-twelve hundred miles away; but Imray was not at the end of
+the drag-ropes nor the telegraph wires. He was gone, and his place knew
+him no more.
+
+Then the work of the great Indian Empire swept forward, because it could
+not be delayed, and Imray from being a man became a mystery--such a
+thing as men talk over at their tables in the Club for a month, and then
+forget utterly. His guns, horses, and carts were sold to the highest
+bidder. His superior officer wrote an altogether absurd letter to
+his mother, saying that Imray had unaccountably disappeared, and his
+bungalow stood empty.
+
+After three or four months of the scorching hot weather had gone by, my
+friend Strickland, of the Police, saw fit to rent the bungalow from
+the native landlord. This was before he was engaged to Miss Youghal--an
+affair which has been described in another place--and while he
+was pursuing his investigations into native life. His own life was
+sufficiently peculiar, and men complained of his manners and customs.
+There was always food in his house, but there were no regular times for
+meals. He ate, standing up and walking about, whatever he might find
+at the sideboard, and this is not good for human beings. His domestic
+equipment was limited to six rifles, three shot-guns, five saddles, and
+a collection of stiff-jointed mahseer-rods, bigger and stronger than the
+largest salmon-rods. These occupied one-half of his bungalow, and the
+other half was given up to Strickland and his dog Tietjens--an enormous
+Rampur slut who devoured daily the rations of two men. She spoke to
+Strickland in a language of her own; and whenever, walking abroad,
+she saw things calculated to destroy the peace of Her Majesty the
+Queen-Empress, she returned to her master and laid information.
+Strickland would take steps at once, and the end of his labours was
+trouble and fine and imprisonment for other people. The natives believed
+that Tietjens was a familiar spirit, and treated her with the great
+reverence that is born of hate and fear. One room in the bungalow was
+set apart for her special use. She owned a bedstead, a blanket, and a
+drinking-trough, and if any one came into Strickland's room at night her
+custom was to knock down the invader and give tongue till some one
+came with a light. Strickland owed his life to her, when he was on the
+Frontier, in search of a local murderer, who came in the gray dawn to
+send Strickland much farther than the Andaman Islands. Tietjens caught
+the man as he was crawling into Strickland's tent with a dagger between
+his teeth; and after his record of iniquity was established in the eyes
+of the law he was hanged. From that date Tietjens wore a collar of rough
+silver, and employed a monogram on her night-blanket; and the blanket
+was of double woven Kashmir cloth, for she was a delicate dog.
+
+Under no circumstances would she be separated from Strickland; and once,
+when he was ill with fever, made great trouble for the doctors, because
+she did not know how to help her master and would not allow another
+creature to attempt aid. Macarnaght, of the Indian Medical Service, beat
+her over her head with a gun-butt before she could understand that she
+must give room for those who could give quinine.
+
+A short time after Strickland had taken Imray's bungalow, my business
+took me through that Station, and naturally, the Club quarters being
+full, I quartered myself upon Strickland. It was a desirable bungalow,
+eight-roomed and heavily thatched against any chance of leakage from
+rain. Under the pitch of the roof ran a ceiling-cloth which looked just
+as neat as a white-washed ceiling. The landlord had repainted it when
+Strickland took the bungalow. Unless you knew how Indian bungalows were
+built you would never have suspected that above the cloth lay the dark
+three-cornered cavern of the roof, where the beams and the underside of
+the thatch harboured all manner of rats, bats, ants, and foul things.
+
+Tietjens met me in the verandah with a bay like the boom of the bell of
+St. Paul's, putting her paws on my shoulder to show she was glad to see
+me. Strickland had contrived to claw together a sort of meal which he
+called lunch, and immediately after it was finished went out about his
+business. I was left alone with Tietjens and my own affairs. The heat of
+the summer had broken up and turned to the warm damp of the rains. There
+was no motion in the heated air, but the rain fell like ramrods on the
+earth, and flung up a blue mist when it splashed back. The bamboos, and
+the custard-apples, the poinsettias, and the mango-trees in the garden
+stood still while the warm water lashed through them, and the frogs
+began to sing among the aloe hedges. A little before the light failed,
+and when the rain was at its worst, I sat in the back verandah and
+heard the water roar from the eaves, and scratched myself because I was
+covered with the thing called prickly-heat. Tietjens came out with
+me and put her head in my lap and was very sorrowful; so I gave her
+biscuits when tea was ready, and I took tea in the back verandah on
+account of the little coolness found there. The rooms of the house were
+dark behind me. I could smell Strickland's saddlery and the oil on his
+guns, and I had no desire to sit among these things. My own servant came
+to me in the twilight, the muslin of his clothes clinging tightly to his
+drenched body, and told me that a gentleman had called and wished to see
+some one. Very much against my will, but only because of the darkness of
+the rooms, I went into the naked drawing-room, telling my man to bring
+the lights. There might or might not have been a caller waiting---it
+seemed to me that I saw a figure by one of the windows---but when the
+lights came there was nothing save the spikes of the rain without,
+and the smell of the drinking earth in my nostrils. I explained to my
+servant that he was no wiser than he ought to be, and went back to the
+verandah to talk to Tietjens. She had gone out into the wet, and I
+could hardly coax her back to me; even with biscuits with sugar tops.
+Strickland came home, dripping wet, just before dinner, and the first
+thing he said was.
+
+'Has any one called?'
+
+I explained, with apologies, that my servant had summoned me into the
+drawing-room on a false alarm; or that some loafer had tried to call on
+Strickland, and thinking better of it had fled after giving his name.
+Strickiand ordered dinner, without comment, and since it was a real
+dinner with a white tablecloth attached, we sat down.
+
+At nine o'clock Strickland wanted to go to bed, and I was tired too.
+Tietjens, who had been lying underneath the table, rose up, and swung
+into the least exposed verandah as soon as her master moved to his own
+room, which was next to the stately chamber set apart for Tietjens. If a
+mere wife had wished to sleep out of doors in that pelting rain it would
+not have mattered; but Tietjens was a dog, and therefore the better
+animal. I looked at Strickland, expecting to see him flay her with
+a whip. He smiled queerly, as a man would smile after telling some
+unpleasant domestic tragedy. 'She has done this ever since I moved in
+here,' said he. 'Let her go.'
+
+The dog was Strickland's dog, so I said nothing, but I felt all that
+Strickland felt In being thus made light of. Tietjens encamped outside
+my bedroom window, and storm after storm came up, thundered on the
+thatch, and died away. The lightning spattered the sky as a thrown egg
+spatters a barn-door, but the light was pale blue, not yellow; and,
+looking through my split bamboo blinds, I could see the great dog
+standing, not sleeping, in the verandah, the hackles alift on her back
+and her feet anchored as tensely as the drawn wire-rope of a suspension
+bridge. In the very short pauses of the thunder I tried to sleep, but
+it seemed that some one wanted me very urgently. He, whoever he was,
+was trying to call me by name, but his voice was no more than a husky
+whisper. The thunder ceased, and Tietjens went into the garden and
+howled at the low moon. Somebody tried to open my door, walked about and
+about through the house and stood breathing heavily in the verandahs,
+and just when I was falling asleep I fancied that I heard a wild
+hammering and clamouring above my head or on the door.
+
+I ran into Strickland's room and asked him whether he was ill, and had
+been calling for me. He was lying on his bed half dressed, a pipe in his
+mouth. 'I thought you'd come,' he said. 'Have I been walking round the
+house recently?'
+
+I explained that he had been tramping in the dining-room and the
+smoking-room and two or three other places, and he laughed and told me
+to go back to bed. I went back to bed and slept till the morning, but
+through all my mixed dreams I was sure I was doing some one an injustice
+in not attending to his wants. What those wants were I could not tell;
+but a fluttering, whispering, bolt-fumbling, lurking, loitering Someone
+was reproaching me for my slackness, and, half awake, I heard the
+howling of Tietjens in the garden and the threshing of the rain.
+
+I lived in that house for two days. Strickland went to his office
+daily, leaving me alone for eight or ten hours with Tietjens for my only
+companion. As long as the full light lasted I was comfortable, and so
+was Tietjens; but in the twilight she and I moved into the back verandah
+and cuddled each other for company. We were alone in the house, but none
+the less it was much too fully occupied by a tenant with whom I did not
+wish to interfere. I never saw him, but I could see the curtains between
+the rooms quivering where he had just passed through; I could hear
+the chairs creaking as the bamboos sprung under a weight that had
+just quitted them; and I could feel when I went to get a book from
+the dining-room that somebody was waiting in the shadows of the front
+verandah till I should have gone away. Tietjens made the twilight more
+interesting by glaring into the darkened rooms with every hair erect,
+and following the motions of something that I could not see. She never
+entered the rooms, but her eyes moved interestedly: that was quite
+sufficient. Only when my servant came to trim the lamps and make all
+light and habitable she would come in with me and spend her time sitting
+on her haunches, watching an invisible extra man as he moved about
+behind my shoulder. Dogs are cheerful companions.
+
+I explained to Strickland, gently as might be, that I would go over to
+the Club and find for myself quarters there. I admired his hospitality,
+was pleased with his guns and rods, but I did not much care for his
+house and its atmosphere. He heard me out to the end, and then smiled
+very wearily, but without contempt, for he is a man who understands
+things. 'Stay on,' he said, 'and see what this thing means. All you have
+talked about I have known since I took the bungalow. Stay on and wait.
+Tietjens has left me. Are you going too?'
+
+I had seen him through one little affair, connected with a heathen
+idol, that had brought me to the doors of a lunatic asylum, and I had
+no desire to help him through further experiences. He was a man to whom
+unpleasantnesses arrived as do dinners to ordinary people.
+
+Therefore I explained more clearly than ever that I liked him immensely,
+and would be happy to see him in the daytime; but that I did not care to
+sleep under his roof. This was after dinner, when Tietjens had gone out
+to lie in the verandah.
+
+''Pon my soul, I don't wonder,' said Strickland, with his eyes on the
+ceiling-cloth. 'Look at that!'
+
+The tails of two brown snakes were hanging between the cloth and the
+cornice of the wall. They threw long shadows in the lamplight.
+
+'If you are afraid of snakes of course--' said Strickland.
+
+I hate and fear snakes, because if you look into the eyes of any snake
+you will see that it knows all and more of the mystery of man's fall,
+and that it feels all the contempt that the Devil felt when Adam was
+evicted from Eden. Besides which its bite is generally fatal, and it
+twists up trouser legs.
+
+'You ought to get your thatch overhauled,' I said.
+
+'Give me a mahseer-rod, and we'll poke 'em down.'
+
+'They'll hide among the roof-beams,' said Strickland. 'I can't stand
+snakes overhead. I'm going up into the roof. If I shake 'em down, stand
+by with a cleaning-rod and break their backs.'
+
+I was not anxious to assist Strickland in his work, but I took the
+cleaning-rod and waited in the dining-room, while Strickland brought a
+gardener's ladder from the verandah, and set it against the side of the
+room.
+
+The snake-tails drew themselves up and disappeared. We could hear the
+dry rushing scuttle of long bodies running over the baggy ceiling-cloth.
+Strickland took a lamp with him, while I tried to make clear to him
+the danger of hunting roof-snakes between a ceiling-cloth and a
+thatch, apart from the deterioration of property caused by ripping out
+ceiling-cloths.
+
+'Nonsense!' said Strickland. 'They're sure to hide near the walls by the
+cloth. The bricks are too cold for 'em, and the heat of the room is just
+what they like.' He put his hand to the corner of the stuff and
+ripped it from the cornice. It gave with a great sound of tearing, and
+Strickland put his head through the opening into the dark of the angle
+of the roof-beams. I set my teeth and lifted the rod, for I had not the
+least knowledge of what might descend.
+
+'H'm!' said Strickland, and his voice rolled and rumbled in the roof.
+'There's room for another set of rooms up here, and, by Jove, some one
+is occupying 'em!'
+
+'Snakes?' I said from below.
+
+'No. It's a buffalo. Hand me up the two last joints of a mahseer-rod,
+and I'll prod it. It's lying on the main roof-beam.'
+
+I handed up the rod.
+
+'What a nest for owls and serpents! No wonder the snakes live here,'
+said Strickland, climbing farther into the roof. I could see his elbow
+thrusting with the rod. 'Come out of that, whoever you are! Heads below
+there! It's falling.'
+
+I saw the ceiling-cloth nearly in the centre of the room bag with a
+shape that was pressing it downwards and downwards towards the lighted
+lamp on the table. I snatched the lamp out of danger and stood back.
+Then the cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split, swayed, and shot
+down upon the table something that I dared not look at, till Strickland
+had slid down the ladder and was standing by my side.
+
+He did not say much, being a man of few words; but he picked up the
+loose end of the tablecloth and threw it over the remnants on the table.
+
+'It strikes me,' said he, putting down the lamp, 'our friend Imray has
+come back. Oh! you would, would you?'
+
+There was a movement under the cloth, and a little snake wriggled out,
+to be back-broken by the butt of the mahseer-rod. I was sufficiently
+sick to make no remarks worth recording.
+
+Strickland meditated, and helped himself to drinks. The arrangement
+under the cloth made no more signs of life.
+
+'Is it Imray?' I said.
+
+Strickland turned back the cloth for a moment, and looked.
+
+'It is Imray,' he said; 'and his throat is cut from ear to ear.'
+
+Then we spoke, both together and to ourselves: 'That's why he whispered
+about the house.'
+
+Tietjens, in the garden, began to bay furiously. A little later her
+great nose heaved open the dining-room door.
+
+She sniffed and was still. The tattered ceiling-cloth hung down almost
+to the level of the table, and there was hardly room to move away from
+the discovery.
+
+Tietjens came in and sat down; her teeth bared under her lip and her
+forepaws planted. She looked at Strickland.
+
+'It's a bad business, old lady,' said he. 'Men don't climb up into the
+roofs of their bungalows to die, and they don't fasten up the ceiling
+cloth behind 'em. Let's think it out.'
+
+'Let's think it out somewhere else,' I said.
+
+'Excellent idea! Turn the lamps out. We'll get into my room.'
+
+I did not turn the lamps out. I went into Strickland's room first,
+and allowed him to make the darkness. Then he followed me, and we lit
+tobacco and thought. Strickland thought. I smoked furiously, because I
+was afraid.
+
+'Imray is back,' said Strickland. 'The question is---who killed Imray?
+Don't talk, I've a notion of my own. When I took this bungalow I took
+over most of Imray's servants. Imray was guileless and inoffensive,
+wasn't he?'
+
+I agreed; though the heap under the cloth had looked neither one thing
+nor the other.
+
+'If I call in all the servants they will stand fast in a crowd and lie
+like Aryans. What do you suggest?'
+
+'Call 'em in one by one,' I said.
+
+'They'll run away and give the news to all their fellows,' said
+Strickland. 'We must segregate 'em. Do you suppose your servant knows
+anything about it?'
+
+'He may, for aught I know; but I don't think it's likely. He has only
+been here two or three days,' I answered. 'What's your notion?'
+
+'I can't quite tell. How the dickens did the man get the wrong side of
+the ceiling-cloth?'
+
+There was a heavy coughing outside Strickland's bedroom door. This
+showed that Bahadur Khan, his body-servant, had waked from sleep and
+wished to put Strickland to bed.
+
+'Come in,' said Strickland. 'It's a very warm night, isn't it?'
+
+Bahadur Khan, a great, green-turbaned, six-foot Mahomedan, said that it
+was a very warm night; but that there was more rain pending, which, by
+his Honour's favour, would bring relief to the country.
+
+'It will be so, if God pleases,' said Strickland, tugging off his boots.
+'It is in my mind, Bahadur Khan, that I have worked thee remorselessly
+for many days---ever since that time when thou first earnest into my
+service. What time was that?'
+
+'Has the Heaven-born forgotten? It was when Imray Sahib went secretly
+to Europe without warning given; and I-even I-came into the honoured
+service of the protector of the poor.'
+
+'And Imray Sahib went to Europe?'
+
+'It is so said among those who were his servants.'
+
+'And thou wilt take service with him when he returns?'
+
+'Assuredly, Sahib. He was a good master, and cherished his dependants.'
+
+'That is true. I am very tired, but I go buck-shooting to-morrow. Give
+me the little sharp rifle that I use for black-buck; it is in the case
+yonder.'
+
+The man stooped over the case; handed barrels, stock, and fore-end to
+Strickland, who fitted all together, yawning dolefully. Then he reached
+down to the gun-case, took a solid-drawn cartridge, and slipped it into
+the breech of the '360 Express.
+
+'And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe secretly! That is very strange,
+Bahadur Khan, is it not?'
+
+'What do I know of the ways of the white man. Heaven-born?'
+
+'Very little, truly. But thou shalt know more anon. It has reached me
+that Imray Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and that
+even now he lies in the next room, waiting his servant.'
+
+'Sahib!'
+
+The lamplight slid along the barrels of the rifle as they levelled
+themselves at Bahadur Khan's broad breast.
+
+'Go and look!'said Strickland. 'Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and he
+waits thee. Go!'
+
+The man picked up a lamp, and went into the dining-room, Strickland
+following, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of the rifle. He
+looked for a moment at the black depths behind the ceiling-cloth; at the
+writhing snake under foot; and last, a gray glaze settling on his face,
+at the thing under the tablecloth.
+
+'Hast thou seen?' said Strickland after a pause.
+
+'I have seen. I am clay in the white man's hands. What does the Presence
+do?'
+
+'Hang thee within the month. What else?'
+
+'For killing him? Nay, Sahib, consider. Walking among us, his servants,
+he cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old. Him he
+bewitched, and in ten days he died of the fever--my child!'
+
+'What said Imray Sahib?'
+
+'He said he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head; wherefore
+my child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when he
+had come back from office, and was sleeping. Wherefore I dragged him up
+into the roof-beams and made all fast behind him. The Heaven-born knows
+all things. I am the servant of the Heaven-born.'
+
+Strickland looked at me above the rifle, and said, in the vernacular,
+'Thou art witness to this saying? He has killed.'
+
+Bahadur Khan stood ashen gray in the light of the one lamp. The need for
+justification came upon him very swiftly. 'I am trapped,' he said, 'but
+the offence was that man's. He cast an evil eye upon my child, and I
+killed and hid him. Only such as are served by devils,' he glared at
+Tietjens, couched stolidly before him, 'only such could know what I
+did.'
+
+'It was clever. But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam with a
+rope. Now, thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. Orderly!'
+
+A drowsy policeman answered Strickland's call. He was followed by
+another, and Tietjens sat wondrous still.
+
+'Take him to the police-station,' said Strickland. 'There is a case
+toward.'
+
+'Do I hang, then?' said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to escape, and
+keeping his eyes on the ground.
+
+'If the sun shines or the water runs--yes!' said Strickland.
+
+Bahadur Khan stepped back one long pace, quivered, and stood still. The
+two policemen waited further orders.
+
+'Go!'said Strickland.
+
+'Nay; but I go very swiftly,' said Bahadur Khan. 'Look! I am even now a
+dead man.'
+
+He lifted his foot, and to the little toe there clung the head of the
+half-killed snake, firm fixed in the agony of death.
+
+'I come of land-holding stock,' said Bahadur Khan, rocking where he
+stood. 'It were a disgrace to me to go to the public scaffold: therefore
+I take this way. Be it remembered that the Sahib's shirts are correctly
+enumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in his washbasin.
+My child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard. Why should you seek to
+slay me with the rope? My honour is saved, and--and--I die.'
+
+At the end of an hour he died, as they die who are bitten by the
+little brown karait, and the policemen bore him and the thing under the
+tablecloth to their appointed places. All were needed to make clear the
+disappearance of Imray.
+
+'This,' said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed, 'is called
+the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said?'
+
+'I heard,' I answered. 'Imray made a mistake.'
+
+'Simply and solely through not knowing the nature of the Oriental, and
+the coincidence of a little seasonal fever. Bahadur Khan had been with
+him for four years.'
+
+I shuddered. My own servant had been with me for exactly that length of
+time. When I went over to my own room I found my man waiting, impassive
+as the copper head on a penny, to pull off my boots.
+
+'What has befallen Bahadur Khan?' said I.
+
+'He was bitten by a snake and died. The rest the Sahib knows,' was the
+answer.
+
+'And how much of this matter hast thou known?'
+
+'As much as might be gathered from One coming in in the twilight to seek
+satisfaction. Gently, Sahib. Let me pull off those boots.'
+
+I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland
+shouting from his side of the house--
+
+'Tietjens has come back to her place!'
+
+And so she had. The great deerhound was couched statelily on her own
+bedstead on her own blanket, while, in the next room, the idle, empty,
+ceiling-cloth waggled as it trailed on the table.
+
+
+
+
+NAMGAY DOOLA
+
+
+ There came to the beach a poor exile of Erin,
+ The dew on his wet robe hung heavy and chill;
+ Ere the steamer that brought him had passed out of hearin',
+ He was Alderman Mike inthrojuicin' a bill!
+                       AMERICAN SONG.
+
+Once upon a time there was a King who lived on the road to Thibet, very
+many miles in the Himalayas. His Kingdom was eleven thousand feet above
+the sea and exactly four miles square; but most of the miles stood on
+end owing to the nature of the country. His revenues were rather
+less than four hundred pounds yearly, and they were expended in the
+maintenance of one elephant and a standing army of five men. He was
+tributary to the Indian Government, who allowed him certain sums for
+keeping a section of the Himalaya-Thibet road in repair. He further
+increased his revenues by selling timber to the railway-companies; for
+he would cut the great deodar trees in his one forest, and they fell
+thundering into the Sutlej river and were swept down to the plains three
+hundred miles away and became railway-ties. Now and again this King,
+whose name does not matter, would mount a ringstraked horse and ride
+scores of miles to Simla-town to confer with the Lieutenant-Governor
+on matters of state, or to assure the Viceroy that his sword was at the
+service of the Queen-Empress. Then the Viceroy would cause a ruffle of
+drums to be sounded, and the ringstraked horse and the cavalry of the
+State---two men in tatters--and the herald who bore the silver stick
+before the King would trot back to their own place, which lay between
+the tail of a heaven-climbing glacier and a dark birch-forest.
+
+Now, from such a King, always remembering that he possessed one
+veritable elephant, and could count his descent for twelve hundred
+years, I expected, when it was my fate to wander through his dominions,
+no more than mere license to live.
+
+The night had closed in rain, and rolling clouds blotted out the lights
+of the villages in the valley. Forty miles away, untouched by cloud or
+storm, the white shoulder of Donga Pa--the Mountain of the Council of
+the Gods--upheld the Evening Star. The monkeys sang sorrowfully to each
+other as they hunted for dry roosts in the fern-wreathed trees, and the
+last puff of the day-wind brought from the unseen villages the scent
+of damp wood-smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting
+pine-cones. That is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if once it
+creeps into the blood of a man, that man will at the last, forgetting
+all else, return to the hills to die. The clouds closed and the smell
+went away, and there remained nothing in all the world except chilling
+white mist and the boom of the Sutlej river racing through the valley
+below. A fat-tailed sheep, who did not want to die, bleated piteously
+at my tent door. He was scuffling with the Prime Minister and the
+Director-General of Public Education, and he was a royal gift to me and
+my camp servants. I expressed my thanks suitably, and asked if I might
+have audience of the King. The Prime Minister readjusted his turban,
+which had fallen off in the struggle, and assured me that the King
+would be very pleased to see me. Therefore I despatched two bottles as a
+foretaste, and when the sheep had entered upon another incarnation went
+to the King's Palace through the wet. He had sent his army to escort me,
+but the army stayed to talk with my cook. Soldiers are very much alike
+all the world over.
+
+The Palace was a four-roomed and whitewashed mud and timber house, the
+finest in all the hills for a day's journey. The King was dressed in a
+purple velvet jacket, white muslin trousers, and a saffron-yellow turban
+of price. He gave me audience in a little carpeted room opening off the
+palace courtyard which was occupied by the Elephant of State. The great
+beast was sheeted and anchored from trunk to tail, and the curve of his
+back stood out grandly against the mist.
+
+The Prime Minister and the Director-General of Public Education were
+present to introduce me, but all the court had been dismissed, lest
+the two bottles aforesaid should corrupt their morals. The King cast a
+wreath of heavy-scented flowers round my neck as I bowed, and inquired
+how my honoured presence had the felicity to be. I said that through
+seeing his auspicious countenance the mists of the night had turned
+into sunshine, and that by reason of his beneficent sheep his good
+deeds would be remembered by the Gods. He said that since I had set my
+magnificent foot in his Kingdom the crops would probably yield seventy
+per cent more than the average. I said that the fame of the King had
+reached to the four corners of the earth, and that the nations gnashed
+their teeth when they heard daily of the glories of his realm and the
+wisdom of his moon-like Prime Minister and lotus-like Director-General
+of Public Education.
+
+Then we sat down on clean white cushions, and I was at the King's right
+hand. Three minutes later he was telling me that the state of the maize
+crop was something disgraceful, and that the railway-companies would
+not pay him enough for his timber. The talk shifted to and fro with the
+bottles, and we discussed very many stately things, and the King became
+confidential on the subject of Government generally. Most of all he
+dwelt on the shortcomings of one of his subjects, who, from all I could
+gather, had been paralyzing the executive.
+
+'In the old days,' said the King, 'I could have ordered the Elephant
+yonder to trample him to death. Now I must e'en send him seventy miles
+across the hills to be tried, and his keep would be upon the State. The
+Elephant eats everything.'
+
+'What be the man's crimes, Rajah Sahib?' said I.
+
+'Firstly, he is an outlander and no man of mine own people. Secondly,
+since of my favour I gave him land upon his first coming, he refuses to
+pay revenue. Am I not the lord of the earth, above and below, entitled
+by right and custom to one-eighth of the crop? Yet this devil,
+establishing himself, refuses to pay a single tax; and he brings a
+poisonous spawn of babes.'
+
+'Cast him into jail,' I said.
+
+'Sahib,' the King answered, shifting a little on the cushions, 'once and
+only once in these forty years sickness came upon me so that I was not
+able to go abroad. In that hour I made a vow to my God that I would
+never again cut man or woman from the light of the sun and the air of
+God; for I perceived the nature of the punishment. How can I break my
+vow? Were it only the lopping of a hand or a foot I should not delay.
+But even that is impossible now that the English have rule. One or
+another of my people'--he looked obliquely at the Director-General of
+Public Education--'would at once write a letter to the Viceroy, and
+perhaps I should be deprived of my ruffle of drums.'
+
+He unscrewed the mouthpiece of his silver water-pipe, fitted a plain
+amber mouthpiece, and passed his pipe to me. 'Not content with refusing
+revenue,' he continued,'this outlander refuses also the begar' (this was
+the corvee or forced labour on the roads) 'and stirs my people up to the
+like treason. Yet he is, when he wills, an expert log-snatcher. There is
+none better or bolder among my people to clear a block of the river when
+the logs stick fast.'
+
+'But he worships strange Gods,' said the Prime Minister deferentially.
+
+'For that I have no concern,' said the King, who was as tolerant as
+Akbar in matters of belief. 'To each man his own God and the fire or
+Mother Earth for us all at last. It is the rebellion that offends me.'
+
+'The King has an army,' I suggested. 'Has not the King burned the man's
+house and left him naked to the night dews?'
+
+'Nay, a hut is a hut, and it holds the life of a man. But once, I sent
+my army against him when his excuses became wearisome: of their heads
+he brake three across the top with a stick. The other two men ran away.
+Also the guns would not shoot.'
+
+I had seen the equipment of the infantry. One-third of it was an old
+muzzle-loading fowling-piece, with a ragged rust-hole where the nipples
+should have been, one-third a wire-bound matchlock with a worm-eaten
+stock, and one-third a four-bore flint duck-gun without a flint.
+
+'But it is to be remembered,' said the King, reaching out for the
+bottle, 'that he is a very expert log-snatcher and a man of a merry
+face. What shall I do to him, Sahib?'
+
+This was interesting. The timid hill-folk would as soon have refused
+taxes to their king as revenues to their Gods.
+
+'If it be the King's permission,' I said, 'I will not strike my tents
+till the third day and I will see this man. The mercy of the King is
+God-like, and rebellion is like unto the sin of witchcraft. Moreover,
+both the bottles and another be empty.'
+
+'You have my leave to go,' said the King.
+
+Next morning a crier went through the state proclaiming that there was
+a log-jam on the river and that it behoved all loyal subjects to remove
+it. The people poured down from their villages to the moist warm valley
+of poppy-fields; and the King and I went with them. Hundreds of dressed
+deodar-logs had caught on a snag of rock, and the river was bringing
+down more logs every minute to complete the blockade. The water snarled
+and wrenched and worried at the timber, and the population of the state
+began prodding the nearest logs with a pole in the hope of starting a
+general movement. Then there went up a shout of 'Namgay Doola! Namgay
+Doola!' and a large red-haired villager hurried up, stripping off his
+clothes as he ran.
+
+'That is he. That is the rebel,' said the King. 'Now will the dam be
+cleared.'
+
+'But why has he red hair?' I asked, since red hair among hill-folks is
+as common as blue or green.
+
+'He is an outlander,' said the King. 'Well done! Oh well done!'
+
+Namgay Doola had scrambled out on the jam and was clawing out the butt
+of a log with a rude sort of boat-hook. It slid forward slowly as an
+alligator moves, three or four others followed it, and the green water
+spouted through the gaps they had made. Then the villagers howled and
+shouted and scrambled across the logs, pulling and pushing the obstinate
+timber, and the red head of Namgay Doola was chief among them all. The
+logs swayed and chafed and groaned as fresh consignments from upstream
+battered the now weakening dam. All gave way at last in a smother of
+foam, racing logs, bobbing black heads and confusion indescribable. The
+river tossed everything before it. I saw the red head go down with
+the last remnants of the jam and disappear between the great grinding
+tree-trunks. It rose close to the bank and blowing like a grampus.
+Namgay Doola wrung the water out of his eyes and made obeisance to the
+King. I had time to observe him closely. The virulent redness of his
+shock head and beard was most startling; and in the thicket of hair
+wrinkled above high cheek bones shone two very merry blue eyes. He was
+indeed an outlander, but yet a Thibetan in language, habit, and attire.
+He spoke the Lepcha dialect with an indescribable softening of the
+gutturals. It was not so much a lisp as an accent.
+
+'Whence comest thou?' I asked.
+
+'From Thibet.' He pointed across the hills and grinned. That grin went
+straight to my heart. Mechanically I held out my hand and Namgay Doola
+shook it. No pure Thibetan would have understood the meaning of the
+gesture. He went away to look for his clothes, and as he climbed back to
+his village, I heard a joyous yell that seemed unaccountably familiar.
+It was the whooping of Namgay Doola.
+
+'You see now,' said the King, 'why I would not kill him. He is a bold
+man among my logs, but,' and he shook his head like a schoolmaster, 'I
+know that before long there will be complaints of him in the court. Let
+us return to the Palace and do justice.' It was that King's custom to
+judge his subjects every day between eleven and three o'clock. I saw him
+decide equitably in weighty matters of trespass, slander, and a little
+wife-stealing. Then his brow clouded and he summoned me.
+
+'Again it is Namgay Doola,' he said despairingly. 'Not content with
+refusing revenue on his own part, he has bound half his village by an
+oath to the like treason. Never before has such a thing befallen me! Nor
+are my taxes heavy.'
+
+A rabbit-faced villager, with a blush-rose stuck behind his ear,
+advanced trembling. He had been in the conspiracy, but had told
+everything and hoped for the King's favour.
+
+'O King,' said I, 'if it be the King's will let this matter stand over
+till the morning. Only the Gods can do right swiftly, and it may be that
+yonder villager has lied.'
+
+'Nay, for I know the nature of Namgay Doola; but since a guest asks let
+the matter remain. Wilt thou speak harshly to this red-headed outlander?
+He may listen to thee.'
+
+I made an attempt that very evening, but for the life of me I could not
+keep my countenance. Namgay Doola grinned persuasively, and began to
+tell me about a big brown bear in a poppy-field by the river. Would I
+care to shoot it? I spoke austerely on the sin of conspiracy, and the
+certainty of punishment. Namgay Doola's face clouded for a moment.
+Shortly afterwards he withdrew from my tent, and I heard him singing to
+himself softly among the pines. The words were unintelligible to me,
+but the tune, like his liquid insinuating speech, seemed the ghost of
+something strangely familiar.
+
+'Dir hane mard-i-yemen dir To weeree ala gee.'
+
+sang Namgay Doola again and again, and I racked my brain for that lost
+tune. It was not till after dinner that I discovered some one had cut a
+square foot of velvet from the centre of my best camera-cloth. This made
+me so angry that I wandered down the valley in the hope of meeting the
+big brown bear. I could hear him grunting like a discontented pig in the
+poppy-field, and I waited shoulder deep in the dew-dripping Indian corn
+to catch him after his meal. The moon was at full and drew out the rich
+scent of the tasselled crop. Then I heard the anguished bellow of
+a Himalayan cow, one of the little black crummies no bigger than
+Newfoundland dogs. Two shadows that looked like a bear and her cub
+hurried past me. I was in act to fire when I saw that they had each a
+brilliant red head. The lesser animal was trailing some rope behind it
+that left a dark track on the path. They passed within six feet of
+me, and the shadow of the moonlight lay velvet-black on their faces.
+Velvet-black was exactly the word, for by all the powers of moonlight
+they were masked in the velvet of my camera-cloth! I marvelled and went
+to bed.
+
+Next morning the Kingdom was in uproar. Namgay Doola, men said, had gone
+forth in the night and with a sharp knife had cut off the tail of a
+cow belonging to the rabbit-faced villager who had betrayed him. It was
+sacrilege unspeakable against the Holy Cow. The State desired his blood,
+but he had retreated into his hut, barricaded the doors and windows with
+big stones, and defied the world.
+
+The King and I and the populace approached the hut cautiously. There was
+no hope of capturing the man without loss of life, for from a hole in
+the wall projected the muzzle of an extremely well-cared-for gun--the
+only gun in the State that could shoot. Namgay Doola had narrowly missed
+a villager just before we came up. The Standing Army stood. It could
+do no more, for when it advanced pieces of sharp shale flew from the
+windows. To these were added from time to time showers of scalding
+water. We saw red heads bobbing up and down in the hut. The family
+of Namgay Doola were aiding their sire, and blood-curdling yells of
+defiance were the only answers to our prayers.
+
+'Never,' said the King, puffing, 'has such a thing befallen my State.
+Next year I will certainly buy a little cannon.' He looked at me
+imploringly.
+
+'Is there any priest in the Kingdom to whom he will listen?' said I, for
+a light was beginning to break upon me.
+
+'He worships his own God,' said the Prime Minister. 'We can starve him
+out.'
+
+'Let the white man approach,' said Namgay Doola from within. 'All others
+I will kill. Send me the white man.'
+
+The door was thrown open and I entered the smoky interior of a Thibetan
+hut crammed with children. And every child had flaming red hair. A
+raw cow's-tail lay on the floor, and by its side two pieces of black
+velvet--my black velvet--rudely hacked into the semblance of masks.
+
+'And what is this shame, Namgay Doola?' said I.
+
+He grinned more winningly than ever. 'There is no shame,' said he. 'I
+did but cut off the tail of that man's cow. He betrayed me. I was minded
+to shoot him, Sahib. But not to death. Indeed not to death. Only in the
+legs.'
+
+'And why at all, since it is the custom to pay revenue to the King? Why
+at all?'
+
+'By the God of my father I cannot tell,' said Namgay Doola.
+
+'And who was thy father?'
+
+'The same that had this gun.' He showed me his weapon--a Tower musket
+bearing date 1832 and the stamp of the Honourable East India Company.
+
+'And thy father's name?' said I.
+
+'Timlay Doola,' said he. 'At the first, I being then a little child, it
+is in my mind that he wore a red coat.'
+
+'Of that I have no doubt. But repeat the name of thy father thrice or
+four times.'
+
+He obeyed, and I understood whence the puzzling accent in his speech
+came. 'Thimla Dhula,' said he excitedly. 'To this hour I worship his
+God.'
+
+'May I see that God?'
+
+'In a little while--at twilight time.'
+
+'Rememberest thou aught of thy father's speech?'
+
+'It is long ago. But there is one word which he said often. Thus "Shun."
+Then I and my brethren stood upon our feet, our hands to our sides.
+Thus.'
+
+'Even so. And what was thy mother?'
+
+'A woman of the hills. We be Lepchas of Darjeeling, but me they call an
+outlander because my hair is as thou seest.'
+
+The Thibetan woman, his wife, touched him on the arm gently. The long
+parley outside the fort had lasted far into the day. It was now close
+upon twilight--the hour of the Angelus. Very solemnly, the red-headed
+brats rose from the floor and formed a semicircle. Namgay Doola laid
+his gun against the wall, lighted a little oil lamp, and set it before a
+recess in the wall. Pulling aside a curtain of dirty cloth, he revealed
+a worn brass crucifix leaning against the helmet-badge of a long
+forgotten East India regiment. 'Thus did my father,' he said, crossing
+himself clumsily. The wife and children followed suit. Then all together
+they struck up the wailing chant that I heard on the hillside--
+
+ Dir bane mard-i-yemen dir
+ To weeree ala gee.
+
+I was puzzled no longer. Again and again they crooned, as if their
+hearts would break, their version of the chorus of the Wearing of the
+Green--
+
+They're hanging men and women too, For the wearing of the green.
+
+A diabolical inspiration came to me. One of the brats, a boy about eight
+years old, was watching me as he sang. I pulled out a rupee, held
+the coin between finger and thumb and looked--only looked--at the
+gun against the wall. A grin of brilliant and perfect comprehension
+overspread the face of the child. Never for an instant stopping the
+song, he held out his hand for the money, and then slid the gun to my
+hand. I might have shot Namgay Doola as he chanted. But I was satisfied.
+The blood-instinct of the race held true. Namgay Doola drew the curtain
+across the recess. Angelus was over.
+
+'Thus my father sang. There was much more, but I have forgotten, and I
+do not know the purport of these words, but it may be that the God will
+understand. I am not of this people, and I will not pay revenue.'
+
+'And why?'
+
+Again that soul-compelling grin. 'What occupation would be to me between
+crop and crop? It is better than scaring bears. But these people do not
+understand.' He picked the masks from the floor, and looked in my face
+as simply as a child.
+
+'By what road didst thou attain knowledge to make these devilries?' I
+said, pointing.
+
+'I cannot tell. I am but a Lepcha of Darjeeling, and yet the stuff--'
+
+'Which thou hast stolen.'
+
+'Nay, surely. Did I steal? I desired it so. The stuff--the stuff--what
+else should I have done with the stuff?' He twisted the velvet between
+his fingers.
+
+'But the sin of maiming the cow--consider that.'
+
+'That is true; but oh, Sahib, that man betrayed me and I had no
+thought--but the heifer's tail waved in the moonlight and I had my
+knife. What else should I have done? The tail came off ere I was aware.
+Sahib, thou knowest more than I.'
+
+'That is true,' said I. 'Stay within the door. I go to speak to the
+King.'
+
+The population of the State were ranged on the hillsides. I went forth
+and spoke to the King.
+
+'O King,' said I. 'Touching this man there be two courses open to thy
+wisdom. Thou canst either hang him from a tree, he and his brood, till
+there remains no hair that is red within the land.'
+
+'Nay' said the King. 'Why should I hurt the little children?'
+
+They had poured out of the hut door and were making plump obeisance to
+everybody. Namgay Doola waited with his gun across his arm.
+
+'Or thou canst, discarding the impiety of the cow-maiming, raise him to
+honour in thy Army. He comes of a race that will not pay revenue. A red
+flame is in his blood which comes out at the top of his head in that
+glowing hair. Make him chief of the Army. Give him honour as may befall,
+and full allowance of work, but look to it, O King, that neither he nor
+his hold a foot of earth from thee henceforward. Feed him with words and
+favour, and also liquor from certain bottles that thou knowest of, and
+he will be a bulwark of defence. But deny him even a tuft of grass for
+his own. This is the nature that God has given him. Moreover he has
+brethren--'
+
+The State groaned unanimously.
+
+'But if his brethren come, they will surely fight with each other till
+they die; or else the one will always give information concerning the
+other. Shall he be of thy Army, O King? Choose.'
+
+The King bowed his head, and I said, 'Come forth, Namgay Doola, and
+command the King's Army. Thy name shall no more be Namgay in the mouths
+of men, but Patsay Doola, for as thou hast said, I know.'
+
+Then Namgay Doola, new christened Patsay Doola, son of Timlay Doola,
+which is Tim Doolan gone very wrong indeed, clasped the King's feet,
+cuffed the Standing Army, and hurried in an agony of contrition from
+temple to temple, making offerings for the sin of cattle-maiming.
+
+And the King was so pleased with my perspicacity, that he offered to
+sell me a village for twenty pounds sterling. But I buy no villages in
+the Himalayas so long as one red head flares between the tail of the
+heaven-climbing glacier and the dark birch-forest.
+
+I know that breed.
+
+
+
+
+BURTRAN AND BIMI
+
+
+The orang-outang in the big iron cage lashed to the sheep-pen began the
+discussion. The night was stiflingly hot, and as I and Hans Breitmann,
+the big-beamed German, passed him, dragging our bedding to the fore-peak
+of the steamer, he roused himself and chattered obscenely. He had been
+caught somewhere in the Malayan Archipelago, and was going to England
+to be exhibited at a shilling a head. For four days he had struggled,
+yelled, and wrenched at the heavy bars of his prison without ceasing,
+and had nearly slain a lascar, incautious enough to come within reach of
+the great hairy paw.
+
+'It would be well for you, mine friend, if you was a liddle seasick,'
+said Hans Breitmann, pausing by the cage.' You haf too much Ego in your
+Cosmos.'
+
+The orang-outang's arm slid out negligently from between the bars. No
+one would have believed that it would make a sudden snakelike rush at
+the German's breast. The thin silk of the sleeping-suit tore out; Hans
+stepped back unconcernedly to pluck a banana from a bunch hanging close
+to one of the boats.
+
+'Too much Ego,' said he, peeling the fruit and offering it to the caged
+devil, who was rending the silk to tatters.
+
+Then we laid out our bedding in the bows among the sleeping Lascars, to
+catch any breeze that the pace of the ship might give us. The sea was
+like smoky oil, except where it turned to fire under our forefoot
+and whirled back into the dark in smears of dull flame. There was a
+thunderstorm some miles away; we could see the glimmer of the lightning.
+The ship's cow, distressed by the heat and the smell of the ape-beast in
+the cage, lowed unhappily from time to time in exactly the same key as
+that in which the look-out man answered the hourly call from the bridge.
+The trampling tune of the engines was very distinct, and the jarring
+of the ash-lift, as it was tipped into the sea, hurt the procession of
+hushed noise. Hans lay down by my side and lighted a good-night cigar.
+This was naturally the beginning of conversation. He owned a voice as
+soothing as the wash of the sea, and stores of experiences as vast as
+the sea itself; for his business in life was to wander up and down the
+world, collecting orchids and wild beasts and ethnological specimens for
+German and American dealers. I watched the glowing end of his cigar wax
+and wane in the gloom, as the sentences rose and fell, till I was nearly
+asleep. The orang-outang, troubled by some dream of the forests of his
+freedom, began to yell like a soul in purgatory, and to pluck madly at
+the bars of the cage.
+
+'If he was out now dere would not be much of us left hereabout,' said
+Hans lazily. 'He screams goot. See, now, how I shall tame him when he
+stops himself.'
+
+There was a pause in the outcry, and from Hans' mouth came an imitation
+of a snake's hiss, so perfect that I almost sprang to my feet. The
+sustained murderous sound ran along the deck, and the wrenching at the
+bars ceased. The orang-outang was quaking in an ecstasy of pure terror.
+
+'Dot stopped him,' said Hans. 'I learned dot trick in Mogoung Tanjong
+when I was collecting liddle monkeys for some peoples in Berlin. Efery
+one in der world is afraid of der monkeys--except der snake. So I blay
+snake against monkey, and he keep quite still. Dere was too much Ego in
+his Cosmos. Dot is der soul-custom of monkeys. Are you asleep, or will
+you listen, and I will tell a dale dot you shall not pelief?'
+
+'There's no tale in the wide world that I can't believe,' I said.
+
+'If you haf learned pelief you haf learned somedings. Now I shall try
+your pelief. Goot! When I was collecting dose liddle monkeys--it was in
+'79 or '80, und I was in der islands of der Archipelago--over dere in
+der dark'--he pointed southward to New Guinea generally--'Mein Gott! I
+would sooner collect life red devils than liddle monkeys. When dey
+do not bite off your thumbs dey are always dying from
+nostalgia--home-sick--for dey haf der imperfect soul, which is midway
+arrested in defelopment--und too much Ego. I was dere for nearly a year,
+und dere I found a man dot was called Bertran. He was a Frenchman, und
+he was goot man--naturalist to his bone. Dey said he was an escaped
+convict, but he was naturalist, und dot was enough for me. He would call
+all der life beasts from der forest, und dey would come. I said he was
+St. Francis of Assizi in a new dransmigration produced, und he
+laughed und said he haf never preach to der fishes. He sold dem for
+tripang--beche-de-mer.
+
+'Und dot man, who was king of beasts-tamer men, he had in der house
+shust such anoder as dot devil-animal in der cage--a great orang-outang
+dot thought he was a man. He haf found him when he was a child--der
+orang-outang--und he was child und brother und opera comique all round
+to Betran. He had his room in dot house--not a cage, but a room--mit
+a bed und sheets, und he would go to bed und get up in der morning und
+smoke his cigar und eat his dinner mit Bertran, und walk mit him hand
+in hand, which was most horrible. Herr Gott! I haf seen dot beast throw
+himself back in his chair und laugh when Bertran haf made fun of me.
+He was NOT a beast; he was a man, und he talked to Bertran, und Bertran
+comprehend, for I have seen dem. Und he was always politeful to me
+except when I talk too long to Bertran und say nodings at all to him.
+Den he would pull me away--dis great, dark devil, mit his enormous
+paws--shust as if I was a child. He was not a beast; he was a man. Dis I
+saw pefore I know him three months, und Bertran he haf saw the same; and
+Bimi, der orang-outang, haf understood us both, mit his cigar between
+his big dog-teeth und der blue gum.
+
+'I was dere a year, dere und at dere oder islands--somedimes for monkeys
+und somedimes for butterflies und orchits. One time Bertran says to me
+dot he will be married, because he haf found a girl dot was goot, und he
+enquire if this marrying idee was right. I would not say, pecause it was
+not me dot was going to be married. Den he go off courting der girl--she
+was a half-caste French girl--very pretty. Haf you got a new light for
+my cigar? Ouf! Very pretty. Only I say, "Haf you thought of Bimi? If he
+pull me away when I talk to you, what will he do to your wife? He will
+pull her in pieces. If I was you, Bertran, I would gif my wife for
+wedding-present der stuff figure of Bimi." By dot time I had learned
+some dings about der monkey peoples. "Shoot him?" says Bertran. "He is
+your beast," I said; "if he was mine he would be shot now!"
+
+'Den I felt at der back of my neck der fingers of Bimi. Mein Gott! I
+tell you dot he talked through dose fingers. It was der deaf-and-dumb
+alphabet all gomplete. He slide his hairy arm round my neck, und he tilt
+up my chin und looked into my face, shust to see if I understood his
+talk so well as he understood mine.
+
+'"See now dere!" says Bertran, "und you would shoot him while he is
+cuddlin' you? Dot is der Teuton ingrate!"
+
+'But I knew dot I had made Bimi a life's-enemy, pecause his fingers haf
+talk murder through the back of my neck. Next dime I see Bimi dere was a
+pistol in my belt, und he touched it once, und I open der breech to show
+him it was loaded. He haf seen der liddle monkeys killed in der woods:
+he understood.
+
+'So Bertran he was married, and he forgot clean about Bimi dot was
+skippin' alone on der beach mit der half of a human soul in his belly.
+I was see him skip, und he took a big bough und thrash der sand till
+he haf made a great hole like a grave. So I says to Bertran, "For any
+sakes, kill Bimi. He is mad mit der jealousy."
+
+'Bertran haf said "He is not mad at all. He haf obey und lofe my wife,
+und if she speak he will get her slippers," und he looked at his wife
+agross der room. She was a very pretty girl.
+
+'Den I said to him, "Dost dou pretend to know monkeys und dis beast dot
+is lashing himself mad upon der sands, pecause you do not talk to him?
+Shoot him when he comes to der house, for he haf der light in his eye
+dot means killing--und killing." Bimi come to der house, but dere was no
+light in his eye. It was all put away, cunning--so cunning--und he fetch
+der girl her slippers, und Bertran turn to me und say, "Dost dou know
+him in nine months more dan I haf known him in twelve years? Shall a
+child stab his fader? I haf fed him, und he was my child. Do not speak
+this nonsense to my wife or to me any more."
+
+'Dot next day Bertran came to my house to help me make some wood cases
+for der specimens, und he tell me dot he haf left his wife a liddle
+while mit Bimi in der garden. Den I finish my cases quick, und I say,
+"Let us go to your houses und get a trink." He laugh and say, "Come
+along, dry mans."
+
+'His wife was not in der garden, und Bimi did not come when Bertran
+called. Und his wife did not come when he called, und he knocked at her
+bedroom door und dot was shut tight--locked. Den he look at me, und his
+face was white. I broke down der door mit my shoulder, und der thatch of
+der roof was torn into a great hole, und der sun came in upon der floor.
+Haf you ever seen paper in der waste-basket, or cards at whist on der
+table scattered? Dere was no wife dot could be seen. I tell you dere was
+nodings in dot room dot might be a woman. Dere was stuff on der floor
+und dot was all. I looked at dese things und I was very sick; but
+Bertran looked a liddle longer at what was upon the floor und der walls,
+und der hole in der thatch. Den he pegan to laugh, soft und low, und I
+knew und thank Gott dot he was mad. He nefer cried, he nefer prayed. He
+stood all still in der doorway und laugh to himself. Den he said, "She
+haf locked herself in dis room, and he haf torn up der thatch. Fi donc!
+Dot is so. We will mend der thatch und wait for Bimi. He will surely
+come."
+
+'I tell you we waited ten days in dot house, after der room was made
+into a room again, und once or twice we saw Bimi comin' a liddle way
+from der woods. He was afraid pecause he haf done wrong. Bertran called
+him when he was come to look on the tenth day, und Bimi come skipping
+along der beach und making noises, mit a long piece of black hair in his
+hands. Den Bertran laugh and say, "Fi donc!" shust as if it was a glass
+broken upon der table; und Bimi come nearer, und Bertran was honey-sweet
+in his voice und laughed to himself. For three days he made love to
+Bimi, pecause Bimi would not let himself be touched. Den Bimi come to
+dinner at der same table mit us, und the hair on his hands was all black
+und thick mit-mit what had dried on der hands. Bertran gave him sangaree
+till Bimi was drunk and stupid, und den----'
+
+Hans paused to puff at his cigar.
+
+'And then?' said I.
+
+'Und den Bertran he kill him mit his hands, und I go for a walk upon der
+beach. It was Bertran's own piziness. When I come back der ape he was
+dead, und Bertran he was dying abofe him; but still he laughed liddle
+und low und he was quite content. Now you know der formula of der
+strength of der orang-outang--it is more as seven to one in relation to
+man. But Bertran, he haf killed Bimi mit sooch dings as Gott gif him.
+Dot was der miracle.'
+
+The infernal clamour in the cage recommenced. 'Aha! Dot friend of ours
+haf still too much Ego in his Cosmos. Be quiet, dou!'
+
+Hans hissed long and venomously. We could hear the great beast quaking
+in his cage.
+
+'But why in the world didn't you help Bertran instead of letting him be
+killed?' I asked.
+
+'My friend,' said Hans, composedly stretching himself to slumber, 'it
+was not nice even to mineself dot I should live after I haf seen dot
+room mit der hole in der thatch. Und Bertran, he was her husband.
+Goot-night, und--sleep well.'
+
+
+
+
+MOTI GUJ--MUTINEER
+
+
+Once upon a time there was a coffee-planter in India who wished to clear
+some forest land for coffee-planting. When he had cut down all the
+trees and burned the under-wood the stumps still remained. Dynamite is
+expensive and slow-fire slow. The happy medium for stump-clearing is the
+lord of all beats, who is the elephant. He will either push the stump
+out of the ground with his tusks, if he has any, or drag it out with
+ropes. The planter, therefore, hired elephants by ones and twos and
+threes, and fell to work. The very best of all the elephants belonged to
+the very worst of all the drivers or mahouts; and the superior beast's
+name was Moti Guj. He was the absolute property of his mahout, which
+would never have been the case under native rule, for Moti Guj was a
+creature to be desired by kings; and his name, being translated, meant
+the Pearl Elephant. Because the British Government was in the land,
+Deesa, the mahout, enjoyed his property undisturbed. He was dissipated.
+When he had made much money through the strength of his elephant, he
+would get extremely drunk and give Moti Guj a beating with a tent-peg
+over the tender nails of the forefeet. Moti Guj never trampled the life
+out of Deesa on these occasions, for he knew that after the beating was
+over Deesa would embrace his trunk and weep and call him his love and
+his life and the liver of his soul, and give him some liquor. Moti
+Guj was very fond of liquor--arrack for choice, though he would drink
+palm-tree toddy if nothing better offered. Then Deesa would go to sleep
+between Moti Guj's forefeet, and as Deesa generally chose the middle of
+the public road, and as Moti Guj mounted guard over him and would not
+permit horse, foot, or cart to pass by, traffic was congested till Deesa
+saw fit to wake up.
+
+There was no sleeping in the daytime on the planter's clearing: the
+wages were too high to risk. Deesa sat on Moti Guj's neck and gave him
+orders, while Moti Guj rooted up the stumps--for he owned a magnificent
+pair of tusks; or pulled at the end of a rope--for he had a magnificent
+pair of shoulders, while Deesa kicked him behind the ears and said he
+was the king of elephants. At evening time Moti Guj would wash down his
+three hundred pounds' weight of green food with a quart of arrack, and
+Deesa would take a share and sing songs between Moti Guj's legs till it
+was time to go to bed. Once a week Deesa led Moti Guj down to the river,
+and Moti Guj lay on his side luxuriously in the shallows, while Deesa
+went over him with a coir-swab and a brick. Moti Guj never mistook the
+pounding blow of the latter for the smack of the former that warned him
+to get up and turn over on the other side. Then Deesa would look at his
+feet, and examine his eyes, and turn up the fringes of his mighty ears
+in case of sores or budding ophthalmia. After inspection, the two would
+'come up with a song from the sea,' Moti Guj all black and shining,
+waving a torn tree branch twelve feet long in his trunk, and Deesa
+knotting up his own long wet hair.
+
+It was a peaceful, well-paid life till Deesa felt the return of the
+desire to drink deep. He wished for an orgie. The little draughts that
+led nowhere were taking the manhood out of him.
+
+He went to the planter, and 'My mother's dead,' said he, weeping.
+
+'She died on the last plantation two months ago; and she died once
+before that when you were working for me last year,' said the planter,
+who knew something of the ways of nativedom.
+
+'Then it's my aunt, and she was just the same as a mother to me,' said
+Deesa, weeping more than ever. 'She has left eighteen small children
+entirely without bread, and it is I who must fill their little
+stomachs,' said Deesa, beating his head on the floor.
+
+'Who brought you the news?' said the planter.
+
+'The post' said Deesa.
+
+'There hasn't been a post here for the past week. Get back to your
+lines!'
+
+'A devastating sickness has fallen on my village, and all my wives are
+dying,' yelled Deesa, really in tears this time.
+
+'Call Chihun, who comes from Deesa's village,' said the planter.'
+Chihun, has this man a wife?'
+
+'He!' said Chihun. 'No. Not a woman of our village would look at him.
+They'd sooner marry the elephant.' Chihun snorted. Deesa wept and
+bellowed.
+
+'You will get into a difficulty in a minute,' said the planter.' Go back
+to your work!'
+
+'Now I will speak Heaven's truth' gulped Deesa, with an inspiration. 'I
+haven't been drunk for two months. I desire to depart in order to get
+properly drunk afar off and distant from this heavenly plantation. Thus
+I shall cause no trouble.'
+
+A flickering smile crossed the planter's face. 'Deesa,' said he, 'you've
+spoken the truth, and I'd give you leave on the spot if anything could
+be done with Moti Guj while you're away. You know that he will only obey
+your orders.'
+
+'May the Light of the Heavens live forty thousand years. I shall be
+absent but ten little days. After that, upon my faith and honour and
+soul, I return. As to the inconsiderable interval, have I the gracious
+permission of the Heaven-born to call up Moti Guj?'
+
+Permission was granted, and, in answer to Deesa's shrill yell, the
+lordly tusker swung out of the shade of a clump of trees where he had
+been squirting dust over himself till his master should return.
+
+'Light of my heart, Protector of the Drunken, Mountain of Might, give
+ear,' said Deesa, standing in front of him.
+
+Moti Guj gave ear, and saluted with his trunk. 'I am going away,' said
+Deesa.
+
+Moti Guj's eyes twinkled. He liked jaunts as well as his master. One
+could snatch all manner of nice things from the roadside then.
+
+'But you, you fubsy old pig, must stay behind and work.'
+
+The twinkle died out as Moti Guj tried to look delighted. He hated
+stump-hauling on the plantation. It hurt his teeth.
+
+'I shall be gone for ten days, O Delectable One. Hold up your near
+forefoot and I'll impress the fact upon it, warty toad of a dried
+mud-puddle.' Deesa took a tent-peg and banged Moti Guj ten times on the
+nails. Moti Guj grunted and shuffled from foot to foot.
+
+'Ten days,' said Deesa, 'you must work and haul and root trees as Chihun
+here shall order you. Take up Chihun and set him on your neck!' Moti Guj
+curled the tip of his trunk, Chihun put his foot there and was swung
+on to the neck. Deesa handed Chihun the heavy ankus, the iron
+elephant-goad.
+
+Chihun thumped Moti Guj's bald head as a paviour thumps a kerbstone.
+
+Moti Guj trumpeted.
+
+'Be still, hog of the backwoods. Chihun's your mahout for ten days. And
+now bid me good-bye, beast after mine own heart. Oh, my lord, my king!
+Jewel of all created elephants, lily of the herd, preserve your honoured
+health; be virtuous. Adieu!'
+
+Moti Guj lapped his trunk round Deesa and swung him into the air twice.
+That was his way of bidding the man good-bye.
+
+'He'll work now,' said Dessa to the planter. 'Have I leave to go?'
+
+The planter nodded, and Deesa dived into the woods. Moti Guj went back
+to haul stumps.
+
+Chihun was very kind to him, but he felt unhappy and forlorn
+notwithstanding. Chihun gave him balls of spices, and tickled him under
+the chin, and Chihun's little baby cooed to him after work was over,
+and Chihun's wife called him a darling; but Moti Guj was a bachelor by
+instinct, as Deesa was. He did not understand the domestic emotions. He
+wanted the light of his universe back again--the drink and the drunken
+slumber, the savage beatings and the savage caresses.
+
+None the less he worked well, and the planter wondered. Deesa had
+vagabonded along the roads till he met a marriage procession of his
+own caste and, drinking, dancing, and tippling, had drifted past all
+knowledge of the lapse of time.
+
+The morning of the eleventh day dawned, and there returned no Deesa.
+Moti Guj was loosed from his ropes for the daily stint. He swung clear,
+looked round, shrugged his shoulders, and began to walk away, as one
+having business elsewhere.
+
+'Hi! ho! Come back, you,' shouted Chihun. 'Come back, and put me on your
+neck, Misborn Mountain. Return, Splendour of the Hillsides. Adornment of
+all India, heave to, or I'll bang every toe off your fat fore-foot!'
+
+Moti Guj gurgled gently, but did not obey. Chihun ran after him with a
+rope and caught him up. Moti Guj put his ears forward, and Chihun knew
+what that meant, though he tried to carry it off with high words.
+
+'None of your nonsense with me,' said he. 'To your pickets, Devil-son.'
+
+'Hrrump!' said Moti Guj, and that was all--that and the forebent ears.
+
+Moti Guj put his hands in his pockets, chewed a branch for a toothpick,
+and strolled about the clearing, making jest of the other elephants, who
+had just set to work.
+
+Chihun reported the state of affairs to the planter, who came out with
+a dog-whip and cracked it furiously. Moti Guj paid the white man
+the compliment of charging him nearly a quarter of a mile across the
+clearing and 'Hrrumping' him into the verandah. Then he stood outside
+the house chuckling to himself, and shaking all over with the fun of it,
+as an elephant will.
+
+'We'll thrash him,' said the planter. 'He shall have the finest
+thrashing that ever elephant received. Give Kala Nag and Nazim twelve
+foot of chain apiece, and tell them to lay on twenty blows.'
+
+Kala Nag--which means Black Snake--and Nazim were two of the biggest
+elephants in the lines, and one of their duties was to administer the
+graver punishments, since no man can beat an elephant properly.
+
+They took the whipping-chains and rattled them in their trunks as they
+sidled up to Moti Guj, meaning to hustle him between them. Moti Guj had
+never, in all his life of thirty-nine years, been whipped, and he did
+not intend to open new experiences. So he waited, weaving his head from
+right to left, and measuring the precise spot in Kala Nag's fat side
+where a blunt tusk would sink deepest. Kala Nag had no tusks; the chain
+was his badge of authority; but he judged it good to swing wide of Moti
+Guj at the last minute, and seem to appear as if he had brought out the
+chain for amusement. Nazim turned round and went home early. He did not
+feel fighting-fit that morning, and so Moti Guj was left standing alone
+with his ears cocked.
+
+That decided the planter to argue no more, and Moti Guj rolled back to
+his inspection of the clearing. An elephant who will not work, and is
+not tied up, is not quite so manageable as an eighty-one ton gun loose
+in a heavy sea-way. He slapped old friends on the back and asked them if
+the stumps were coming away easily; he talked nonsense concerning
+labour and the inalienable rights of elephants to a long 'nooning'; and,
+wandering to and fro, thoroughly demoralized the garden till sundown,
+when he returned to his pickets for food.
+
+'If you won't work you shan't eat,' said Chihun angrily. 'You're a wild
+elephant, and no educated animal at all. Go back to your jungle.'
+
+Chihun's little brown baby, rolling on the floor of the hut, stretched
+its fat arms to the huge shadow in the doorway. Moti Guj knew well that
+it was the dearest thing on earth to Chihun. He swung out his trunk with
+a fascinating crook at the end, and the brown baby threw itself shouting
+upon it. Moti Guj made fast and pulled up till the brown baby was
+crowing in the air twelve feet above his father's head.
+
+'Great Chief!' said Chihun. 'Flour cakes of the best, twelve in number,
+two feet across, and soaked in rum shall be yours on the instant, and
+two hundred pounds' weight of fresh-cut young sugar-cane therewith.
+Deign only to put down safely that insignificant brat who is my heart
+and my life to me.'
+
+Moti Guj tucked the brown baby comfortably between his forefeet, that
+could have knocked into toothpicks all Chihun's hut, and waited for his
+food. He ate it, and the brown baby crawled away. Moti Guj dozed, and
+thought of Deesa. One of many mysteries connected with the elephant is
+that his huge body needs less sleep than anything else that lives. Four
+or five hours in the night suffice--two just before midnight, lying down
+on one side; two just after one o'clock, lying down on the other. The
+rest of the silent hours are filled with eating and fidgeting and long
+grumbling soliloquies.
+
+At midnight, therefore, Moti Guj strode out of his pickets, for a
+thought had come to him that Deesa might be lying drunk somewhere in
+the dark forest with none to look after him. So all that night he chased
+through the undergrowth, blowing and trumpeting and shaking his ears. He
+went down to the river and blared across the shallows where Deesa used
+to wash him, but there was no answer. He could not find Deesa, but he
+disturbed all the elephants in the lines, and nearly frightened to death
+some gypsies in the woods.
+
+At dawn Deesa returned to the plantation. He had been very drunk indeed,
+and he expected to fall into trouble for outstaying his leave. He drew a
+long breath when he saw that the bungalow and the plantation were still
+uninjured; for he knew something of Moti Guj's temper; and reported
+himself with many lies and salaams. Moti Guj had gone to his pickets for
+breakfast. His night exercise had made him hungry.
+
+'Call up your beast,' said the planter, and Deesa shouted in the
+mysterious elephant-language, that some mahouts believe came from China
+at the birth of the world, when elephants and not men were masters. Moti
+Guj heard and came. Elephants do not gallop. They move from spots at
+varying rates of speed. If an elephant wished to catch an express train
+he could not gallop, but he could catch the train. Thus Moti Guj was
+at the planter's door almost before Chihun noticed that he had left his
+pickets. He fell into Deesa's arms trumpeting with joy, and the man and
+beast wept and slobbered over each other, and handled each other from
+head to heel to see that no harm had befallen.
+
+'Now we will get to work,' said Deesa. 'Lift me up, my son and my joy.'
+
+Moti Guj swung him up and the two went to the coffee-clearing to look
+for irksome stumps.
+
+The planter was too astonished to be very angry.
+
+
+
+
+L'ENVOI
+
+
+   My new-cut ashlar takes the light
+     Where crimson-blank the windows flare;
+   By my own work, before the night,
+    Great Overseer, I make my prayer.
+
+   If there be good in that I wrought,
+     Thy hand compelled it, Master, Thine;
+   Where I have failed to meet Thy thought
+     I know, through Thee, the blame is mine.
+
+   One instant's toil to Thee denied
+     Stands all Eternity's offence,
+   Of that I did with Thee to guide
+     To Thee, through Thee, be excellence.
+
+   Who, lest all thought of Eden fade,
+     Bring'st Eden to the craftsman's brain,
+   Godlike to muse o'er his own trade
+     And Manlike stand with God again.
+
+   The depth and dream of my desire,
+     The bitter paths wherein I stray,
+   Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire,
+     Thou knowest Who hast made the Clay.
+
+   One stone the more swings to her place
+     In that dread Temple of Thy Worth
+   --It is enough that through Thy grace
+     I saw naught common on Thy earth.
+
+   Take not that vision from my ken;
+     Oh whatso'er may spoil or speed,
+   Help me to need no aid from men
+     That I may help such men as need!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life's Handicap, by Rudyard Kipling
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diff --git a/5777.zip b/5777.zip
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #5777 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5777)
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Life's Handicap, by Rudyard Kipling
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
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+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life's Handicap, by Rudyard Kipling
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Life's Handicap
+
+Author: Rudyard Kipling
+
+
+Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5777]
+This file was first posted on September 1, 2002
+Last Updated: October 7, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE'S HANDICAP ***
+
+
+
+
+Text file produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
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+
+</pre>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      LIFE&rsquo;S HANDICAP
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      BEING STORIES OF MINE OWN PEOPLE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Rudyard Kipling
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      1915
+    </h4>
+    <h3>
+      TO<br /> E.K.R.<br /> FROM<br /> R.K.<br /> 1887-89<br /> C.M.G.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> THE LANG MEN O&rsquo; LARUT </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> REINGELDER AND THE GERMAN FLAG </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> THE WANDERING JEW </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> THROUGH THE FIRE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> THE FINANCES OF THE GODS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> THE AMIR&rsquo;S HOMILY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> JEWS IN SHUSHAN </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> THE LIMITATIONS OF PAMBE SERANG </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> LITTLE TOBRAH </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> BUBBLING WELL ROAD </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> &lsquo;THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT&rsquo; </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> GEORGIE PORGIE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> NABOTH </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> THE DREAM OF DUNCAN PARRENNESS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> THE INCARNATION OF KRISHNA MULVANEY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> ON GREENHOW HILL </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> THE MAN WHO WAS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> THE MARK OF THE BEAST </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> THE RETURN OF IMRAY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> NAMGAY DOOLA </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> BURTRAN AND BIMI </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> MOTI GUJ&mdash;MUTINEER </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> L&rsquo;ENVOI </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In Northern India stood a monastery called The Chubara of Dhunni Bhagat.
+      No one remembered who or what Dhunni Bhagat had been. He had lived his
+      life, made a little money and spent it all, as every good Hindu should do,
+      on a work of piety&mdash;the Chubara. That was full of brick cells, gaily
+      painted with the figures of Gods and kings and elephants, where worn-out
+      priests could sit and meditate on the latter end of things; the paths were
+      brick paved, and the naked feet of thousands had worn them into gutters.
+      Clumps of mangoes sprouted from between the bricks; great pipal trees
+      overhung the well-windlass that whined all day; and hosts of parrots tore
+      through the trees. Crows and squirrels were tame in that place, for they
+      knew that never a priest would touch them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wandering mendicants, charm-sellers, and holy vagabonds for a hundred
+      miles round used to make the Chubara their place of call and rest.
+      Mahomedan, Sikh, and Hindu mixed equally under the trees. They were old
+      men, and when man has come to the turnstiles of Night all the creeds in
+      the world seem to him wonderfully alike and colourless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gobind the one-eyed told me this. He was a holy man who lived on an island
+      in the middle of a river and fed the fishes with little bread pellets
+      twice a day. In flood-time, when swollen corpses stranded themselves at
+      the foot of the island, Gobind would cause them to be piously burned, for
+      the sake of the honour of mankind, and having regard to his own account
+      with God hereafter. But when two-thirds of the island was torn away in a
+      spate, Gobind came across the river to Dhunni Bhagat&rsquo;s Chubara, he and his
+      brass drinking vessel with the well-cord round the neck, his short
+      arm-rest crutch studded with brass nails, his roll of bedding, his big
+      pipe, his umbrella, and his tall sugar-loaf hat with the nodding peacock
+      feathers in it. He wrapped himself up in his patched quilt made of every
+      colour and material in the world, sat down in a sunny corner of the very
+      quiet Chubara, and, resting his arm on his short-handled crutch, waited
+      for death. The people brought him food and little clumps of marigold
+      flowers, and he gave his blessing in return. He was nearly blind, and his
+      face was seamed and lined and wrinkled beyond belief, for he had lived in
+      his time which was before the English came within five hundred miles of
+      Dhunni Bhagat&rsquo;s Chubara.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we grew to know each other well, Gobind would tell me tales in a
+      voice most like the rumbling of heavy guns over a wooden bridge. His tales
+      were true, but not one in twenty could be printed in an English book,
+      because the English do not think as natives do. They brood over matters
+      that a native would dismiss till a fitting occasion; and what they would
+      not think twice about a native will brood over till a fitting occasion:
+      then native and English stare at each other hopelessly across great gulfs
+      of miscomprehension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And what,&rsquo; said Gobind one Sunday evening, &lsquo;is your honoured craft, and
+      by what manner of means earn you your daily bread?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;a kerani&mdash;one who writes with a pen upon paper, not
+      being in the service of the Government.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then what do you write?&rsquo; said Gobind. &lsquo;Come nearer, for I cannot see your
+      countenance, and the light fails.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I write of all matters that lie within my understanding, and of many that
+      do not. But chiefly I write of Life and Death, and men and women, and Love
+      and Fate according to the measure of my ability, telling the tale through
+      the mouths of one, two, or more people. Then by the favour of God the
+      tales are sold and money accrues to me that I may keep alive.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Even so,&rsquo; said Gobind. &lsquo;That is the work of the bazar story-teller; but
+      he speaks straight to men and women and does not write anything at all.
+      Only when the tale has aroused expectation, and calamities are about to
+      befall the virtuous, he stops suddenly and demands payment ere he
+      continues the narration. Is it so in your craft, my son?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have heard of such things when a tale is of great length, and is sold
+      as a cucumber, in small pieces.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay, I was once a famed teller of stories when I was begging on the road
+      between Koshin and Etra; before the last pilgrimage that ever I took to
+      Orissa. I told many tales and heard many more at the rest-houses in the
+      evening when we were merry at the end of the march. It is in my heart that
+      grown men are but as little children in the matter of tales, and the
+      oldest tale is the most beloved.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;With your people that is truth,&rsquo; said I. &lsquo;But in regard to our people
+      they desire new tales, and when all is written they rise up and declare
+      that the tale were better told in such and such a manner, and doubt either
+      the truth or the invention thereof.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But what folly is theirs!&rsquo; said Gobind, throwing out his knotted hand. &lsquo;A
+      tale that is told is a true tale as long as the telling lasts. And of
+      their talk upon it&mdash;you know how Bilas Khan, that was the prince of
+      tale-tellers, said to one who mocked him in the great rest-house on the
+      Jhelum road: &ldquo;Go on, my brother, and finish that I have begun,&rdquo; and he who
+      mocked took up the tale, but having neither voice nor manner for the task
+      came to a standstill, and the pilgrims at supper made him eat abuse and
+      stick half that night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, but with our people, money having passed, it is their right; as we
+      should turn against a shoeseller in regard to shoes if those wore out. If
+      ever I make a book you shall see and judge.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And the parrot said to the falling tree, Wait, brother, till I fetch a
+      prop!&rsquo; said Gobind with a grim chuckle. &lsquo;God has given me eighty years,
+      and it may be some over. I cannot look for more than day granted by day
+      and as a favour at this tide. Be swift.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;In what manner is it best to set about the task.&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;O chiefest of
+      those who string pearls with their tongue?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How do I know? Yet&rsquo;&mdash;he thought for a little&mdash;&lsquo;how should I not
+      know? God has made very many heads, but there is only one heart in all the
+      world among your people or my people. They are children in the matter of
+      tales.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But none are so terrible as the little ones, if a man misplace a word, or
+      in a second telling vary events by so much as one small devil.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay, I also have told tales to the little ones, but do thou this&mdash;&rsquo; 
+      His old eyes fell on the gaudy paintings of the wall, the blue and red
+      dome, and the flames of the poinsettias beyond. &lsquo;Tell them first of those
+      things that thou hast seen and they have seen together. Thus their
+      knowledge will piece out thy imperfections. Tell them of what thou alone
+      hast seen, then what thou hast heard, and since they be children tell them
+      of battles and kings, horses, devils, elephants, and angels, but omit not
+      to tell them of love and suchlike. All the earth is full of tales to him
+      who listens and does not drive away the poor from his door. The poor are
+      the best of tale-tellers; for they must lay their ear to the ground every
+      night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After this conversation the idea grew in my head, and Gobind was pressing
+      in his inquiries as to the health of the book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Later, when we had been parted for months, it happened that I was to go
+      away and far off, and I came to bid Gobind good-bye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is farewell between us now, for I go a very long journey,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And I also. A longer one than thou. But what of the book?&rsquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It will be born in due season if it is so ordained.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I would I could see it,&rsquo; said the old man, huddling beneath his quilt.
+      &lsquo;But that will not be. I die three days hence, in the night, a little
+      before the dawn. The term of my years is accomplished.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In nine cases out of ten a native makes no miscalculation as to the day of
+      his death. He has the foreknowledge of the beasts in this respect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then thou wilt depart in peace, and it is good talk, for thou hast said
+      that life is no delight to thee.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But it is a pity that our book is not born. How shall I know that there
+      is any record of my name?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Because I promise, in the forepart of the book, preceding everything
+      else, that it shall be written, Gobind, sadhu, of the island in the river
+      and awaiting God in Dhunni Bhagat&rsquo;s Chubara, first spoke of the book,&rsquo; 
+      said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And gave counsel&mdash;an old man&rsquo;s counsel. Gobind, son of Gobind of the
+      Chumi village in the Karaon tehsil, in the district of Mooltan. Will that
+      be written also?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That will be written also.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And the book will go across the Black Water to the houses of your people,
+      and all the Sahibs will know of me who am eighty years old?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All who read the book shall know. I cannot promise for the rest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That is good talk. Call aloud to all who are in the monastery, and I will
+      tell them this thing.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They trooped up, faquirs, sadhus, sunnyasis, byragis, nihangs, and
+      mullahs, priests of all faiths and every degree of raggedness, and Gobind,
+      leaning upon his crutch, spoke so that they were visibly filled with envy,
+      and a white-haired senior bade Gobind think of his latter end instead of
+      transitory repute in the mouths of strangers. Then Gobind gave me his
+      blessing and I came away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These tales have been collected from all places, and all sorts of people,
+      from priests in the Chubara, from Ala Yar the carver, Jiwun Singh the
+      carpenter, nameless men on steamers and trains round the world, women
+      spinning outside their cottages in the twilight, officers and gentlemen
+      now dead and buried, and a few, but these are the very best, my father
+      gave me. The greater part of them have been published in magazines and
+      newspapers, to whose editors I am indebted; but some are new on this side
+      of the water, and some have not seen the light before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The most remarkable stories are, of course, those which do not appear&mdash;for
+      obvious reasons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE LANG MEN O&rsquo; LARUT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; CO.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Chief Engineer&rsquo;s sleeping suit was of yellow striped with blue, and
+      his speech was the speech of Aberdeen. They sluiced the deck under him,
+      and he hopped on to the ornamental capstan, a black pipe between his
+      teeth, though the hour was not seven of the morn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Did you ever hear o&rsquo; the Lang Men o&rsquo; Larut?&rsquo; he asked when the Man from
+      Orizava had finished a story of an aboriginal giant discovered in the
+      wilds of Brazil. There was never story yet passed the lips of teller, but
+      the Man from Orizava could cap it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, we never did,&rsquo; we responded with one voice. The Man from Orizava
+      watched the Chief keenly, as a possible rival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m not telling the story for the sake of talking merely,&rsquo; said the
+      Chief, &lsquo;but as a warning against betting, unless you bet on a perrfect
+      certainty. The Lang Men o&rsquo; Larut were just a certainty. I have had talk
+      wi&rsquo; them. Now Larut, you will understand, is a dependency, or it may be an
+      outlying possession, o&rsquo; the island o&rsquo; Penang, and there they will get you
+      tin and manganese, an&rsquo; it mayhap mica, and all manner o&rsquo; meenerals. Larut
+      is a great place.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But what about the population?&rsquo; said the Man from Orizava.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The population,&rsquo; said the Chief slowly, &lsquo;were few but enorrmous. You must
+      understand that, exceptin&rsquo; the tin-mines, there is no special inducement
+      to Europeans to reside in Larut. The climate is warm and remarkably like
+      the climate o&rsquo; Calcutta; and in regard to Calcutta, it cannot have escaped
+      your obsairvation that&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Calcutta isn&rsquo;t Larut; and we&rsquo;ve only just come from it,&rsquo; protested the
+      Man from Orizava. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s a meteorological department in Calcutta, too.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay, but there&rsquo;s no meteorological department in Larut. Each man is a law
+      to himself. Some drink whisky, and some drink brandipanee, and some drink
+      cocktails&mdash;vara bad for the coats o&rsquo; the stomach is a cocktail&mdash;and
+      some drink sangaree, so I have been credibly informed; but one and all
+      they sweat like the packing of piston-head on a fourrteen-days&rsquo; voyage
+      with the screw racing half her time. But, as I was saying, the population
+      o&rsquo; Larut was five all told of English&mdash;that is to say, Scotch&mdash;an&rsquo; 
+      I&rsquo;m Scotch, ye know,&rsquo; said the Chief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Man from Orizava lit another cigarette, and waited patiently. It was
+      hopeless to hurry the Chief Engineer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am not pretending to account for the population o&rsquo; Larut being laid
+      down according to such fabulous dimensions. O&rsquo; the five white men engaged
+      upon the extraction o&rsquo; tin ore and mercantile pursuits, there were three
+      o&rsquo; the sons o&rsquo; Anak. Wait while I remember. Lammitter was the first by two
+      inches&mdash;a giant in the land, an&rsquo; a terreefic man to cross in his
+      ways. From heel to head he was six feet nine inches, and proportionately
+      built across and through the thickness of his body. Six good feet nine
+      inches&mdash;an overbearin&rsquo; man. Next to him, and I have forgotten his
+      precise business, was Sandy Vowle. And he was six feet seven, but lean and
+      lathy, and it was more in the elasteecity of his neck that the height lay
+      than in any honesty o&rsquo; bone and sinew. Five feet and a few odd inches may
+      have been his real height. The remainder came out when he held up his
+      head, and six feet seven he was upon the door-sills. I took his measure in
+      chalk standin&rsquo; on a chair. And next to him, but a proportionately made
+      man, ruddy and of a fair countenance, was Jock Coan&mdash;that they called
+      the Fir Cone. He was but six feet five, and a child beside Lammitter and
+      Vowle. When the three walked out together, they made a scunner run through
+      the colony o&rsquo; Larut. The Malays ran round them as though they had been the
+      giant trees in the Yosemite Valley&mdash;these three Lang Men o&rsquo; Larut. It
+      was perfectly ridiculous&mdash;a lusus naturae&mdash;that one little place
+      should have contained maybe the three tallest ordinar&rsquo; men upon the face
+      o&rsquo; the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Obsairve now the order o&rsquo; things. For it led to the finest big drink in
+      Larut, and six sore heads the morn that endured for a week. I am against
+      immoderate liquor, but the event to follow was a justification. You must
+      understand that many coasting steamers call at Larut wi&rsquo; strangers o&rsquo; the
+      mercantile profession. In the spring time, when the young cocoanuts were
+      ripening, and the trees o&rsquo; the forests were putting forth their leaves,
+      there came an American man to Larut, and he was six foot three, or it may
+      have been four, in his stockings. He came on business from Sacramento, but
+      he stayed for pleasure wi&rsquo; the Lang Men o&rsquo; Larut. Less than, a half o&rsquo; the
+      population were ordinar&rsquo; in their girth and stature, ye will understand&mdash;Howson
+      and Nailor, merchants, five feet nine or thereabouts. He had business with
+      those two, and he stood above them from the six feet threedom o&rsquo; his
+      height till they went to drink. In the course o&rsquo; conversation he said, as
+      tall men will, things about his height, and the trouble of it to him. That
+      was his pride o&rsquo; the flesh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;As the longest man in the island&mdash;&rdquo; he said, but there they took
+      him up and asked if he were sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I say I am the longest man in the island,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and on that I&rsquo;ll
+      bet my substance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They laid down the bed-plates of a big drink then and there, and put it
+      aside while they called Jock Coan from his house, near by among the
+      fireflies&rsquo; winking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;How&rsquo;s a&rsquo; wi&rsquo; you?&rdquo; said Jock, and came in by the side o&rsquo; the Sacramento
+      profligate, two inches, or it may have been one, taller than he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;You&rsquo;re long,&rdquo; said the man, opening his eyes. &ldquo;But I am longer.&rdquo; An&rsquo; 
+      they sent a whistle through the night an&rsquo; howkit out Sandy Vowle from his
+      bit bungalow, and he came in an&rsquo; stood by the side o&rsquo; Jock, an&rsquo; the pair
+      just fillit the room to the ceiling-cloth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The Sacramento man was a euchre-player and a most profane sweerer. &ldquo;You
+      hold both Bowers,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but the Joker is with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Fair an&rsquo; softly,&rdquo; says Nailor. &ldquo;Jock, whaur&rsquo;s Lang Lammitter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Here,&rdquo; says that man, putting his leg through the window and coming in
+      like an anaconda o&rsquo; the desert furlong by furlong, one foot in Penang and
+      one in Batavia, and a hand in North Borneo it may be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Are you suited?&rdquo; said Nailor, when the hinder end o&rsquo; Lang Lammitter was
+      slidden through the sill an&rsquo; the head of Lammitter was lost in the smoke
+      away above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The American man took out his card and put it on the table. &ldquo;Esdras B.
+      Longer is my name, America is my nation, &lsquo;Frisco is my resting-place, but
+      this here beats Creation,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Boys, giants&mdash;side-show giants&mdash;I
+      minded to slide out of my bet if I had been overtopped, on the strength of
+      the riddle on this paste-board. I would have done it if you had topped me
+      even by three inches, but when it comes to feet&mdash;yards&mdash;miles, I
+      am not the man to shirk the biggest drink that ever made the
+      travellers&rsquo;-joy palm blush with virginal indignation, or the orang-outang
+      and the perambulating dyak howl with envy. Set them up and continue till
+      the final conclusion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O mon, I tell you &lsquo;twas an awful sight to see those four giants threshing
+      about the house and the island, and tearin&rsquo; down the pillars thereof an&rsquo; 
+      throwing palm-trees broadcast, and currling their long legs round the
+      hills o&rsquo; Larut. An awfu&rsquo; sight! I was there. I did not mean to tell you,
+      but it&rsquo;s out now. I was not overcome, for I e&rsquo;en sat me down under the
+      pieces o&rsquo; the table at four the morn an&rsquo; meditated upon the strangeness of
+      things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Losh, yon&rsquo;s the breakfast-bell!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      REINGELDER AND THE GERMAN FLAG
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; CO.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hans Breitmann paddled across the deck in his pink pyjamas, a cup of tea
+      in one hand and a cheroot in the other, when the steamer was sweltering
+      down the coast on her way to Singapur. He drank beer all day and all
+      night, and played a game called &lsquo;Scairt&rsquo; with three compatriots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I haf washed,&rsquo; said he in a voice of thunder, &lsquo;but dere is no use washing
+      on these hell-seas. Look at me&mdash;I am still all wet and schweatin&rsquo;. It
+      is der tea dot makes me so. Boy, bring me Bilsener on ice.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You will die if you drink beer before breakfast,&rsquo; said one man. &lsquo;Beer is
+      the worst thing in the world for&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ya, I know&mdash;der liver. I haf no liver, und I shall not die. At least
+      I will not die obon dese benny sdeamers dot haf no beer fit to trink. If I
+      should haf died, I will haf don so a hoondert dimes before now&mdash;in
+      Shermany, in New York, in Japon, in Assam, und all over der inside bans of
+      South Amerique. Also in Shamaica should I hat died or in Siam, but I am
+      here; und der are my orchits dot I have drafelled all the vorld round to
+      find.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He pointed towards the wheel, where, in two rough wooden boxes, lay a mass
+      of shrivelled vegetation, supposed by all the ship to represent Assam
+      orchids of fabulous value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, orchids do not grow in the main streets of towns, and Hans Breitmann
+      had gone far to get his. There was nothing that he had not collected that
+      year, from king-crabs to white kangaroos.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Lisden now,&rsquo; said he, after he had been speaking for not much more than
+      ten minutes without a pause; &lsquo;Lisden und I will dell you a sdory to show
+      how bad und worse it is to go gollectin&rsquo; und belief vot anoder fool haf
+      said. Dis was in Uraguay which was in Amerique&mdash;North or Sout&rsquo; you
+      would not know&mdash;und I was hoontin&rsquo; orchits und aferydings else dot I
+      could back in my kanasters&mdash;dot is drafelling sbecimen-gaces. Dere
+      vas den mit me anoder man&mdash;Reingelder, dot vas his name&mdash;und he
+      vas hoontin&rsquo; also but only coral-snakes&mdash;joost Uraguay coral-snakes&mdash;aferykind
+      you could imagine. I dell you a coral-snake is a peauty&mdash;all red und
+      white like coral dot has been gestrung in bands upon der neck of a girl.
+      Dere is one snake howefer dot we who gollect know ash der Sherman Flag,
+      pecause id is red und plack und white, joost like a sausage mit druffles.
+      Reingelder he was naturalist&mdash;goot man&mdash;goot trinker&mdash;better
+      as me! &ldquo;By Gott,&rdquo; said Reingelder, &ldquo;I will get a Sherman Flag snake or I
+      will die.&rdquo; Und we toorned all Uraguay upside-behint all pecause of dot
+      Sherman Flag.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Von day when we was in none knows where&mdash;shwingin&rsquo; in our hummocks
+      among der woods, oop comes a natif woman mit a Sherman Flag in a
+      bickle-bottle&mdash;my bickle-bottle&mdash;und we both fell from our
+      hummocks flat ubon our pot&mdash;what you call stomach&mdash;mit shoy at
+      dis thing. Now I was gollectin&rsquo; orchits also, und I knowed dot der idee of
+      life to Reingelder vas dis Sherman Flag. Derefore I bicked myselfs oop und
+      I said, &ldquo;Reingelder, dot is YOUR find.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Heart&rsquo;s true friend, dou
+      art a goot man,&rdquo; said Reingelder, und mit dot he obens der bickle-bottle,
+      und der natif woman she shqueals: &ldquo;Herr Gott! It will bite.&rdquo; I said&mdash;pecause
+      in Uraguay a man must be careful of der insects&mdash;&ldquo;Reingelder,
+      shpifligate her in der alcohol und den she will be all right.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Nein,&rdquo;
+       said Reingelder, &ldquo;I will der shnake alife examine. Dere is no fear. Der
+      coral-shnakes are mitout shting-apparatus brofided.&rdquo; Boot I looked at her
+      het, und she vas der het of a boison-shnake&mdash;der true viper cranium,
+      narrow und contract. &ldquo;It is not goot,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;she may bite und den&mdash;we
+      are tree hoondert mile from aferywheres. Broduce der alcohol und bickle
+      him alife.&rdquo; Reingelder he had him in his hand&mdash;grawlin&rsquo; und grawlin&rsquo; 
+      as slow as a woorm und dwice as guiet. &ldquo;Nonsense,&rdquo; says Reingelder. &ldquo;Yates
+      haf said dot not von of der coral-shnakes haf der sack of boison.&rdquo; Yates
+      vas der crate authorite ubon der reptilia of Sout&rsquo; Amerique. He haf
+      written a book. You do not know, of course, but he vas a crate authorite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I gum my eye upon der Sherman Flag, grawlin&rsquo; und grawlin&rsquo; in Reingelder&rsquo;s
+      fist, und der het vas not der het of innocence. &ldquo;Mein Gott,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;It
+      is you dot will get der sack&mdash;der sack from dis life here pelow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Den you may haf der shnake,&rdquo; says Reingelder, pattin&rsquo; it ubon her het.
+      &ldquo;See now, I will show you vat Yates haf written!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Uud mit dot he went indo his dent, unt brung out his big book of Yates;
+      der Sherman Flag grawlin&rsquo; in his fist. &ldquo;Yates haf said,&rdquo; said Reingelder,
+      und he throwed oben der book in der fork of his fist und read der passage,
+      proofin&rsquo; conglusivement dot nefer coral-shnake bite vas boison. Den he
+      shut der book mit a bang, und dot shqueeze der Sherman Flag, und she nip
+      once und dwice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Der liddle fool he haf bit me,&rdquo; says Reingelder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dese things was before we know apout der permanganat-potash injection. I
+      was discomfordable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Die oop der arm, Reingelder,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;und trink whisky ontil you can no
+      more trink.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Trink ten tousand tevils! I will go to dinner,&rdquo; said Reingelder, und he
+      put her afay und it vas very red mit emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We lifed upon soup, horse-flesh, und beans for dinner, but before we vas
+      eaten der soup, Reingelder he haf hold of his arm und cry, &ldquo;It is genumben
+      to der clavicle. I am a dead man; und Yates he haf lied in brint!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I dell you it vas most sad, for der symbtoms dot came vas all dose of
+      strychnine. He vas doubled into big knots, und den undoubled, und den
+      redoubled mooch worse dan pefore, und he frothed. I vas mit him, saying,
+      &ldquo;Reingelder, dost dou know me?&rdquo; but he himself, der inward gonsciousness
+      part, was peyond knowledge, und so I know he vas not in bain. Den he wrop
+      himself oop in von dremendous knot und den he died&mdash;all alone mit me
+      in Uraguay. I was sorry, for I lofed Reingelder, und I puried him, und den
+      I took der coral-shnake&mdash;dot Sherman Flag&mdash;so bad und
+      dreacherous und I bickled him alife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So I got him: und so I lost Reingelder.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE WANDERING JEW
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by Macmillan &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If you go once round the world in an easterly direction, you gain one
+      day,&rsquo; said the men of science to John Hay. In after years John Hay went
+      east, west, north, and south, transacted business, made love, and begat a
+      family, as have done many men, and the scientific information above
+      recorded lay neglected in the deeps of his mind with a thousand other
+      matters of equal importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a rich relative died, he found himself wealthy beyond any reasonable
+      expectation that he had entertained in his previous career, which had been
+      a chequered and evil one. Indeed, long before the legacy came to him,
+      there existed in the brain of John Hay a little cloud-a momentary
+      obscuration of thought that came and went almost before he could realize
+      that there was any solution of continuity. So do the bats flit round the
+      eaves of a house to show that the darkness is falling. He entered upon
+      great possessions, in money, land, and houses; but behind his delight
+      stood a ghost that cried out that his enjoyment of these things should not
+      be of long duration. It was the ghost of the rich relative, who had been
+      permitted to return to earth to torture his nephew into the grave.
+      Wherefore, under the spur of this constant reminder, John Hay, always
+      preserving the air of heavy business-like stolidity that hid the shadow on
+      his mind, turned investments, houses, and lands into sovereigns&mdash;-rich,
+      round, red, English sovereigns, each one worth twenty shillings. Lands may
+      become valueless, and houses fly heavenward on the wings of red flame, but
+      till the Day of Judgment a sovereign will always be a sovereign&mdash;that
+      is to say, a king of pleasures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Possessed of his sovereigns, John Hay would fain have spent them one by
+      one on such coarse amusements as his soul loved; but he was haunted by the
+      instant fear of Death; for the ghost of his relative stood in the hall of
+      his house close to the hat-rack, shouting up the stairway that life was
+      short, that there was no hope of increase of days, and that the
+      undertakers were already roughing out his nephew&rsquo;s coffin. John Hay was
+      generally alone in the house, and even when he had company, his friends
+      could not hear the clamorous uncle. The shadow inside his brain grew
+      larger and blacker. His fear of death was driving John Hay mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, from the deeps of his mind, where he had stowed away all his
+      discarded information, rose to light the scientific fact of the Easterly
+      journey. On the next occasion that his uncle shouted up the stairway
+      urging him to make haste and live, a shriller voice cried, &lsquo;Who goes round
+      the world once easterly, gains one day.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His growing diffidence and distrust of mankind made John Hay unwilling to
+      give this precious message of hope to his friends. They might take it up
+      and analyse it. He was sure it was true, but it would pain him acutely
+      were rough hands to examine it too closely. To him alone of all the
+      toiling generations of mankind had the secret of immortality been
+      vouchsafed. It would be impious&mdash;against all the designs of the
+      Creator&mdash;to set mankind hurrying eastward. Besides, this would crowd
+      the steamers inconveniently, and John Hay wished of all things to be
+      alone. If he could get round the world in two months&mdash;some one of
+      whom he had read, he could not remember the name, had covered the passage
+      in eighty days&mdash;he would gain a clear day; and by steadily continuing
+      to do it for thirty years, would gain one hundred and eighty days, or
+      nearly the half of a year. It would not be much, but in course of time, as
+      civilisation advanced, and the Euphrates Valley Railway was opened, he
+      could improve the pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Armed with many sovereigns, John Hay, in the thirty-fifth year of his age,
+      set forth on his travels, two voices bearing him company from Dover as he
+      sailed to Calais. Fortune favoured him. The Euphrates Valley Railway was
+      newly opened, and he was the first man who took ticket direct from Calais
+      to Calcutta&mdash;thirteen days in the train. Thirteen days in the train
+      are not good for the nerves; but he covered the world and returned to
+      Calais from America in twelve days over the two months, and started afresh
+      with four and twenty hours of precious time to his credit. Three years
+      passed, and John Hay religiously went round this earth seeking for more
+      time wherein to enjoy the remainder of his sovereigns. He became known on
+      many lines as the man who wanted to go on; when people asked him what he
+      was and what he did, he answered&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m the person who intends to live, and I am trying to do it now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His days were divided between watching the white wake spinning behind the
+      stern of the swiftest steamers, or the brown earth flashing past the
+      windows of the fastest trains; and he noted in a pocket-book every minute
+      that he had railed or screwed out of remorseless eternity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;This is better than praying for long life,&rsquo; quoth John Hay as he turned
+      his face eastward for his twentieth trip. The years had done more for him
+      than he dared to hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the extension of the Brahmaputra Valley line to meet the
+      newly-developed China Midland, the Calais railway ticket held good via
+      Karachi and Calcutta to Hongkong. The round trip could be managed in a
+      fraction over forty-seven days, and, filled with fatal exultation, John
+      Hay told the secret of his longevity to his only friend, the house-keeper
+      of his rooms in London. He spoke and passed; but the woman was one of
+      resource, and immediately took counsel with the lawyers who had first
+      informed John Hay of his golden legacy. Very many sovereigns still
+      remained, and another Hay longed to spend them on things more sensible
+      than railway tickets and steamer accommodation.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+The chase was long, for when a man is journeying literally for the dear
+life, he does not tarry upon the road. Round the world Hay swept anew,
+and overtook the wearied Doctor, who had been sent out to look for him,
+in Madras. It was there that he found the reward of his toil and the
+assurance of a blessed immortality. In half an hour the Doctor, watching
+always the parched lips, the shaking hands, and the eye that turned
+eternally to the east, won John Hay to rest in a little house close to
+the Madras surf. All that Hay need do was to hang by ropes from the roof
+of the room and let the round earth swing free beneath him. This was
+better than steamer or train, for he gained a day in a day, and was
+thus the equal of the undying sun. The other Hay would pay his expenses
+throughout eternity.
+
+ It is true that we cannot yet take tickets from Calais to Hongkong,
+though that will come about in fifteen years; but men say that if you
+wander along the southern coast of India you shall find in a neatly
+whitewashed little bungalow, sitting in a chair swung from the
+roof, over a sheet of thin steel which he knows so well destroys the
+attraction of the earth, an old and worn man who for ever faces the
+rising sun, a stop-watch in his hand, racing against eternity. He cannot
+drink, he does not smoke, and his living expenses amount to perhaps
+twenty-five rupees a month, but he is John Hay, the Immortal. Without,
+he hears the thunder of the wheeling world with which he is careful to
+explain he has no connection whatever; but if you say that it is only
+the noise of the surf, he will cry bitterly, for the shadow on his brain
+is passing away as the brain ceases to work, and he doubts sometimes
+whether the doctor spoke the truth.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why does not the sun always remain over my head?&rsquo; asks John Hay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THROUGH THE FIRE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Policeman rode through the Himalayan forest, under the moss-draped
+      oaks, and his orderly trotted after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s an ugly business, Bhere Singh,&rsquo; said the Policeman. &lsquo;Where are
+      they?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is a very ugly business,&rsquo; said Bhere Singh; &lsquo;and as for THEM, they
+      are, doubtless, now frying in a hotter fire than was ever made of
+      spruce-branches.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let us hope not,&rsquo; said the Policeman, &lsquo;for, allowing for the difference
+      between race and race, it&rsquo;s the story of Francesca da Rimini, Bhere
+      Singh.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bhere Singh knew nothing about Francesca da Rimini, so he held his peace
+      until they came to the charcoal-burners&rsquo; clearing where the dying flames
+      said &lsquo;whit, whit, whit&rsquo; as they fluttered and whispered over the white
+      ashes. It must have been a great fire when at full height. Men had seen it
+      at Donga Pa across the valley winking and blazing through the night, and
+      said that the charcoal-burners of Kodru were getting drunk. But it was
+      only Suket Singh, Sepoy of the load Punjab Native Infantry, and Athira, a
+      woman, burning&mdash;burning&mdash;burning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was how things befell; and the Policeman&rsquo;s Diary will bear me out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Athira was the wife of Madu, who was a charcoal-burner, one-eyed and of a
+      malignant disposition. A week after their marriage, he beat Athira with a
+      heavy stick. A month later, Suket Singh, Sepoy, came that way to the cool
+      hills on leave from his regiment, and electrified the villagers of Kodru
+      with tales of service and glory under the Government, and the honour in
+      which he, Suket Singh, was held by the Colonel Sahib Bahadur. And
+      Desdemona listened to Othello as Desdemonas have done all the world over,
+      and, as she listened, she loved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve a wife of my own,&rsquo; said Suket Singh, &lsquo;though that is no matter when
+      you come to think of it. I am also due to return to my regiment after a
+      time, and I cannot be a deserter&mdash;I who intend to be Havildar.&rsquo; There
+      is no Himalayan version of &lsquo;I could not love thee, dear, as much, Loved I
+      not Honour more;&rsquo; but Suket Singh came near to making one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Never mind,&rsquo; said Athira, &lsquo;stay with me, and, if Madu tries to beat me,
+      you beat him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Very good,&rsquo; said Suket Singh; and he beat Madu severely, to the delight
+      of all the charcoal-burners of Kodru.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That is enough,&rsquo; said Suket Singh, as he rolled Madu down the hillside.
+      &lsquo;Now we shall have peace.&rsquo; But Madu crawled up the grass slope again, and
+      hovered round his hut with angry eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He&rsquo;ll kill me dead,&rsquo; said Athira to Suket Singh. &lsquo;You must take me away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;ll be a trouble in the Lines. My wife will pull out my beard; but
+      never mind,&rsquo; said Suket Singh, &lsquo;I will take you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was loud trouble in the Lines, and Suket Singh&rsquo;s beard was pulled,
+      and Suket Singh&rsquo;s wife went to live with her mother and took away the
+      children. &lsquo;That&rsquo;s all right,&rsquo; said Athira; and Suket Singh said, &lsquo;Yes,
+      that&rsquo;s all right.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So there was only Madu left in the hut that looks across the valley to
+      Donga Pa; and, since the beginning of time, no one has had any sympathy
+      for husbands so unfortunate as Madu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to Juseen Daze, the wizard-man who keeps the Talking Monkey&rsquo;s
+      Head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Get me back my wife,&rsquo; said Madu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t,&rsquo; said Juseen Daze, &lsquo;until you have made the Sutlej in the valley
+      run up the Donga Pa.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No riddles,&rsquo; said Madu, and he shook his hatchet above Juseen Daze&rsquo;s
+      white head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Give all your money to the headmen of the village,&rsquo; said Juseen Daze;
+      &lsquo;and they will hold a communal Council, and the Council will send a
+      message that your wife must come back.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Madu gave up all his worldly wealth, amounting to twenty-seven rupees,
+      eight annas, three pice, and a silver chain, to the Council of Kodru. And
+      it fell as Juseen Daze foretold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sent Athira&rsquo;s brother down into Suket Singh&rsquo;s regiment to call Athira
+      home. Suket Singh kicked him once round the Lines, and then handed him
+      over to the Havildar, who beat him with a belt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come back,&rsquo; yelled Athira&rsquo;s brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where to?&rsquo; said Athira.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;To Madu,&rsquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Never,&rsquo; said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then Juseen Daze will send a curse, and you will wither away like a
+      barked tree in the springtime,&rsquo; said Athira&rsquo;s brother. Athira slept over
+      these things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning she had rheumatism. &lsquo;I am beginning to wither away like a
+      barked tree in the springtime,&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;That is the curse of Juseen
+      Daze.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she really began to wither away because her heart was dried up with
+      fear, and those who believe in curses die from curses. Suket Singh, too,
+      was afraid because he loved Athira better than his very life. Two months
+      passed, and Athira&rsquo;s brother stood outside the regimental Lines again and
+      yelped, &lsquo;Aha! You are withering away. Come back.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I will come back,&rsquo; said Athira.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Say rather that WE will come back,&rsquo; said Suket Singh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ai; but when?&rsquo; said Athira&rsquo;s brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Upon a day very early in the morning,&rsquo; said Suket Singh; and he tramped
+      off to apply to the Colonel Sahib Bahadur for one week&rsquo;s leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am withering away like a barked tree in the spring,&rsquo; moaned Athira.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You will be better soon,&rsquo; said Suket Singh; and he told her what was in
+      his heart, and the two laughed together softly, for they loved each other.
+      But Athira grew better from that hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went away together, travelling third-class by train as the
+      regulations provided, and then in a cart to the low hills, and on foot to
+      the high ones. Athira sniffed the scent of the pines of her own hills, the
+      wet Himalayan hills. &lsquo;It is good to be alive,&rsquo; said Athira.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hah!&rsquo; said Suket Singh. &lsquo;Where is the Kodru road and where is the Forest
+      Ranger&rsquo;s house?&rsquo;...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It cost forty rupees twelve years ago,&rsquo; said the Forest Ranger, handing
+      the gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Here are twenty,&rsquo; said Suket Singh, &lsquo;and you must give me the best
+      bullets.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is very good to be alive,&rsquo; said Athira wistfully, sniffing the scent
+      of the pine-mould; and they waited till the night had fallen upon Kodru
+      and the Donga Pa. Madu had stacked the dry wood for the next day&rsquo;s
+      charcoal-burning on the spur above his house. &lsquo;It is courteous in Madu to
+      save us this trouble,&rsquo; said Suket Singh as he stumbled on the pile, which
+      was twelve foot square and four high. &lsquo;We must wait till the moon rises.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the moon rose, Athira knelt upon the pile. &lsquo;If it were only a
+      Government Snider,&rsquo; said Suket Singh ruefully, squinting down the
+      wire-bound barrel of the Forest Ranger&rsquo;s gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Be quick,&rsquo; said Athira; and Suket Singh was quick; but Athira was quick
+      no longer. Then he lit the pile at the four corners and climbed on to it,
+      re-loading the gun.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+The little flames began to peer up between the big logs atop of the
+brushwood. &lsquo;The Government should teach us to pull the triggers with
+our toes,&rsquo; said Suket Singh grimly to the moon. That was the last public
+observation of Sepoy Suket Singh.
+
+ Upon a day, early in the morning, Madu came to the pyre and shrieked
+very grievously, and ran away to catch the Policeman who was on tour in
+the district.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The base-born has ruined four rupees&rsquo; worth of charcoal wood,&rsquo; Madu
+      gasped. &lsquo;He has also killed my wife, and he has left a letter which I
+      cannot read, tied to a pine bough.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the stiff, formal hand taught in the regimental school, Sepoy Suket
+      Singh had written&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let us be burned together, if anything remain over, for we have made the
+      necessary prayers. We have also cursed Madu, and Malak the brother of
+      Athira&mdash;both evil men. Send my service to the Colonel Sahib Bahadur.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Policeman looked long and curiously at the marriage bed of red and
+      white ashes on which lay, dull black, the barrel of the Ranger&rsquo;s gun. He
+      drove his spurred heel absently into a half-charred log, and the
+      chattering sparks flew upwards. &lsquo;Most extraordinary people,&rsquo; said the
+      Policeman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;WHE-W, WHEW, OUIOU,&rsquo; said the little flames.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Policeman entered the dry bones of the case, for the Punjab Government
+      does not approve of romancing, in his Diary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But who will pay me those four rupees?&rsquo; said Madu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE FINANCES OF THE GODS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening meal was ended in Dhunni Bhagat&rsquo;s Chubara and the old priests
+      were smoking or counting their beads. A little naked child pattered in,
+      with its mouth wide open, a handful of marigold flowers in one hand, and a
+      lump of conserved tobacco in the other. It tried to kneel and make
+      obeisance to Gobind, but it was so fat that it fell forward on its shaven
+      head, and rolled on its side, kicking and gasping, while the marigolds
+      tumbled one way and the tobacco the other. Gobind laughed, set it up
+      again, and blessed the marigold flowers as he received the tobacco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;From my father,&rsquo; said the child. &lsquo;He has the fever, and cannot come. Wilt
+      thou pray for him, father?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Surely, littlest; but the smoke is on the ground, and the night-chill is
+      in the airs, and it is not good to go abroad naked in the autumn.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have no clothes,&rsquo; said the child, &lsquo;and all to-day I have been carrying
+      cow-dung cakes to the bazar. It was very hot, and I am very tired.&rsquo; It
+      shivered a little, for the twilight was cool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gobind lifted an arm under his vast tattered quilt of many colours, and
+      made an inviting little nest by his side. The child crept in, and Gobind
+      filled his brass-studded leather waterpipe with the new tobacco. When I
+      came to the Chubara the shaven head with the tuft atop, and the beady
+      black eyes looked out of the folds of the quilt as a squirrel looks out
+      from his nest, and Gobind was smiling while the child played with his
+      beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would have said something friendly, but remembered in time that if the
+      child fell ill afterwards I should be credited with the Evil Eye, and that
+      is a horrible possession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sit thou still, Thumbling,&rsquo; I said as it made to get up and run away.
+      &lsquo;Where is thy slate, and why has the teacher let such an evil character
+      loose on the streets when there are no police to protect us weaklings? In
+      which ward dost thou try to break thy neck with flying kites from the
+      house-tops?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, Sahib, nay,&rsquo; said the child, burrowing its face into Gobind&rsquo;s beard,
+      and twisting uneasily. &lsquo;There was a holiday to-day among the schools, and
+      I do not always fly kites. I play ker-li-kit like the rest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cricket is the national game among the schoolboys of the Punjab, from the
+      naked hedge-school children, who use an old kerosene-tin for wicket, to
+      the B.A.&lsquo;s of the University, who compete for the Championship belt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thou play kerlikit! Thou art half the height of the bat!&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child nodded resolutely. &lsquo;Yea, I DO play. PERLAYBALL OW-AT! RAN, RAN,
+      RAN! I know it all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But thou must not forget with all this to pray to the Gods according to
+      custom,&rsquo; said Gobind, who did not altogether approve of cricket and
+      western innovations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I do not forget,&rsquo; said the child in a hushed voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Also to give reverence to thy teacher, and&rsquo;&mdash;Gobind&rsquo;s voice softened&mdash;&rsquo; 
+      to abstain from pulling holy men by the beard, little badling. Eh, eh,
+      eh?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child&rsquo;s face was altogether hidden in the great white beard, and it
+      began to whimper till Gobind soothed it as children are soothed all the
+      world over, with the promise of a story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I did not think to frighten thee, senseless little one. Look up! Am I
+      angry? Are, are, are! Shall I weep too, and of our tears make a great pond
+      and drown us both, and then thy father will never get well, lacking thee
+      to pull his beard? Peace, peace, and I will tell thee of the Gods. Thou
+      hast heard many tales?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Very many, father.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now, this is a new one which thou hast not heard. Long and long ago when
+      the Gods walked with men as they do to-day, but that we have not faith to
+      see, Shiv, the greatest of Gods, and Parbati his wife, were walking in the
+      garden of a temple.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Which temple? That in the Nandgaon ward?&rsquo; said the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, very far away. Maybe at Trimbak or Hurdwar, whither thou must make
+      pilgrimage when thou art a man. Now, there was sitting in the garden under
+      the jujube trees, a mendicant that had worshipped Shiv for forty years,
+      and he lived on the offerings of the pious, and meditated holiness night
+      and day.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh father, was it thou?&rsquo; said the child, looking up with large eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, I have said it was long ago, and, moreover, this mendicant was
+      married.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Did they put him on a horse with flowers on his head, and forbid him to
+      go to sleep all night long? Thus they did to me when they made my
+      wedding,&rsquo; said the child, who had been married a few months before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And what didst thou do?&rsquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I wept, and they called me evil names, and then I smote HER, and we wept
+      together.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thus did not the mendicant,&rsquo; said Gobind; &lsquo;for he was a holy man, and
+      very poor. Parbati perceived him sitting naked by the temple steps where
+      all went up and down, and she said to Shiv, &ldquo;What shall men think of the
+      Gods when the Gods thus scorn their worshippers? For forty years yonder
+      man has prayed to us, and yet there be only a few grains of rice and some
+      broken cowries before him after all. Men&rsquo;s hearts will be hardened by this
+      thing.&rdquo; And Shiv said, &ldquo;It shall be looked to,&rdquo; and so he called to the
+      temple which was the temple of his son, Ganesh of the elephant head,
+      saying, &ldquo;Son, there is a mendicant without who is very poor. What wilt
+      thou do for him?&rdquo; Then that great elephant-headed One awoke in the dark
+      and answered, &ldquo;In three days, if it be thy will, he shall have one lakh of
+      rupees.&rdquo; Then Shiv and Parbati went away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But there was a money-lender in the garden hidden among the marigolds&rsquo;&mdash;the
+      child looked at the ball of crumpled blossoms in its hands&mdash;&lsquo;ay,
+      among the yellow marigolds, and he heard the Gods talking. He was a
+      covetous man, and of a black heart, and he desired that lakh of rupees for
+      himself. So he went to the mendicant and said, &ldquo;O brother, how much do the
+      pious give thee daily?&rdquo; The mendicant said, &ldquo;I cannot tell. Sometimes a
+      little rice, sometimes a little pulse, and a few cowries and, it has been,
+      pickled mangoes, and dried fish.&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That is good,&rsquo; said the child, smacking its lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then said the money-lender, &ldquo;Because I have long watched thee, and
+      learned to love thee and thy patience, I will give thee now five rupees
+      for all thy earnings of the three days to come. There is only a bond to
+      sign on the matter.&rdquo; But the mendicant said, &ldquo;Thou art mad. In two months
+      I do not receive the worth of five rupees,&rdquo; and he told the thing to his
+      wife that evening. She, being a woman, said, &ldquo;When did money-lender ever
+      make a bad bargain? The wolf runs through the corn for the sake of the fat
+      deer. Our fate is in the hands of the Gods. Pledge it not even for three
+      days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So the mendicant returned to the money-lender, and would not sell. Then
+      that wicked man sat all day before him offering more and more for those
+      three days&rsquo; earnings. First, ten, fifty, and a hundred rupees; and then,
+      for he did not know when the Gods would pour down their gifts, rupees by
+      the thousand, till he had offered half a lakh of rupees. Upon this sum the
+      mendicant&rsquo;s wife shifted her counsel, and the mendicant signed the bond,
+      and the money was paid in silver; great white bullocks bringing it by the
+      cartload. But saving only all that money, the mendicant received nothing
+      from the Gods at all, and the heart of the money-lender was uneasy on
+      account of expectation. Therefore at noon of the third day the
+      money-lender went into the temple to spy upon the councils of the Gods,
+      and to learn in what manner that gift might arrive. Even as he was making
+      his prayers, a crack between the stones of the floor gaped, and, closing,
+      caught him by the heel. Then he heard the Gods walking in the temple in
+      the darkness of the columns, and Shiv called to his son Ganesh, saying,
+      &ldquo;Son, what hast thou done in regard to the lakh of rupees for the
+      mendicant?&rdquo; And Ganesh woke, for the money-lender heard the dry rustle of
+      his trunk uncoiling, and he answered, &ldquo;Father, one half of the money has
+      been paid, and the debtor for the other half I hold here fast by the
+      heel.&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child bubbled with laughter. &lsquo;And the moneylender paid the mendicant?&rsquo; 
+      it said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Surely, for he whom the Gods hold by the heel must pay to the uttermost.
+      The money was paid at evening, all silver, in great carts, and thus Ganesh
+      did his work.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nathu! Ohe Nathu!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A woman was calling in the dusk by the door of the courtyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child began to wriggle. &lsquo;That is my mother,&rsquo; it said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go then, littlest,&rsquo; answered Gobind; &lsquo;but stay a moment.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He ripped a generous yard from his patchwork-quilt, put it over the
+      child&rsquo;s shoulders, and the child ran away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE AMIR&rsquo;S HOMILY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MacMillan &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His Royal Highness Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, G.C.S.I., and
+      trusted ally of Her Imperial Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of
+      India, is a gentleman for whom all right-thinking people should have a
+      profound regard. Like most other rulers, he governs not as he would but as
+      he can, and the mantle of his authority covers the most turbulent race
+      under the stars. To the Afghan neither life, property, law, nor kingship
+      are sacred when his own lusts prompt him to rebel. He is a thief by
+      instinct, a murderer by heredity and training, and frankly and bestially
+      immoral by all three. None the less he has his own crooked notions of
+      honour, and his character is fascinating to study. On occasion he will
+      fight without reason given till he is hacked in pieces; on other occasions
+      he will refuse to show fight till he is driven into a corner. Herein he is
+      as unaccountable as the gray wolf, who is his blood-brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And these men His Highness rules by the only weapon that they understand&mdash;the
+      fear of death, which among some Orientals is the beginning of wisdom. Some
+      say that the Amir&rsquo;s authority reaches no farther than a rifle bullet can
+      range; but as none are quite certain when their king may be in their
+      midst, and as he alone holds every one of the threads of Government, his
+      respect is increased among men. Gholam Hyder, the Commander-in-chief of
+      the Afghan army, is feared reasonably, for he can impale; all Kabul city
+      fears the Governor of Kabul, who has power of life and death through all
+      the wards; but the Amir of Afghanistan, though outlying tribes pretend
+      otherwise when his back is turned, is dreaded beyond chief and governor
+      together. His word is red law; by the gust of his passion falls the leaf
+      of man&rsquo;s life, and his favour is terrible. He has suffered many things,
+      and been a hunted fugitive before he came to the throne, and he
+      understands all the classes of his people. By the custom of the East any
+      man or woman having a complaint to make, or an enemy against whom to be
+      avenged, has the right of speaking face to face with the king at the daily
+      public audience. This is personal government, as it was in the days of
+      Harun al Raschid of blessed memory, whose times exist still and will exist
+      long after the English have passed away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The privilege of open speech is of course exercised at certain personal
+      risk. The king may be pleased, and raise the speaker to honour for that
+      very bluntness of speech which three minutes later brings a too imitative
+      petitioner to the edge of the ever ready blade. And the people love to
+      have it so, for it is their right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It happened upon a day in Kabul that the Amir chose to do his day&rsquo;s work
+      in the Baber Gardens, which lie a short distance from the city of Kabul. A
+      light table stood before him, and round the table in the open air were
+      grouped generals and finance ministers according to their degree. The
+      Court and the long tail of feudal chiefs&mdash;men of blood, fed and cowed
+      by blood&mdash;stood in an irregular semicircle round the table, and the
+      wind from the Kabul orchards blew among them. All day long sweating
+      couriers dashed in with letters from the outlying districts with rumours
+      of rebellion, intrigue, famine, failure of payments, or announcements of
+      treasure on the road; and all day long the Amir would read the dockets,
+      and pass such of these as were less private to the officials whom they
+      directly concerned, or call up a waiting chief for a word of explanation.
+      It is well to speak clearly to the ruler of Afghanistan. Then the grim
+      head, under the black astrachan cap with the diamond star in front, would
+      nod gravely, and that chief would return to his fellows. Once that
+      afternoon a woman clamoured for divorce against her husband, who was bald,
+      and the Amir, hearing both sides of the case, bade her pour curds over the
+      bare scalp, and lick them off, that the hair might grown again, and she be
+      contented. Here the Court laughed, and the woman withdrew, cursing her
+      king under her breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when twilight was falling, and the order of the Court was a little
+      relaxed, there came before the king, in custody, a trembling haggard
+      wretch, sore with much buffeting, but of stout enough build, who had
+      stolen three rupees&mdash;of such small matters does His Highness take
+      cognisance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why did you steal?&rsquo; said he; and when the king asks questions they do
+      themselves service who answer directly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I was poor, and no one gave. Hungry, and there was no food.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why did you not work?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I could find no work, Protector of the Poor, and I was starving.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You lie. You stole for drink, for lust, for idleness, for anything but
+      hunger, since any man who will may find work and daily bread.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prisoner dropped his eyes. He had attended the Court before, and he
+      knew the ring of the death-tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Any man may get work. Who knows this so well as I do? for I too have been
+      hungered&mdash;not like you, bastard scum, but as any honest man may be,
+      by the turn of Fate and the will of God.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Growing warm, the Amir turned to his nobles all arow and thrust the hilt
+      of his sabre aside with his elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You have heard this Son of Lies? Hear me tell a true tale. I also was
+      once starved, and tightened my belt on the sharp belly-pinch. Nor was I
+      alone, for with me was another, who did not fail me in my evil days, when
+      I was hunted, before ever I came to this throne. And wandering like a
+      houseless dog by Kandahar, my money melted, melted, melted till&mdash;&rsquo; He
+      flung out a bare palm before the audience. &lsquo;And day upon day, faint and
+      sick, I went back to that one who waited, and God knows how we lived, till
+      on a day I took our best lihaf&mdash;silk it was, fine work of Iran, such
+      as no needle now works, warm, and a coverlet for two, and all that we had.
+      I brought it to a money-lender in a bylane, and I asked for three rupees
+      upon it. He said to me, who am now the King, &ldquo;You are a thief. This is
+      worth three hundred.&rdquo; &ldquo;I am no thief,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;but a prince of good
+      blood, and I am hungry.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Prince of wandering beggars,&rdquo; said that
+      money-lender, &ldquo;I have no money with me, but go to my house with my clerk
+      and he will give you two rupees eight annas, for that is all I will lend.&rdquo;
+       So I went with the clerk to the house, and we talked on the way, and he
+      gave me the money. We lived on it till it was spent, and we fared hard.
+      And then that clerk said, being a young man of a good heart, &ldquo;Surely the
+      money-lender will lend yet more on that lihaf,&rdquo; and he offered me two
+      rupees. These I refused, saying, &ldquo;Nay; but get me some work.&rdquo; And he got
+      me work, and I, even I, Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, wrought day by
+      day as a coolie, bearing burdens, and labouring of my hands, receiving
+      four annas wage a day for my sweat and backache. But he, this bastard son
+      of naught, must steal! For a year and four months I worked, and none dare
+      say that I lie, for I have a witness, even that clerk who is now my
+      friend.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there rose in his place among the Sirdars and the nobles one clad in
+      silk, who folded his hands and said, &lsquo;This is the truth of God, for I,
+      who, by the favour of God and the Amir, am such as you know, was once
+      clerk to that money-lender.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause, and the Amir cried hoarsely to the prisoner, throwing
+      scorn upon him, till he ended with the dread &lsquo;Dar arid,&rsquo; which clinches
+      justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they led the thief away, and the whole of him was seen no more
+      together; and the Court rustled out of its silence, whispering, &lsquo;Before
+      God and the Prophet, but this is a man!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      JEWS IN SHUSHAN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1981, by Macmillan &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My newly purchased house furniture was, at the least, insecure; the legs
+      parted from the chairs, and the tops from the tables, on the slightest
+      provocation. But such as it was, it was to be paid for, and Ephraim, agent
+      and collector for the local auctioneer, waited in the verandah with the
+      receipt. He was announced by the Mahomedan servant as &lsquo;Ephraim, Yahudi&rsquo;&mdash;Ephraim
+      the Jew. He who believes in the Brotherhood of Man should hear my Elahi
+      Bukhsh grinding the second word through his white teeth with all the scorn
+      he dare show before his master. Ephraim was, personally, meek in manner&mdash;so
+      meek indeed that one could not understand how he had fallen into the
+      profession of bill-collecting. He resembled an over-fed sheep, and his
+      voice suited his figure. There was a fixed, unvarying mask of childish
+      wonder upon his face. If you paid him, he was as one marvelling at your
+      wealth; if you sent him away, he seemed puzzled at your hard-heartedness.
+      Never was Jew more unlike his dread breed. Ephraim wore list slippers and
+      coats of duster-cloth, so preposterously patterned that the most brazen of
+      British subalterns would have shied from them in fear. Very slow and
+      deliberate was his speech, and carefully guarded to give offence to no
+      one. After many weeks, Ephraim was induced to speak to me of his friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There be eight of us in Shushan, and we are waiting till there are ten.
+      Then we shall apply for a synagogue, and get leave from Calcutta. To-day
+      we have no synagogue; and I, only I, am Priest and Butcher to our people.
+      I am of the tribe of Judah&mdash;I think, but I am not sure. My father was
+      of the tribe of Judah, and we wish much to get our synagogue. I shall be a
+      priest of that synagogue.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shushan is a big city in the North of India, counting its dwellers by the
+      ten thousand; and these eight of the Chosen People were shut up in its
+      midst, waiting till time or chance sent them their full congregation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miriam the wife of Ephraim, two little children, an orphan boy of their
+      people, Epraim&rsquo;s uncle Jackrael Israel, a white-haired old man, his wife
+      Hester, a Jew from Cutch, one Hyem Benjamin, and Ephraim, Priest and
+      Butcher, made up the list of the Jews in Shushan. They lived in one house,
+      on the outskirts of the great city, amid heaps of saltpetre, rotten
+      bricks, herds of kine, and a fixed pillar of dust caused by the incessant
+      passing of the beasts to the river to drink. In the evening the children
+      of the City came to the waste place to fly their kites, and Ephraim&rsquo;s sons
+      held aloof, watching the sport from the roof, but never descending to take
+      part in them. At the back of the house stood a small brick enclosure, in
+      which Ephraim prepared the daily meat for his people after the custom of
+      the Jews. Once the rude door of the square was suddenly smashed open by a
+      struggle from inside, and showed the meek bill-collector at his work,
+      nostrils dilated, lips drawn back over his teeth, and his hands upon a
+      half-maddened sheep. He was attired in strange raiment, having no relation
+      whatever to duster coats or list slippers, and a knife was in his mouth.
+      As he struggled with the animal between the walls, the breath came from
+      him in thick sobs, and the nature of the man seemed changed. When the
+      ordained slaughter was ended, he saw that the door was open and shut it
+      hastily, his hand leaving a red mark on the timber, while his children
+      from the neighbouring house-top looked down awe-stricken and open-eyed. A
+      glimpse of Ephraim busied in one of his religious capacities was no thing
+      to be desired twice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Summer came upon Shushan, turning the trodden waste-ground to iron, and
+      bringing sickness to the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It will not touch us,&rsquo; said Ephraim confidently. &lsquo;Before the winter we
+      shall have our synagogue. My brother and his wife and children are coming
+      up from Calcutta, and THEN I shall be the priest of the synagogue.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jackrael Israel, the old man, would crawl out in the stifling evenings to
+      sit on the rubbish-heap and watch the corpses being borne down to the
+      river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It will not come near us,&rsquo; said Jackrael Israel feebly, &lsquo;for we are the
+      People of God, and my nephew will be priest of our synagogue. Let them
+      die.&rsquo; He crept back to his house again and barred the door to shut himself
+      off from the world of the Gentile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Miriam, the wife of Ephraim, looked out of the window at the dead as
+      the biers passed and said that she was afraid. Ephraim comforted her with
+      hopes of the synagogue to be, and collected bills as was his custom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In one night, the two children died and were buried early in the morning
+      by Ephraim. The deaths never appeared in the City returns. &lsquo;The sorrow is
+      my sorrow,&rsquo; said Ephraim; and this to him seemed a sufficient reason for
+      setting at naught the sanitary regulations of a large, flourishing, and
+      remarkably well-governed Empire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The orphan boy, dependent on the charity of Ephraim and his wife, could
+      have felt no gratitude, and must have been a ruffian. He begged for
+      whatever money his protectors would give him, and with that fled
+      down-country for his life. A week after the death of her children Miriam
+      left her bed at night and wandered over the country to find them. She
+      heard them crying behind every bush, or drowning in every pool of water in
+      the fields, and she begged the cartmen on the Grand Trunk Road not to
+      steal her little ones from her. In the morning the sun rose and beat upon
+      her bare head, and she turned into the cool wet crops to lie down and
+      never came back; though Hyem Benjamin and Ephraim sought her for two
+      nights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The look of patient wonder on Ephraim&rsquo;s face deepened, but he presently
+      found an explanation. &lsquo;There are so few of us here, and these people are
+      so many,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;that, it may be, our God has forgotten us.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the house on the outskirts of the city old Jackrael Israel and Hester
+      grumbled that there was no one to wait on them, and that Miriam had been
+      untrue to her race. Ephraim went out and collected bills, and in the
+      evenings smoked with Hyem Benjamin till, one dawning, Hyem Benjamin died,
+      having first paid all his debts to Ephraim. Jackrael Israel and Hester sat
+      alone in the empty house all day, and, when Ephraim returned, wept the
+      easy tears of age till they cried themselves asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A week later Ephraim, staggering under a huge bundle of clothes and
+      cooking-pots, led the old man and woman to the railway station, where the
+      bustle and confusion made them whimper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We are going back to Calcutta,&rsquo; said Ephraim, to whose sleeve Hester was
+      clinging. &lsquo;There are more of us there, and here my house is empty.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He helped Hester into the carriage and, turning back, said to me, &lsquo;I
+      should have been priest of the synagogue if there had been ten of us.
+      Surely we must have been forgotten by our God.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The remnant of the broken colony passed out of the station on their
+      journey south; while a subaltern, turning over the books on the bookstall,
+      was whistling to himself &lsquo;The Ten Little Nigger Boys.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the tune sounded as solemn as the Dead March.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the dirge of the Jews in Shushan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE LIMITATIONS OF PAMBE SERANG
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you consider the circumstances of the case, it was the only thing that
+      he could do. But Pambe Serang has been hanged by the neck till he is dead,
+      and Nurkeed is dead also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three years ago, when the Elsass-Lothringen steamer Saarbruck was coaling
+      at Aden and the weather was very hot indeed, Nurkeed, the big fat Zanzibar
+      stoker who fed the second right furnace thirty feet down in the hold, got
+      leave to go ashore. He departed a &lsquo;Seedee boy,&rsquo; as they call the stokers;
+      he returned the full-blooded Sultan of Zanzibar&mdash;His Highness Sayyid
+      Burgash, with a bottle in each hand. Then he sat on the fore-hatch
+      grating, eating salt fish and onions, and singing the songs of a far
+      country. The food belonged to Pambe, the Serang or head man of the lascar
+      sailors. He had just cooked it for himself, turned to borrow some salt,
+      and when he came back Nurkeed&rsquo;s dirty black fingers were spading into the
+      rice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A serang is a person of importance, far above a stoker, though the stoker
+      draws better pay. He sets the chorus of &lsquo;Hya! Hulla! Hee-ah! Heh!&rsquo; when
+      the captain&rsquo;s gig is pulled up to the davits; he heaves the lead too; and
+      sometimes, when all the ship is lazy, he puts on his whitest muslin and a
+      big red sash, and plays with the passengers&rsquo; children on the quarter-deck.
+      Then the passengers give him money, and he saves it all up for an orgie at
+      Bombay or Calcutta, or Pulu Penang. &lsquo;Ho! you fat black barrel, you&rsquo;re
+      eating my food!&rsquo; said Pambe, in the Other Lingua Franca that begins where
+      the Levant tongue stops, and runs from Port Said eastward till east is
+      west, and the sealing-brigs of the Kurile Islands gossip with the strayed
+      Hakodate junks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Son of Eblis, monkey-face, dried shark&rsquo;s liver, pigman, I am the Sultan
+      Sayyid Burgash, and the commander of all this ship. Take away your
+      garbage;&rsquo; and Nurkeed thrust the empty pewter rice-plate into Pambe&rsquo;s
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pambe beat it into a basin over Nurkeed&rsquo;s woolly head. Nurkeed drew HIS
+      sheath-knife and stabbed Pambe in the leg. Pambe drew his sheath-knife;
+      but Nurkeed dropped down into the darkness of the hold and spat through
+      the grating at Pambe, who was staining the clean fore-deck with his blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only the white moon saw these things; for the officers were looking after
+      the coaling, and the passengers were tossing in their close cabins. &lsquo;All
+      right,&rsquo; said Pambe&mdash;and went forward to tie up his leg&mdash;&lsquo;we will
+      settle the account later on.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a Malay born in India: married once in Burma, where his wife had a
+      cigar-shop on the Shwe Dagon road; once in Singapore, to a Chinese girl;
+      and once in Madras, to a Mahomedan woman who sold fowls. The English
+      sailor cannot, owing to postal and telegraph facilities, marry as
+      profusely as he used to do; but native sailors can, being uninfluenced by
+      the barbarous inventions of the Western savage. Pambe was a good husband
+      when he happened to remember the existence of a wife; but he was also a
+      very good Malay; and it is not wise to offend a Malay, because he does not
+      forget anything. Moreover, in Pambe&rsquo;s case blood had been drawn and food
+      spoiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning Nurkeed rose with a blank mind. He was no longer Sultan of
+      Zanzibar, but a very hot stoker. So he went on deck and opened his jacket
+      to the morning breeze, till a sheath-knife came like a flying-fish and
+      stuck into the woodwork of the cook&rsquo;s galley half an inch from his right
+      armpit. He ran down below before his time, trying to remember what he
+      could have said to the owner of the weapon. At noon, when all the ship&rsquo;s
+      lascars were feeding, Nurkeed advanced into their midst, and, being a
+      placid man with a large regard for his own skin, he opened negotiations,
+      saying, &lsquo;Men of the ship, last night I was drunk, and this morning I know
+      that I behaved unseemly to some one or another of you. Who was that man,
+      that I may meet him face to face and say that I was drunk?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pambe measured the distance to Nurkeed&rsquo;s naked breast. If he sprang at him
+      he might be tripped up, and a blind blow at the chest sometimes only means
+      a gash on the breast-bone. Ribs are difficult to thrust between unless the
+      subject be asleep. So he said nothing; nor did the other lascars. Their
+      faces immediately dropped all expression, as is the custom of the Oriental
+      when there is killing on the carpet or any chance of trouble. Nurkeed
+      looked long at the white eyeballs. He was only an African, and could not
+      read characters. A big sigh&mdash;almost a groan&mdash;broke from him, and
+      he went back to the furnaces. The lascars took up the conversation where
+      he had interrupted it. They talked of the best methods of cooking rice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nurkeed suffered considerably from lack of fresh air during the run to
+      Bombay. He only came on deck to breathe when all the world was about; and
+      even then a heavy block once dropped from a derrick within a foot of his
+      head, and an apparently firm-lashed grating on which he set his foot,
+      began to turn over with the intention of dropping him on the cased cargo
+      fifteen feet below; and one insupportable night the sheath-knife dropped
+      from the fo&rsquo;c&rsquo;s&rsquo;le, and this time it drew blood. So Nurkeed made
+      complaint; and, when the Saarbruck reached Bombay, fled and buried himself
+      among eight hundred thousand people, and did not sign articles till the
+      ship had been a month gone from the port. Pambe waited too; but his Bombay
+      wife grew clamorous, and he was forced to sign in the Spicheren to
+      Hongkong, because he realised that all play and no work gives Jack a
+      ragged shirt. In the foggy China seas he thought a great deal of Nurkeed,
+      and, when Elsass-Lothringen steamers lay in port with the Spicheren,
+      inquired after him and found he had gone to England via the Cape, on the
+      Gravelotte. Pambe came to England on the Worth. The Spicheren met her by
+      the Nore Light. Nurkeed was going out with the Spicheren to the Calicut
+      coast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Want to find a friend, my trap-mouthed coal-scuttle?&rsquo; said a gentleman in
+      the mercantile service. &lsquo;Nothing easier. Wait at the Nyanza Docks till he
+      comes. Every one comes to the Nyanza Docks. Wait, you poor heathen.&rsquo; The
+      gentleman spoke truth. There are three great doors in the world where, if
+      you stand long enough, you shall meet any one you wish. The head of the
+      Suez Canal is one, but there Death comes also; Charing Cross Station is
+      the second&mdash;for inland work; and the Nyanza Docks is the third. At
+      each of these places are men and women looking eternally for those who
+      will surely come. So Pambe waited at the docks. Time was no object to him;
+      and the wives could wait, as he did from day to day, week to week, and
+      month to month, by the Blue Diamond funnels, the Red Dot smoke-stacks, the
+      Yellow Streaks, and the nameless dingy gypsies of the sea that loaded and
+      unloaded, jostled, whistled, and roared in the everlasting fog. When money
+      failed, a kind gentleman told Pambe to become a Christian; and Pambe
+      became one with great speed, getting his religious teachings between ship
+      and ship&rsquo;s arrival, and six or seven shillings a week for distributing
+      tracts to mariners. What the faith was Pambe did not in the least care;
+      but he knew if he said &lsquo;Native Ki-lis-ti-an, Sar&rsquo; to men with long black
+      coats he might get a few coppers; and the tracts were vendible at a little
+      public-house that sold shag by the &lsquo;dottel,&rsquo; which is even smaller weight
+      than the &lsquo;half-screw,&rsquo; which is less than the half-ounce, and a most
+      profitable retail trade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But after eight months Pambe fell sick with pneumonia, contracted from
+      long standing still in slush; and much against his will he was forced to
+      lie down in his two-and-sixpenny room raging against Fate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The kind gentleman sat by his bedside, and grieved to find that Pambe
+      talked in strange tongues, instead of listening to good books, and almost
+      seemed to become a benighted heathen again&mdash;till one day he was
+      roused from semi-stupor by a voice in the street by the dock-head. &lsquo;My
+      friend&mdash;he,&rsquo; whispered Pambe. &lsquo;Call now&mdash;call Nurkeed. Quick!
+      God has sent him!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He wanted one of his own race,&rsquo; said the kind gentleman; and, going out,
+      he called &lsquo;Nurkeed!&rsquo; at the top of his voice. An excessively coloured man
+      in a rasping white shirt and brand-new slops, a shining hat, and a
+      breastpin, turned round. Many voyages had taught Nurkeed how to spend his
+      money and made him a citizen of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hi! Yes!&rsquo; said he, when the situation was explained. &lsquo;Command him&mdash;black
+      nigger&mdash;when I was in the Saarbruck. Ole Pambe, good ole Pambe. Dam
+      lascar. Show him up, Sar;&rsquo; and he followed into the room. One glance told
+      the stoker what the kind gentleman had overlooked. Pambe was desperately
+      poor. Nurkeed drove his hands deep into his pockets, then advanced with
+      clenched fists on the sick, shouting, &lsquo;Hya, Pambe. Hya! Hee-ah! Hulla!
+      Heh! Takilo! Takilo! Make fast aft, Pambe. You know, Pambe. You know me.
+      Dekho, jee! Look! Dam big fat lazy lascar!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pambe beckoned with his left hand. His right was under his pillow. Nurkeed
+      removed his gorgeous hat and stooped over Pambe till he could catch a
+      faint whisper. &lsquo;How beautiful!&rsquo; said the kind gentleman. &lsquo;How these
+      Orientals love like children!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Spit him out,&rsquo; said Nurkeed, leaning over Pambe yet more closely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Touching the matter of that fish and onions&mdash;&rsquo; said Pambe&mdash;and
+      sent the knife home under the edge of the rib-bone upwards and forwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a thick sick cough, and the body of the African slid slowly from
+      the bed, his clutching hands letting fall a shower of silver pieces that
+      ran across the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now I can die!&rsquo; said Pambe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he did not die. He was nursed back to life with all the skill that
+      money could buy, for the Law wanted him; and in the end he grew
+      sufficiently healthy to be hanged in due and proper form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pambe did not care particularly; but it was a sad blow to the kind
+      gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      LITTLE TOBRAH
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Prisoner&rsquo;s head did not reach to the top of the dock,&rsquo; as the English
+      newspapers say. This case, however, was not reported because nobody cared
+      by so much as a hempen rope for the life or death of Little Tobrah. The
+      assessors in the red court-house sat upon him all through the long hot
+      afternoon, and whenever they asked him a question he salaamed and whined.
+      Their verdict was that the evidence was inconclusive, and the Judge
+      concurred. It was true that the dead body of Little Tobrah&rsquo;s sister had
+      been found at the bottom of the well, and Little Tobrah was the only human
+      being within a half mile radius at the time; but the child might have
+      fallen in by accident. Therefore Little Tobrah was acquitted, and told to
+      go where he pleased. This permission was not so generous as it sounds, for
+      he had nowhere to go to, nothing in particular to eat, and nothing
+      whatever to wear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He trotted into the court-compound, and sat upon the well-kerb, wondering
+      whether an unsuccessful dive into the black water below would end in a
+      forced voyage across the other Black Water. A groom put down an emptied
+      nose-bag on the bricks, and Little Tobrah, being hungry, set himself to
+      scrape out what wet grain the horse had overlooked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O Thief&mdash;and but newly set free from the terror of the Law! Come
+      along!&rsquo; said the groom, and Little Tobrah was led by the ear to a large
+      and fat Englishman, who heard the tale of the theft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hah!&rsquo; said the Englishman three times (only he said a stronger word).
+      &lsquo;Put him into the net and take him home.&rsquo; So Little Tobrah was thrown into
+      the net of the cart, and, nothing doubting that he should be stuck like a
+      pig, was driven to the Englishman&rsquo;s house. &lsquo;Hah!&rsquo; said the Englishman as
+      before. &lsquo;Wet grain, by Jove! Feed the little beggar, some of you, and
+      we&rsquo;ll make a riding-boy of him! See? Wet grain, good Lord!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Give an account of yourself,&rsquo; said the Head of the Grooms, to Little
+      Tobrah after the meal had been eaten, and the servants lay at ease in
+      their quarters behind the house. &lsquo;You are not of the groom caste, unless
+      it be for the stomach&rsquo;s sake. How came you into the court, and why?
+      Answer, little devil&rsquo;s spawn!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There was not enough to eat,&rsquo; said Little Tobrah calmly. &lsquo;This is a good
+      place.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Talk straight talk,&rsquo; said the Head Groom, &lsquo;or I will make you clean out
+      the stable of that large red stallion who bites like a camel.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We be Telis, oil-pressers,&rsquo; said Little Tobrah, scratching his toes in
+      the dust. &lsquo;We were Telis&mdash;my father, my mother, my brother, the elder
+      by four years, myself, and the sister.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She who was found dead in the well?&rsquo; said one who had heard something of
+      the trial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Even so,&rsquo; said Little Tobrah gravely. &lsquo;She who was found dead in the
+      well. It befel upon a time, which is not in my memory, that the sickness
+      came to the village where our oil-press stood, and first my sister was
+      smitten as to her eyes, and went without sight, for it was mata&mdash;the
+      smallpox. Thereafter, my father and my mother died of that same sickness,
+      so we were alone&mdash;my brother who had twelve years, I who had eight,
+      and the sister who could not see. Yet were there the bullock and the
+      oil-press remaining, and we made shift to press the oil as before. But
+      Surjun Dass, the grain-seller, cheated us in his dealings; and it was
+      always a stubborn bullock to drive. We put marigold flowers for the Gods
+      upon the neck of the bullock, and upon the great grinding-beam that rose
+      through the roof; but we gained nothing thereby, and Surjun Dass was a
+      hard man.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bapri-bap,&rsquo; muttered the grooms&rsquo; wives, &lsquo;to cheat a child so! But WE know
+      what the bunnia-folk are, sisters.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The press was an old press, and we were not strong men&mdash;my brother
+      and I; nor could we fix the neck of the beam firmly in the shackle.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, indeed,&rsquo; said the gorgeously-clad wife of the Head Groom, joining
+      the circle. &lsquo;That is a strong man&rsquo;s work. When I was a maid in my father&rsquo;s
+      house&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Peace, woman,&rsquo; said the Head Groom. &lsquo;Go on, boy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is nothing,&rsquo; said Little Tobrah. &lsquo;The big beam tore down the roof upon
+      a day which is not in my memory, and with the roof fell much of the hinder
+      wall, and both together upon our bullock, whose back was broken. Thus we
+      had neither home, nor press, nor bullock&mdash;my brother, myself, and the
+      sister who was blind. We went crying away from that place, hand-in-hand,
+      across the fields; and our money was seven annas and six pie. There was a
+      famine in the land. I do not know the name of the land. So, on a night
+      when we were sleeping, my brother took the five annas that remained to us
+      and ran away. I do not know whither he went. The curse of my father be
+      upon him. But I and the sister begged food in the villages, and there was
+      none to give. Only all men said&mdash;&ldquo;Go to the Englishmen and they will
+      give.&rdquo; I did not know what the Englishmen were; but they said that they
+      were white, living in tents. I went forward; but I cannot say whither I
+      went, and there was no more food for myself or the sister. And upon a hot
+      night, she weeping and calling for food, we came to a well, and I bade her
+      sit upon the kerb, and thrust her in, for, in truth, she could not see;
+      and it is better to die than to starve.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ai! Ahi!&rsquo; wailed the grooms&rsquo; wives in chorus; &lsquo;he thrust her in, for it
+      is better to die than to starve!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I would have thrown myself in also, but that she was not dead and called
+      to me from the bottom of the well, and I was afraid and ran. And one came
+      out of the crops saying that I had killed her and defiled the well, and
+      they took me before an Englishman, white and terrible, living in a tent,
+      and me he sent here. But there were no witnesses, and it is better to die
+      than to starve. She, furthermore, could not see with her eyes, and was but
+      a little child.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Was but a little child,&rsquo; echoed the Head Groom&rsquo;s wife. &lsquo;But who art thou,
+      weak as a fowl and small as a day-old colt, what art THOU?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I who was empty am now full,&rsquo; said Little Tobrah, stretching himself upon
+      the dust. &lsquo;And I would sleep.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The groom&rsquo;s wife spread a cloth over him while Little Tobrah slept the
+      sleep of the just.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BUBBLING WELL ROAD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Look out on a large scale map the place where the Chenab river falls into
+      the Indus fifteen miles or so above the hamlet of Chachuran. Five miles
+      west of Chachuran lies Bubbling Well Road, and the house of the gosain or
+      priest of Arti-goth. It was the priest who showed me the road, but it is
+      no thanks to him that I am able to tell this story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five miles west of Chachuran is a patch of the plumed jungle-grass, that
+      turns over in silver when the wind blows, from ten to twenty feet high and
+      from three to four miles square. In the heart of the patch hides the
+      gosain of Bubbling Well Road. The villagers stone him when he peers into
+      the daylight, although he is a priest, and he runs back again as a strayed
+      wolf turns into tall crops. He is a one-eyed man and carries, burnt
+      between his brows, the impress of two copper coins. Some say that he was
+      tortured by a native prince in the old days; for he is so old that he must
+      have been capable of mischief in the days of Runjit Singh. His most
+      pressing need at present is a halter, and the care of the British
+      Government.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These things happened when the jungle-grass was tall; and the villagers of
+      Chachuran told me that a sounder of pig had gone into the Arti-goth patch.
+      To enter jungle-grass is always an unwise proceeding, but I went, partly
+      because I knew nothing of pig-hunting, and partly because the villagers
+      said that the big boar of the sounder owned foot long tushes. Therefore I
+      wished to shoot him, in order to produce the tushes in after years, and
+      say that I had ridden him down in fair chase. I took a gun and went into
+      the hot, close patch, believing that it would be an easy thing to unearth
+      one pig in ten square miles of jungle. Mr. Wardle, the terrier, went with
+      me because he believed that I was incapable of existing for an hour
+      without his advice and countenance. He managed to slip in and out between
+      the grass clumps, but I had to force my way, and in twenty minutes was as
+      completely lost as though I had been in the heart of Central Africa. I did
+      not notice this at first till I had grown wearied of stumbling and pushing
+      through the grass, and Mr. Wardle was beginning to sit down very often and
+      hang out his tongue very far. There was nothing but grass everywhere, and
+      it was impossible to see two yards in any direction. The grass-stems held
+      the heat exactly as boiler-tubes do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In half-an-hour, when I was devoutly wishing that I had left the big boar
+      alone, I came to a narrow path which seemed to be a compromise between a
+      native foot-path and a pig-run. It was barely six inches wide, but I could
+      sidle along it in comfort. The grass was extremely thick here, and where
+      the path was ill defined it was necessary to crush into the tussocks
+      either with both hands before the face, or to back into it, leaving both
+      hands free to manage the rifle. None the less it was a path, and valuable
+      because it might lead to a place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of nearly fifty yards of fair way, just when I was preparing to
+      back into an unusually stiff tussock, I missed Mr. Wardle, who for his
+      girth is an unusually frivolous dog and never keeps to heel. I called him
+      three times and said aloud, &lsquo;Where has the little beast gone to?&rsquo; Then I
+      stepped backwards several paces, for almost under my feet a deep voice
+      repeated, &lsquo;Where has the little beast gone?&rsquo; To appreciate an unseen voice
+      thoroughly you should hear it when you are lost in stifling jungle-grass.
+      I called Mr. Wardle again and the underground echo assisted me. At that I
+      ceased calling and listened very attentively, because I thought I heard a
+      man laughing in a peculiarly offensive manner. The heat made me sweat, but
+      the laughter made me shake. There is no earthly need for laughter in high
+      grass. It is indecent, as well as impolite. The chuckling stopped, and I
+      took courage and continued to call till I thought that I had located the
+      echo somewhere behind and below the tussock into which I was preparing to
+      back just before I lost Mr. Wardle. I drove my rifle up to the triggers,
+      between the grass-stems in a downward and forward direction. Then I
+      waggled it to and fro, but it did not seem to touch ground on the far side
+      of the tussock as it should have done. Every time that I grunted with the
+      exertion of driving a heavy rifle through thick grass, the grunt was
+      faithfully repeated from below, and when I stopped to wipe my face the
+      sound of low laughter was distinct beyond doubting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went into the tussock, face first, an inch at a time, my mouth open and
+      my eyes fine, full, and prominent. When I had overcome the resistance of
+      the grass I found that I was looking straight across a black gap in the
+      ground&mdash;that I was actually lying on my chest leaning over the mouth
+      of a well so deep I could scarcely see the water in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were things in the water,&mdash;black things,&mdash;and the water
+      was as black as pitch with blue scum atop. The laughing sound came from
+      the noise of a little spring, spouting half-way down one side of the well.
+      Sometimes as the black things circled round, the trickle from the spring
+      fell upon their tightly-stretched skins, and then the laughter changed
+      into a sputter of mirth. One thing turned over on its back, as I watched,
+      and drifted round and round the circle of the mossy brickwork with a hand
+      and half an arm held clear of the water in a stiff and horrible flourish,
+      as though it were a very wearied guide paid to exhibit the beauties of the
+      place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not spend more than half-an-hour in creeping round that well and
+      finding the path on the other side. The remainder of the journey I
+      accomplished by feeling every foot of ground in front of me, and crawling
+      like a snail through every tussock. I carried Mr. Wardle in my arms and he
+      licked my nose. He was not frightened in the least, nor was I, but we
+      wished to reach open ground in order to enjoy the view. My knees were
+      loose, and the apple in my throat refused to slide up and down. The path
+      on the far side of the well was a very good one, though boxed in on all
+      sides by grass, and it led me in time to a priest&rsquo;s hut in the centre of a
+      little clearing. When that priest saw my very white face coming through
+      the grass he howled with terror and embraced my boots; but when I reached
+      the bedstead set outside his door I sat down quickly and Mr. Wardle
+      mounted guard over me. I was not in a condition to take care of myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I awoke I told the priest to lead me into the open, out of the
+      Arti-goth patch, and to walk slowly in front of me. Mr. Wardle hates
+      natives, and the priest was more afraid of Mr. Wardle than of me, though
+      we were both angry. He walked very slowly down a narrow little path from
+      his hut. That path crossed three paths, such as the one I had come by in
+      the first instance, and every one of the three headed towards the Bubbling
+      Well. Once when we stopped to draw breath, I heard the Well laughing to
+      itself alone in the thick grass, and only my need for his services
+      prevented my firing both barrels into the priest&rsquo;s back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we came to the open the priest crashed back into cover, and I went to
+      the village of Arti-goth for a drink. It was pleasant to be able to see
+      the horizon all round, as well as the ground underfoot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The villagers told me that the patch of grass was full of devils and
+      ghosts, all in the service of the priest, and that men and women and
+      children had entered it and had never returned. They said the priest used
+      their livers for purposes of witchcraft. When I asked why they had not
+      told me of this at the outset, they said that they were afraid they would
+      lose their reward for bringing news of the pig.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before I left I did my best to set the patch alight, but the grass was too
+      green. Some fine summer day, however, if the wind is favourable, a file of
+      old newspapers and a box of matches will make clear the mystery of
+      Bubbling Well Road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      &lsquo;THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT&rsquo; 
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dense wet heat that hung over the face of land, like a blanket,
+      prevented all hope of sleep in the first instance. The cicalas helped the
+      heat; and the yelling jackals the cicalas. It was impossible to sit still
+      in the dark, empty, echoing house and watch the punkah beat the dead air.
+      So, at ten o&rsquo;clock of the night, I set my walking-stick on end in the
+      middle of the garden, and waited to see how it would fall. It pointed
+      directly down the moonlit road that leads to the City of Dreadful Night.
+      The sound of its fall disturbed a hare. She limped from her form and ran
+      across to a disused Mahomedan burial-ground, where the jawless skulls and
+      rough-butted shank-bones, heartlessly exposed by the July rains, glimmered
+      like mother o&rsquo; pearl on the rain-channelled soil. The heated air and the
+      heavy earth had driven the very dead upward for coolness&rsquo; sake. The hare
+      limped on; snuffed curiously at a fragment of a smoke-stained lamp-shard,
+      and died out, in the shadow of a clump of tamarisk trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mat-weaver&rsquo;s hut under the lee of the Hindu temple was full of
+      sleeping men who lay like sheeted corpses. Overhead blazed the unwinking
+      eye of the Moon. Darkness gives at least a false impression of coolness.
+      It was hard not to believe that the flood of light from above was warm.
+      Not so hot as the Sun, but still sickly warm, and heating the heavy air
+      beyond what was our due. Straight as a bar of polished steel ran the road
+      to the City of Dreadful Night; and on either side of the road lay corpses
+      disposed on beds in fantastic attitudes&mdash;one hundred and seventy
+      bodies of men. Some shrouded all in white with bound-up mouths; some naked
+      and black as ebony in the strong light; and one&mdash;that lay face
+      upwards with dropped jaw, far away from the others&mdash;silvery white and
+      ashen gray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A leper asleep; and the remainder wearied coolies, servants, small
+      shopkeepers, and drivers from the hackstand hard by. The scene&mdash;a
+      main approach to Lahore city, and the night a warm one in August.&rsquo; This
+      was all that there was to be seen; but by no means all that one could see.
+      The witchery of the moonlight was everywhere; and the world was horribly
+      changed. The long line of the naked dead, flanked by the rigid silver
+      statue, was not pleasant to look upon. It was made up of men alone. Were
+      the womenkind, then, forced to sleep in the shelter of the stifling
+      mud-huts as best they might? The fretful wail of a child from a low
+      mud-roof answered the question. Where the children are the mothers must be
+      also to look after them. They need care on these sweltering nights. A
+      black little bullet-head peeped over the coping, and a thin&mdash;a
+      painfully thin&mdash;brown leg was slid over on to the gutter pipe. There
+      was a sharp clink of glass bracelets; a woman&rsquo;s arm showed for an instant
+      above the parapet, twined itself round the lean little neck, and the child
+      was dragged back, protesting, to the shelter of the bedstead. His thin,
+      high-pitched shriek died out in the thick air almost as soon as it was
+      raised; for even the children of the soil found it too hot to weep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More corpses; more stretches of moonlit, white road, a string of sleeping
+      camels at rest by the wayside; a vision of scudding jackals; ekka-ponies
+      asleep&mdash;the harness still on their backs, and the brass-studded
+      country carts, winking in the moonlight&mdash;and again more corpses.
+      Wherever a grain cart atilt, a tree trunk, a sawn log, a couple of bamboos
+      and a few handfuls of thatch cast a shadow, the ground is covered with
+      them. They lie&mdash;some face downwards, arms folded, in the dust; some
+      with clasped hands flung up above their heads; some curled up dog-wise;
+      some thrown like limp gunny-bags over the side of the grain carts; and
+      some bowed with their brows on their knees in the full glare of the Moon.
+      It would be a comfort if they were only given to snoring; but they are
+      not, and the likeness to corpses is unbroken in all respects save one. The
+      lean dogs snuff at them and turn away. Here and there a tiny child lies on
+      his father&rsquo;s bedstead, and a protecting arm is thrown round it in every
+      instance. But, for the most part, the children sleep with their mothers on
+      the house-tops. Yellow-skinned white-toothed pariahs are not to be trusted
+      within reach of brown bodies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A stifling hot blast from the mouth of the Delhi Gate nearly ends my
+      resolution of entering the City of Dreadful Night at this hour. It is a
+      compound of all evil savours, animal and vegetable, that a walled city can
+      brew in a day and a night. The temperature within the motionless groves of
+      plantain and orange-trees outside the city walls seems chilly by
+      comparison. Heaven help all sick persons and young children within the
+      city to-night! The high house-walls are still radiating heat savagely, and
+      from obscure side gullies fetid breezes eddy that ought to poison a
+      buffalo. But the buffaloes do not heed. A drove of them are parading the
+      vacant main street; stopping now and then to lay their ponderous muzzles
+      against the closed shutters of a grain-dealer&rsquo;s shops and to blow thereon
+      like grampuses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then silence follows&mdash;the silence that is full of the night noises of
+      a great city. A stringed instrument of some kind is just, and only just,
+      audible. High overhead some one throws open a window, and the rattle of
+      the wood-work echoes down the empty street. On one of the roofs, a hookah
+      is in full blast; and the men are talking softly as the pipe gutters. A
+      little farther on, the noise of conversation is more distinct. A slit of
+      light shows itself between the sliding shutters of a shop. Inside, a
+      stubble-bearded, weary-eyed trader is balancing his account-books among
+      the bales of cotton prints that surround him. Three sheeted figures bear
+      him company, and throw in a remark from time to time. First he makes an
+      entry, then a remark; then passes the back of his hand across his
+      streaming forehead. The heat in the built-in street is fearful. Inside the
+      shops it must be almost unendurable. But the work goes on steadily; entry,
+      guttural growl, and uplifted hand-stroke succeeding each other with the
+      precision of clock-work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A policeman&mdash;turbanless and fast asleep&mdash;lies across the road on
+      the way to the Mosque of Wazir Khan. A bar of moonlight falls across the
+      forehead and eyes of the sleeper, but he never stirs. It is close upon
+      midnight, and the heat seems to be increasing. The open square in front of
+      the Mosque is crowded with corpses; and a man must pick his way carefully
+      for fear of treading on them. The moonlight stripes the Mosque&rsquo;s high
+      front of coloured enamel work in broad diagonal bands; and each separate
+      dreaming pigeon in the niches and corners of the masonry throws a squab
+      little shadow. Sheeted ghosts rise up wearily from their pallets, and flit
+      into the dark depths of the building. Is it possible to climb to the top
+      of the great Minars, and thence to look down on the city? At all events
+      the attempt is worth making, and the chances are that the door of the
+      staircase will be unlocked. Unlocked it is; but a deeply sleeping janitor
+      lies across the threshold, face turned to the Moon. A rat dashes out of
+      his turban at the sound of approaching footsteps. The man grunts, opens
+      his eyes for a minute, turns round, and goes to sleep again. All the heat
+      of a decade of fierce Indian summers is stored in the pitch-black,
+      polished walls of the corkscrew staircase. Half-way up, there is something
+      alive, warm, and feathery; and it snores. Driven from step to step as it
+      catches the sound of my advance, it flutters to the top and reveals itself
+      as a yellow-eyed, angry kite. Dozens of kites are asleep on this and the
+      other Minars, and on the domes below. There is the shadow of a cool, or at
+      least a less sultry breeze at this height; and, refreshed thereby, turn to
+      look on the City of Dreadful Night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dore might have drawn it! Zola could describe it&mdash;this spectacle of
+      sleeping thousands in the moonlight and in the shadow of the Moon. The
+      roof-tops are crammed with men, women, and children; and the air is full
+      of undistinguishable noises. They are restless in the City of Dreadful
+      Night; and small wonder. The marvel is that they can even breathe. If you
+      gaze intently at the multitude, you can see that they are almost as uneasy
+      as a daylight crowd; but the tumult is subdued. Everywhere, in the strong
+      light, you can watch the sleepers turning to and fro; shifting their beds
+      and again resettling them. In the pit-like court-yards of the houses there
+      is the same movement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pitiless Moon shows it all. Shows, too, the plains outside the city,
+      and here and there a hand&rsquo;s-breadth of the Ravee without the walls. Shows
+      lastly, a splash of glittering silver on a house-top almost directly below
+      the mosque Minar. Some poor soul has risen to throw a jar of water over
+      his fevered body; the tinkle of the falling water strikes faintly on the
+      ear. Two or three other men, in far-off corners of the City of Dreadful
+      Night, follow his example, and the water flashes like heliographic
+      signals. A small cloud passes over the face of the Moon, and the city and
+      its inhabitants&mdash;clear drawn in black and white before&mdash;fade
+      into masses of black and deeper black. Still the unrestful noise
+      continues, the sigh of a great city overwhelmed with the heat, and of a
+      people seeking in vain for rest. It is only the lower-class women who
+      sleep on the house-tops. What must the torment be in the latticed zenanas,
+      where a few lamps are still twinkling? There are footfalls in the court
+      below. It is the Muezzin&mdash;faithful minister; but he ought to have
+      been here an hour ago to tell the Faithful that prayer is better than
+      sleep&mdash;the sleep that will not come to the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Muezzin fumbles for a moment with the door of one of the Minars,
+      disappears awhile, and a bull-like roar&mdash;a magnificent bass thunder&mdash;tells
+      that he has reached the top of the Minar. They must hear the cry to the
+      banks of the shrunken Ravee itself! Even across the courtyard it is almost
+      overpowering. The cloud drifts by and shows him outlined in black against
+      the sky, hands laid upon his ears, and broad chest heaving with the play
+      of his lungs&mdash;&lsquo;Allah ho Akbar&rsquo;; then a pause while another Muezzin
+      somewhere in the direction of the Golden Temple takes up the call&mdash;&lsquo;Allah
+      ho Akbar.&rsquo; Again and again; four times in all; and from the bedsteads a
+      dozen men have risen up already.&mdash;&lsquo;I bear witness that there is no
+      God but God.&rsquo; What a splendid cry it is, the proclamation of the creed
+      that brings men out of their beds by scores at midnight! Once again he
+      thunders through the same phrase, shaking with the vehemence of his own
+      voice; and then, far and near, the night air rings with &lsquo;Mahomed is the
+      Prophet of God.&rsquo; It is as though he were flinging his defiance to the
+      far-off horizon, where the summer lightning plays and leaps like a bared
+      sword. Every Muezzin in the city is in full cry, and some men on the
+      roof-tops are beginning to kneel. A long pause precedes the last cry, &lsquo;La
+      ilaha Illallah,&rsquo; and the silence closes up on it, as the ram on the head
+      of a cotton-bale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Muezzin stumbles down the dark stairway grumbling in his beard. He
+      passes the arch of the entrance and disappears. Then the stifling silence
+      settles down over the City of Dreadful Night. The kites on the Minar sleep
+      again, snoring more loudly, the hot breeze comes up in puffs and lazy
+      eddies, and the Moon slides down towards the horizon. Seated with both
+      elbows on the parapet of the tower, one can watch and wonder over that
+      heat-tortured hive till the dawn. &lsquo;How do they live down there? What do
+      they think of? When will they awake?&rsquo; More tinkling of sluiced water-pots;
+      faint jarring of wooden bedsteads moved into or out of the shadows;
+      uncouth music of stringed instruments softened by distance into a
+      plaintive wail, and one low grumble of far-off thunder. In the courtyard
+      of the mosque the janitor, who lay across the threshold of the Minar when
+      I came up, starts wildly in his sleep, throws his hands above his head,
+      mutters something, and falls back again. Lulled by the snoring of the
+      kites&mdash;they snore like over-gorged humans&mdash;I drop off into an
+      uneasy doze, conscious that three o&rsquo;clock has struck, and that there is a
+      slight&mdash;a very slight&mdash;coolness in the atmosphere. The city is
+      absolutely quiet now, but for some vagrant dog&rsquo;s love-song. Nothing save
+      dead heavy sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several weeks of darkness pass after this. For the Moon has gone out. The
+      very dogs are still, and I watch for the first light of the dawn before
+      making my way homeward. Again the noise of shuffling feet. The morning
+      call is about to begin, and my night watch is over. &lsquo;Allah ho Akbar! Allah
+      ho Akbar!&rsquo; The east grows gray, and presently saffron; the dawn wind comes
+      up as though the Muezzin had summoned it; and, as one man, the City of
+      Dreadful Night rises from its bed and turns its face towards the dawning
+      day. With return of life comes return of sound. First a low whisper, then
+      a deep bass hum; for it must be remembered that the entire city is on the
+      house-tops. My eyelids weighed down with the arrears of long deferred
+      sleep, I escape from the Minar through the courtyard and out into the
+      square beyond, where the sleepers have risen, stowed away the bedsteads,
+      and are discussing the morning hookah. The minute&rsquo;s freshness of the air
+      has gone, and it is as hot as at first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Will the Sahib, out of his kindness, make room?&rsquo; What is it? Something
+      borne on men&rsquo;s shoulders comes by in the half-light, and I stand back. A
+      woman&rsquo;s corpse going down to the burning-ghat, and a bystander says, &lsquo;She
+      died at midnight from the heat.&rsquo; So the city was of Death as well as Night
+      after all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      GEORGIE PORGIE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie,
+     Kissed the girls and made them cry.
+     When the girls came out to play
+     Georgie Porgie ran away.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      If you will admit that a man has no right to enter his drawing-room early
+      in the morning, when the housemaid is setting things right and clearing
+      away the dust, you will concede that civilised people who eat out of china
+      and own card-cases have no right to apply their standard of right and
+      wrong to an unsettled land. When the place is made fit for their
+      reception, by those men who are told off to the work, they can come up,
+      bringing in their trunks their own society and the Decalogue, and all the
+      other apparatus. Where the Queen&rsquo;s Law does not carry, it is irrational to
+      expect an observance of other and weaker rules. The men who run ahead of
+      the cars of Decency and Propriety, and make the jungle ways straight,
+      cannot be judged in the same manner as the stay-at-home folk of the ranks
+      of the regular Tchin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not many months ago the Queen&rsquo;s Law stopped a few miles north of Thayetmyo
+      on the Irrawaddy. There was no very strong Public Opinion up to that
+      limit, but it existed to keep men in order. When the Government said that
+      the Queen&rsquo;s Law must carry up to Bhamo and the Chinese border the order
+      was given, and some men whose desire was to be ever a little in advance of
+      the rush of Respectability flocked forward with the troops. These were the
+      men who could never pass examinations, and would have been too pronounced
+      in their ideas for the administration of bureau-worked Provinces. The
+      Supreme Government stepped in as soon as might be, with codes and
+      regulations, and all but reduced New Burma to the dead Indian level; but
+      there was a short time during which strong men were necessary and ploughed
+      a field for themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the fore-runners of Civilisation was Georgie Porgie, reckoned by all
+      who knew him a strong man. He held an appointment in Lower Burma when the
+      order came to break the Frontier, and his friends called him Georgie
+      Porgie because of the singularly Burmese-like manner in which he sang a
+      song whose first line is something like the words &lsquo;Georgie Porgie.&rsquo; Most
+      men who have been in Burma will know the song. It means: &lsquo;Puff, puff,
+      puff, puff, great steamboat!&rsquo; Georgie sang it to his banjo, and his
+      friends shouted with delight, so that you could hear them far away in the
+      teak-forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he went to Upper Burma he had no special regard for God or Man, but
+      he knew how to make himself respected, and to carry out the mixed
+      Military-Civil duties that fell to most men&rsquo;s share in those months. He
+      did his office work and entertained, now and again, the detachments of
+      fever-shaken soldiers who blundered through his part of the world in
+      search of a flying party of dacoits. Sometimes he turned out and dressed
+      down dacoits on his own account; for the country was still smouldering and
+      would blaze when least expected. He enjoyed these charivaris, but the
+      dacoits were not so amused. All the officials who came in contact with him
+      departed with the idea that Georgie Porgie was a valuable person, well
+      able to take care of himself, and, on that belief, he was left to his own
+      devices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of a few months he wearied of his solitude, and cast about for
+      company and refinement. The Queen&rsquo;s Law had hardly begun to be felt in the
+      country, and Public Opinion, which is more powerful than the Queen&rsquo;s Law,
+      had yet to come. Also, there was a custom in the country which allowed a
+      white man to take to himself a wife of the Daughters of Heth upon due
+      payment. The marriage was not quite so binding as is the nikkah ceremony
+      among Mahomedans, but the wife was very pleasant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When all our troops are back from Burma there will be a proverb in their
+      mouths, &lsquo;As thrifty as a Burmese wife,&rsquo; and pretty English ladies will
+      wonder what in the world it means.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The headman of the village next to Georgie Porgie&rsquo;s post had a fair
+      daughter who had seen Georgie Porgie and loved him from afar. When news
+      went abroad that the Englishman with the heavy hand who lived in the
+      stockade was looking for a housekeeper, the headman came in and explained
+      that, for five hundred rupees down, he would entrust his daughter to
+      Georgie Porgie&rsquo;s keeping, to be maintained in all honour, respect, and
+      comfort, with pretty dresses, according to the custom of the country. This
+      thing was done, and Georgie Porgie never repented it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found his rough-and-tumble house put straight and made comfortable, his
+      hitherto unchecked expenses cut down by one half, and himself petted and
+      made much of by his new acquisition, who sat at the head of his table and
+      sang songs to him and ordered his Madrassee servants about, and was in
+      every way as sweet and merry and honest and winning a little woman as the
+      most exacting of bachelors could have desired. No race, men say who know,
+      produces such good wives and heads of households as the Burmese. When the
+      next detachment tramped by on the war-path the Subaltern in Command found
+      at Georgie Porgie&rsquo;s table a hostess to be deferential to, a woman to be
+      treated in every way as one occupying an assured position. When he
+      gathered his men together next dawn and replunged into the jungle he
+      thought regretfully of the nice little dinner and the pretty face, and
+      envied Georgie Porgie from the bottom of his heart. Yet HE was engaged to
+      a girl at Home, and that is how some men are constructed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Burmese girl&rsquo;s name was not a pretty one; but as she was promptly
+      christened Georgina by Georgie Porgie, the blemish did not matter. Georgie
+      Porgie thought well of the petting and the general comfort, and vowed that
+      he had never spent five hundred rupees to a better end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After three months of domestic life, a great idea struck him. Matrimony&mdash;English
+      matrimony&mdash;could not be such a bad thing after all. If he were so
+      thoroughly comfortable at the Back of Beyond with this Burmese girl who
+      smoked cheroots, how much more comfortable would he be with a sweet
+      English maiden who would not smoke cheroots, and would play upon a piano
+      instead of a banjo? Also he had a desire to return to his kind, to hear a
+      Band once more, and to feel how it felt to wear a dress-suit again.
+      Decidedly, Matrimony would be a very good thing. He thought the matter out
+      at length of evenings, while Georgina sang to him, or asked him why he was
+      so silent, and whether she had done anything to offend him. As he thought,
+      he smoked, and as he smoked he looked at Georgina, and in his fancy turned
+      her into a fair, thrifty, amusing, merry, little English girl, with hair
+      coming low down on her forehead, and perhaps a cigarette between her lips.
+      Certainly, not a big, thick, Burma cheroot, of the brand that Georgina
+      smoked. He would wed a girl with Georgina&rsquo;s eyes and most of her ways. But
+      not all. She could be improved upon. Then he blew thick smoke-wreaths
+      through his nostrils and stretched himself. He would taste marriage.
+      Georgina had helped him to save money, and there were six months&rsquo; leave
+      due to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;See here, little woman,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;we must put by more money for these
+      next three months. I want it.&rsquo; That was a direct slur on Georgina&rsquo;s
+      housekeeping; for she prided herself on her thrift; but since her God
+      wanted money she would do her best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You want money?&rsquo; she said with a little laugh. &lsquo;I HAVE money. Look!&rsquo; She
+      ran to her own room and fetched out a small bag of rupees. &lsquo;Of all that
+      you give me, I keep back some. See! One hundred and seven rupees. Can you
+      want more money than that? Take it. It is my pleasure if you use it.&rsquo; She
+      spread out the money on the table and pushed it towards him, with her
+      quick, little, pale yellow fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Georgie Porgie never referred to economy in the household again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three months later, after the dispatch and receipt of several mysterious
+      letters which Georgina could not understand, and hated for that reason,
+      Georgie Porgie said that he was going away and she must return to her
+      father&rsquo;s house and stay there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Georgina wept. She would go with her God from the world&rsquo;s end to the
+      world&rsquo;s end. Why should she leave him? She loved him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am only going to Rangoon,&rsquo; said Georgie Porgie. &lsquo;I shall be back in a
+      month, but it is safer to stay with your father. I will leave you two
+      hundred rupees.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If you go for a month, what need of two hundred? Fifty are more than
+      enough. There is some evil here. Do not go, or at least let me go with
+      you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Georgie Porgie does not like to remember that scene even at this date. In
+      the end he got rid of Georgina by a compromise of seventy-five rupees. She
+      would not take more. Then he went by steamer and rail to Rangoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mysterious letters had granted him six months&rsquo; leave. The actual
+      flight and an idea that he might have been treacherous hurt severely at
+      the time, but as soon as the big steamer was well out into the blue,
+      things were easier, and Georgina&rsquo;s face, and the queer little stockaded
+      house, and the memory of the rushes of shouting dacoits by night, the cry
+      and struggle of the first man that he had ever killed with his own hand,
+      and a hundred other more intimate things, faded and faded out of Georgie
+      Porgie&rsquo;s heart, and the vision of approaching England took its place. The
+      steamer was full of men on leave, all rampantly jovial souls who had
+      shaken off the dust and sweat of Upper Burma and were as merry as
+      schoolboys. They helped Georgie Porgie to forget.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came England with its luxuries and decencies and comforts, and
+      Georgie Porgie walked in a pleasant dream upon pavements of which he had
+      nearly forgotten the ring, wondering why men in their senses ever left
+      Town. He accepted his keen delight in his furlough as the reward of his
+      services. Providence further arranged for him another and greater delight&mdash;all
+      the pleasures of a quiet English wooing, quite different from the brazen
+      businesses of the East, when half the community stand back and bet on the
+      result, and the other half wonder what Mrs. So-and-So will say to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a pleasant girl and a perfect summer, and a big country-house near
+      Petworth where there are acres and acres of purple heather and
+      high-grassed water-meadows to wander through. Georgie Porgie felt that he
+      had at last found something worth the living for, and naturally assumed
+      that the next thing to do was to ask the girl to share his life in India.
+      She, in her ignorance, was willing to go. On this occasion there was no
+      bartering with a village headman. There was a fine middle-class wedding in
+      the country, with a stout Papa and a weeping Mamma, and a best-man in
+      purple and fine linen, and six snub-nosed girls from the Sunday School to
+      throw roses on the path between the tombstones up to the Church door. The
+      local paper described the affair at great length, even down to giving the
+      hymns in full. But that was because the Direction were starving for want
+      of material.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came a honeymoon at Arundel, and the Mamma wept copiously before she
+      allowed her one daughter to sail away to India under the care of Georgie
+      Porgie the Bridegroom. Beyond any question, Georgie Porgie was immensely
+      fond of his wife, and she was devoted to him as the best and greatest man
+      in the world. When he reported himself at Bombay he felt justified in
+      demanding a good station for his wife&rsquo;s sake; and, because he had made a
+      little mark in Burma and was beginning to be appreciated, they allowed him
+      nearly all that he asked for, and posted him to a station which we will
+      call Sutrain. It stood upon several hills, and was styled officially a
+      &lsquo;Sanitarium,&rsquo; for the good reason that the drainage was utterly neglected.
+      Here Georgie Porgie settled down, and found married life come very
+      naturally to him. He did not rave, as do many bridegrooms, over the
+      strangeness and delight of seeing his own true love sitting down to
+      breakfast with him every morning &lsquo;as though it were the most natural thing
+      in the world.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He had been there before,&rsquo; as the Americans say, and, checking the merits
+      of his own present Grace by those of Georgina, he was more and more
+      inclined to think that he had done well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there was no peace or comfort across the Bay of Bengal, under the
+      teak-trees where Georgina lived with her father, waiting for Georgie
+      Porgie to return. The headman was old, and remembered the war of &lsquo;51. He
+      had been to Rangoon, and knew something of the ways of the Kullahs.
+      Sitting in front of his door in the evenings, he taught Georgina a dry
+      philosophy which did not console her in the least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trouble was that she loved Georgie Porgie just as much as the French
+      girl in the English History books loved the priest whose head was broken
+      by the king&rsquo;s bullies. One day she disappeared from the village with all
+      the rupees that Georgie Porgie had given her, and a very small smattering
+      of English&mdash;also gained from Georgie Porgie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The headman was angry at first, but lit a fresh cheroot and said something
+      uncomplimentary about the sex in general. Georgina had started on a search
+      for Georgie Porgie, who might be in Rangoon, or across the Black Water, or
+      dead, for aught that she knew. Chance favoured her. An old Sikh policeman
+      told her that Georgie Porgie had crossed the Black Water. She took a
+      steerage-passage from Rangoon and went to Calcutta; keeping the secret of
+      her search to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In India every trace of her was lost for six weeks, and no one knows what
+      trouble of heart she must have undergone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She reappeared, four hundred miles north of Calcutta, steadily heading
+      northwards, very worn and haggard, but very fixed in her determination to
+      find Georgie Porgie. She could not understand the language of the people;
+      but India is infinitely charitable, and the women-folk along the Grand
+      Trunk gave her food. Something made her believe that Georgie Porgie was to
+      be found at the end of that pitiless road. She may have seen a sepoy who
+      knew him in Burma, but of this no one can be certain. At last, she found a
+      regiment on the line of march, and met there one of the many subalterns
+      whom Georgie Porgie had invited to dinner in the far-off, old days of the
+      dacoit-hunting. There was a certain amount of amusement among the tents
+      when Georgina threw herself at the man&rsquo;s feet and began to cry. There was
+      no amusement when her story was told; but a collection was made, and that
+      was more to the point. One of the subalterns knew of Georgie Porgie&rsquo;s
+      whereabouts, but not of his marriage. So he told Georgina and she went her
+      way joyfully to the north, in a railway carriage where there was rest for
+      tired feet and shade for a dusty little head. The marches from the train
+      through the hills into Sutrain were trying, but Georgina had money, and
+      families journeying in bullock-carts gave her help. It was an almost
+      miraculous journey, and Georgina felt sure that the good spirits of Burma
+      were looking after her. The hill-road to Sutrain is a chilly stretch, and
+      Georgina caught a bad cold. Still there was Georgie Porgie at the end of
+      all the trouble to take her up in his arms and pet her, as he used to do
+      in the old days when the stockade was shut for the night and he had
+      approved of the evening meal. Georgina went forward as fast as she could;
+      and her good spirits did her one last favour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An Englishman stopped her, in the twilight, just at the turn of the road
+      into Sutrain, saying, &lsquo;Good Heavens! What are you doing here?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was Gillis, the man who had been Georgie Porgie&rsquo;s assistant in Upper
+      Burma, and who occupied the next post to Georgie Porgie&rsquo;s in the jungle.
+      Georgie Porgie had applied to have him to work with at Sutrain because he
+      liked him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have come,&rsquo; said Georgina simply. &lsquo;It was such a long way, and I have
+      been months in coming. Where is his house?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gillis gasped. He had seen enough of Georgina in the old times to know
+      that explanations would be useless. You cannot explain things to the
+      Oriental. You must show.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll take you there,&rsquo; said Gillis, and he led Georgina off the road, up
+      the cliff, by a little pathway, to the back of a house set on a platform
+      cut into the hillside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lamps were just lit, but the curtains were not drawn. &lsquo;Now look,&rsquo; said
+      Gillis, stopping in front of the drawing-room window. Georgina looked and
+      saw Georgie Porgie and the Bride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She put her hand up to her hair, which had come out of its top-knot and
+      was straggling about her face. She tried to set her ragged dress in order,
+      but the dress was past pulling straight, and she coughed a queer little
+      cough, for she really had taken a very bad cold. Gillis looked, too, but
+      while Georgina only looked at the Bride once, turning her eyes always on
+      Georgie Porgie, Gillis looked at the Bride all the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What are you going to do?&rsquo; said Gillis, who held Georgina by the wrist,
+      in case of any unexpected rush into the lamplight. &lsquo;Will you go in and
+      tell that English woman that you lived with her husband?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; said Georgina faintly. &lsquo;Let me go. I am going away. I swear that I
+      am going away.&rsquo; She twisted herself free and ran off into the dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Poor little beast!&rsquo; said Gillis, dropping on to the main road. &lsquo;I&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; 
+      given her something to get back to Burma with. What a narrow shave though!
+      And that angel would never have forgiven it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This seems to prove that the devotion of Gillis was not entirely due to
+      his affection for Georgie Porgie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bride and the Bridegroom came out into the verandah after dinner, in
+      order that the smoke of Georgie Porgie&rsquo;s cheroots might not hang in the
+      new drawing-room curtains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is that noise down there?&rsquo; said the Bride. Both listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh,&rsquo; said Georgie Porgie, &lsquo;I suppose some brute of a hillman has been
+      beating his wife.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Beating&mdash;his&mdash;wife! How ghastly!&rsquo; said the Bride. &lsquo;Fancy YOUR
+      beating ME!&rsquo; She slipped an arm round her husband&rsquo;s waist, and, leaning
+      her head against his shoulder, looked out across the cloud-filled valley
+      in deep content and security.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was Georgina crying, all by herself, down the hillside, among the
+      stones of the water-course where the washermen wash the clothes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      NABOTH
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was how it happened; and the truth is also an allegory of Empire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I met him at the corner of my garden, an empty basket on his head, and an
+      unclean cloth round his loins. That was all the property to which Naboth
+      had the shadow of a claim when I first saw him. He opened our acquaintance
+      by begging. He was very thin and showed nearly as many ribs as his basket;
+      and he told me a long story about fever and a lawsuit, and an iron
+      cauldron that had been seized by the court in execution of a decree. I put
+      my hand into my pocket to help Naboth, as kings of the East have helped
+      alien adventurers to the loss of their kingdoms. A rupee had hidden in my
+      waistcoat lining. I never knew it was there, and gave the trove to Naboth
+      as a direct gift from Heaven. He replied that I was the only legitimate
+      Protector of the Poor he had ever known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning he reappeared, a little fatter in the round, and curled
+      himself into knots in the front verandah. He said I was his father and his
+      mother, and the direct descendant of all the gods in his Pantheon, besides
+      controlling the destinies of the universe. He himself was but a
+      sweetmeat-seller, and much less important than the dirt under my feet. I
+      had heard this sort of thing before, so I asked him what he wanted. My
+      rupee, quoth Naboth, had raised him to the ever-lasting heavens, and he
+      wished to prefer a request. He wished to establish a sweetmeat-pitch near
+      the house of his benefactor, to gaze on my revered countenance as I went
+      to and fro illumining the world. I was graciously pleased to give
+      permission, and he went away with his head between his knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now at the far end of my garden, the ground slopes toward the public road,
+      and the slope is crowned with a thick shrubbery. There is a short
+      carriage-road from the house to the Mall, which passes close to the
+      shrubbery. Next afternoon I saw that Naboth had seated himself at the
+      bottom of the slope, down in the dust of the public road, and in the full
+      glare of the sun, with a starved basket of greasy sweets in front of him.
+      He had gone into trade once more on the strength of my munificent
+      donation, and the ground was as Paradise by my honoured favour. Remember,
+      there was only Naboth, his basket, the sunshine, and the gray dust when
+      the sap of my Empire first began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day he had moved himself up the slope nearer to my shrubbery, and
+      waved a palm-leaf fan to keep the flies off the sweets. So I judged that
+      he must have done a fair trade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four days later I noticed that he had backed himself and his basket under
+      the shadow of the shrubbery, and had tied an Isabella-coloured rag between
+      two branches in order to make more shade. There were plenty of sweets in
+      his basket. I thought that trade must certainly be looking up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seven weeks later the Government took up a plot of ground for a Chief
+      Court close to the end of my compound, and employed nearly four hundred
+      coolies on the foundations. Naboth bought a blue and white striped
+      blanket, a brass lamp-stand, and a small boy, to cope with the rush of
+      trade, which was tremendous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five days later he bought a huge, fat, red-backed account-book, and a
+      glass inkstand. Thus I saw that the coolies had been getting into his
+      debt, and that commerce was increasing on legitimate lines of credit. Also
+      I saw that the one basket had grown into three, and that Naboth had backed
+      and hacked into the shrubbery, and made himself a nice little clearing for
+      the proper display of the basket, the blanket, the books, and the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One week and five days later he had built a mud fire-place in the
+      clearing, and the fat account-book was overflowing. He said that God
+      created few Englishmen of my kind, and that I was the incarnation of all
+      human virtues. He offered me some of his sweets as tribute, and by
+      accepting these I acknowledged him as my feudatory under the skirt of my
+      protection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three weeks later I noticed that the boy was in the habit of cooking
+      Naboth&rsquo;s mid-day meal for him, and Naboth was beginning to grow a stomach.
+      He had hacked away more of my shrubbery and owned another and a fatter
+      account-book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eleven weeks later Naboth had eaten his way nearly through that shrubbery,
+      and there was a reed hut with a bedstead outside it, standing in the
+      little glade that he had eroded. Two dogs and a baby slept on the
+      bedstead. So I fancied Naboth had taken a wife. He said that he had, by my
+      favour, done this thing, and that I was several times finer than Krishna.
+      Six weeks and two days later a mud wall had grown up at the back of the
+      hut. There were fowls in front and it smelt a little. The Municipal
+      Secretary said that a cess-pool was forming in the public road from the
+      drainage of my compound, and that I must take steps to clear it away. I
+      spoke to Naboth. He said I was Lord Paramount of his earthly concerns, and
+      the garden was all my own property, and sent me some more sweets in a
+      second-hand duster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two months later a coolie bricklayer was killed in a scuffle that took
+      place opposite Naboth&rsquo;s Vineyard. The Inspector of Police said it was a
+      serious case; went into my servants&rsquo; quarters; insulted my butler&rsquo;s wife,
+      and wanted to arrest my butler. The curious thing about the murder was
+      that most of the coolies were drunk at the time. Naboth pointed out that
+      my name was a strong shield between him and his enemies, and he expected
+      that another baby would be born to him shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four months later the hut was ALL mud walls, very solidly built, and
+      Naboth had used most of my shrubbery for his five goats. A silver watch
+      and an aluminium chain shone upon his very round stomach. My servants were
+      alarmingly drunk several times, and used to waste the day with Naboth when
+      they got the chance. I spoke to Naboth. He said, by my favour and the
+      glory of my countenance, he would make all his women-folk ladies, and that
+      if any one hinted that he was running an illicit still under the shadow of
+      the tamarisks, why, I, his Suzerain, was to prosecute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A week later he hired a man to make several dozen square yards of
+      trellis-work to put around the back of his hut, that his women-folk might
+      be screened from the public gaze. The man went away in the evening, and
+      left his day&rsquo;s work to pave the short cut from the public road to my
+      house. I was driving home in the dusk, and turned the corner by Naboth&rsquo;s
+      Vineyard quickly. The next thing I knew was that the horses of the phaeton
+      were stamping and plunging in the strongest sort of bamboo net-work. Both
+      beasts came down. One rose with nothing more than chipped knees. The other
+      was so badly kicked that I was forced to shoot him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naboth is gone now, and his hut is ploughed into its native mud with
+      sweetmeats instead of salt for a sign that the place is accursed. I have
+      built a summer-house to overlook the end of the garden, and it is as a
+      fort on my frontier whence I guard my Empire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know exactly how Ahab felt. He has been shamefully misrepresented in the
+      Scriptures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DREAM OF DUNCAN PARRENNESS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      [Footnote: Copyright, 1891, by MACMILLAN &amp; Co.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like Mr. Bunyan of old, I, Duncan Parrenness, Writer to the Most
+      Honourable the East India Company, in this God-forgotten city of Calcutta,
+      have dreamed a dream, and never since that Kitty my mare fell lame have I
+      been so troubled. Therefore, lest I should forget my dream, I have made
+      shift to set it down here. Though Heaven knows how unhandy the pen is to
+      me who was always readier with sword than ink-horn when I left London two
+      long years since.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Governor-General&rsquo;s great dance (that he gives yearly at the
+      latter end of November) was finisht, I had gone to mine own room which
+      looks over that sullen, un-English stream, the Hoogly, scarce so sober as
+      I might have been. Now, roaring drunk in the West is but fuddled in the
+      East, and I was drunk Nor&rsquo;-Nor&rsquo; Easterly as Mr. Shakespeare might have
+      said. Yet, in spite of my liquor, the cool night winds (though I have
+      heard that they breed chills and fluxes innumerable) sobered me somewhat;
+      and I remembered that I had been but a little wrung and wasted by all the
+      sicknesses of the past four months, whereas those young bloods that came
+      eastward with me in the same ship had been all, a month back, planted to
+      Eternity in the foul soil north of Writers&rsquo; Buildings. So then, I thanked
+      God mistily (though, to my shame, I never kneeled down to do so) for
+      license to live, at least till March should be upon us again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, we that were alive (and our number was less by far than those who
+      had gone to their last account in the hot weather late past) had made very
+      merry that evening, by the ramparts of the Fort, over this kindness of
+      Providence; though our jests were neither witty nor such as I should have
+      liked my Mother to hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I had lain down (or rather thrown me on my bed) and the fumes of my
+      drink had a little cleared away, I found that I could get no sleep for
+      thinking of a thousand things that were better left alone. First, and it
+      was a long time since I had thought of her, the sweet face of Kitty
+      Somerset, drifted, as it might have been drawn in a picture, across the
+      foot of my bed, so plainly, that I almost thought she had been present in
+      the body. Then I remembered how she drove me to this accursed country to
+      get rich, that I might the more quickly marry her, our parents on both
+      sides giving their consent; and then how she thought better (or worse may
+      be) of her troth, and wed Tom Sanderson but a short three months after I
+      had sailed. From Kitty I fell a-musing on Mrs. Vansuythen, a tall pale
+      woman with violet eyes that had come to Calcutta from the Dutch Factory at
+      Chinsura, and had set all our young men, and not a few of the factors, by
+      the ears. Some of our ladies, it is true, said that she had never a
+      husband or marriage-lines at all; but women, and specially those who have
+      led only indifferent good lives themselves, are cruel hard one on another.
+      Besides, Mrs. Vansuythen was far prettier than them all. She had been most
+      gracious to me at the Governor-General&rsquo;s rout, and indeed I was looked
+      upon by all as her preux chevalier&mdash;which is French for a much worse
+      word. Now, whether I cared so much as the scratch of a pin for this same
+      Mrs. Vansuythen (albeit I had vowed eternal love three days after we met)
+      I knew not then nor did till later on; but mine own pride, and a skill in
+      the small sword that no man in Calcutta could equal, kept me in her
+      affections. So that I believed I worshipt her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I had dismist her violet eyes from my thoughts, my reason reproacht
+      me for ever having followed her at all; and I saw how the one year that I
+      had lived in this land had so burnt and seared my mind with the flames of
+      a thousand bad passions and desires, that I had aged ten months for each
+      one in the Devil&rsquo;s school. Whereat I thought of my Mother for a while, and
+      was very penitent: making in my sinful tipsy mood a thousand vows of
+      reformation&mdash;all since broken, I fear me, again and again. To-morrow,
+      says I to myself, I will live cleanly for ever. And I smiled dizzily (the
+      liquor being still strong in me) to think of the dangers I had escaped;
+      and built all manner of fine Castles in Spain, whereof a shadowy Kitty
+      Somerset that had the violet eyes and the sweet slow speech of Mrs.
+      Vansuythen, was always Queen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lastly, a very fine and magnificent courage (that doubtless had its birth
+      in Mr. Hastings&rsquo; Madeira) grew upon me, till it seemed that I could become
+      Governor-General, Nawab, Prince, ay, even the Great Mogul himself, by the
+      mere wishing of it. Wherefore, taking my first steps, random and unstable
+      enough, towards my new kingdom, I kickt my servants sleeping without till
+      they howled and ran from me, and called Heaven and Earth to witness that
+      I, Duncan Parrenness, was a Writer in the service of the Company and
+      afraid of no man. Then, seeing that neither the Moon nor the Great Bear
+      were minded to accept my challenge, I lay down again and must have fallen
+      asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was waked presently by my last words repeated two or three times, and I
+      saw that there had come into the room a drunken man, as I thought, from
+      Mr. Hastings&rsquo; rout. He sate down at the foot of my bed in all the world as
+      it belonged to him, and I took note, as well as I could, that his face was
+      somewhat like mine own grown older, save when it changed to the face of
+      the Governor-General or my father, dead these six months. But this seemed
+      to me only natural, and the due result of too much wine; and I was so
+      angered at his entry all unannounced, that I told him, not over civilly,
+      to go. To all my words he made no answer whatever, only saying slowly, as
+      though it were some sweet morsel: &lsquo;Writer in the Company&rsquo;s service and
+      afraid of no man.&rsquo; Then he stops short, and turning round sharp upon me,
+      says that one of my kidney need fear neither man nor devil; that I was a
+      brave young man, and like enough, should I live so long, to be
+      Governor-General. But for all these things (and I suppose that he meant
+      thereby the changes and chances of our shifty life in these parts) I must
+      pay my price. By this time I had sobered somewhat, and being well waked
+      out of my first sleep, was disposed to look upon the matter as a tipsy
+      man&rsquo;s jest. So, says I merrily: &lsquo;And what price shall I pay for this
+      palace of mine, which is but twelve feet square, and my five poor pagodas
+      a month? The Devil take you and your jesting: I have paid my price twice
+      over in sickness.&rsquo; At that moment my man turns full towards me: so that by
+      the moonlight I could see every line and wrinkle of his face. Then my
+      drunken mirth died out of me, as I have seen the waters of our great
+      rivers die away in one night; and I, Duncan Parrenness, who was afraid of
+      no man, was taken with a more deadly terror than I hold it has ever been
+      the lot of mortal man to know. For I saw that his face was my very own,
+      but marked and lined and scarred with the furrows of disease and much evil
+      living&mdash;as I once, when I was (Lord help me) very drunk indeed, have
+      seen mine own face, all white and drawn and grown old, in a mirror. I take
+      it that any man would have been even more greatly feared than I. For I am
+      in no way wanting in courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After I had lain still for a little, sweating in my agony and waiting
+      until I should awake from this terrible dream (for dream I knew it to be)
+      he says again, that I must pay my price, and a little after, as though it
+      were to be given in pagodas and sicca rupees: &lsquo;What price will you pay?&rsquo; 
+      Says I, very softly: &lsquo;For God&rsquo;s sake let me be, whoever you are, and I
+      will mend my ways from to-night.&rsquo; Says he, laughing a little at my words,
+      but otherwise making no motion of having heard them: &lsquo;Nay, I would only
+      rid so brave a young ruffler as yourself of much that will be a great
+      hindrance to you on your way through life in the Indies; for believe me,&rsquo; 
+      and here he looks full on me once more, &lsquo;there is no return.&rsquo; At all this
+      rigmarole, which I could not then understand, I was a good deal put aback
+      and waited for what should come next. Says he very calmly, &lsquo;Give me your
+      trust in man.&rsquo; At that I saw how heavy would be my price, for I never
+      doubted but that he could take from me all that he asked, and my head was,
+      through terror and wakefulness, altogether cleared of the wine I had
+      drunk. So I takes him up very short, crying that I was not so wholly bad
+      as he would make believe, and that I trusted my fellows to the full as
+      much as they were worthy of it. &lsquo;It was none of my fault,&rsquo; says I, &lsquo;if one
+      half of them were liars and the other half deserved to be burnt in the
+      hand, and I would once more ask him to have done with his questions.&rsquo; Then
+      I stopped, a little afraid, it is true, to have let my tongue so run away
+      with me, but he took no notice of this, and only laid his hand lightly on
+      my left breast and I felt very cold there for a while. Then he says,
+      laughing more: &lsquo;Give me your faith in women.&rsquo; At that I started in my bed
+      as though I had been stung, for I thought of my sweet mother in England,
+      and for a while fancied that my faith in God&rsquo;s best creatures could
+      neither be shaken nor stolen from me. But later, Myself&rsquo;s hard eyes being
+      upon me, I fell to thinking, for the second time that night, of Kitty (she
+      that jilted me and married Tom Sanderson) and of Mistress Vansuythen, whom
+      only my devilish pride made me follow, and how she was even worse than
+      Kitty, and I worst of them all&mdash;seeing that with my life&rsquo;s work to be
+      done, I must needs go dancing down the Devil&rsquo;s swept and garnished
+      causeway, because, forsooth, there was a light woman&rsquo;s smile at the end of
+      it. And I thought that all women in the world were either like Kitty or
+      Mistress Vansuythen (as indeed they have ever since been to me) and this
+      put me to such an extremity of rage and sorrow, that I was beyond word
+      glad when Myself&rsquo;s hand fell again on my left breast, and I was no more
+      troubled by these follies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After this he was silent for a little, and I made sure that he must go or
+      I awake ere long: but presently he speaks again (and very softly) that I
+      was a fool to care for such follies as those he had taken from me, and
+      that ere he went he would only ask me for a few other trifles such as no
+      man, or for matter of that boy either, would keep about him in this
+      country. And so it happened that he took from out of my very heart as it
+      were, looking all the time into my face with my own eyes, as much as
+      remained to me of my boy&rsquo;s soul and conscience. This was to me a far more
+      terrible loss than the two that I had suffered before. For though, Lord
+      help me, I had travelled far enough from all paths of decent or godly
+      living, yet there was in me, though I myself write it, a certain goodness
+      of heart which, when I was sober (or sick) made me very sorry of all that
+      I had done before the fit came on me. And this I lost wholly: having in
+      place thereof another deadly coldness at the heart. I am not, as I have
+      before said, ready with my pen, so I fear that what I have just written
+      may not be readily understood. Yet there be certain times in a young man&rsquo;s
+      life, when, through great sorrow or sin, all the boy in him is burnt and
+      seared away so that he passes at one step to the more sorrowful state of
+      manhood: as our staring Indian day changes into night with never so much
+      as the gray of twilight to temper the two extremes. This shall perhaps
+      make my state more clear, if it be remembered that my torment was ten
+      times as great as comes in the natural course of nature to any man. At
+      that time I dared not think of the change that had come over me, and all
+      in one night: though I have often thought of it since. &lsquo;I have paid the
+      price,&rsquo; says I, my teeth chattering, for I was deadly cold, &lsquo;and what is
+      my return?&rsquo; At this time it was nearly dawn, and Myself had begun to grow
+      pale and thin against the white light in the east, as my mother used to
+      tell me is the custom of ghosts and devils and the like. He made as if he
+      would go, but my words stopt him and he laughed&mdash;as I remember that I
+      laughed when I ran Angus Macalister through the sword-arm last August,
+      because he said that Mrs. Vansuythen was no better than she should be.
+      &lsquo;What return?&rsquo;&mdash;says he, catching up my last words&mdash;&lsquo;Why,
+      strength to live as long as God or the Devil pleases, and so long as you
+      live my young master, my gift.&rsquo; With that he puts something into my hand,
+      though it was still too dark to see what it was, and when next I lookt up
+      he was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the light came I made shift to behold his gift, and saw that it was a
+      little piece of dry bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE INCARNATION OF KRISHNA MULVANEY
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ Wohl auf, my bully cavaliers,
+   We ride to church to-day,
+ The man that hasn&rsquo;t got a horse
+   Must steal one straight away.
+
+ Be reverent, men, remember
+   This is a Gottes haus.
+ Du, Conrad, cut along der aisle
+   And schenck der whiskey aus.
+                  HANS BREITMANN&rsquo;S RIDE TO CHURCH.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Once upon a time, very far from England, there lived three men who loved
+      each other so greatly that neither man nor woman could come between them.
+      They were in no sense refined, nor to be admitted to the outer-door mats
+      of decent folk, because they happened to be private soldiers in Her
+      Majesty&rsquo;s Army; and private soldiers of our service have small time for
+      self-culture. Their duty is to keep themselves and their accoutrements
+      specklessly clean, to refrain from getting drunk more often than is
+      necessary, to obey their superiors, and to pray for a war. All these
+      things my friends accomplished; and of their own motion threw in some
+      fighting-work for which the Army Regulations did not call. Their fate sent
+      them to serve in India, which is not a golden country, though poets have
+      sung otherwise. There men die with great swiftness, and those who live
+      suffer many and curious things. I do not think that my friends concerned
+      themselves much with the social or political aspects of the East. They
+      attended a not unimportant war on the northern frontier, another one on
+      our western boundary, and a third in Upper Burma. Then their regiment sat
+      still to recruit, and the boundless monotony of cantonment life was their
+      portion. They were drilled morning and evening on the same dusty
+      parade-ground. They wandered up and down the same stretch of dusty white
+      road, attended the same church and the same grog-shop, and slept in the
+      same lime-washed barn of a barrack for two long years. There was Mulvaney,
+      the father in the craft, who had served with various regiments from
+      Bermuda to Halifax, old in war, scarred, reckless, resourceful, and in his
+      pious hours an unequalled soldier. To him turned for help and comfort six
+      and a half feet of slow-moving, heavy-footed Yorkshireman, born on the
+      wolds, bred in the dales, and educated chiefly among the carriers&rsquo; carts
+      at the back of York railway-station. His name was Learoyd, and his chief
+      virtue an unmitigated patience which helped him to win fights. How
+      Ortheris, a fox-terrier of a Cockney, ever came to be one of the trio, is
+      a mystery which even to-day I cannot explain. &lsquo;There was always three av
+      us,&rsquo; Mulvaney used to say. &lsquo;An&rsquo; by the grace av God, so long as our
+      service lasts, three av us they&rsquo;ll always be. &lsquo;Tis betther so.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They desired no companionship beyond their own, and it was evil for any
+      man of the regiment who attempted dispute with them. Physical argument was
+      out of the question as regarded Mulvaney and the Yorkshireman; and assault
+      on Ortheris meant a combined attack from these twain&mdash;a business
+      which no five men were anxious to have on their hands. Therefore they
+      flourished, sharing their drinks, their tobacco, and their money; good
+      luck and evil; battle and the chances of death; life and the chances of
+      happiness from Calicut in southern, to Peshawur in northern India.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through no merit of my own it was my good fortune to be in a measure
+      admitted to their friendship&mdash;frankly by Mulvaney from the beginning,
+      sullenly and with reluctance by Learoyd, and suspiciously by Ortheris, who
+      held to it that no man not in the Army could fraternise with a red-coat.
+      &lsquo;Like to like,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m a bloomin&rsquo; sodger&mdash;he&rsquo;s a bloomin&rsquo; 
+      civilian. &lsquo;Tain&rsquo;t natural&mdash;that&rsquo;s all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that was not all. They thawed progressively, and in the thawing told
+      me more of their lives and adventures than I am ever likely to write.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Omitting all else, this tale begins with the Lamentable Thirst that was at
+      the beginning of First Causes. Never was such a thirst&mdash;Mulvaney told
+      me so. They kicked against their compulsory virtue, but the attempt was
+      only successful in the case of Ortheris. He, whose talents were many, went
+      forth into the highways and stole a dog from a &lsquo;civilian&rsquo;&mdash;videlicet,
+      some one, he knew not who, not in the Army. Now that civilian was but
+      newly connected by marriage with the colonel of the regiment, and outcry
+      was made from quarters least anticipated by Ortheris, and, in the end, he
+      was forced, lest a worse thing should happen, to dispose at ridiculously
+      unremunerative rates of as promising a small terrier as ever graced one
+      end of a leading string. The purchase-money was barely sufficient for one
+      small outbreak which led him to the guard-room. He escaped, however, with
+      nothing worse than a severe reprimand, and a few hours of punishment
+      drill. Not for nothing had he acquired the reputation of being &lsquo;the best
+      soldier of his inches&rsquo; in the regiment. Mulvaney had taught personal
+      cleanliness and efficiency as the first articles of his companions&rsquo; creed.
+      &lsquo;A dhirty man,&rsquo; he was used to say, in the speech of his kind, &lsquo;goes to
+      Clink for a weakness in the knees, an&rsquo; is coort-martialled for a pair av
+      socks missin&rsquo;; but a clane man, such as is an ornament to his service&mdash;a
+      man whose buttons are gold, whose coat is wax upon him, an&rsquo; whose
+      &lsquo;coutrements are widout a speck&mdash;THAT man may, spakin&rsquo; in reason, do
+      fwhat he likes an&rsquo; dhrink from day to divil. That&rsquo;s the pride av bein&rsquo; 
+      dacint.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We sat together, upon a day, in the shade of a ravine far from the
+      barracks, where a watercourse used to run in rainy weather. Behind us was
+      the scrub jungle, in which jackals, peacocks, the gray wolves of the
+      North-Western Provinces, and occasionally a tiger estrayed from Central
+      India, were supposed to dwell. In front lay the cantonment, glaring white
+      under a glaring sun; and on either side ran the broad road that led to
+      Delhi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the scrub that suggested to my mind the wisdom of Mulvaney taking a
+      day&rsquo;s leave and going upon a shooting-tour. The peacock is a holy bird
+      throughout India, and he who slays one is in danger of being mobbed by the
+      nearest villagers; but on the last occasion that Mulvaney had gone forth,
+      he had contrived, without in the least offending local religious
+      susceptibilities, to return with six beautiful peacock skins which he sold
+      to profit. It seemed just possible then&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But fwhat manner av use is ut to me goin&rsquo; out widout a dhrink? The
+      ground&rsquo;s powdher-dhry underfoot, an&rsquo; ut gets unto the throat fit to kill,&rsquo; 
+      wailed Mulvaney, looking at me reproachfully. &lsquo;An&rsquo; a peacock is not a bird
+      you can catch the tail av onless ye run. Can a man run on wather&mdash;an&rsquo; 
+      jungle-wather too?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris had considered the question in all its bearings. He spoke,
+      chewing his pipe-stem meditatively the while:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+‘Go forth, return in glory, To Clusium&rsquo;s royal &lsquo;ome:
+ An&rsquo; round these bloomin&rsquo; temples &lsquo;ang
+ The bloomin&rsquo; shields o&rsquo; Rome.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      You better go. You ain&rsquo;t like to shoot yourself&mdash;not while there&rsquo;s a
+      chanst of liquor. Me an&rsquo; Learoyd&rsquo;ll stay at &lsquo;ome an&rsquo; keep shop&mdash;&lsquo;case
+      o&rsquo; anythin&rsquo; turnin&rsquo; up. But you go out with a gas-pipe gun an&rsquo; ketch the
+      little peacockses or somethin&rsquo;. You kin get one day&rsquo;s leave easy as
+      winkin&rsquo;. Go along an&rsquo; get it, an&rsquo; get peacockses or somethin&rsquo;.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Jock,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, turning to Learoyd, who was half asleep under the
+      shadow of the bank. He roused slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sitha, Mulvaaney, go,&rsquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mulvaney went; cursing his allies with Irish fluency and barrack-room
+      point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Take note,&rsquo; said he, when he had won his holiday, and appeared dressed in
+      his roughest clothes with the only other regimental fowling-piece in his
+      hand. &lsquo;Take note, Jock, an&rsquo; you Orth&rsquo;ris, I am goin&rsquo; in the face av my own
+      will&mdash;all for to please you. I misdoubt anythin&rsquo; will come av
+      permiscuous huntin&rsquo; afther peacockses in a desolit lan&rsquo;; an&rsquo; I know that I
+      will lie down an&rsquo; die wid thirrrst. Me catch peacockses for you, ye lazy
+      scutts&mdash;an&rsquo; be sacrificed by the peasanthry&mdash;Ugh!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He waved a huge paw and went away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At twilight, long before the appointed hour, he returned empty-handed,
+      much begrimed with dirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Peacockses?&rsquo; queried Ortheris from the safe rest of a barrack-room table
+      whereon he was smoking cross-legged, Learoyd fast asleep on a bench.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Jock,&rsquo; said Mulvaney without answering, as he stirred up the sleeper.
+      &lsquo;Jock, can ye fight? Will ye fight?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very slowly the meaning of the words communicated itself to the
+      half-roused man. He understood&mdash;and again&mdash;what might these
+      things mean? Mulvaney was shaking him savagely. Meantime the men in the
+      room howled with delight. There was war in the confederacy at last&mdash;war
+      and the breaking of bonds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barrack-room etiquette is stringent. On the direct challenge must follow
+      the direct reply. This is more binding than the ties of tried friendship.
+      Once again Mulvaney repeated the question. Learoyd answered by the only
+      means in his power, and so swiftly that the Irishman had barely time to
+      avoid the blow. The laughter around increased. Learoyd looked bewilderedly
+      at his friend&mdash;himself as greatly bewildered. Ortheris dropped from
+      the table because his world was falling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come outside,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, and as the occupants of the barrack-room
+      prepared joyously to follow, he turned and said furiously, &lsquo;There will be
+      no fight this night&mdash;onless any wan av you is wishful to assist. The
+      man that does, follows on.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No man moved. The three passed out into the moonlight, Learoyd fumbling
+      with the buttons of his coat. The parade-ground was deserted except for
+      the scurrying jackals. Mulvaney&rsquo;s impetuous rush carried his companions
+      far into the open ere Learoyd attempted to turn round and continue the
+      discussion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Be still now. &lsquo;Twas my fault for beginnin&rsquo; things in the middle av an
+      end, Jock. I should ha&rsquo; comminst wid an explanation; but Jock, dear, on
+      your sowl are ye fit, think you, for the finest fight that iver was&mdash;betther
+      than fightin&rsquo; me? Considher before ye answer.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More than ever puzzled, Learoyd turned round two or three times, felt an
+      arm, kicked tentatively, and answered, &lsquo;Ah&rsquo;m fit.&rsquo; He was accustomed to
+      fight blindly at the bidding of the superior mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat them down, the men looking on from afar, and Mulvaney untangled
+      himself in mighty words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Followin&rsquo; your fools&rsquo; scheme I wint out into the thrackless desert beyond
+      the barricks. An&rsquo; there I met a pious Hindu dhriving a bullock-kyart. I
+      tuk ut for granted he wud be delighted for to convoy me a piece, an&rsquo; I
+      jumped in&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You long, lazy, black-haired swine,&rsquo; drawled Ortheris, who would have
+      done the same thing under similar circumstances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Twas the height av policy. That naygur-man dhruv miles an&rsquo; miles&mdash;as
+      far as the new railway line they&rsquo;re buildin&rsquo; now back av the Tavi river.
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Tis a kyart for dhirt only,&rdquo; says he now an&rsquo; again timoreously, to get
+      me out av ut. &ldquo;Dhirt I am,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;an&rsquo; the dhryest that you iver kyarted.
+      Dhrive on, me son, an glory be wid you.&rdquo; At that I wint to slape, an&rsquo; took
+      no heed till he pulled up on the embankmint av the line where the coolies
+      were pilin&rsquo; mud. There was a matther av two thousand coolies on that line&mdash;you
+      remimber that. Prisintly a bell rang, an&rsquo; they throops off to a big
+      pay-shed. &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the white man in charge?&rdquo; sez I to my kyart-dhriver.
+      &ldquo;In the shed,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;engaged on a riffle.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;A fwhat?&rdquo; sez I.
+      &ldquo;Riffle,&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;You take ticket. He take money. You get nothin&rsquo;.&rdquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oho!&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s fwhat the shuperior an&rsquo; cultivated man calls a
+      raffle, me misbeguided child av darkness an&rsquo; sin. Lead on to that raffle,
+      though fwhat the mischief &lsquo;tis doin&rsquo; so far away from uts home&mdash;which
+      is the charity-bazaar at Christmas, an&rsquo; the colonel&rsquo;s wife grinnin&rsquo; behind
+      the tea-table&mdash;is more than I know.&rdquo; Wid that I wint to the shed an&rsquo; 
+      found &lsquo;twas pay-day among the coolies. Their wages was on a table forninst
+      a big, fine, red buck av a man&mdash;sivun fut high, four fut wide, an&rsquo; 
+      three fut thick, wid a fist on him like a corn-sack. He was payin&rsquo; the
+      coolies fair an&rsquo; easy, but he wud ask each man if he wud raffle that
+      month, an&rsquo; each man sez? &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; av course. Thin he wud deduct from their
+      wages accordin&rsquo;. Whin all was paid, he filled an ould cigar-box full av
+      gun-wads an&rsquo; scatthered ut among the coolies. They did not take much joy
+      av that performince, an&rsquo; small wondher. A man close to me picks up a black
+      gun-wad an&rsquo; sings out, &ldquo;I have ut.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Good may ut do you,&rdquo; sez I. The
+      coolie wint forward to this big, fine, red man, who threw a cloth off av
+      the most sumpshus, jooled, enamelled an&rsquo; variously bedivilled sedan-chair
+      I iver saw.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sedan-chair! Put your &lsquo;ead in a bag. That was a palanquin. Don&rsquo;t yer know
+      a palanquin when you see it?&rsquo; said Ortheris with great scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I chuse to call ut sedan-chair, an&rsquo; chair ut shall be, little man,&rsquo; 
+      continued the Irishman. &lsquo;&rsquo;Twas a most amazin&rsquo; chair&mdash;all lined wid
+      pink silk an&rsquo; fitted wid red silk curtains. &ldquo;Here ut is,&rdquo; sez the red man.
+      &ldquo;Here ut is,&rdquo; sez the coolie, an&rsquo; he grinned weakly-ways. &ldquo;Is ut any use
+      to you?&rdquo; sez the red man. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; sez the coolie; &ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to make a
+      presint av ut to you.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;I am graciously pleased to accept that
+      same,&rdquo; sez the red man; an&rsquo; at that all the coolies cried aloud in fwhat
+      was mint for cheerful notes, an&rsquo; wint back to their diggin&rsquo;, lavin&rsquo; me
+      alone in the shed. The red man saw me, an&rsquo; his face grew blue on his big,
+      fat neck. &ldquo;Fwhat d&rsquo;you want here?&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;Standin&rsquo;-room an&rsquo; no more,&rdquo;
+       sez I, &ldquo;onless it may be fwhat ye niver had, an&rsquo; that&rsquo;s manners, ye
+      rafflin&rsquo; ruffian,&rdquo; for I was not goin&rsquo; to have the Service throd upon.
+      &ldquo;Out of this,&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m in charge av this section av construction.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+      in charge av mesilf,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;an&rsquo; it&rsquo;s like I will stay a while. D&rsquo;ye
+      raffle much in these parts?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Fwhat&rsquo;s that to you?&rdquo; sez he.
+      &ldquo;Nothin&rsquo;,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;but a great dale to you, for begad I&rsquo;m thinkin&rsquo; you get
+      the full half av your revenue from that sedan-chair. Is ut always raffled
+      so?&rdquo; I sez, an&rsquo; wid that I wint to a coolie to ask questions. Bhoys, that
+      man&rsquo;s name is Dearsley, an&rsquo; he&rsquo;s been rafflin&rsquo; that ould sedan-chair
+      monthly this matther av nine months. Ivry coolie on the section takes a
+      ticket&mdash;or he gives &lsquo;em the go&mdash;wanst a month on pay-day. Ivry
+      coolie that wins ut gives ut back to him, for &lsquo;tis too big to carry away,
+      an&rsquo; he&rsquo;d sack the man that thried to sell ut. That Dearsley has been
+      makin&rsquo; the rowlin&rsquo; wealth av Roshus by nefarious rafflin&rsquo;. Think av the
+      burnin&rsquo; shame to the sufferin&rsquo; coolie-man that the army in Injia are bound
+      to protect an&rsquo; nourish in their bosoms! Two thousand coolies defrauded
+      wanst a month!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dom t&rsquo; coolies. Has&rsquo;t gotten t&rsquo; cheer, man?&rsquo; said Learoyd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hould on. Havin&rsquo; onearthed this amazin&rsquo; an&rsquo; stupenjus fraud committed by
+      the man Dearsley, I hild a council av war; he thryin&rsquo; all the time to
+      sejuce me into a fight with opprobrious language. That sedan-chair niver
+      belonged by right to any foreman av coolies. &lsquo;Tis a king&rsquo;s chair or a
+      quane&rsquo;s. There&rsquo;s gold on ut an&rsquo; silk an&rsquo; all manner av trapesemints.
+      Bhoys, &lsquo;tis not for me to countenance any sort av wrong-doin&rsquo;&mdash;me
+      bein&rsquo; the ould man&mdash;but&mdash;anyway he has had ut nine months, an&rsquo; 
+      he dare not make throuble av ut was taken from him. Five miles away, or ut
+      may be six&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a long pause, and the jackals howled merrily. Learoyd bared one
+      arm, and contemplated it in the moonlight. Then he nodded partly to
+      himself and partly to his friends. Ortheris wriggled with suppressed
+      emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I thought ye wud see the reasonableness av ut,&rsquo; said Mulvaney. &lsquo;I made
+      bould to say as much to the man before. He was for a direct front attack&mdash;fut,
+      horse, an&rsquo; guns&mdash;an&rsquo; all for nothin&rsquo;, seein&rsquo; that I had no thransport
+      to convey the machine away. &ldquo;I will not argue wid you,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;this day,
+      but subsequently, Mister Dearsley, me rafflin&rsquo; jool, we talk ut out
+      lengthways. &lsquo;Tis no good policy to swindle the naygur av his hard-earned
+      emolumints, an&rsquo; by presint informashin&rsquo;&rdquo;&mdash;&lsquo;twas the kyart man that
+      tould me&mdash;&ldquo;ye&rsquo;ve been perpethrating that same for nine months. But
+      I&rsquo;m a just man,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;an&rsquo; overlookin&rsquo; the presumpshin that yondher
+      settee wid the gilt top was not come by honust&rdquo;&mdash;at that he turned
+      sky-green, so I knew things was more thrue than tellable&mdash;&ldquo;not come
+      by honust, I&rsquo;m willin&rsquo; to compound the felony for this month&rsquo;s winnin&rsquo;s.&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! Ho!&rsquo; from Learoyd and Ortheris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That man Dearsley&rsquo;s rushin&rsquo; on his fate,&rsquo; continued Mulvaney, solemnly
+      wagging his head. &lsquo;All Hell had no name bad enough for me that tide.
+      Faith, he called me a robber! Me! that was savin&rsquo; him from continuin&rsquo; in
+      his evil ways widout a remonstrince&mdash;an&rsquo; to a man av conscience a
+      remonstrince may change the chune av his life. &ldquo;&lsquo;Tis not for me to argue,&rdquo;
+       sez I, &ldquo;fwhatever ye are, Mister Dearsley, but, by my hand, I&rsquo;ll take away
+      the temptation for you that lies in that sedan-chair.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;You will
+      have to fight me for ut,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;for well I know you will never dare
+      make report to any one.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Fight I will,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;but not this day,
+      for I&rsquo;m rejuced for want av nourishment.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Ye&rsquo;re an ould bould
+      hand,&rdquo; sez he, sizin&rsquo; me up an&rsquo; down; &ldquo;an&rsquo; a jool av a fight we will have.
+      Eat now an&rsquo; dhrink, an&rsquo; go your way.&rdquo; Wid that he gave me some hump an&rsquo; 
+      whisky&mdash;good whisky&mdash;an&rsquo; we talked av this an&rsquo; that the while.
+      &ldquo;It goes hard on me now,&rdquo; sez I, wipin&rsquo; my mouth, &ldquo;to confiscate that
+      piece av furniture, but justice is justice.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Ye&rsquo;ve not got ut yet,&rdquo;
+       sez he; &ldquo;there&rsquo;s the fight between.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;There is,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;an&rsquo; a good
+      fight. Ye shall have the pick av the best quality in my rigimint for the
+      dinner you have given this day.&rdquo; Thin I came hot-foot to you two. Hould
+      your tongue, the both. &lsquo;Tis this way. To-morrow we three will go there an&rsquo; 
+      he shall have his pick betune me an&rsquo; Jock. Jock&rsquo;s a deceivin&rsquo; fighter, for
+      he is all fat to the eye, an&rsquo; he moves slow. Now, I&rsquo;m all beef to the
+      look, an&rsquo; I move quick. By my reckonin&rsquo; the Dearsley man won&rsquo;t take me; so
+      me an&rsquo; Orth&rsquo;ris &lsquo;ll see fair play. Jock, I tell you, &rsquo;twill be big fightin&rsquo;&mdash;whipped,
+      wid the cream above the jam. Afther the business &lsquo;twill take a good three
+      av us&mdash;Jock &lsquo;ll be very hurt&mdash;to haul away that sedan-chair.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Palanquin.&rsquo; This from Ortheris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Fwhatever ut is, we must have ut. &lsquo;Tis the only sellin&rsquo; piece av property
+      widin reach that we can get so cheap. An&rsquo; fwhat&rsquo;s a fight afther all? He
+      has robbed the naygur-man, dishonust. We rob him honust for the sake av
+      the whisky he gave me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But wot&rsquo;ll we do with the bloomin&rsquo; article when we&rsquo;ve got it? Them
+      palanquins are as big as &lsquo;ouses, an&rsquo; uncommon &lsquo;ard to sell, as McCleary
+      said when ye stole the sentry-box from the Curragh.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Who&rsquo;s goin&rsquo; to do t&rsquo; fightin&rsquo;?&rsquo; said Learoyd, and Ortheris subsided. The
+      three returned to barracks without a word. Mulvaney&rsquo;s last argument
+      clinched the matter. This palanquin was property, vendible, and to be
+      attained in the simplest and least embarrassing fashion. It would
+      eventually become beer. Great was Mulvaney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next afternoon a procession of three formed itself and disappeared into
+      the scrub in the direction of the new railway line. Learoyd alone was
+      without care, for Mulvaney dived darkly into the future, and little
+      Ortheris feared the unknown. What befell at that interview in the lonely
+      pay-shed by the side of the half-built embankment, only a few hundred
+      coolies know, and their tale is confusing one, running thus&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We were at work. Three men in red coats came. They saw the Sahib&mdash;Dearsley
+      Sahib. They made oration; and noticeably the small man among the
+      red-coats. Dearsley Sahib also made oration, and used many very strong
+      words. Upon this talk they departed together to an open space, and there
+      the fat man in the red coat fought with Dearsley Sahib after the custom of
+      white men&mdash;with his hands, making no noise, and never at all pulling
+      Dearsley Sahib&rsquo;s hair. Such of us as were not afraid beheld these things
+      for just so long a time as a man needs to cook the mid-day meal. The small
+      man in the red coat had possessed himself of Dearsley Sahib&rsquo;s watch. No,
+      he did not steal that watch. He held it in his hand, and at certain
+      seasons made outcry, and the twain ceased their combat, which was like the
+      combat of young bulls in spring. Both men were soon all red, but Dearsley
+      Sahib was much more red than the other. Seeing this, and fearing for his
+      life&mdash;because we greatly loved him&mdash;some fifty of us made shift
+      to rush upon the red-coats. But a certain man&mdash;very black as to the
+      hair, and in no way to be confused with the small man, or the fat man who
+      fought&mdash;that man, we affirm, ran upon us, and of us he embraced some
+      ten or fifty in both arms, and beat our heads together, so that our livers
+      turned to water, and we ran away. It is not good to interfere in the
+      fightings of white men. After that Dearsley Sahib fell and did not rise,
+      these men jumped upon his stomach and despoiled him of all his money, and
+      attempted to fire the pay-shed, and departed. Is it true that Dearsley
+      Sahib makes no complaint of these latter things having been done? We were
+      senseless with fear, and do not at all remember. There was no palanquin
+      near the pay-shed. What do we know about palanquins? Is it true that
+      Dearsley Sahib does not return to this place, on account of his sickness,
+      for ten days? This is the fault of those bad men in the red coats, who
+      should be severely punished; for Dearsley Sahib is both our father and
+      mother, and we love him much. Yet, if Dearsley Sahib does not return to
+      this place at all, we will speak the truth. There was a palanquin, for the
+      up-keep of which we were forced to pay nine-tenths of our monthly wage. On
+      such mulctings Dearsley Sahib allowed us to make obeisance to him before
+      the palanquin. What could we do? We were poor men. He took a full half of
+      our wages. Will the Government repay us those moneys? Those three men in
+      red coats bore the palanquin upon their shoulders and departed. All the
+      money that Dearsley Sahib had taken from us was in the cushions of that
+      palanquin. Therefore they stole it. Thousands of rupees were there&mdash;all
+      our money. It was our bank-box, to fill which we cheerfully contributed to
+      Dearsley Sahib three-sevenths of our monthly wage. Why does the white man
+      look upon us with the eye of disfavour? Before God, there was a palanquin,
+      and now there is no palanquin; and if they send the police here to make
+      inquisition, we can only say that there never has been any palanquin. Why
+      should a palanquin be near these works? We are poor men, and we know
+      nothing.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such is the simplest version of the simplest story connected with the
+      descent upon Dearsley. From the lips of the coolies I received it.
+      Dearsley himself was in no condition to say anything, and Mulvaney
+      preserved a massive silence, broken only by the occasional licking of the
+      lips. He had seen a fight so gorgeous that even his power of speech was
+      taken from him. I respected that reserve until, three days after the
+      affair, I discovered in a disused stable in my quarters a palanquin of
+      unchastened splendour&mdash;evidently in past days the litter of a queen.
+      The pole whereby it swung between the shoulders of the bearers was rich
+      with the painted papier-mache of Cashmere. The shoulder-pads were of
+      yellow silk. The panels of the litter itself were ablaze with the loves of
+      all the gods and goddesses of the Hindu Pantheon&mdash;lacquer on cedar.
+      The cedar sliding doors were fitted with hasps of translucent Jaipur
+      enamel and ran in grooves shod with silver. The cushions were of brocaded
+      Delhi silk, and the curtains which once hid any glimpse of the beauty of
+      the king&rsquo;s palace were stiff with gold. Closer investigation showed that
+      the entire fabric was everywhere rubbed and discoloured by time and wear;
+      but even thus it was sufficiently gorgeous to deserve housing on the
+      threshold of a royal zenana. I found no fault with it, except that it was
+      in my stable. Then, trying to lift it by the silver-shod shoulder-pole, I
+      laughed. The road from Dearsley&rsquo;s pay-shed to the cantonment was a narrow
+      and uneven one, and, traversed by three very inexperienced
+      palanquin-bearers, one of whom was sorely battered about the head, must
+      have been a path of torment. Still I did not quite recognise the right of
+      the three musketeers to turn me into a &lsquo;fence&rsquo; for stolen property.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m askin&rsquo; you to warehouse ut,&rsquo; said Mulvaney when he was brought to
+      consider the question. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s no steal in ut. Dearsley tould us we cud
+      have ut if we fought. Jock fought&mdash;an&rsquo;, oh, sorr, when the throuble
+      was at uts finest an&rsquo; Jock was bleedin&rsquo; like a stuck pig, an&rsquo; little
+      Orth&rsquo;ris was shquealin&rsquo; on one leg chewin&rsquo; big bites out av Dearsley&rsquo;s
+      watch, I wud ha&rsquo; given my place at the fight to have had you see wan
+      round. He tuk Jock, as I suspicioned he would, an&rsquo; Jock was deceptive.
+      Nine roun&rsquo;s they were even matched, an&rsquo; at the tenth&mdash;About that
+      palanquin now. There&rsquo;s not the least throuble in the world, or we wud not
+      ha&rsquo; brought ut here. You will ondherstand that the Queen&mdash;God bless
+      her!&mdash;does not reckon for a privit soldier to kape elephints an&rsquo; 
+      palanquins an&rsquo; sich in barricks. Afther we had dhragged ut down from
+      Dearsley&rsquo;s through that cruel scrub that near broke Orth&rsquo;ris&rsquo;s heart, we
+      set ut in the ravine for a night; an&rsquo; a thief av a porcupine an&rsquo; a
+      civet-cat av a jackal roosted in ut, as well we knew in the mornin&rsquo;. I put
+      ut to you, sorr, is an elegint palanquin, fit for the princess, the
+      natural abidin&rsquo; place av all the vermin in cantonmints? We brought ut to
+      you, afther dhark, and put ut in your shtable. Do not let your conscience
+      prick. Think av the rejoicin&rsquo; men in the pay-shed yonder&mdash;lookin&rsquo; at
+      Dearsley wid his head tied up in a towel&mdash;an&rsquo; well knowin&rsquo; that they
+      can dhraw their pay ivry month widout stoppages for riffles. Indirectly,
+      sorr, you have rescued from an onprincipled son av a night-hawk the
+      peasanthry av a numerous village. An&rsquo; besides, will I let that sedan-chair
+      rot on our hands? Not I. &lsquo;Tis not every day a piece av pure joolry comes
+      into the market. There&rsquo;s not a king widin these forty miles&rsquo;&mdash;he
+      waved his hand round the dusty horizon&mdash;&lsquo;not a king wud not be glad
+      to buy ut. Some day meself, whin I have leisure, I&rsquo;ll take ut up along the
+      road an&rsquo; dishpose av ut.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How?&rsquo; said I, for I knew the man was capable of anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Get into ut, av coorse, and keep wan eye open through the curtains. Whin
+      I see a likely man av the native persuasion, I will descind blushin&rsquo; from
+      my canopy and say, &ldquo;Buy a palanquin, ye black scutt?&rdquo; I will have to hire
+      four men to carry me first, though; and that&rsquo;s impossible till next
+      pay-day.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Curiously enough, Learoyd, who had fought for the prize, and in the
+      winning secured the highest pleasure life had to offer him, was altogether
+      disposed to undervalue it, while Ortheris openly said it would be better
+      to break the thing up. Dearsley, he argued, might be a many-sided man,
+      capable, despite his magnificent fighting qualities, of setting in motion
+      the machinery of the civil law&mdash;a thing much abhorred by the soldier.
+      Under any circumstances their fun had come and passed; the next pay-day
+      was close at hand, when there would be beer for all. Wherefore longer
+      conserve the painted palanquin?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A first-class rifle-shot an&rsquo; a good little man av your inches you are,&rsquo; 
+      said Mulvaney. &lsquo;But you niver had a head worth a soft-boiled egg. &lsquo;Tis me
+      has to lie awake av nights schamin&rsquo; an&rsquo; plottin&rsquo; for the three av us.
+      Orth&rsquo;ris, me son, &lsquo;tis no matther av a few gallons av beer&mdash;no, nor
+      twenty gallons&mdash;but tubs an&rsquo; vats an&rsquo; firkins in that sedan-chair.
+      Who ut was, an&rsquo; what ut was, an&rsquo; how ut got there, we do not know; but I
+      know in my bones that you an&rsquo; me an&rsquo; Jock wid his sprained thumb will get
+      a fortune thereby. Lave me alone, an&rsquo; let me think.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime the palanquin stayed in my stall, the key of which was in
+      Mulvaney&rsquo;s hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pay-day came, and with it beer. It was not in experience to hope that
+      Mulvaney, dried by four weeks&rsquo; drought, would avoid excess. Next morning
+      he and the palanquin had disappeared. He had taken the precaution of
+      getting three days&rsquo; leave &lsquo;to see a friend on the railway,&rsquo; and the
+      colonel, well knowing that the seasonal outburst was near, and hoping it
+      would spend its force beyond the limits of his jurisdiction, cheerfully
+      gave him all he demanded. At this point Mulvaney&rsquo;s history, as recorded in
+      the mess-room, stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris carried it not much further. &lsquo;No, &lsquo;e wasn&rsquo;t drunk,&rsquo; said the
+      little man loyally, &lsquo;the liquor was no more than feelin&rsquo; its way round
+      inside of &lsquo;im; but &lsquo;e went an&rsquo; filled that &lsquo;ole bloomin&rsquo; palanquin with
+      bottles &lsquo;fore &lsquo;e went off. &lsquo;E&rsquo;s gone an&rsquo; &lsquo;ired six men to carry &lsquo;im, an&rsquo; I
+      &lsquo;ad to &lsquo;elp &lsquo;im into &lsquo;is nupshal couch, &lsquo;cause &lsquo;e wouldn&rsquo;t &lsquo;ear reason.
+      &lsquo;E&rsquo;s gone off in &lsquo;is shirt an&rsquo; trousies, swearin&rsquo; tremenjus&mdash;gone
+      down the road in the palanquin, wavin&rsquo; &lsquo;is legs out o&rsquo; windy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;but where?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now you arx me a question. &lsquo;E said &lsquo;e was goin&rsquo; to sell that palanquin,
+      but from observations what happened when I was stuffin&rsquo; &lsquo;im through the
+      door, I fancy &lsquo;e&rsquo;s gone to the new embankment to mock at Dearsley. &lsquo;Soon
+      as Jock&rsquo;s off duty I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; there to see if &lsquo;e&rsquo;s safe&mdash;not Mulvaney,
+      but t&rsquo;other man. My saints, but I pity &lsquo;im as &lsquo;elps Terence out o&rsquo; the
+      palanquin when &lsquo;e&rsquo;s once fair drunk!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He&rsquo;ll come back without harm,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Corse &lsquo;e will. On&rsquo;y question is, what &lsquo;ll &lsquo;e be doin&rsquo; on the road?
+      Killing Dearsley, like as not. &lsquo;E shouldn&rsquo;t &lsquo;a gone without Jock or me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reinforced by Learoyd, Ortheris sought the foreman of the coolie-gang.
+      Dearsley&rsquo;s head was still embellished with towels. Mulvaney, drunk or
+      sober, would have struck no man in that condition, and Dearsley
+      indignantly denied that he would have taken advantage of the intoxicated
+      brave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I had my pick o&rsquo; you two,&rsquo; he explained to Learoyd, &lsquo;and you got my
+      palanquin&mdash;not before I&rsquo;d made my profit on it. Why&rsquo;d I do harm when
+      everything&rsquo;s settled? Your man DID come here&mdash;drunk as Davy&rsquo;s sow on
+      a frosty night&mdash;came a-purpose to mock me&mdash;stuck his head out of
+      the door an&rsquo; called me a crucified hodman. I made him drunker, an&rsquo; sent
+      him along. But I never touched him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To these things, Learoyd, slow to perceive the evidences of sincerity,
+      answered only, &lsquo;If owt comes to Mulvaaney &lsquo;long o&rsquo; you, I&rsquo;ll gripple you,
+      clouts or no clouts on your ugly head, an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll draw t&rsquo; throat twistyways,
+      man. See there now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The embassy removed itself, and Dearsley, the battered, laughed alone over
+      his supper that evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three days passed&mdash;a fourth and a fifth. The week drew to a close and
+      Mulvaney did not return. He, his royal palanquin, and his six attendants,
+      had vanished into air. A very large and very tipsy soldier, his feet
+      sticking out of the litter of a reigning princess, is not a thing to
+      travel along the ways without comment. Yet no man of all the country round
+      had seen any such wonder. He was, and he was not; and Learoyd suggested
+      the immediate smashment of Dearsley as a sacrifice to his ghost. Ortheris
+      insisted that all was well, and in the light of past experience his hopes
+      seemed reasonable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;When Mulvaney goes up the road,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;&rsquo;e&rsquo;s like to go a very long
+      ways up, specially when &lsquo;e&rsquo;s so blue drunk as &lsquo;e is now. But what gits me
+      is &lsquo;is not bein&rsquo; &lsquo;eard of pullin&rsquo; wool off the niggers somewheres about.
+      That don&rsquo;t look good. The drink must ha&rsquo; died out in &lsquo;im by this, unless
+      &lsquo;e&rsquo;s broke a bank, an&rsquo; then&mdash;Why don&rsquo;t &lsquo;e come back? &lsquo;E didn&rsquo;t ought
+      to ha&rsquo; gone off without us.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even Ortheris&rsquo;s heart sank at the end of the seventh day, for half the
+      regiment were out scouring the country-side, and Learoyd had been forced
+      to fight two men who hinted openly that Mulvaney had deserted. To do him
+      justice, the colonel laughed at the notion, even when it was put forward
+      by his much-trusted adjutant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mulvaney would as soon think of deserting as you would,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;No;
+      he&rsquo;s either fallen into a mischief among the villagers&mdash;and yet that
+      isn&rsquo;t likely, for he&rsquo;d blarney himself out of the Pit; or else he is
+      engaged on urgent private affairs&mdash;some stupendous devilment that we
+      shall hear of at mess after it has been the round of the barrack-rooms.
+      The worst of it is that I shall have to give him twenty-eight days&rsquo; 
+      confinement at least for being absent without leave, just when I most want
+      him to lick the new batch of recruits into shape. I never knew a man who
+      could put a polish on young soldiers as quickly as Mulvaney can. How does
+      he do it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;With blarney and the buckle-end of a belt, sir,&rsquo; said the adjutant. &lsquo;He
+      is worth a couple of non-commissioned officers when we are dealing with an
+      Irish draft, and the London lads seem to adore him. The worst of it is
+      that if he goes to the cells the other two are neither to hold nor to bind
+      till he comes out again. I believe Ortheris preaches mutiny on those
+      occasions, and I know that the mere presence of Learoyd mourning for
+      Mulvaney kills all the cheerfulness of his room. The sergeants tell me
+      that he allows no man to laugh when he feels unhappy. They are a queer
+      gang.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For all that, I wish we had a few more of them. I like a well-conducted
+      regiment, but these pasty-faced, shifty-eyed, mealy-mouthed young
+      slouchers from the depot worry me sometimes with their offensive virtue.
+      They don&rsquo;t seem to have backbone enough to do anything but play cards and
+      prowl round the married quarters. I believe I&rsquo;d forgive that old villain
+      on the spot if he turned up with any sort of explanation that I could in
+      decency accept.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Not likely to be much difficulty about that, sir,&rsquo; said the adjutant.
+      &lsquo;Mulvaney&rsquo;s explanations are only one degree less wonderful than his
+      performances. They say that when he was in the Black Tyrone, before he
+      came to us, he was discovered on the banks of the Liffey trying to sell
+      his colonel&rsquo;s charger to a Donegal dealer as a perfect lady&rsquo;s hack.
+      Shackbolt commanded the Tyrone then.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Shackbolt must have had apoplexy at the thought of his ramping war-horses
+      answering to that description. He used to buy unbacked devils, and tame
+      them on some pet theory of starvation. What did Mulvaney say?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That he was a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
+      Animals, anxious to &ldquo;sell the poor baste where he would get something to
+      fill out his dimples.&rdquo; Shackbolt laughed, but I fancy that was why
+      Mulvaney exchanged to ours.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I wish he were back,&rsquo; said the colonel; &lsquo;for I like him and believe he
+      likes me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening, to cheer our souls, Learoyd, Ortheris, and I went into the
+      waste to smoke out a porcupine. All the dogs attended, but even their
+      clamour&mdash;and they began to discuss the shortcomings of porcupines
+      before they left cantonments&mdash;could not take us out of ourselves. A
+      large, low moon turned the tops of the plume-grass to silver, and the
+      stunted camelthorn bushes and sour tamarisks into the likenesses of
+      trooping devils. The smell of the sun had not left the earth, and little
+      aimless winds blowing across the rose-gardens to the southward brought the
+      scent of dried roses and water. Our fire once started, and the dogs
+      craftily disposed to wait the dash of the porcupine, we climbed to the top
+      of a rain-scarred hillock of earth, and looked across the scrub seamed
+      with cattle paths, white with the long grass, and dotted with spots of
+      level pond-bottom, where the snipe would gather in winter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;This,&rsquo; said Ortheris, with a sigh, as he took in the unkempt desolation
+      of it all, &lsquo;this is sanguinary. This is unusually sanguinary. Sort o&rsquo; mad
+      country. Like a grate when the fire&rsquo;s put out by the sun.&rsquo; He shaded his
+      eyes against the moonlight. &lsquo;An&rsquo; there&rsquo;s a loony dancin&rsquo; in the middle of
+      it all. Quite right. I&rsquo;d dance too if I wasn&rsquo;t so downheart.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There pranced a Portent in the face of the moon&mdash;a huge and ragged
+      spirit of the waste, that flapped its wings from afar. It had risen out of
+      the earth; it was coming towards us, and its outline was never twice the
+      same. The toga, table-cloth, or dressing-gown, whatever the creature wore,
+      took a hundred shapes. Once it stopped on a neighbouring mound and flung
+      all its legs and arms to the winds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;My, but that scarecrow &lsquo;as got &lsquo;em bad!&rsquo; said Ortheris. &lsquo;Seems like if &lsquo;e
+      comes any furder we&rsquo;ll &lsquo;ave to argify with &lsquo;im.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Learoyd raised himself from the dirt as a bull clears his flanks of the
+      wallow. And as a bull bellows, so he, after a short minute at gaze, gave
+      tongue to the stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;MULVAANEY! MULVAANEY! A-hoo!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh then it was that we yelled, and the figure dipped into the hollow,
+      till, with a crash of rending grass, the lost one strode up to the light
+      of the fire and disappeared to the waist in a wave of joyous dogs! Then
+      Learoyd and Ortheris gave greeting, bass and falsetto together, both
+      swallowing a lump in the throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You damned fool!&rsquo; said they, and severally pounded him with their fists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go easy!&rsquo; he answered; wrapping a huge arm round each. &lsquo;I would have you
+      to know that I am a god, to be treated as such&mdash;tho&rsquo;, by my faith, I
+      fancy I&rsquo;ve got to go to the guard-room just like a privit soldier.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter part of the sentence destroyed the suspicions raised by the
+      former. Any one would have been justified in regarding Mulvaney as mad. He
+      was hatless and shoeless, and his shirt and trousers were dropping off
+      him. But he wore one wondrous garment&mdash;a gigantic cloak that fell
+      from collar-bone to heel&mdash;of pale pink silk, wrought all over in
+      cunningest needlework of hands long since dead, with the loves of the
+      Hindu gods. The monstrous figures leaped in and out of the light of the
+      fire as he settled the folds round him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris handled the stuff respectfully for a moment while I was trying to
+      remember where I had seen it before. Then he screamed, &lsquo;What &lsquo;AVE you done
+      with the palanquin? You&rsquo;re wearin&rsquo; the linin&rsquo;.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am,&rsquo; said the Irishman, &lsquo;an&rsquo; by the same token the &lsquo;broidery is
+      scrapin&rsquo; my hide off. I&rsquo;ve lived in this sumpshus counterpane for four
+      days. Me son, I begin to ondherstand why the naygur is no use. Widout me
+      boots, an&rsquo; me trousies like an openwork stocking on a gyurl&rsquo;s leg at a
+      dance, I begin to feel like a naygur-man&mdash;all fearful an&rsquo; timoreous.
+      Give me a pipe an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll tell on.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lit a pipe, resumed his grip of his two friends, and rocked to and fro
+      in a gale of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mulvaney,&rsquo; said Ortheris sternly, &lsquo;&rsquo;tain&rsquo;t no time for laughin&rsquo;. You&rsquo;ve
+      given Jock an&rsquo; me more trouble than you&rsquo;re worth. You &lsquo;ave been absent
+      without leave an&rsquo; you&rsquo;ll go into cells for that; an&rsquo; you &lsquo;ave come back
+      disgustin&rsquo;ly dressed an&rsquo; most improper in the linin&rsquo; o&rsquo; that bloomin&rsquo; 
+      palanquin. Instid of which you laugh. An&rsquo; WE thought you was dead all the
+      time.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bhoys,&rsquo; said the culprit, still shaking gently, &lsquo;whin I&rsquo;ve done my tale
+      you may cry if you like, an&rsquo; little Orth&rsquo;ris here can thrample my inside
+      out. Ha&rsquo; done an&rsquo; listen. My performances have been stupenjus: my luck has
+      been the blessed luck av the British Army&mdash;an&rsquo; there&rsquo;s no betther
+      than that. I went out dhrunk an&rsquo; dhrinkin&rsquo; in the palanquin, and I have
+      come back a pink god. Did any of you go to Dearsley afther my time was up?
+      He was at the bottom of ut all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah said so,&rsquo; murmured Learoyd. &lsquo;To-morrow ah&rsquo;ll smash t&rsquo; face in upon his
+      heead.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ye will not. Dearsley&rsquo;s a jool av a man. Afther Ortheris had put me into
+      the palanquin an&rsquo; the six bearer-men were gruntin&rsquo; down the road, I tuk
+      thought to mock Dearsley for that fight. So I tould thim, &ldquo;Go to the
+      embankmint,&rdquo; and there, bein&rsquo; most amazin&rsquo; full, I shtuck my head out av
+      the concern an&rsquo; passed compliments wid Dearsley. I must ha&rsquo; miscalled him
+      outrageous, for whin I am that way the power av the tongue comes on me. I
+      can bare remimber tellin&rsquo; him that his mouth opened endways like the mouth
+      av a skate, which was thrue afther Learoyd had handled ut; an&rsquo; I clear
+      remimber his takin&rsquo; no manner nor matter av offence, but givin&rsquo; me a big
+      dhrink of beer. &lsquo;Twas the beer did the thrick, for I crawled back into the
+      palanquin, steppin&rsquo; on me right ear wid me left foot, an&rsquo; thin I slept
+      like the dead. Wanst I half-roused, an&rsquo; begad the noise in my head was
+      tremenjus&mdash;roarin&rsquo; and rattlin&rsquo; an&rsquo; poundin&rsquo; such as was quite new to
+      me. &ldquo;Mother av Mercy,&rdquo; thinks I, &ldquo;phwat a concertina I will have on my
+      shoulders whin I wake!&rdquo; An&rsquo; wid that I curls mysilf up to sleep before ut
+      should get hould on me. Bhoys, that noise was not dhrink, &lsquo;twas the rattle
+      av a thrain!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There followed an impressive pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, he had put me on a thrain&mdash;put me, palanquin an&rsquo; all, an&rsquo; six
+      black assassins av his own coolies that was in his nefarious confidence,
+      on the flat av a ballast-thruck, and we were rowlin&rsquo; an&rsquo; bowlin&rsquo; along to
+      Benares. Glory be that I did not wake up thin an&rsquo; introjuce mysilf to the
+      coolies. As I was sayin&rsquo;, I slept for the betther part av a day an&rsquo; a
+      night. But remimber you, that that man Dearsley had packed me off on wan
+      av his material-thrains to Benares, all for to make me overstay my leave
+      an&rsquo; get me into the cells.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The explanation was an eminently rational one. Benares lay at least ten
+      hours by rail from the cantonments, and nothing in the world could have
+      saved Mulvaney from arrest as a deserter had he appeared there in the
+      apparel of his orgies. Dearsley had not forgotten to take revenge.
+      Learoyd, drawing back a little, began to place soft blows over selected
+      portions of Mulvaney&rsquo;s body. His thoughts were away on the embankment, and
+      they meditated evil for Dearsley. Mulvaney continued&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Whin I was full awake the palanquin was set down in a street, I
+      suspicioned, for I cud hear people passin&rsquo; an&rsquo; talkin&rsquo;. But I knew well I
+      was far from home. There is a queer smell upon our cantonments&mdash;a
+      smell av dried earth and brick-kilns wid whiffs av cavalry stable-litter.
+      This place smelt marigold flowers an&rsquo; bad water, an&rsquo; wanst somethin&rsquo; alive
+      came an&rsquo; blew heavy with his muzzle at the chink av the shutter. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s in
+      a village I am,&rdquo; thinks I to mysilf, &ldquo;an&rsquo; the parochial buffalo is
+      investigatin&rsquo; the palanquin.&rdquo; But anyways I had no desire to move. Only
+      lie still whin you&rsquo;re in foreign parts an&rsquo; the standin&rsquo; luck av the
+      British Army will carry ye through. That is an epigram. I made ut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thin a lot av whishperin&rsquo; divils surrounded the palanquin. &ldquo;Take ut up,&rdquo;
+       sez wan man. &ldquo;But who&rsquo;ll pay us?&rdquo; sez another. &ldquo;The Maharanee&rsquo;s minister,
+      av coorse,&rdquo; sez the man. &ldquo;Oho!&rdquo; sez I to mysilf, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a quane in me own
+      right, wid a minister to pay me expenses. I&rsquo;ll be an emperor if I lie
+      still long enough; but this is no village I&rsquo;ve found.&rdquo; I lay quiet, but I
+      gummed me right eye to a crack av the shutters, an&rsquo; I saw that the whole
+      street was crammed wid palanquins an&rsquo; horses, an&rsquo; a sprinklin&rsquo; av naked
+      priests all yellow powder an&rsquo; tigers&rsquo; tails. But I may tell you, Orth&rsquo;ris,
+      an&rsquo; you, Learoyd, that av all the palanquins ours was the most imperial
+      an&rsquo; magnificent. Now a palanquin means a native lady all the world over,
+      except whin a soldier av the Quane happens to be takin&rsquo; a ride. &ldquo;Women an&rsquo; 
+      priests!&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Your father&rsquo;s son is in the right pew this time,
+      Terence. There will be proceedin&rsquo;s.&rdquo; Six black divils in pink muslin tuk
+      up the palanquin, an&rsquo; oh! but the rowlin&rsquo; an&rsquo; the rockin&rsquo; made me sick.
+      Thin we got fair jammed among the palanquins&mdash;not more than fifty av
+      them&mdash;an&rsquo; we grated an&rsquo; bumped like Queenstown potato-smacks in a
+      runnin&rsquo; tide. I cud hear the women gigglin&rsquo; and squirkin&rsquo; in their
+      palanquins, but mine was the royal equipage. They made way for ut, an&rsquo;,
+      begad, the pink muslin men o&rsquo; mine were howlin&rsquo;, &ldquo;Room for the Maharanee
+      av Gokral-Seetarun.&rdquo; Do you know aught av the lady, sorr?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said I. &lsquo;She is a very estimable old queen of the Central Indian
+      States, and they say she is fat. How on earth could she go to Benares
+      without all the city knowing her palanquin?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Twas the eternal foolishness av the naygur-man. They saw the palanquin
+      lying loneful an&rsquo; forlornsome, an&rsquo; the beauty av ut, after Dearsley&rsquo;s men
+      had dhropped ut and gone away, an&rsquo; they gave ut the best name that
+      occurred to thim. Quite right too. For aught we know the ould lady was
+      thravellin&rsquo; incog&mdash;like me. I&rsquo;m glad to hear she&rsquo;s fat. I was no
+      light weight mysilf, an&rsquo; my men were mortial anxious to dhrop me under a
+      great big archway promiscuously ornamented wid the most improper carvin&rsquo;s
+      an&rsquo; cuttin&rsquo;s I iver saw. Begad! they made me blush&mdash;like a&mdash;like
+      a Maharanee.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The temple of Prithi-Devi,&rsquo; I murmured, remembering the monstrous horrors
+      of that sculptured archway at Benares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Pretty Devilskins, savin&rsquo; your presence, sorr! There was nothin&rsquo; pretty
+      about ut, except me. &lsquo;Twas all half dhark, an&rsquo; whin the coolies left they
+      shut a big black gate behind av us, an&rsquo; half a company av fat yellow
+      priests began pully-haulin&rsquo; the palanquins into a dharker place yet&mdash;a
+      big stone hall full av pillars, an&rsquo; gods, an&rsquo; incense, an&rsquo; all manner av
+      similar thruck. The gate disconcerted me, for I perceived I wud have to go
+      forward to get out, my retreat bein&rsquo; cut off. By the same token a good
+      priest makes a bad palanquin-coolie. Begad! they nearly turned me inside
+      out draggin&rsquo; the palanquin to the temple. Now the disposishin av the
+      forces inside was this way. The Maharanee av Gokral-Seetarun&mdash;that
+      was me&mdash;lay by the favour av Providence on the far left flank behind
+      the dhark av a pillar carved with elephints&rsquo; heads. The remainder av the
+      palanquins was in a big half circle facing in to the biggest, fattest, an&rsquo; 
+      most amazin&rsquo; she-god that iver I dreamed av. Her head ran up into the
+      black above us, an&rsquo; her feet stuck out in the light av a little fire av
+      melted butter that a priest was feedin&rsquo; out av a butter-dish. Thin a man
+      began to sing an&rsquo; play on somethin&rsquo; back in the dhark, an &lsquo;twas a queer
+      song. Ut made my hair lift on the back av my neck. Thin the doors av all
+      the palanquins slid back, an&rsquo; the women bundled out. I saw what I&rsquo;ll niver
+      see again. &lsquo;Twas more glorious than thransformations at a pantomime, for
+      they was in pink an&rsquo; blue an&rsquo; silver an&rsquo; red an&rsquo; grass green, wid di&rsquo;monds
+      an&rsquo; im&rsquo;ralds an&rsquo; great red rubies all over thim. But that was the least
+      part av the glory. O bhoys, they were more lovely than the like av any
+      loveliness in hiven; ay, their little bare feet were betther than the
+      white hands av a lord&rsquo;s lady, an&rsquo; their mouths were like puckered roses,
+      an&rsquo; their eyes were bigger an&rsquo; dharker than the eyes av any livin&rsquo; women
+      I&rsquo;ve seen. Ye may laugh, but I&rsquo;m speakin&rsquo; truth. I niver saw the like, an&rsquo; 
+      niver I will again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Seeing that in all probability you were watching the wives and daughters
+      of most of the Kings of India, the chances are that you won&rsquo;t,&rsquo; I said,
+      for it was dawning on me that Mulvaney had stumbled upon a big Queens&rsquo; 
+      Praying at Benares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I niver will,&rsquo; he said mournfully. &lsquo;That sight doesn&rsquo;t come twist to any
+      man. It made me ashamed to watch. A fat priest knocked at my door. I
+      didn&rsquo;t think he&rsquo;d have the insolince to disturb the Maharanee av
+      Gokral-Seetarun, so I lay still. &ldquo;The old cow&rsquo;s asleep,&rdquo; sez he to
+      another. &ldquo;Let her be,&rdquo; sez that. &ldquo;&lsquo;Twill be long before she has a calf!&rdquo; I
+      might ha&rsquo; known before he spoke that all a woman prays for in Injia&mdash;an&rsquo; 
+      for matter o&rsquo; that in England too&mdash;is childher. That made me more
+      sorry I&rsquo;d come, me bein&rsquo;, as you well know, a childless man.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent for a moment, thinking of his little son, dead many years
+      ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They prayed, an&rsquo; the butter-fires blazed up an&rsquo; the incense turned
+      everything blue, an&rsquo; between that an&rsquo; the fires the women looked as tho&rsquo; 
+      they were all ablaze an&rsquo; twinklin&rsquo;. They took hold av the she-god&rsquo;s knees,
+      they cried out an&rsquo; they threw themselves about, an&rsquo; that
+      world-without-end-amen music was dhrivin&rsquo; thim mad. Mother av Hiven! how
+      they cried, an&rsquo; the ould she-god grinnin&rsquo; above thim all so scornful! The
+      dhrink was dyin&rsquo; out in me fast, an&rsquo; I was thinkin&rsquo; harder than the
+      thoughts wud go through my head&mdash;thinkin&rsquo; how to get out, an&rsquo; all
+      manner of nonsense as well. The women were rockin&rsquo; in rows, their di&rsquo;mond
+      belts clickin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; the tears runnin&rsquo; out betune their hands, an&rsquo; the
+      lights were goin&rsquo; lower an&rsquo; dharker. Thin there was a blaze like lightnin&rsquo; 
+      from the roof, an&rsquo; that showed me the inside av the palanquin, an&rsquo; at the
+      end where my foot was, stood the livin&rsquo; spit an&rsquo; image o&rsquo; mysilf worked on
+      the linin&rsquo;. This man here, ut was.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hunted in the folds of his pink cloak, ran a hand under one, and thrust
+      into the firelight a foot-long embroidered presentment of the great god
+      Krishna, playing on a flute. The heavy jowl, the staring eye, and the
+      blue-black moustache of the god made up a far-off resemblance to Mulvaney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The blaze was gone in a wink, but the whole schame came to me thin. I
+      believe I was mad too. I slid the off-shutter open an&rsquo; rowled out into the
+      dhark behind the elephint-head pillar, tucked up my trousies to my knees,
+      slipped off my boots an&rsquo; tuk a general hould av all the pink linin&rsquo; av the
+      palanquin. Glory be, ut ripped out like a woman&rsquo;s dhriss whin you tread on
+      ut at a sergeants&rsquo; ball, an&rsquo; a bottle came with ut. I tuk the bottle an&rsquo; 
+      the next minut I was out av the dhark av the pillar, the pink linin&rsquo; 
+      wrapped round me most graceful, the music thunderin&rsquo; like kettledrums, an&rsquo; 
+      a could draft blowin&rsquo; round my bare legs. By this hand that did ut, I was
+      Khrishna tootlin&rsquo; on the flute&mdash;the god that the rig&rsquo;mental chaplain
+      talks about. A sweet sight I must ha&rsquo; looked. I knew my eyes were big, and
+      my face was wax-white, an&rsquo; at the worst I must ha&rsquo; looked like a ghost.
+      But they took me for the livin&rsquo; god. The music stopped, and the women were
+      dead dumb an&rsquo; I crooked my legs like a shepherd on a china basin, an&rsquo; I
+      did the ghost-waggle with my feet as I had done ut at the rig&rsquo;mental
+      theatre many times, an&rsquo; I slid acrost the width av that temple in front av
+      the she-god tootlin&rsquo; on the beer bottle.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wot did you toot?&rsquo; demanded Ortheris the practical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Me? Oh!&rsquo; Mulvaney sprang up, suiting the action to the word, and sliding
+      gravely in front of us, a dilapidated but imposing deity in the half
+      light. &lsquo;I sang&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &lsquo;Only say
+     You&rsquo;ll be Mrs. Brallaghan.
+     Don&rsquo;t say nay,
+     Charmin&rsquo; Judy Callaghan.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I didn&rsquo;t know me own voice when I sang. An&rsquo; oh! &lsquo;twas pitiful to see the
+      women. The darlin&rsquo;s were down on their faces. Whin I passed the last wan I
+      cud see her poor little fingers workin&rsquo; one in another as if she wanted to
+      touch my feet. So I dhrew the tail av this pink overcoat over her head for
+      the greater honour, an&rsquo; I slid into the dhark on the other side av the
+      temple, and fetched up in the arms av a big fat priest. All I wanted was
+      to get away clear. So I tuk him by his greasy throat an&rsquo; shut the speech
+      out av him. &ldquo;Out!&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Which way, ye fat heathen?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; sez he.
+      &ldquo;Man,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;White man, soldier man, common soldier man. Where in the
+      name av confusion is the back door?&rdquo; The women in the temple were still on
+      their faces, an&rsquo; a young priest was holdin&rsquo; out his arms above their
+      heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;This way,&rdquo; sez my fat friend, duckin&rsquo; behind a big bull-god an&rsquo; divin&rsquo; 
+      into a passage. Thin I remimbered that I must ha&rsquo; made the miraculous
+      reputation av that temple for the next fifty years. &ldquo;Not so fast,&rdquo; I sez,
+      an&rsquo; I held out both my hands wid a wink. That ould thief smiled like a
+      father. I tuk him by the back av the neck in case he should be wishful to
+      put a knife into me unbeknownst, an&rsquo; I ran him up an&rsquo; down the passage
+      twice to collect his sensibilities! &ldquo;Be quiet,&rdquo; sez he, in English. &ldquo;Now
+      you talk sense,&rdquo; I sez. &ldquo;Fwhat &lsquo;ll you give me for the use av that most
+      iligant palanquin I have no time to take away?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t tell,&rdquo; sez
+      he. &ldquo;Is ut like?&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;But ye might give me my railway fare. I&rsquo;m far
+      from my home an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve done you a service.&rdquo; Bhoys, &lsquo;tis a good thing to be
+      a priest. The ould man niver throubled himself to dhraw from a bank. As I
+      will prove to you subsequint, he philandered all round the slack av his
+      clothes an&rsquo; began dribblin&rsquo; ten-rupee notes, old gold mohurs, and rupees
+      into my hand till I could hould no more.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You lie!&rsquo; said Ortheris. &lsquo;You&rsquo;re mad or sunstrook. A native don&rsquo;t give
+      coin unless you cut it out o&rsquo; &lsquo;im. &lsquo;Tain&rsquo;t nature.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then my lie an&rsquo; my sunstroke is concealed under that lump av sod yonder,&rsquo; 
+      retorted Mulvaney unruffled, nodding across the scrub. &lsquo;An&rsquo; there&rsquo;s a dale
+      more in nature than your squidgy little legs have iver taken you to,
+      Orth&rsquo;ris, me son. Four hundred an&rsquo; thirty-four rupees by my reckonin&rsquo;, AN&rsquo; 
+      a big fat gold necklace that I took from him as a remimbrancer, was our
+      share in that business.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; &lsquo;e give it you for love?&rsquo; said Ortheris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We were alone in that passage. Maybe I was a trifle too pressin&rsquo;, but
+      considher fwhat I had done for the good av the temple and the iverlastin&rsquo; 
+      joy av those women. &lsquo;Twas cheap at the price. I wud ha&rsquo; taken more if I
+      cud ha&rsquo; found ut. I turned the ould man upside down at the last, but he
+      was milked dhry. Thin he opened a door in another passage an&rsquo; I found
+      mysilf up to my knees in Benares river-water, an&rsquo; bad smellin&rsquo; ut is. More
+      by token I had come out on the river-line close to the burnin&rsquo; ghat and
+      contagious to a cracklin&rsquo; corpse. This was in the heart av the night, for
+      I had been four hours in the temple. There was a crowd av boats tied up,
+      so I tuk wan an&rsquo; wint across the river. Thin I came home acrost country,
+      lyin&rsquo; up by day.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How on earth did you manage?&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How did Sir Frederick Roberts get from Cabul to Candahar? He marched an&rsquo; 
+      he niver tould how near he was to breakin&rsquo; down. That&rsquo;s why he is fwhat he
+      is. An&rsquo; now&mdash;&rsquo; Mulvaney yawned portentously. &lsquo;Now I will go an&rsquo; give
+      myself up for absince widout leave. It&rsquo;s eight an&rsquo; twenty days an&rsquo; the
+      rough end of the colonel&rsquo;s tongue in orderly room, any way you look at ut.
+      But &lsquo;tis cheap at the price.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mulvaney,&rsquo; said I softly. &lsquo;If there happens to be any sort of excuse that
+      the colonel can in any way accept, I have a notion that you&rsquo;ll get nothing
+      more than the dressing-gown. The new recruits are in, and&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Not a word more, sorr. Is ut excuses the old man wants? &lsquo;Tis not my way,
+      but he shall have thim. I&rsquo;ll tell him I was engaged in financial
+      operations connected wid a church,&rsquo; and he flapped his way to cantonments
+      and the cells, singing lustily&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &lsquo;So they sent a corp&rsquo;ril&rsquo;s file,
+     And they put me in the gyard-room
+     For conduck unbecomin&rsquo; of a soldier.&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And when he was lost in the midst of the moonlight we could hear the
+      refrain&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Bang upon the big drum, bash upon the cymbals,
+     As we go marchin&rsquo; along, boys, oh!
+     For although in this campaign
+     There&rsquo;s no whisky nor champagne,
+     We&rsquo;ll keep our spirits goin&rsquo; with a song, boys!&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Therewith he surrendered himself to the joyful and almost weeping guard,
+      and was made much of by his fellows. But to the colonel he said that he
+      had been smitten with sunstroke and had lain insensible on a villager&rsquo;s
+      cot for untold hours; and between laughter and goodwill the affair was
+      smoothed over, so that he could, next day, teach the new recruits how to
+      &lsquo;Fear God, Honour the Queen, Shoot Straight, and Keep Clean.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     What did the colonel&rsquo;s lady think?
+       Nobody never knew.
+     Somebody asked the sergeant&rsquo;s wife
+       An&rsquo; she told &lsquo;em true.
+     When you git to a man in the case
+       They&rsquo;re like a row o&rsquo; pins,
+     For the colonel&rsquo;s lady an&rsquo; Judy O&rsquo;Grady
+       Are sisters under their skins.
+                          BARRACK-ROOM BALLAD.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Al day I had followed at the heels of a pursuing army engaged on one of
+      the finest battles that ever camp of exercise beheld. Thirty thousand
+      troops had by the wisdom of the Government of India been turned loose over
+      a few thousand square miles of country to practise in peace what they
+      would never attempt in war. Consequently cavalry charged unshaken infantry
+      at the trot. Infantry captured artillery by frontal attacks delivered in
+      line of quarter columns, and mounted infantry skirmished up to the wheels
+      of an armoured train which carried nothing more deadly than a twenty-five
+      pounder Armstrong, two Nordenfeldts, and a few score volunteers all cased
+      in three-eighths-inch boiler-plate. Yet it was a very lifelike camp.
+      Operations did not cease at sundown; nobody knew the country and nobody
+      spared man or horse. There was unending cavalry scouting and almost
+      unending forced work over broken ground. The Army of the South had finally
+      pierced the centre of the Army of the North, and was pouring through the
+      gap hot-foot to capture a city of strategic importance. Its front extended
+      fanwise, the sticks being represented by regiments strung out along the
+      line of route backwards to the divisional transport columns and all the
+      lumber that trails behind an army on the move. On its right the broken
+      left of the Army of the North was flying in mass, chased by the Southern
+      horse and hammered by the Southern guns till these had been pushed far
+      beyond the limits of their last support. Then the flying sat down to rest,
+      while the elated commandant of the pursuing force telegraphed that he held
+      all in check and observation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unluckily he did not observe that three miles to his right flank a flying
+      column of Northern horse with a detachment of Ghoorkhas and British troops
+      had been pushed round, as fast as the failing light allowed, to cut across
+      the entire rear of the Southern Army, to break, as it were, all the ribs
+      of the fan where they converged by striking at the transport, reserve
+      ammunition, and artillery supplies. Their instructions were to go in,
+      avoiding the few scouts who might not have been drawn off by the pursuit,
+      and create sufficient excitement to impress the Southern Army with the
+      wisdom of guarding their own flank and rear before they captured cities.
+      It was a pretty manoeuvre, neatly carried out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Speaking for the second division of the Southern Army, our first
+      intimation of the attack was at twilight, when the artillery were
+      labouring in deep sand, most of the escort were trying to help them out,
+      and the main body of the infantry had gone on. A Noah&rsquo;s Ark of elephants,
+      camels, and the mixed menagerie of an Indian transport-train bubbled and
+      squealed behind the guns when there appeared from nowhere in particular
+      British infantry to the extent of three companies, who sprang to the heads
+      of the gun-horses and brought all to a standstill amid oaths and cheers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How&rsquo;s that, umpire?&rsquo; said the major commanding the attack, and with one
+      voice the drivers and limber gunners answered &lsquo;Hout!&rsquo; while the colonel of
+      artillery sputtered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All your scouts are charging our main body,&rsquo; said the major. &lsquo;Your flanks
+      are unprotected for two miles. I think we&rsquo;ve broken the back of this
+      division. And listen,&mdash;there go the Ghoorkhas!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A weak fire broke from the rear-guard more than a mile away, and was
+      answered by cheerful howlings. The Ghoorkhas, who should have swung clear
+      of the second division, had stepped on its tail in the dark, but drawing
+      off hastened to reach the next line of attack, which lay almost parallel
+      to us five or six miles away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our column swayed and surged irresolutely,&mdash;three batteries, the
+      divisional ammunition reserve, the baggage, and a section of the hospital
+      and bearer corps. The commandant ruefully promised to report himself &lsquo;cut
+      up&rsquo; to the nearest umpire, and commending his cavalry and all other
+      cavalry to the special care of Eblis, toiled on to resume touch with the
+      rest of the division.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll bivouac here to-night,&rsquo; said the major, &lsquo;I have a notion that the
+      Ghoorkhas will get caught. They may want us to re-form on. Stand easy till
+      the transport gets away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A hand caught my beast&rsquo;s bridle and led him out of the choking dust; a
+      larger hand deftly canted me out of the saddle; and two of the hugest
+      hands in the world received me sliding. Pleasant is the lot of the special
+      correspondent who falls into such hands as those of Privates Mulvaney,
+      Ortheris, and Learoyd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; that&rsquo;s all right,&rsquo; said the Irishman calmly. &lsquo;We thought we&rsquo;d find
+      you somewheres here by. Is there anything av yours in the transport?
+      Orth&rsquo;ris &lsquo;ll fetch ut out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris did &lsquo;fetch ut out,&rsquo; from under the trunk of an elephant, in the
+      shape of a servant and an animal both laden with medical comforts. The
+      little man&rsquo;s eyes sparkled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If the brutil an&rsquo; licentious soldiery av these parts gets sight av the
+      thruck,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, making practised investigations, &lsquo;they&rsquo;ll loot
+      ev&rsquo;rything. They&rsquo;re bein&rsquo; fed on iron-filin&rsquo;s an&rsquo; dog-biscuit these days,
+      but glory&rsquo;s no compensation for a belly-ache. Praise be, we&rsquo;re here to
+      protect you, sorr. Beer, sausage, bread (soft an&rsquo; that&rsquo;s a cur&rsquo;osity),
+      soup in a tin, whisky by the smell av ut, an&rsquo; fowls! Mother av Moses, but
+      ye take the field like a confectioner! &lsquo;Tis scand&rsquo;lus.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ere&rsquo;s a orficer,&rsquo; said Ortheris significantly. &lsquo;When the sergent&rsquo;s done
+      lushin&rsquo; the privit may clean the pot.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I bundled several things into Mulvaney&rsquo;s haversack before the major&rsquo;s hand
+      fell on my shoulder and he said tenderly, &lsquo;Requisitioned for the Queen&rsquo;s
+      service. Wolseley was quite wrong about special correspondents: they are
+      the soldier&rsquo;s best friends. Come and take pot-luck with us to-night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it happened amid laughter and shoutings that my well-considered
+      commissariat melted away to reappear later at the mess-table, which was a
+      waterproof sheet spread on the ground. The flying column had taken three
+      days&rsquo; rations with it, and there be few things nastier than government
+      rations&mdash;especially when government is experimenting with German
+      toys. Erbsenwurst, tinned beef of surpassing tinniness, compressed
+      vegetables, and meat-biscuits may be nourishing, but what Thomas Atkins
+      needs is bulk in his inside. The major, assisted by his brother officers,
+      purchased goats for the camp and so made the experiment of no effect. Long
+      before the fatigue-party sent to collect brushwood had returned, the men
+      were settled down by their valises, kettles and pots had appeared from the
+      surrounding country and were dangling over fires as the kid and the
+      compressed vegetable bubbled together; there rose a cheerful clinking of
+      mess-tins; outrageous demands for &lsquo;a little more stuffin&rsquo; with that there
+      liver-wing;&rsquo; and gust on gust of chaff as pointed as a bayonet and as
+      delicate as a gun-butt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The boys are in a good temper,&rsquo; said the major. &lsquo;They&rsquo;ll be singing
+      presently. Well, a night like this is enough to keep them happy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Over our heads burned the wonderful Indian stars, which are not all
+      pricked in on one plane, but, preserving an orderly perspective, draw the
+      eye through the velvet darkness of the void up to the barred doors of
+      heaven itself. The earth was a gray shadow more unreal than the sky. We
+      could hear her breathing lightly in the pauses between the howling of the
+      jackals, the movement of the wind in the tamarisks, and the fitful mutter
+      of musketry-fire leagues away to the left. A native woman from some unseen
+      hut began to sing, the mail-train thundered past on its way to Delhi, and
+      a roosting crow cawed drowsily. Then there was a belt-loosening silence
+      about the fires, and the even breathing of the crowded earth took up the
+      story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men, full fed, turned to tobacco and song,&mdash;their officers with
+      them. The subaltern is happy who can win the approval of the musical
+      critics in his regiment, and is honoured among the more intricate
+      step-dancers. By him, as by him who plays cricket cleverly, Thomas Atkins
+      will stand in time of need, when he will let a better officer go on alone.
+      The ruined tombs of forgotten Mussulman saints heard the ballad of Agra
+      Town, The Buffalo Battery, Marching to Kabul, The long, long Indian Day,
+      The Place where the Punkah-coolie died, and that crashing chorus which
+      announces,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Youth&rsquo;s daring spirit, manhood&rsquo;s fire,
+       Firm hand and eagle eye,
+     Must he acquire who would aspire
+       To see the gray boar die.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      To-day, of all those jovial thieves who appropriated my commissariat and
+      lay and laughed round that water-proof sheet, not one remains. They went
+      to camps that were not of exercise and battles without umpires. Burmah,
+      the Soudan, and the frontier,&mdash;fever and fight,&mdash;took them in
+      their time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I drifted across to the men&rsquo;s fires in search of Mulvaney, whom I found
+      strategically greasing his feet by the blaze. There is nothing
+      particularly lovely in the sight of a private thus engaged after a long
+      day&rsquo;s march, but when you reflect on the exact proportion of the &lsquo;might,
+      majesty, dominion, and power&rsquo; of the British Empire which stands on those
+      feet you take an interest in the proceedings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;s a blister, bad luck to ut, on the heel,&rsquo; said Mulvaney. &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t
+      touch ut. Prick ut out, little man.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris took out his house-wife, eased the trouble with a needle, stabbed
+      Mulvaney in the calf with the same weapon, and was swiftly kicked into the
+      fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve bruk the best av my toes over you, ye grinnin&rsquo; child av disruption,&rsquo; 
+      said Mulvaney, sitting cross-legged and nursing his feet; then seeing me,
+      &lsquo;Oh, ut&rsquo;s you, sorr! Be welkim, an&rsquo; take that maraudin&rsquo; scutt&rsquo;s place.
+      Jock, hold him down on the cindhers for a bit.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ortheris escaped and went elsewhere, as I took possession of the
+      hollow he had scraped for himself and lined with his greatcoat. Learoyd on
+      the other side of the fire grinned affably and in a minute fell fast
+      asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;s the height av politeness for you,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, lighting his
+      pipe with a flaming branch. &lsquo;But Jock&rsquo;s eaten half a box av your sardines
+      at wan gulp, an&rsquo; I think the tin too. What&rsquo;s the best wid you, sorr, an&rsquo; 
+      how did you happen to be on the losin&rsquo; side this day whin we captured
+      you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The Army of the South is winning all along the line,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then that line&rsquo;s the hangman&rsquo;s rope, savin&rsquo; your presence. You&rsquo;ll learn
+      to-morrow how we rethreated to dhraw thim on before we made thim trouble,
+      an&rsquo; that&rsquo;s what a woman does. By the same tokin, we&rsquo;ll be attacked before
+      the dawnin&rsquo; an&rsquo; ut would be betther not to slip your boots. How do I know
+      that? By the light av pure reason. Here are three companies av us ever so
+      far inside av the enemy&rsquo;s flank an&rsquo; a crowd av roarin&rsquo;, tarin&rsquo;, squealin&rsquo; 
+      cavalry gone on just to turn out the whole hornet&rsquo;s nest av them. Av
+      course the enemy will pursue, by brigades like as not, an&rsquo; thin we&rsquo;ll have
+      to run for ut. Mark my words. I am av the opinion av Polonius whin he
+      said, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t fight wid ivry scutt for the pure joy av fightin&rsquo;, but if you
+      do, knock the nose av him first an&rsquo; frequint.&rdquo; We ought to ha&rsquo; gone on an&rsquo; 
+      helped the Ghoorkhas.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But what do you know about Polonius?&rsquo; I demanded. This was a new side of
+      Mulvaney&rsquo;s character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All that Shakespeare iver wrote an&rsquo; a dale more that the gallery
+      shouted,&rsquo; said the man of war, carefully lacing his boots. &lsquo;Did I not tell
+      you av Silver&rsquo;s theatre in Dublin, whin I was younger than I am now an&rsquo; a
+      patron av the drama? Ould Silver wud never pay actor-man or woman their
+      just dues, an&rsquo; by consequince his comp&rsquo;nies was collapsible at the last
+      minut. Thin the bhoys wud clamour to take a part, an&rsquo; oft as not ould
+      Silver made them pay for the fun. Faith, I&rsquo;ve seen Hamlut played wid a new
+      black eye an&rsquo; the queen as full as a cornucopia. I remimber wanst Hogin
+      that &lsquo;listed in the Black Tyrone an&rsquo; was shot in South Africa, he sejuced
+      ould Silver into givin&rsquo; him Hamlut&rsquo;s part instid av me that had a fine
+      fancy for rhetoric in those days. Av course I wint into the gallery an&rsquo; 
+      began to fill the pit wid other people&rsquo;s hats, an&rsquo; I passed the time av
+      day to Hogin walkin&rsquo; through Denmark like a hamstrung mule wid a pall on
+      his back. &ldquo;Hamlut,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s a hole in your heel. Pull up your
+      shtockin&rsquo;s, Hamlut,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;Hamlut, Hamlut, for the love av decincy dhrop
+      that skull an&rsquo; pull up your shtockin&rsquo;s.&rdquo; The whole house begun to tell him
+      that. He stopped his soliloquishms mid-between. &ldquo;My shtockin&rsquo;s may be
+      comin&rsquo; down or they may not,&rdquo; sez he, screwin&rsquo; his eye into the gallery,
+      for well he knew who I was. &ldquo;But afther this performince is over me an&rsquo; 
+      the Ghost &lsquo;ll trample the tripes out av you, Terence, wid your ass&rsquo;s
+      bray!&rdquo; An&rsquo; that&rsquo;s how I come to know about Hamlut. Eyah! Those days, those
+      days! Did you iver have onendin&rsquo; devilmint an&rsquo; nothin&rsquo; to pay for it in
+      your life, sorr?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Never, without having to pay,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s thrue! &lsquo;Tis mane whin you considher on ut; but ut&rsquo;s the same wid
+      horse or fut. A headache if you dhrink, an&rsquo; a belly-ache if you eat too
+      much, an&rsquo; a heart-ache to kape all down. Faith, the beast only gets the
+      colic, an&rsquo; he&rsquo;s the lucky man.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped his head and stared into the fire, fingering his moustache the
+      while. From the far side of the bivouac the voice of Corbet-Nolan, senior
+      subaltern of B company, uplifted itself in an ancient and much appreciated
+      song of sentiment, the men moaning melodiously behind him.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The north wind blew coldly, she drooped from that hour,
+     My own little Kathleen, my sweet little Kathleen,
+     Kathleen, my Kathleen, Kathleen O&rsquo;Moore!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      With forty-five O&rsquo;s in the last word: even at that distance you might have
+      cut the soft South Irish accent with a shovel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For all we take we must pay, but the price is cruel high,&rsquo; murmured
+      Mulvaney when the chorus had ceased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the trouble?&rsquo; I said gently, for I knew that he was a man of an
+      inextinguishable sorrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hear now,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;Ye know what I am now. <i>I</i> know what I mint to
+      be at the beginnin&rsquo; av my service. I&rsquo;ve tould you time an&rsquo; again, an&rsquo; what
+      I have not Dinah Shadd has. An&rsquo; what am I? Oh, Mary Mother av Hiven, an
+      ould dhrunken, untrustable baste av a privit that has seen the reg&rsquo;ment
+      change out from colonel to drummer-boy, not wanst or twice, but scores av
+      times! Ay, scores! An&rsquo; me not so near gettin&rsquo; promotion as in the first!
+      An&rsquo; me livin&rsquo; on an&rsquo; kapin&rsquo; clear av clink, not by my own good conduck,
+      but the kindness av some orf&rsquo;cer-bhoy young enough to be son to me! Do I
+      not know ut? Can I not tell whin I&rsquo;m passed over at p&rsquo;rade, tho&rsquo; I&rsquo;m
+      rockin&rsquo; full av liquor an&rsquo; ready to fall all in wan piece, such as even a
+      suckin&rsquo; child might see, bekaze, &ldquo;Oh, &lsquo;tis only ould Mulvaney!&rdquo; An&rsquo; whin
+      I&rsquo;m let off in ord&rsquo;ly-room through some thrick of the tongue an&rsquo; a ready
+      answer an&rsquo; the ould man&rsquo;s mercy, is ut smilin&rsquo; I feel whin I fall away an&rsquo; 
+      go back to Dinah Shadd, thryin&rsquo; to carry ut all off as a joke? Not I! &lsquo;Tis
+      hell to me, dumb hell through ut all; an&rsquo; next time whin the fit comes I
+      will be as bad again. Good cause the reg&rsquo;ment has to know me for the best
+      soldier in ut. Better cause have I to know mesilf for the worst man. I&rsquo;m
+      only fit to tache the new drafts what I&rsquo;ll niver learn mesilf; an&rsquo; I am
+      sure, as tho&rsquo; I heard ut, that the minut wan av these pink-eyed recruities
+      gets away from my &ldquo;Mind ye now,&rdquo; an&rsquo; &ldquo;Listen to this, Jim, bhoy,&rdquo;&mdash;sure
+      I am that the sergint houlds me up to him for a warnin&rsquo;. So I tache, as
+      they say at musketry-instruction, by direct and ricochet fire. Lord be
+      good to me, for I have stud some throuble!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Lie down and go to sleep,&rsquo; said I, not being able to comfort or advise.
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;re the best man in the regiment, and, next to Ortheris, the biggest
+      fool. Lie down and wait till we&rsquo;re attacked. What force will they turn
+      out? Guns, think you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Try that wid your lorrds an&rsquo; ladies, twistin&rsquo; an&rsquo; turnin&rsquo; the talk, tho&rsquo; 
+      you mint ut well. Ye cud say nothin&rsquo; to help me, an&rsquo; yet ye niver knew
+      what cause I had to be what I am.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Begin at the beginning and go on to the end,&rsquo; I said royally. &lsquo;But rake
+      up the fire a bit first.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I passed Ortheris&rsquo;s bayonet for a poker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That shows how little we know what we do,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, putting it
+      aside. &lsquo;Fire takes all the heart out av the steel, an&rsquo; the next time, may
+      be, that our little man is fighting for his life his bradawl &lsquo;ll break,
+      an&rsquo; so you&rsquo;ll ha&rsquo; killed him, manin&rsquo; no more than to kape yourself warm.
+      &lsquo;Tis a recruity&rsquo;s thrick that. Pass the clanin&rsquo;-rod, sorr.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I snuggled down abased; and after an interval the voice of Mulvaney began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Did I iver tell you how Dinah Shadd came to be wife av mine?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I dissembled a burning anxiety that I had felt for some months&mdash;ever
+      since Dinah Shadd, the strong, the patient, and the infinitely tender, had
+      of her own good love and free will washed a shirt for me, moving in a
+      barren land where washing was not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t remember,&rsquo; I said casually. &lsquo;Was it before or after you made love
+      to Annie Bragin, and got no satisfaction?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story of Annie Bragin is written in another place. It is one of the
+      many less respectable episodes in Mulvaney&rsquo;s chequered career.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Before&mdash;before&mdash;long before, was that business av Annie Bragin
+      an&rsquo; the corp&rsquo;ril&rsquo;s ghost. Niver woman was the worse for me whin I had
+      married Dinah. There&rsquo;s a time for all things, an&rsquo; I know how to kape all
+      things in place&mdash;barrin&rsquo; the dhrink, that kapes me in my place wid no
+      hope av comin&rsquo; to be aught else.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Begin at the beginning,&rsquo; I insisted. &lsquo;Mrs. Mulvaney told me that you
+      married her when you were quartered in Krab Bokhar barracks.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; the same is a cess-pit,&rsquo; said Mulvaney piously. &lsquo;She spoke thrue, did
+      Dinah. &lsquo;Twas this way. Talkin&rsquo; av that, have ye iver fallen in love,
+      sorr?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I preserved the silence of the damned. Mulvaney continued&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thin I will assume that ye have not. <i>I</i> did. In the days av my
+      youth, as I have more than wanst tould you, I was a man that filled the
+      eye an&rsquo; delighted the sowl av women. Niver man was hated as I have bin.
+      Niver man was loved as I&mdash;no, not within half a day&rsquo;s march av ut!
+      For the first five years av my service, whin I was what I wud give my sowl
+      to be now, I tuk whatever was within my reach an&rsquo; digested ut&mdash;an
+      that&rsquo;s more than most men can say. Dhrink I tuk, an&rsquo; ut did me no harm. By
+      the Hollow av Hiven, I cud play wid four women at wanst, an&rsquo; kape them
+      from findin&rsquo; out anythin&rsquo; about the other three, an&rsquo; smile like a
+      full-blown marigold through ut all. Dick Coulhan, av the battery we&rsquo;ll
+      have down on us to-night, could drive his team no betther than I mine, an&rsquo; 
+      I hild the worser cattle! An&rsquo; so I lived, an&rsquo; so I was happy till afther
+      that business wid Annie Bragin&mdash;she that turned me off as cool as a
+      meat-safe, an&rsquo; taught me where I stud in the mind av an honest woman.
+      &lsquo;Twas no sweet dose to swallow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Afther that I sickened awhile an&rsquo; tuk thought to my reg&rsquo;mental work;
+      conceiting mesilf I wud study an&rsquo; be a sergint, an&rsquo; a major-gineral twinty
+      minutes afther that. But on top av my ambitiousness there was an empty
+      place in my sowl, an&rsquo; me own opinion av mesilf cud not fill ut. Sez I to
+      mesilf, &ldquo;Terence, you&rsquo;re a great man an&rsquo; the best set-up in the reg&rsquo;mint.
+      Go on an&rsquo; get promotion.&rdquo; Sez mesilf to me, &ldquo;What for?&rdquo; Sez I to mesilf,
+      &ldquo;For the glory av ut!&rdquo; Sez mesilf to me, &ldquo;Will that fill these two strong
+      arrums av yours, Terence?&rdquo; &ldquo;Go to the devil,&rdquo; sez I to mesilf. &ldquo;Go to the
+      married lines,&rdquo; sez mesilf to me. &ldquo;&lsquo;Tis the same thing,&rdquo; sez I to mesilf.
+      &ldquo;Av you&rsquo;re the same man, ut is,&rdquo; said mesilf to me; an&rsquo; wid that I
+      considhered on ut a long while. Did you iver feel that way, sorr?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I snored gently, knowing that if Mulvaney were uninterrupted he would go
+      on. The clamour from the bivouac fires beat up to the stars, as the rival
+      singers of the companies were pitted against each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So I felt that way an&rsquo; a bad time ut was. Wanst, bein&rsquo; a fool, I wint
+      into the married lines more for the sake av spakin&rsquo; to our ould
+      colour-sergint Shadd than for any thruck wid women-folk. I was a corp&rsquo;ril
+      then&mdash;rejuced aftherwards, but a corp&rsquo;ril then. I&rsquo;ve got a photograft
+      av mesilf to prove ut. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll take a cup av tay wid us?&rdquo; sez Shadd. &ldquo;I
+      will that,&rdquo; I sez, &ldquo;tho&rsquo; tay is not my divarsion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;&lsquo;Twud be better for you if ut were,&rdquo; sez ould Mother Shadd, an&rsquo; she had
+      ought to know, for Shadd, in the ind av his service, dhrank bung-full each
+      night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wid that I tuk off my gloves&mdash;there was pipe-clay in thim, so that
+      they stud alone&mdash;an&rsquo; pulled up my chair, lookin&rsquo; round at the china
+      ornaments an&rsquo; bits av things in the Shadds&rsquo; quarters. They were things
+      that belonged to a man, an&rsquo; no camp-kit, here to-day an&rsquo; dishipated next.
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re comfortable in this place, sergint,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;&lsquo;Tis the wife that
+      did ut, boy,&rdquo; sez he, pointin&rsquo; the stem av his pipe to ould Mother Shadd,
+      an&rsquo; she smacked the top av his bald head apon the compliment. &ldquo;That manes
+      you want money,&rdquo; sez she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; thin&mdash;an&rsquo; thin whin the kettle was to be filled, Dinah came in&mdash;my
+      Dinah&mdash;her sleeves rowled up to the elbow an&rsquo; her hair in a winkin&rsquo; 
+      glory over her forehead, the big blue eyes beneath twinklin&rsquo; like stars on
+      a frosty night, an&rsquo; the tread av her two feet lighter than waste-paper
+      from the colonel&rsquo;s basket in ord&rsquo;ly-room whin ut&rsquo;s emptied. Bein&rsquo; but a
+      shlip av a girl she went pink at seein&rsquo; me, an&rsquo; I twisted me moustache an&rsquo; 
+      looked at a picture forninst the wall. Niver show a woman that ye care the
+      snap av a finger for her, an&rsquo; begad she&rsquo;ll come bleatin&rsquo; to your
+      boot-heels!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I suppose that&rsquo;s why you followed Annie Bragin till everybody in the
+      married quarters laughed at you,&rsquo; said I, remembering that unhallowed
+      wooing and casting off the disguise of drowsiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m layin&rsquo; down the gin&rsquo;ral theory av the attack,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, driving
+      his boot into the dying fire. &lsquo;If you read the Soldier&rsquo;s Pocket Book,
+      which niver any soldier reads, you&rsquo;ll see that there are exceptions. Whin
+      Dinah was out av the door (an&rsquo; &lsquo;twas as tho&rsquo; the sunlight had shut too)&mdash;&ldquo;Mother
+      av Hiven, sergint,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;but is that your daughter?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+      believed that way these eighteen years,&rdquo; sez ould Shadd, his eyes
+      twinklin&rsquo;; &ldquo;but Mrs. Shadd has her own opinion, like iv&rsquo;ry woman,&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;&lsquo;Tis
+      wid yours this time, for a mericle,&rdquo; sez Mother Shadd. &ldquo;Thin why in the
+      name av fortune did I niver see her before?&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Bekaze you&rsquo;ve been
+      thrapesin&rsquo; round wid the married women these three years past. She was a
+      bit av a child till last year, an&rsquo; she shot up wid the spring,&rdquo; sez ould
+      Mother Shadd. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll thrapese no more,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;D&rsquo;you mane that?&rdquo; sez ould
+      Mother Shadd, lookin&rsquo; at me side-ways like a hen looks at a hawk whin the
+      chickens are runnin&rsquo; free. &ldquo;Try me, an&rsquo; tell,&rdquo; sez I. Wid that I pulled on
+      my gloves, dhrank off the tay, an&rsquo; went out av the house as stiff as at
+      gin&rsquo;ral p&rsquo;rade, for well I knew that Dinah Shadd&rsquo;s eyes were in the small
+      av my back out av the scullery window. Faith! that was the only time I
+      mourned I was not a cav&rsquo;lry-man for the pride av the spurs to jingle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I wint out to think, an&rsquo; I did a powerful lot av thinkin&rsquo;, but ut all
+      came round to that shlip av a girl in the dotted blue dhress, wid the blue
+      eyes an&rsquo; the sparkil in them. Thin I kept off canteen, an&rsquo; I kept to the
+      married quarthers, or near by, on the chanst av meetin&rsquo; Dinah. Did I meet
+      her? Oh, my time past, did I not; wid a lump in my throat as big as my
+      valise an&rsquo; my heart goin&rsquo; like a farrier&rsquo;s forge on a Saturday morning?
+      &lsquo;Twas &ldquo;Good day to ye, Miss Dinah,&rdquo; an&rsquo; &ldquo;Good day t&rsquo;you, corp&rsquo;ril,&rdquo; for a
+      week or two, and divil a bit further could I get bekaze av the respect I
+      had to that girl that I cud ha&rsquo; broken betune finger an&rsquo; thumb.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here I giggled as I recalled the gigantic figure of Dinah Shadd when she
+      handed me my shirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ye may laugh,&rsquo; grunted Mulvaney. &lsquo;But I&rsquo;m speakin&rsquo; the trut&rsquo;, an &lsquo;tis you
+      that are in fault. Dinah was a girl that wud ha&rsquo; taken the imperiousness
+      out av the Duchess av Clonmel in those days. Flower hand, foot av shod
+      air, an&rsquo; the eyes av the livin&rsquo; mornin&rsquo; she had that is my wife to-day&mdash;ould
+      Dinah, and niver aught else than Dinah Shadd to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Twas after three weeks standin&rsquo; off an&rsquo; on, an&rsquo; niver makin&rsquo; headway
+      excipt through the eyes, that a little drummer-boy grinned in me face whin
+      I had admonished him wid the buckle av my belt for riotin&rsquo; all over the
+      place. &ldquo;An&rsquo; I&rsquo;m not the only wan that doesn&rsquo;t kape to barricks,&rdquo; sez he. I
+      tuk him by the scruff av his neck,&mdash;my heart was hung on a
+      hair-thrigger those days, you will onderstand&mdash;an&rsquo; &ldquo;Out wid ut,&rdquo; sez
+      I, &ldquo;or I&rsquo;ll lave no bone av you unbreakable.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Speak to Dempsey,&rdquo;
+       sez he howlin&rsquo;. &ldquo;Dempsey which?&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;ye unwashed limb av Satan.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Av
+      the Bob-tailed Dhragoons,&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s seen her home from her aunt&rsquo;s
+      house in the civil lines four times this fortnight.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Child!&rdquo; sez I,
+      dhroppin&rsquo; him, &ldquo;your tongue&rsquo;s stronger than your body. Go to your
+      quarters. I&rsquo;m sorry I dhressed you down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;At that I went four ways to wanst huntin&rsquo; Dempsey. I was mad to think
+      that wid all my airs among women I shud ha&rsquo; been chated by a basin-faced
+      fool av a cav&rsquo;lry-man not fit to trust on a trunk. Presintly I found him
+      in our lines&mdash;the Bobtails was quartered next us&mdash;an&rsquo; a tallowy,
+      topheavy son av a she-mule he was wid his big brass spurs an&rsquo; his
+      plastrons on his epigastrons an&rsquo; all. But he niver flinched a hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;A word wid you, Dempsey,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve walked wid Dinah Shadd four
+      times this fortnight gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that to you?&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll walk forty times more, an&rsquo; forty on
+      top av that, ye shovel-futted clod-breakin&rsquo; infantry lance-corp&rsquo;ril.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Before I cud gyard he had his gloved fist home on my cheek an&rsquo; down I
+      went full-sprawl. &ldquo;Will that content you?&rdquo; sez he, blowin&rsquo; on his knuckles
+      for all the world like a Scots Greys orf&rsquo;cer. &ldquo;Content!&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;For your
+      own sake, man, take off your spurs, peel your jackut, an&rsquo; onglove. &lsquo;Tis
+      the beginnin&rsquo; av the overture; stand up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He stud all he know, but he niver peeled his jackut, an&rsquo; his shoulders
+      had no fair play. I was fightin&rsquo; for Dinah Shadd an&rsquo; that cut on my cheek.
+      What hope had he forninst me? &ldquo;Stand up,&rdquo; sez I, time an&rsquo; again whin he
+      was beginnin&rsquo; to quarter the ground an&rsquo; gyard high an&rsquo; go large. &ldquo;This
+      isn&rsquo;t ridin&rsquo;-school,&rdquo; I sez. &ldquo;O man, stand up an&rsquo; let me get in at ye.&rdquo;
+       But whin I saw he wud be runnin&rsquo; about, I grup his shtock in my left an&rsquo; 
+      his waist-belt in my right an&rsquo; swung him clear to my right front, head
+      undher, he hammerin&rsquo; my nose till the wind was knocked out av him on the
+      bare ground. &ldquo;Stand up,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;or I&rsquo;ll kick your head into your chest!&rdquo;
+       and I wud ha&rsquo; done ut too, so ragin&rsquo; mad I was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;My collar-bone&rsquo;s bruk,&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;Help me back to lines. I&rsquo;ll walk wid
+      her no more.&rdquo; So I helped him back.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And was his collar-bone broken?&rsquo; I asked, for I fancied that only Learoyd
+      could neatly accomplish that terrible throw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He pitched on his left shoulder-point. Ut was. Next day the news was in
+      both barricks, an&rsquo; whin I met Dinah Shadd wid a cheek on me like all the
+      reg&rsquo;mintal tailor&rsquo;s samples there was no &ldquo;Good mornin&rsquo;, corp&rsquo;ril,&rdquo; or
+      aught else. &ldquo;An&rsquo; what have I done, Miss Shadd,&rdquo; sez I, very bould,
+      plantin&rsquo; mesilf forninst her, &ldquo;that ye should not pass the time of day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Ye&rsquo;ve half-killed rough-rider Dempsey,&rdquo; sez she, her dear blue eyes
+      fillin&rsquo; up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;May be,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Was he a friend av yours that saw ye home four times in
+      the fortnight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez she, but her mouth was down at the corners. &ldquo;An&rsquo;&mdash;an&rsquo; 
+      what&rsquo;s that to you?&rdquo; she sez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Ask Dempsey,&rdquo; sez I, purtendin&rsquo; to go away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Did you fight for me then, ye silly man?&rdquo; she sez, tho&rsquo; she knew ut all
+      along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Who else?&rdquo; sez I, an&rsquo; I tuk wan pace to the front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t worth ut,&rdquo; sez she, fingerin&rsquo; in her apron,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;That&rsquo;s for me to say,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Shall I say ut?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; sez she in a saint&rsquo;s whisper, an&rsquo; at that I explained mesilf; and
+      she tould me what ivry man that is a man, an&rsquo; many that is a woman, hears
+      wanst in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;But what made ye cry at startin&rsquo;, Dinah, darlin&rsquo;?&rsquo;&rdquo; sez I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Your&mdash;your bloody cheek,&rdquo; sez she, duckin&rsquo; her little head down on
+      my sash (I was on duty for the day) an&rsquo; whimperin&rsquo; like a sorrowful angil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now a man cud take that two ways. I tuk ut as pleased me best an&rsquo; my
+      first kiss wid ut. Mother av Innocence! but I kissed her on the tip av the
+      nose an&rsquo; undher the eye; an&rsquo; a girl that let&rsquo;s a kiss come tumble-ways
+      like that has never been kissed before. Take note av that, sorr. Thin we
+      wint hand in hand to ould Mother Shadd like two little childher, an&rsquo; she
+      said &lsquo;twas no bad thing, an&rsquo; ould Shadd nodded behind his pipe, an&rsquo; Dinah
+      ran away to her own room. That day I throd on rollin&rsquo; clouds. All earth
+      was too small to hould me. Begad, I cud ha&rsquo; hiked the sun out av the sky
+      for a live coal to my pipe, so magnificent I was. But I tuk recruities at
+      squad-drill instid, an&rsquo; began wid general battalion advance whin I shud
+      ha&rsquo; been balance-steppin&rsquo; them. Eyah! that day! that day!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very long pause. &lsquo;Well?&rsquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Twas all wrong,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, with an enormous sigh. &lsquo;An&rsquo; I know that
+      ev&rsquo;ry bit av ut was my own foolishness. That night I tuk maybe the half av
+      three pints&mdash;not enough to turn the hair of a man in his natural
+      senses. But I was more than half drunk wid pure joy, an&rsquo; that canteen beer
+      was so much whisky to me. I can&rsquo;t tell how it came about, but BEKAZE I had
+      no thought for anywan except Dinah, BEKAZE I hadn&rsquo;t slipped her little
+      white arms from my neck five minuts, BEKAZE the breath of her kiss was not
+      gone from my mouth, I must go through the married lines on my way to
+      quarters an&rsquo; I must stay talkin&rsquo; to a red-headed Mullingar heifer av a
+      girl, Judy Sheehy, that was daughter to Mother Sheehy, the wife of Nick
+      Sheehy, the canteen-sergint&mdash;the Black Curse av Shielygh be on the
+      whole brood that are above groun&rsquo; this day!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;An&rsquo; what are ye houldin&rsquo; your head that high for, corp&rsquo;ril?&rdquo; sez Judy.
+      &ldquo;Come in an&rsquo; thry a cup av tay,&rdquo; she sez, standin&rsquo; in the doorway. Bein&rsquo; 
+      an ontrustable fool, an&rsquo; thinkin&rsquo; av anything but tay, I wint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Mother&rsquo;s at canteen,&rdquo; sez Judy, smoothin&rsquo; the hair av hers that was like
+      red snakes, an&rsquo; lookin&rsquo; at me cornerways out av her green cats&rsquo; eyes. &ldquo;Ye
+      will not mind, corp&rsquo;ril?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I can endure,&rdquo; sez I; ould Mother Sheehy bein&rsquo; no divarsion av mine, nor
+      her daughter too. Judy fetched the tea things an&rsquo; put thim on the table,
+      leanin&rsquo; over me very close to get thim square. I dhrew back, thinkin&rsquo; av
+      Dinah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Is ut afraid you are av a girl alone?&rdquo; sez Judy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;No,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Why should I be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;That rests wid the girl,&rdquo; sez Judy, dhrawin&rsquo; her chair next to mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Thin there let ut rest,&rdquo; sez I; an&rsquo; thinkin&rsquo; I&rsquo;d been a trifle onpolite,
+      I sez, &ldquo;The tay&rsquo;s not quite sweet enough for my taste. Put your little
+      finger in the cup, Judy. &lsquo;Twill make ut necthar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;What&rsquo;s necthar?&rdquo; sez she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;Somethin&rsquo; very sweet,&rdquo; sez I; an&rsquo; for the sinful life av me I cud not
+      help lookin&rsquo; at her out av the corner av my eye, as I was used to look at
+      a woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Go on wid ye, corp&rsquo;ril,&rdquo; sez she. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a flirrt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;On me sowl I&rsquo;m not,&rdquo; sez I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Then you&rsquo;re a cruel handsome man, an&rsquo; that&rsquo;s worse,&rdquo; sez she, heaving
+      big sighs an&rsquo; lookin&rsquo; crossways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;You know your own mind,&rdquo; sez I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;&lsquo;Twud be better for me if I did not,&rdquo; she sez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a dale to be said on both sides av that,&rdquo; sez I, unthinkin&rsquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Say your own part av ut, then, Terence, darlin&rsquo;,&rdquo; sez she; &ldquo;for begad
+      I&rsquo;m thinkin&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve said too much or too little for an honest girl,&rdquo; an&rsquo; wid
+      that she put her arms round my neck an&rsquo; kissed me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no more to be said afther that,&rdquo; sez I, kissin&rsquo; her back again&mdash;Oh
+      the mane scutt that I was, my head ringin&rsquo; wid Dinah Shadd! How does ut
+      come about, sorr, that when a man has put the comether on wan woman, he&rsquo;s
+      sure bound to put it on another? &lsquo;Tis the same thing at musketry. Wan day
+      ivry shot goes wide or into the bank, an&rsquo; the next, lay high lay low,
+      sight or snap, ye can&rsquo;t get off the bull&rsquo;s-eye for ten shots runnin&rsquo;.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That only happens to a man who has had a good deal of experience. He does
+      it without thinking,&rsquo; I replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thankin&rsquo; you for the complimint, sorr, ut may be so. But I&rsquo;m doubtful
+      whether you mint ut for a complimint. Hear now; I sat there wid Judy on my
+      knee tellin&rsquo; me all manner av nonsinse an&rsquo; only sayin&rsquo; &ldquo;yes&rdquo; an&rsquo; &ldquo;no,&rdquo;
+       when I&rsquo;d much better ha&rsquo; kept tongue betune teeth. An&rsquo; that was not an
+      hour afther I had left Dinah! What I was thinkin&rsquo; av I cannot say.
+      Presintly, quiet as a cat, ould Mother Sheehy came in velvet-dhrunk. She
+      had her daughter&rsquo;s red hair, but &lsquo;twas bald in patches, an&rsquo; I cud see in
+      her wicked ould face, clear as lightnin&rsquo;, what Judy wud be twenty years to
+      come. I was for jumpin&rsquo; up, but Judy niver moved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Terence has promust, mother,&rdquo; sez she, an&rsquo; the could sweat bruk out all
+      over me. Ould Mother Sheehy sat down of a heap an&rsquo; began playin&rsquo; wid the
+      cups. &ldquo;Thin you&rsquo;re a well-matched pair,&rdquo; she sez very thick. &ldquo;For he&rsquo;s the
+      biggest rogue that iver spoiled the queen&rsquo;s shoe-leather&rdquo; an&rsquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m off, Judy,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Ye should not talk nonsinse to your mother. Get
+      her to bed, girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Nonsinse!&rdquo; sez the ould woman, prickin&rsquo; up her ears like a cat an&rsquo; 
+      grippin&rsquo; the table-edge. &ldquo;&lsquo;Twill be the most nonsinsical nonsinse for you,
+      ye grinnin&rsquo; badger, if nonsinse &lsquo;tis. Git clear, you. I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I ran out into the dhark, my head in a stew an&rsquo; my heart sick, but I had
+      sinse enough to see that I&rsquo;d brought ut all on mysilf. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s this to pass
+      the time av day to a panjandhrum av hell-cats,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;What I&rsquo;ve said,
+      an&rsquo; what I&rsquo;ve not said do not matther. Judy an&rsquo; her dam will hould me for
+      a promust man, an&rsquo; Dinah will give me the go, an&rsquo; I desarve ut. I will go
+      an&rsquo; get dhrunk,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;an&rsquo; forget about ut, for &lsquo;tis plain I&rsquo;m not a
+      marrin&rsquo; man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;On my way to canteen I ran against Lascelles, colour-sergint that was av
+      E Comp&rsquo;ny, a hard, hard man, wid a torment av a wife. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve the head av
+      a drowned man on your shoulders,&rdquo; sez he; &ldquo;an&rsquo; you&rsquo;re goin&rsquo; where you&rsquo;ll
+      get a worse wan. Come back,&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;Let me go,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve thrown my
+      luck over the wall wid my own hand!&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Then that&rsquo;s not the way to get
+      ut back again,&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;Have out wid your throuble, ye fool-bhoy.&rdquo; An&rsquo; I
+      tould him how the matther was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He sucked in his lower lip. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been thrapped,&rdquo; sez he. &ldquo;Ju Sheehy
+      wud be the betther for a man&rsquo;s name to hers as soon as can. An&rsquo; we thought
+      ye&rsquo;d put the comether on her,&mdash;that&rsquo;s the natural vanity of the
+      baste, Terence, you&rsquo;re a big born fool, but you&rsquo;re not bad enough to marry
+      into that comp&rsquo;ny. If you said anythin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; for all your protestations
+      I&rsquo;m sure ye did&mdash;or did not, which is worse,&mdash;eat ut all&mdash;lie
+      like the father of all lies, but come out av ut free av Judy. Do I not
+      know what ut is to marry a woman that was the very spit an&rsquo; image av Judy
+      whin she was young? I&rsquo;m gettin&rsquo; old an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve larnt patience, but you,
+      Terence, you&rsquo;d raise hand on Judy an&rsquo; kill her in a year. Never mind if
+      Dinah gives you the go, you&rsquo;ve desarved ut; never mind if the whole
+      reg&rsquo;mint laughs you all day. Get shut av Judy an&rsquo; her mother. They can&rsquo;t
+      dhrag you to church, but if they do, they&rsquo;ll dhrag you to hell. Go back to
+      your quarters and lie down,&rdquo; sez he. Thin over his shoulder, &ldquo;You MUST ha&rsquo; 
+      done with thim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Next day I wint to see Dinah, but there was no tucker in me as I walked.
+      I knew the throuble wud come soon enough widout any handlin&rsquo; av mine, an&rsquo; 
+      I dreaded ut sore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I heard Judy callin&rsquo; me, but I hild straight on to the Shadds&rsquo; quarthers,
+      an&rsquo; Dinah wud ha&rsquo; kissed me but I put her back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Whin all&rsquo;s said, darlin&rsquo;,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;you can give ut me if ye will, tho&rsquo; I
+      misdoubt &lsquo;twill be so easy to come by then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I had scarce begun to put the explanation into shape before Judy an&rsquo; her
+      mother came to the door. I think there was a verandah, but I&rsquo;m forgettin&rsquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Will ye not step in?&rdquo; sez Dinah, pretty and polite, though the Shadds
+      had no dealin&rsquo;s with the Sheehys. Ould Mother Shadd looked up quick, an&rsquo; 
+      she was the fust to see the throuble; for Dinah was her daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m pressed for time to-day,&rdquo; sez Judy as bould as brass; &ldquo;an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve only
+      come for Terence,&mdash;my promust man. &lsquo;Tis strange to find him here the
+      day afther the day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dinah looked at me as though I had hit her, an&rsquo; I answered straight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;There was some nonsinse last night at the Sheehys&rsquo; quarthers, an&rsquo; Judy&rsquo;s
+      carryin&rsquo; on the joke, darlin&rsquo;,&rdquo; sez I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;At the Sheehys&rsquo; quarthers?&rdquo; sez Dinah very slow, an&rsquo; Judy cut in wid:
+      &ldquo;He was there from nine till ten, Dinah Shadd, an&rsquo; the betther half av
+      that time I was sittin&rsquo; on his knee, Dinah Shadd. Ye may look and ye may
+      look an&rsquo; ye may look me up an&rsquo; down, but ye won&rsquo;t look away that Terence
+      is my promust man. Terence, darlin&rsquo;, &lsquo;tis time for us to be comin&rsquo; home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dinah Shadd niver said word to Judy. &ldquo;Ye left me at half-past eight,&rdquo; she
+      sez to me, &ldquo;an I niver thought that ye&rsquo;d leave me for Judy,&mdash;promises
+      or no promises. Go back wid her, you that have to be fetched by a girl!
+      I&rsquo;m done with you,&rdquo; sez she, and she ran into her own room, her mother
+      followin&rsquo;. So I was alone wid those two women and at liberty to spake my
+      sentiments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Judy Sheehy,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;if you made a fool av me betune the lights you
+      shall not do ut in the day. I niver promised you words or lines.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;You lie,&rdquo; sez ould Mother Sheehy, &ldquo;an&rsquo; may ut choke you where you
+      stand!&rdquo; She was far gone in dhrink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;An&rsquo; tho&rsquo; ut choked me where I stud I&rsquo;d not change,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Go home,
+      Judy. I take shame for a decent girl like you dhraggin&rsquo; your mother out
+      bare-headed on this errand. Hear now, and have ut for an answer. I gave my
+      word to Dinah Shadd yesterday, an&rsquo;, more blame to me, I was wid you last
+      night talkin&rsquo; nonsinse but nothin&rsquo; more. You&rsquo;ve chosen to thry to hould me
+      on ut. I will not be held thereby for anythin&rsquo; in the world. Is that
+      enough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Judy wint pink all over. &ldquo;An&rsquo; I wish you joy av the perjury,&rdquo; sez she,
+      duckin&rsquo; a curtsey. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve lost a woman that would ha&rsquo; wore her hand to
+      the bone for your pleasure; an&rsquo; &lsquo;deed, Terence, ye were not thrapped...&rdquo;
+       Lascelles must ha&rsquo; spoken plain to her. &ldquo;I am such as Dinah is&mdash;&lsquo;deed
+      I am! Ye&rsquo;ve lost a fool av a girl that&rsquo;ll niver look at you again, an&rsquo; 
+      ye&rsquo;ve lost what he niver had,&mdash;your common honesty. If you manage
+      your men as you manage your love-makin&rsquo;, small wondher they call you the
+      worst corp&rsquo;ril in the comp&rsquo;ny. Come away, mother,&rdquo; sez she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But divil a fut would the ould woman budge! &ldquo;D&rsquo;you hould by that?&rdquo; sez
+      she, peerin&rsquo; up under her thick gray eyebrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Ay, an&rsquo; wud,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;tho&rsquo; Dinah give me the go twinty times. I&rsquo;ll have
+      no thruck with you or yours,&rdquo; sez I. &ldquo;Take your child away, ye shameless
+      woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;An&rsquo; am I shameless?&rdquo; sez she, bringin&rsquo; her hands up above her head.
+      &ldquo;Thin what are you, ye lyin&rsquo;, schamin&rsquo;, weak-kneed, dhirty-souled son av a
+      sutler? Am <i>I</i> shameless? Who put the open shame on me an&rsquo; my child
+      that we shud go beggin&rsquo; through the lines in the broad daylight for the
+      broken word of a man? Double portion of my shame be on you, Terence
+      Mulvaney, that think yourself so strong! By Mary and the saints, by blood
+      and water an&rsquo; by ivry sorrow that came into the world since the beginnin&rsquo;,
+      the black blight fall on you and yours, so that you may niver be free from
+      pain for another when ut&rsquo;s not your own! May your heart bleed in your
+      breast drop by drop wid all your friends laughin&rsquo; at the bleedin&rsquo;! Strong
+      you think yourself? May your strength be a curse to you to dhrive you into
+      the divil&rsquo;s hands against your own will! Clear-eyed you are? May your eyes
+      see clear ivry step av the dark path you take till the hot cindhers av
+      hell put thim out! May the ragin&rsquo; dry thirst in my own ould bones go to
+      you that you shall niver pass bottle full nor glass empty. God preserve
+      the light av your onderstandin&rsquo; to you, my jewel av a bhoy, that ye may
+      niver forget what you mint to be an&rsquo; do, whin you&rsquo;re wallowin&rsquo; in the
+      muck! May ye see the betther and follow the worse as long as there&rsquo;s
+      breath in your body; an&rsquo; may ye die quick in a strange land, watchin&rsquo; your
+      death before ut takes you, an&rsquo; enable to stir hand or foot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I heard a scufflin&rsquo; in the room behind, and thin Dinah Shadd&rsquo;s hand
+      dhropped into mine like a rose-leaf into a muddy road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;The half av that I&rsquo;ll take,&rdquo; sez she, &ldquo;an&rsquo; more too if I can. Go home,
+      ye silly talkin&rsquo; woman,&mdash;go home an&rsquo; confess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Come away! Come away!&rdquo; sez Judy, pullin&rsquo; her mother by the shawl. &ldquo;&lsquo;Twas
+      none av Terence&rsquo;s fault. For the love av Mary stop the talkin&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;An&rsquo; you!&rdquo; said ould Mother Sheehy, spinnin&rsquo; round forninst Dinah. &ldquo;Will
+      ye take the half av that man&rsquo;s load? Stand off from him, Dinah Shadd,
+      before he takes you down too&mdash;you that look to be a
+      quarther-master-sergeant&rsquo;s wife in five years. You look too high, child.
+      You shall WASH for the quarther-master-sergeant, whin he plases to give
+      you the job out av charity; but a privit&rsquo;s wife you shall be to the end,
+      an&rsquo; ivry sorrow of a privit&rsquo;s wife you shall know and niver a joy but wan,
+      that shall go from you like the running tide from a rock. The pain av
+      bearin&rsquo; you shall know but niver the pleasure av giving the breast; an&rsquo; 
+      you shall put away a man-child into the common ground wid niver a priest
+      to say a prayer over him, an&rsquo; on that man-child ye shall think ivry day av
+      your life. Think long, Dinah Shadd, for you&rsquo;ll niver have another tho&rsquo; you
+      pray till your knees are bleedin&rsquo;. The mothers av childher shall mock you
+      behind your back when you&rsquo;re wringing over the wash-tub. You shall know
+      what ut is to help a dhrunken husband home an&rsquo; see him go to the
+      gyard-room. Will that plase you, Dinah Shadd, that won&rsquo;t be seen talkin&rsquo; 
+      to my daughter? You shall talk to worse than Judy before all&rsquo;s over. The
+      sergints&rsquo; wives shall look down on you contemptuous, daughter av a
+      sergint, an&rsquo; you shall cover ut all up wid a smiling face when your
+      heart&rsquo;s burstin&rsquo;. Stand off av him, Dinah Shadd, for I&rsquo;ve put the Black
+      Curse of Shielygh upon him an&rsquo; his own mouth shall make ut good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She pitched forward on her head an&rsquo; began foamin&rsquo; at the mouth. Dinah
+      Shadd ran out wid water, an&rsquo; Judy dhragged the ould woman into the
+      verandah till she sat up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m old an&rsquo; forlore,&rdquo; she sez, thremblin&rsquo; an&rsquo; cryin&rsquo;, &ldquo;and &lsquo;tis like I
+      say a dale more than I mane.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;When you&rsquo;re able to walk,&mdash;go,&rdquo; says ould Mother Shadd. &ldquo;This house
+      has no place for the likes av you that have cursed my daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Eyah!&rdquo; said the ould woman. &ldquo;Hard words break no bones, an&rsquo; Dinah
+      Shadd&rsquo;ll kape the love av her husband till my bones are green corn. Judy
+      darlin&rsquo;, I misremember what I came here for. Can you lend us the bottom av
+      a taycup av tay, Mrs. Shadd?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But Judy dhragged her off cryin&rsquo; as tho&rsquo; her heart wud break. An&rsquo; Dinah
+      Shadd an&rsquo; I, in ten minutes we had forgot ut all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then why do you remember it now?&rsquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is ut like I&rsquo;d forget? Ivry word that wicked ould woman spoke fell thrue
+      in my life aftherwards, an&rsquo; I cud ha&rsquo; stud ut all&mdash;stud ut all&mdash;excipt
+      when my little Shadd was born. That was on the line av march three months
+      afther the regiment was taken with cholera. We were betune Umballa an&rsquo; 
+      Kalka thin, an&rsquo; I was on picket. Whin I came off duty the women showed me
+      the child, an&rsquo; ut turned on uts side an&rsquo; died as I looked. We buried him
+      by the road, an&rsquo; Father Victor was a day&rsquo;s march behind wid the heavy
+      baggage, so the comp&rsquo;ny captain read a prayer. An&rsquo; since then I&rsquo;ve been a
+      childless man, an&rsquo; all else that ould Mother Sheehy put upon me an&rsquo; Dinah
+      Shadd. What do you think, sorr?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought a good deal, but it seemed better then to reach out for
+      Mulvaney&rsquo;s hand. The demonstration nearly cost me the use of three
+      fingers. Whatever he knows of his weaknesses, Mulvaney is entirely
+      ignorant of his strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But what do you think?&rsquo; he repeated, as I was straightening out the
+      crushed fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My reply was drowned in yells and outcries from the next fire, where ten
+      men were shouting for &lsquo;Orth&rsquo;ris,&rsquo; &lsquo;Privit Orth&rsquo;ris,&rsquo; &lsquo;Mistah Or&mdash;ther&mdash;ris!&rsquo; 
+      &lsquo;Deah boy,&rsquo; &lsquo;Cap&rsquo;n Orth&rsquo;ris,&rsquo; &lsquo;Field-Marshal Orth&rsquo;ris,&rsquo; &lsquo;Stanley, you
+      pen&rsquo;north o&rsquo; pop, come &lsquo;ere to your own comp&rsquo;ny!&rsquo; And the cockney, who had
+      been delighting another audience with recondite and Rabelaisian yarns, was
+      shot down among his admirers by the major force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;ve crumpled my dress-shirt &lsquo;orrid,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;an&rsquo; I shan&rsquo;t sing no
+      more to this &lsquo;ere bloomin&rsquo; drawin&rsquo;-room.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Learoyd, roused by the confusion, uncoiled himself, crept behind Ortheris,
+      and slung him aloft on his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sing, ye bloomin&rsquo; hummin&rsquo; bird!&rsquo; said he, and Ortheris, beating time on
+      Learoyd&rsquo;s skull, delivered himself, in the raucous voice of the Ratcliffe
+      Highway, of this song:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    My girl she give me the go onst,
+      When I was a London lad,
+    An&rsquo; I went on the drink for a fortnight,
+      An&rsquo; then I went to the bad.
+    The Queen she give me a shillin&rsquo; 
+      To fight for &lsquo;er over the seas;
+    But Guv&rsquo;ment built me a fever-trap,
+      An&rsquo; Injia give me disease.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Chorus.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    Ho! don&rsquo;t you &lsquo;eed what a girl says,
+      An&rsquo; don&rsquo;t you go for the beer;
+    But I was an ass when I was at grass,
+      An&rsquo; that is why I&rsquo;m &lsquo;ere.
+
+   I fired a shot at a Afghan,
+      The beggar &lsquo;e fired again,
+    An&rsquo; I lay on my bed with a &lsquo;ole in my &lsquo;ed;
+      An&rsquo; missed the next campaign!
+    I up with my gun at a Burman
+      Who carried a bloomin&rsquo; dah,
+    But the cartridge stuck and the bay&rsquo;nit bruk,
+      An&rsquo; all I got was the scar.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Chorus.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    Ho! don&rsquo;t you aim at a Afghan
+       When you stand on the sky-line clear;
+    An&rsquo; don&rsquo;t you go for a Burman
+      If none o&rsquo; your friends is near.
+
+    I served my time for a corp&rsquo;ral,
+      An&rsquo; wetted my stripes with pop,
+    For I went on the bend with a intimate friend,
+      An&rsquo; finished the night in the &lsquo;shop.&rsquo; 
+    I served my time for a sergeant;
+      The colonel &lsquo;e sez &lsquo;No!
+    The most you&rsquo;ll see is a full C. B.&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+[Footnote: Confined to barracks.]
+      An&rsquo;...very next night &lsquo;twas so.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Chorus.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    Ho! don&rsquo;t you go for a corp&rsquo;ral
+      Unless your &lsquo;ed is clear;
+    But I was an ass when I was at grass,
+      An&rsquo; that is why I&rsquo;m &lsquo;ere.
+
+    I&rsquo;ve tasted the luck o&rsquo; the army
+      In barrack an&rsquo; camp an&rsquo; clink,
+    An&rsquo; I lost my tip through the bloomin&rsquo; trip
+      Along o&rsquo; the women an&rsquo; drink.
+    I&rsquo;m down at the heel o&rsquo; my service
+      An&rsquo; when I am laid on the shelf,
+    My very wust friend from beginning to end
+      By the blood of a mouse was myself!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Chorus.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    Ho! don&rsquo;t you &lsquo;eed what a girl says,
+      An&rsquo; don&rsquo;t you go for the beer;
+    But I was an ass when I was at grass,
+      An&rsquo; that is why I&rsquo;m &lsquo;ere.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay, listen to our little man now, singin&rsquo; an&rsquo; shoutin&rsquo; as tho&rsquo; trouble
+      had niver touched him. D&rsquo;you remember when he went mad with the
+      home-sickness?&rsquo; said Mulvaney, recalling a never-to-be-forgotten season
+      when Ortheris waded through the deep waters of affliction and behaved
+      abominably. &lsquo;But he&rsquo;s talkin&rsquo; bitter truth, though. Eyah!
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &lsquo;My very worst frind from beginnin&rsquo; to ind
+    By the blood av a mouse was mesilf!&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      When I woke I saw Mulvaney, the night-dew gemming his moustache, leaning
+      on his rifle at picket, lonely as Prometheus on his rock, with I know not
+      what vultures tearing his liver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ON GREENHOW HILL
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ To Love&rsquo;s low voice she lent a careless ear;
+ Her hand within his rosy fingers lay,
+ A chilling weight. She would not turn or hear;
+ But with averted face went on her way.
+ But when pale Death, all featureless and grim,
+ Lifted his bony hand, and beckoning
+ Held out his cypress-wreath, she followed him,
+ And Love was left forlorn and wondering,
+ That she who for his bidding would not stay,
+ At Death&rsquo;s first whisper rose and went away.
+                                 RIVALS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ohe, Ahmed Din! Shafiz Ullah ahoo! Bahadur Khan, where are you? Come out
+      of the tents, as I have done, and fight against the English. Don&rsquo;t kill
+      your own kin! Come out to me!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deserter from a native corps was crawling round the outskirts of the
+      camp, firing at intervals, and shouting invitations to his old comrades.
+      Misled by the rain and the darkness, he came to the English wing of the
+      camp, and with his yelping and rifle-practice disturbed the men. They had
+      been making roads all day, and were tired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris was sleeping at Learoyd&rsquo;s feet. &lsquo;Wot&rsquo;s all that?&rsquo; he said
+      thickly. Learoyd snored, and a Snider bullet ripped its way through the
+      tent wall. The men swore. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s that bloomin&rsquo; deserter from the
+      Aurangabadis,&rsquo; said Ortheris. &lsquo;Git up, some one, an&rsquo; tell &lsquo;im &lsquo;e&rsquo;s come to
+      the wrong shop.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go to sleep, little man,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, who was steaming nearest the
+      door. &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t arise an&rsquo; expaytiate with him. &lsquo;Tis rainin&rsquo; entrenchin&rsquo; 
+      tools outside.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Tain&rsquo;t because you bloomin&rsquo; can&rsquo;t. It&rsquo;s &lsquo;cause you bloomin&rsquo; won&rsquo;t, ye
+      long, limp, lousy, lazy beggar, you. &lsquo;Ark to&rsquo;im &lsquo;owlin&rsquo;!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wot&rsquo;s the good of argifying? Put a bullet into the swine! &lsquo;E&rsquo;s keepin&rsquo; us
+      awake!&rsquo; said another voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A subaltern shouted angrily, and a dripping sentry whined from the
+      darkness&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Tain&rsquo;t no good, sir. I can&rsquo;t see &lsquo;im. &lsquo;E&rsquo;s &lsquo;idin&rsquo; somewhere down &lsquo;ill.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris tumbled out of his blanket. &lsquo;Shall I try to get &lsquo;im, sir?&rsquo; said
+      he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No,&rsquo; was the answer. &lsquo;Lie down. I won&rsquo;t have the whole camp shooting all
+      round the clock. Tell him to go and pot his friends.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris considered for a moment. Then, putting his head under the tent
+      wall, he called, as a &lsquo;bus conductor calls in a block, &lsquo;&rsquo;Igher up, there!
+      &lsquo;Igher up!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men laughed, and the laughter was carried down wind to the deserter,
+      who, hearing that he had made a mistake, went off to worry his own
+      regiment half a mile away. He was received with shots; the Aurangabadis
+      were very angry with him for disgracing their colours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; that&rsquo;s all right,&rsquo; said Ortheris, withdrawing his head as he heard
+      the hiccough of the Sniders in the distance. &lsquo;S&rsquo;elp me Gawd, tho&rsquo;, that
+      man&rsquo;s not fit to live&mdash;messin&rsquo; with my beauty-sleep this way.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go out and shoot him in the morning, then,&rsquo; said the subaltern
+      incautiously. &lsquo;Silence in the tents now. Get your rest, men.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris lay down with a happy little sigh, and in two minutes there was
+      no sound except the rain on the canvas and the all-embracing and elemental
+      snoring of Learoyd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The camp lay on a bare ridge of the Himalayas, and for a week had been
+      waiting for a flying column to make connection. The nightly rounds of the
+      deserter and his friends had become a nuisance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning the men dried themselves in hot sunshine and cleaned their
+      grimy accoutrements. The native regiment was to take its turn of
+      road-making that day while the Old Regiment loafed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; to lay for a shot at that man,&rsquo; said Ortheris, when he had
+      finished washing out his rifle. &lsquo;&rsquo;E comes up the watercourse every evenin&rsquo; 
+      about five o&rsquo;clock. If we go and lie out on the north &lsquo;ill a bit this
+      afternoon we&rsquo;ll get &lsquo;im.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;re a bloodthirsty little mosquito,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, blowing blue
+      clouds into the air. &lsquo;But I suppose I will have to come wid you. Fwhere&rsquo;s
+      Jock?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Gone out with the Mixed Pickles, &lsquo;cause &lsquo;e thinks &lsquo;isself a bloomin&rsquo; 
+      marksman,&rsquo; said Ortheris with scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The &lsquo;Mixed Pickles&rsquo; were a detachment of picked shots, generally employed
+      in clearing spurs of hills when the enemy were too impertinent. This
+      taught the young officers how to handle men, and did not do the enemy much
+      harm. Mulvaney and Ortheris strolled out of camp, and passed the
+      Aurangabadis going to their road-making.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;ve got to sweat to-day,&rsquo; said Ortheris genially. &lsquo;We&rsquo;re going to get
+      your man. You didn&rsquo;t knock &lsquo;im out last night by any chance, any of you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No. The pig went away mocking us. I had one shot at him,&rsquo; said a private.
+      &lsquo;He&rsquo;s my cousin, and <i>I</i> ought to have cleared our dishonour. But
+      good luck to you.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went cautiously to the north hill, Ortheris leading, because, as he
+      explained, &rsquo;this is a long-range show, an&rsquo; I&rsquo;ve got to do it.&rsquo; His was an
+      almost passionate devotion to his rifle, which, by barrack-room report, he
+      was supposed to kiss every night before turning in. Charges and scuffles
+      he held in contempt, and, when they were inevitable, slipped between
+      Mulvaney and Learoyd, bidding them to fight for his skin as well as their
+      own. They never failed him. He trotted along, questing like a hound on a
+      broken trail, through the wood of the north hill. At last he was
+      satisfied, and threw himself down on the soft pine-needled slope that
+      commanded a clear view of the watercourse and a brown, bare hillside
+      beyond it. The trees made a scented darkness in which an army corps could
+      have hidden from the sun-glare without.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Ere&rsquo;s the tail o&rsquo; the wood,&rsquo; said Ortheris. &lsquo;&rsquo;E&rsquo;s got to come up the
+      watercourse, &lsquo;cause it gives &lsquo;im cover. We&rsquo;ll lay &lsquo;ere. &lsquo;Tain&rsquo;t not arf so
+      bloomin&rsquo; dusty neither.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He buried his nose in a clump of scentless white violets. No one had come
+      to tell the flowers that the season of their strength was long past, and
+      they had bloomed merrily in the twilight of the pines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;This is something like,&rsquo; he said luxuriously. &lsquo;Wot a &lsquo;evinly clear drop
+      for a bullet acrost! How much d&rsquo;you make it, Mulvaney?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Seven hunder. Maybe a trifle less, bekaze the air&rsquo;s so thin.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      WOP! WOP! WOP! went a volley of musketry on the rear face of the north
+      hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Curse them Mixed Pickles firin&rsquo; at nothin&rsquo;! They&rsquo;ll scare arf the
+      country.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thry a sightin&rsquo; shot in the middle of the row,&rsquo; said Mulvaney, the man of
+      many wiles. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s a red rock yonder he&rsquo;ll be sure to pass. Quick!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris ran his sight up to six hundred yards and fired. The bullet threw
+      up a feather of dust by a clump of gentians at the base of the rock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good enough!&rsquo; said Ortheris, snapping the scale down. &lsquo;You snick your
+      sights to mine or a little lower. You&rsquo;re always firin&rsquo; high. But remember,
+      first shot to me. O Lordy! but it&rsquo;s a lovely afternoon.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The noise of the firing grew louder, and there was a tramping of men in
+      the wood. The two lay very quiet, for they knew that the British soldier
+      is desperately prone to fire at anything that moves or calls. Then Learoyd
+      appeared, his tunic ripped across the breast by a bullet, looking ashamed
+      of himself. He flung down on the pine-needles, breathing in snorts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;One o&rsquo; them damned gardeners o&rsquo; th&rsquo; Pickles,&rsquo; said he, fingering the
+      rent. &lsquo;Firin&rsquo; to th&rsquo; right flank, when he knowed I was there. If I knew
+      who he was I&rsquo;d &lsquo;a&rsquo; rippen the hide offan him. Look at ma tunic!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s the spishil trustability av a marksman. Train him to hit a fly wid
+      a stiddy rest at seven hunder, an&rsquo; he loose on anythin&rsquo; he sees or hears
+      up to th&rsquo; mile. You&rsquo;re well out av that fancy-firin&rsquo; gang, Jock. Stay
+      here.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bin firin&rsquo; at the bloomin&rsquo; wind in the bloomin&rsquo; tree-tops,&rsquo; said Ortheris
+      with a chuckle. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll show you some firin&rsquo; later on.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They wallowed in the pine-needles, and the sun warmed them where they lay.
+      The Mixed Pickles ceased firing, and returned to camp, and left the wood
+      to a few scared apes. The watercourse lifted up its voice in the silence,
+      and talked foolishly to the rocks. Now and again the dull thump of a
+      blasting charge three miles away told that the Aurangabadis were in
+      difficulties with their road-making. The men smiled as they listened and
+      lay still, soaking in the warm leisure. Presently Learoyd, between the
+      whiffs of his pipe&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Seems queer&mdash;about &lsquo;im yonder&mdash;desertin&rsquo; at all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;E&rsquo;ll be a bloomin&rsquo; side queerer when I&rsquo;ve done with &lsquo;im,&rsquo; said Ortheris.
+      They were talking in whispers, for the stillness of the wood and the
+      desire of slaughter lay heavy upon them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I make no doubt he had his reasons for desertin&rsquo;; but, my faith! I make
+      less doubt ivry man has good reason for killin&rsquo; him,&rsquo; said Mulvaney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Happen there was a lass tewed up wi&rsquo; it. Men do more than more for th&rsquo; 
+      sake of a lass.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They make most av us &lsquo;list. They&rsquo;ve no manner av right to make us
+      desert.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah; they make us &lsquo;list, or their fathers do,&rsquo; said Learoyd softly, his
+      helmet over his eyes. Ortheris&rsquo;s brows contracted savagely. He was
+      watching the valley. &lsquo;If it&rsquo;s a girl I&rsquo;ll shoot the beggar twice over, an&rsquo; 
+      second time for bein&rsquo; a fool. You&rsquo;re blasted sentimental all of a sudden.
+      Thinkin&rsquo; o&rsquo; your last near shave?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, lad; ah was but thinkin&rsquo; o&rsquo; what had happened.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; fwhat has happened, ye lumberin&rsquo; child av calamity, that you&rsquo;re
+      lowing like a cow-calf at the back av the pasture, an&rsquo; suggestin&rsquo; 
+      invidious excuses for the man Stanley&rsquo;s goin&rsquo; to kill. Ye&rsquo;ll have to wait
+      another hour yet, little man. Spit it out, Jock, an&rsquo; bellow melojus to the
+      moon. It takes an earthquake or a bullet graze to fetch aught out av you.
+      Discourse, Don Juan! The a-moors av Lotharius Learoyd! Stanley, kape a
+      rowlin&rsquo; rig&rsquo;mental eye on the valley.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s along o&rsquo; yon hill there,&rsquo; said Learoyd, watching the bare
+      sub-Himalayan spur that reminded him of his Yorkshire moors. He was
+      speaking more to himself than his fellows. &lsquo;Ay,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;Rumbolds Moor
+      stands up ower Skipton town, an&rsquo; Greenhow Hill stands up ower Pately Brig.
+      I reckon you&rsquo;ve never heeard tell o&rsquo; Greenhow Hill, but you bit o&rsquo; bare
+      stuff if there was nobbut a white road windin&rsquo; is like ut; strangely like.
+      Moors an&rsquo; moors an&rsquo; moors, wi&rsquo; never a tree for shelter, an&rsquo; gray houses
+      wi&rsquo; flagstone rooves, and pewits cryin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; a windhover goin&rsquo; to and fro
+      just like these kites. And cold! A wind that cuts you like a knife. You
+      could tell Greenhow Hill folk by the red-apple colour o&rsquo; their cheeks an&rsquo; 
+      nose tips, and their blue eyes, driven into pinpoints by the wind. Miners
+      mostly, burrowin&rsquo; for lead i&rsquo; th&rsquo; hillsides, followin&rsquo; the trail of th&rsquo; 
+      ore vein same as a field-rat. It was the roughest minin&rsquo; I ever seen. Yo&rsquo;d
+      come on a bit o&rsquo; creakin&rsquo; wood windlass like a well-head, an&rsquo; you was let
+      down i&rsquo; th&rsquo; bight of a rope, fendin&rsquo; yoursen off the side wi&rsquo; one hand,
+      carryin&rsquo; a candle stuck in a lump o&rsquo; clay with t&rsquo;other, an&rsquo; clickin&rsquo; hold
+      of a rope with t&rsquo;other hand.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; that&rsquo;s three of them,&rsquo; said Mulvaney. &lsquo;Must be a good climate in
+      those parts.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Learoyd took no heed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; then yo&rsquo; came to a level, where you crept on your hands and knees
+      through a mile o&rsquo; windin&rsquo; drift, an&rsquo; you come out into a cave-place as big
+      as Leeds Townhall, with a engine pumpin&rsquo; water from workin&rsquo;s &lsquo;at went
+      deeper still. It&rsquo;s a queer country, let alone minin&rsquo;, for the hill is full
+      of those natural caves, an&rsquo; the rivers an&rsquo; the becks drops into what they
+      call pot-holes, an&rsquo; come out again miles away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wot was you doin&rsquo; there?&rsquo; said Ortheris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I was a young chap then, an&rsquo; mostly went wi&rsquo; &lsquo;osses, leadin&rsquo; coal and
+      lead ore; but at th&rsquo; time I&rsquo;m tellin&rsquo; on I was drivin&rsquo; the waggon-team i&rsquo; 
+      th&rsquo; big sumph. I didn&rsquo;t belong to that country-side by rights. I went
+      there because of a little difference at home, an&rsquo; at fust I took up wi&rsquo; a
+      rough lot. One night we&rsquo;d been drinkin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; I must ha&rsquo; hed more than I
+      could stand, or happen th&rsquo; ale was none so good. Though i&rsquo; them days, By
+      for God, I never seed bad ale.&rsquo; He flung his arms over his head, and
+      gripped a vast handful of white violets. &lsquo;Nah,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;I never seed the
+      ale I could not drink, the bacca I could not smoke, nor the lass I could
+      not kiss. Well, we mun have a race home, the lot on us. I lost all th&rsquo; 
+      others, an&rsquo; when I was climbin&rsquo; ower one of them walls built o&rsquo; loose
+      stones, I comes down into the ditch, stones and all, an&rsquo; broke my arm. Not
+      as I knawed much about it, for I fell on th&rsquo; back of my head, an&rsquo; was
+      knocked stupid like. An&rsquo; when I come to mysen it were mornin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; I were
+      lyin&rsquo; on the settle i&rsquo; Jesse Roantree&rsquo;s houseplace, an&rsquo; &lsquo;Liza Roantree was
+      settin&rsquo; sewin&rsquo;, I ached all ovver, and my mouth were like a lime-kiln. She
+      gave me a drink out of a china mug wi&rsquo; gold letters&mdash;&ldquo;A Present from
+      Leeds&rdquo;&mdash;as I looked at many and many a time at after. &ldquo;Yo&rsquo;re to lie
+      still while Dr. Warbottom comes, because your arm&rsquo;s broken, and father has
+      sent a lad to fetch him. He found yo&rsquo; when he was goin&rsquo; to work, an&rsquo; 
+      carried you here on his back,&rdquo; sez she. &ldquo;Oa!&rdquo; sez I; an&rsquo; I shet my eyes,
+      for I felt ashamed o&rsquo; mysen. &ldquo;Father&rsquo;s gone to his work these three hours,
+      an&rsquo; he said he&rsquo;d tell &lsquo;em to get somebody to drive the tram.&rdquo; The clock
+      ticked, an&rsquo; a bee comed in the house, an&rsquo; they rung i&rsquo; my head like
+      mill-wheels. An&rsquo; she give me another drink an&rsquo; settled the pillow. &ldquo;Eh,
+      but yo&rsquo;re young to be getten drunk an&rsquo; such like, but yo&rsquo; won&rsquo;t do it
+      again, will yo&rsquo;?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Noa,&rdquo; sez I, &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t if she&rsquo;d not but stop
+      they mill-wheels clatterin&rsquo;.&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Faith, it&rsquo;s a good thing to be nursed by a woman when you&rsquo;re sick!&rsquo; said
+      Mulvaney. &lsquo;Dir&rsquo; cheap at the price av twenty broken heads.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris turned to frown across the valley. He had not been nursed by many
+      women in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; then Dr. Warbottom comes ridin&rsquo; up, an&rsquo; Jesse Roantree along with
+      &lsquo;im. He was a high-larned doctor, but he talked wi&rsquo; poor folk same as
+      theirsens. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s ta big agaate on naa?&rdquo; he sings out. &ldquo;Brekkin&rsquo; tha
+      thick head?&rdquo; An&rsquo; he felt me all ovver. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s none broken. Tha&rsquo; nobbut
+      knocked a bit sillier than ordinary, an&rsquo; that&rsquo;s daaft eneaf.&rdquo; An&rsquo; soa he
+      went on, callin&rsquo; me all the names he could think on, but settin&rsquo; my arm,
+      wi&rsquo; Jesse&rsquo;s help, as careful as could be. &ldquo;Yo&rsquo; mun let the big oaf bide
+      here a bit, Jesse,&rdquo; he says, when he hed strapped me up an&rsquo; given me a
+      dose o&rsquo; physic; &ldquo;an&rsquo; you an&rsquo; Liza will tend him, though he&rsquo;s scarcelins
+      worth the trouble. An&rsquo; tha&rsquo;ll lose tha work,&rdquo; sez he, &ldquo;an&rsquo; tha&rsquo;ll be upon
+      th&rsquo; Sick Club for a couple o&rsquo; months an&rsquo; more. Doesn&rsquo;t tha think tha&rsquo;s a
+      fool?&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But whin was a young man, high or low, the other av a fool, I&rsquo;d like to
+      know?&rsquo; said Mulvaney. &lsquo;Sure, folly&rsquo;s the only safe way to wisdom, for I&rsquo;ve
+      thried it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wisdom!&rsquo; grinned Ortheris, scanning his comrades with uplifted chin.
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;re bloomin&rsquo; Solomons, you two, ain&rsquo;t you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Learoyd went calmly on, with a steady eye like an ox chewing the cud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And that was how I come to know &lsquo;Liza Roantree. There&rsquo;s some tunes as she
+      used to sing&mdash;aw, she were always singin&rsquo;&mdash;that fetches Greenhow
+      Hill before my eyes as fair as yon brow across there. And she would learn
+      me to sing bass, an&rsquo; I was to go to th&rsquo; chapel wi&rsquo; &lsquo;em where Jesse and she
+      led the singin&rsquo;, th&rsquo; old man playin&rsquo; the fiddle. He was a strange chap,
+      old Jesse, fair mad wi&rsquo; music, an&rsquo; he made me promise to learn the big
+      fiddle when my arm was better. It belonged to him, and it stood up in a
+      big case alongside o&rsquo; th&rsquo; eight-day clock, but Willie Satterthwaite, as
+      played it in the chapel, had getten deaf as a door-post, and it vexed
+      Jesse, as he had to rap him ower his head wi&rsquo; th&rsquo; fiddle-stick to make him
+      give ower sawin&rsquo; at th&rsquo; right time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But there was a black drop in it all, an&rsquo; it was a man in a black coat
+      that brought it. When th&rsquo; Primitive Methodist preacher came to Greenhow,
+      he would always stop wi&rsquo; Jesse Roantree, an&rsquo; he laid hold of me from th&rsquo; 
+      beginning. It seemed I wor a soul to be saved, and he meaned to do it. At
+      th&rsquo; same time I jealoused &lsquo;at he were keen o&rsquo; savin&rsquo; &lsquo;Liza Roantree&rsquo;s soul
+      as well, and I could ha&rsquo; killed him many a time. An&rsquo; this went on till one
+      day I broke out, an&rsquo; borrowed th&rsquo; brass for a drink from &lsquo;Liza. After
+      fower days I come back, wi&rsquo; my tail between my legs, just to see &lsquo;Liza
+      again. But Jesse were at home an&rsquo; th&rsquo; preacher&mdash;th&rsquo; Reverend Amos
+      Barraclough. &lsquo;Liza said naught, but a bit o&rsquo; red come into her face as
+      were white of a regular thing. Says Jesse, tryin&rsquo; his best to be civil,
+      &ldquo;Nay, lad, it&rsquo;s like this. You&rsquo;ve getten to choose which way it&rsquo;s goin&rsquo; to
+      be. I&rsquo;ll ha&rsquo; nobody across ma doorstep as goes a-drinkin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; borrows my
+      lass&rsquo;s money to spend i&rsquo; their drink. Ho&rsquo;d tha tongue, &lsquo;Liza,&rdquo; sez he,
+      when she wanted to put in a word &lsquo;at I were welcome to th&rsquo; brass, and she
+      were none afraid that I wouldn&rsquo;t pay it back. Then the Reverend cuts in,
+      seein&rsquo; as Jesse were losin&rsquo; his temper, an&rsquo; they fair beat me among them.
+      But it were &lsquo;Liza, as looked an&rsquo; said naught, as did more than either o&rsquo; 
+      their tongues, an&rsquo; soa I concluded to get converted.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Fwhat?&rsquo; shouted Mulvaney. Then, checking himself, he said softly, &lsquo;Let
+      be! Let be! Sure the Blessed Virgin is the mother of all religion an&rsquo; most
+      women; an&rsquo; there&rsquo;s a dale av piety in a girl if the men would only let ut
+      stay there. I&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; been converted myself under the circumstances.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, but,&rsquo; pursued Learoyd with a blush, &lsquo;I meaned it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris laughed as loudly as he dared, having regard to his business at
+      the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay, Ortheris, you may laugh, but you didn&rsquo;t know yon preacher Barraclough&mdash;a
+      little white-faced chap, wi&rsquo; a voice as &lsquo;ud wile a bird off an a bush, and
+      a way o&rsquo; layin&rsquo; hold of folks as made them think they&rsquo;d never had a live
+      man for a friend before. You never saw him, an&rsquo;&mdash;an&rsquo;&mdash;you never
+      seed &lsquo;Liza Roantree&mdash;never seed &lsquo;Liza Roantree.... Happen it was as
+      much &lsquo;Liza as th&rsquo; preacher and her father, but anyways they all meaned it,
+      an&rsquo; I was fair shamed o&rsquo; mysen, an&rsquo; so I become what they call a changed
+      character. And when I think on, it&rsquo;s hard to believe as yon chap going to
+      prayer-meetin&rsquo;s, chapel, and class-meetin&rsquo;s were me. But I never had
+      naught to say for mysen, though there was a deal o&rsquo; shoutin&rsquo;, and old
+      Sammy Strother, as were almost clemmed to death and doubled up with the
+      rheumatics, would sing out, &ldquo;Joyful! Joyful!&rdquo; and &lsquo;at it were better to go
+      up to heaven in a coal-basket than down to hell i&rsquo; a coach an&rsquo; six. And he
+      would put his poor old claw on my shoulder, sayin&rsquo;, &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t tha feel it,
+      tha great lump? Doesn&rsquo;t tha feel it?&rdquo; An&rsquo; sometimes I thought I did, and
+      then again I thought I didn&rsquo;t, an&rsquo; how was that?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The iverlastin&rsquo; nature av mankind,&rsquo; said Mulvaney. &lsquo;An&rsquo;, furthermore, I
+      misdoubt you were built for the Primitive Methodians. They&rsquo;re a new corps
+      anyways. I hold by the Ould Church, for she&rsquo;s the mother of them all&mdash;ay,
+      an&rsquo; the father, too. I like her bekaze she&rsquo;s most remarkable regimental in
+      her fittings. I may die in Honolulu, Nova Zambra, or Cape Cayenne, but
+      wherever I die, me bein&rsquo; fwhat I am, an&rsquo; a priest handy, I go under the
+      same orders an&rsquo; the same words an&rsquo; the same unction as tho&rsquo; the Pope
+      himself come down from the roof av St. Peter&rsquo;s to see me off. There&rsquo;s
+      neither high nor low, nor broad nor deep, nor betwixt nor between wid her,
+      an&rsquo; that&rsquo;s what I like. But mark you, she&rsquo;s no manner av Church for a wake
+      man, bekaze she takes the body and the soul av him, onless he has his
+      proper work to do. I remember when my father died that was three months
+      comin&rsquo; to his grave; begad he&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; sold the shebeen above our heads for
+      ten minutes&rsquo; quittance of purgathory. An&rsquo; he did all he could. That&rsquo;s why
+      I say ut takes a strong man to deal with the Ould Church, an&rsquo; for that
+      reason you&rsquo;ll find so many women go there. An&rsquo; that same&rsquo;s a conundrum.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wot&rsquo;s the use o&rsquo; worritin&rsquo; &lsquo;bout these things?&rsquo; said Ortheris. &lsquo;You&rsquo;re
+      bound to find all out quicker nor you want to, any&rsquo;ow.&rsquo; He jerked the
+      cartridge out of the breech-block into the palm of his hand. &lsquo;&rsquo;Ere&rsquo;s my
+      chaplain,&rsquo; he said, and made the venomous black-headed bullet bow like a
+      marionette. &lsquo;&rsquo;E&rsquo;s goin&rsquo; to teach a man all about which is which, an&rsquo; wot&rsquo;s
+      true, after all, before sundown. But wot &lsquo;appened after that, Jock?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There was one thing they boggled at, and almost shut th&rsquo; gate i&rsquo; my face
+      for, and that were my dog Blast, th&rsquo; only one saved out o&rsquo; a litter o&rsquo; 
+      pups as was blowed up when a keg o&rsquo; minin&rsquo; powder loosed off in th&rsquo; 
+      store-keeper&rsquo;s hut. They liked his name no better than his business, which
+      were fightin&rsquo; every dog he comed across; a rare good dog, wi&rsquo; spots o&rsquo; 
+      black and pink on his face, one ear gone, and lame o&rsquo; one side wi&rsquo; being
+      driven in a basket through an iron roof, a matter of half a mile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They said I mun give him up &lsquo;cause he were worldly and low; and would I
+      let mysen be shut out of heaven for the sake on a dog? &ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; says I, &ldquo;if
+      th&rsquo; door isn&rsquo;t wide enough for th&rsquo; pair on us, we&rsquo;ll stop outside, for
+      we&rsquo;ll none be parted.&rdquo; And th&rsquo; preacher spoke up for Blast, as had a
+      likin&rsquo; for him from th&rsquo; first&mdash;I reckon that was why I come to like
+      th&rsquo; preacher&mdash;and wouldn&rsquo;t hear o&rsquo; changin&rsquo; his name to Bless, as
+      some o&rsquo; them wanted. So th&rsquo; pair on us became reg&rsquo;lar chapel-members. But
+      it&rsquo;s hard for a young chap o&rsquo; my build to cut traces from the world, th&rsquo; 
+      flesh, an&rsquo; the devil all uv a heap. Yet I stuck to it for a long time,
+      while th&rsquo; lads as used to stand about th&rsquo; town-end an&rsquo; lean ower th&rsquo; 
+      bridge, spittin&rsquo; into th&rsquo; beck o&rsquo; a Sunday, would call after me, &ldquo;Sitha,
+      Learoyd, when&rsquo;s ta bean to preach, &lsquo;cause we&rsquo;re comin&rsquo; to hear tha.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Ho&rsquo;d
+      tha jaw. He hasn&rsquo;t getten th&rsquo; white choaker on ta morn,&rdquo; another lad would
+      say, and I had to double my fists hard i&rsquo; th&rsquo; bottom of my Sunday coat,
+      and say to mysen, &ldquo;If &lsquo;twere Monday and I warn&rsquo;t a member o&rsquo; the Primitive
+      Methodists, I&rsquo;d leather all th&rsquo; lot of yond&rsquo;.&rdquo; That was th&rsquo; hardest of all&mdash;to
+      know that I could fight and I mustn&rsquo;t fight.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sympathetic grunts from Mulvaney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So what wi&rsquo; singin&rsquo;, practising and class-meetin&rsquo;s, and th&rsquo; big fiddle,
+      as he made me take between my knees, I spent a deal o&rsquo; time i&rsquo; Jesse
+      Roantree&rsquo;s house-place. But often as I was there, th&rsquo; preacher fared to me
+      to go oftener, and both th&rsquo; old man an&rsquo; th&rsquo; young woman were pleased to
+      have him. He lived i&rsquo; Pately Brig, as were a goodish step off, but he
+      come. He come all the same. I liked him as well or better as any man I&rsquo;d
+      ever seen i&rsquo; one way, and yet I hated him wi&rsquo; all my heart i&rsquo; t&rsquo;other, and
+      we watched each other like cat and mouse, but civil as you please, for I
+      was on my best behaviour, and he was that fair and open that I was bound
+      to be fair with him. Rare good company he was, if I hadn&rsquo;t wanted to wring
+      his cliver little neck half of the time. Often and often when he was goin&rsquo; 
+      from Jesse&rsquo;s I&rsquo;d set him a bit on the road.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;See &lsquo;im &lsquo;ome, you mean?&rsquo; said Ortheris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay. It&rsquo;s a way we have i&rsquo; Yorkshire o&rsquo; seein&rsquo; friends off. You was a
+      friend as I didn&rsquo;t want to come back, and he didn&rsquo;t want me to come back
+      neither, and so we&rsquo;d walk together towards Pately, and then he&rsquo;d set me
+      back again, and there we&rsquo;d be wal two o&rsquo;clock i&rsquo; the mornin&rsquo; settin&rsquo; each
+      other to an&rsquo; fro like a blasted pair o&rsquo; pendulums twixt hill and valley,
+      long after th&rsquo; light had gone out i&rsquo; &lsquo;Liza&rsquo;s window, as both on us had
+      been looking at, pretending to watch the moon.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; broke in Mulvaney, &lsquo;ye&rsquo;d no chanst against the maraudin&rsquo; 
+      psalm-singer. They&rsquo;ll take the airs an&rsquo; the graces instid av the man nine
+      times out av ten, an&rsquo; they only find the blunder later&mdash;the wimmen.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s just where yo&rsquo;re wrong,&rsquo; said Learoyd, reddening under the
+      freckled tan of his cheeks. &lsquo;I was th&rsquo; first wi&rsquo; &lsquo;Liza, an&rsquo; yo&rsquo;d think
+      that were enough. But th&rsquo; parson were a steady-gaited sort o&rsquo; chap, and
+      Jesse were strong o&rsquo; his side, and all th&rsquo; women i&rsquo; the congregation
+      dinned it to &lsquo;Liza &lsquo;at she were fair fond to take up wi&rsquo; a wastrel
+      ne&rsquo;er-do-weel like me, as was scarcelins respectable an&rsquo; a fighting dog at
+      his heels. It was all very well for her to be doing me good and saving my
+      soul, but she must mind as she didn&rsquo;t do herself harm. They talk o&rsquo; rich
+      folk bein&rsquo; stuck up an&rsquo; genteel, but for cast-iron pride o&rsquo; respectability
+      there&rsquo;s naught like poor chapel folk. It&rsquo;s as cold as th&rsquo; wind o&rsquo; Greenhow
+      Hill&mdash;ay, and colder, for &lsquo;twill never change. And now I come to
+      think on it, one at strangest things I know is &lsquo;at they couldn&rsquo;t abide th&rsquo; 
+      thought o&rsquo; soldiering. There&rsquo;s a vast o&rsquo; fightin&rsquo; i&rsquo; th&rsquo; Bible, and
+      there&rsquo;s a deal of Methodists i&rsquo; th&rsquo; army; but to hear chapel folk talk
+      yo&rsquo;d think that soldierin&rsquo; were next door, an&rsquo; t&rsquo;other side, to hangin&rsquo;.
+      I&rsquo; their meetin&rsquo;s all their talk is o&rsquo; fightin&rsquo;. When Sammy Strother were
+      stuck for summat to say in his prayers, he&rsquo;d sing out, &ldquo;Th&rsquo; sword o&rsquo; th&rsquo; 
+      Lord and o&rsquo; Gideon.&rdquo; They were allus at it about puttin&rsquo; on th&rsquo; whole
+      armour o&rsquo; righteousness, an&rsquo; fightin&rsquo; the good fight o&rsquo; faith. And then,
+      atop o&rsquo; &lsquo;t all, they held a prayer-meetin&rsquo; ower a young chap as wanted to
+      &lsquo;list, and nearly deafened him, till he picked up his hat and fair ran
+      away. And they&rsquo;d tell tales in th&rsquo; Sunday-school o&rsquo; bad lads as had been
+      thumped and brayed for bird-nesting o&rsquo; Sundays and playin&rsquo; truant o&rsquo; 
+      week-days, and how they took to wrestlin&rsquo;, dog-fightin&rsquo;, rabbit-runnin&rsquo;,
+      and drinkin&rsquo;, till at last, as if &lsquo;twere a hepitaph on a gravestone, they
+      damned him across th&rsquo; moors wi&rsquo;, &ldquo;an&rsquo; then he went and &lsquo;listed for a
+      soldier,&rdquo; an&rsquo; they&rsquo;d all fetch a deep breath, and throw up their eyes like
+      a hen drinkin&rsquo;.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Fwhy is ut?&rsquo; said Mulvaney, bringing down his hand on his thigh with a
+      crack.&rsquo; In the name av God, fwhy is ut? I&rsquo;ve seen ut, tu. They cheat an&rsquo; 
+      they swindle an&rsquo; they lie an&rsquo; they slander, an&rsquo; fifty things fifty times
+      worse; but the last an&rsquo; the worst by their reckonin&rsquo; is to serve the Widdy
+      honest. It&rsquo;s like the talk av childher&mdash;seein&rsquo; things all round.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Plucky lot of fightin&rsquo; good fights of whatsername they&rsquo;d do if we didn&rsquo;t
+      see they had a quiet place to fight in. And such fightin&rsquo; as theirs is!
+      Cats on the tiles. T&rsquo;other callin&rsquo; to which to come on. I&rsquo;d give a month&rsquo;s
+      pay to get some o&rsquo; them broad-backed beggars in London sweatin&rsquo; through a
+      day&rsquo;s road-makin&rsquo; an&rsquo; a night&rsquo;s rain. They&rsquo;d carry on a deal afterwards&mdash;same
+      as we&rsquo;re supposed to carry on. I&rsquo;ve bin turned out of a measly arf-license
+      pub down Lambeth way, full o&rsquo; greasy kebmen, &lsquo;fore now,&rsquo; said Ortheris
+      with an oath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Maybe you were dhrunk,&rsquo; said Mulvaney soothingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Worse nor that. The Forders were drunk. <i>I</i> was wearin&rsquo; the Queen&rsquo;s
+      uniform.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;d no particular thought to be a soldier i&rsquo; them days,&rsquo; said Learoyd,
+      still keeping his eye on the bare hill opposite, &lsquo;but this sort o&rsquo; talk
+      put it i&rsquo; my head. They was so good, th&rsquo; chapel folk, that they tumbled
+      ower t&rsquo;other side. But I stuck to it for &lsquo;Liza&rsquo;s sake, specially as she
+      was learning me to sing the bass part in a horotorio as Jesse were gettin&rsquo; 
+      up. She sung like a throstle hersen, and we had practisin&rsquo;s night after
+      night for a matter of three months.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I know what a horotorio is,&rsquo; said Ortheris pertly. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s a sort of
+      chaplain&rsquo;s sing-song&mdash;words all out of the Bible, and hullabaloojah
+      choruses.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Most Greenhow Hill folks played some instrument or t&rsquo;other, an&rsquo; they all
+      sung so you might have heard them miles away, and they were so pleased wi&rsquo; 
+      the noise they made they didn&rsquo;t fair to want anybody to listen. The
+      preacher sung high seconds when he wasn&rsquo;t playin&rsquo; the flute, an&rsquo; they set
+      me, as hadn&rsquo;t got far with big fiddle, again Willie Satterthwaite, to jog
+      his elbow when he had to get a&rsquo; gate playin&rsquo;. Old Jesse was happy if ever
+      a man was, for he were th&rsquo; conductor an&rsquo; th&rsquo; first fiddle an&rsquo; th&rsquo; leadin&rsquo; 
+      singer, beatin&rsquo; time wi&rsquo; his fiddle-stick, till at times he&rsquo;d rap with it
+      on the table, and cry out, &ldquo;Now, you mun all stop; it&rsquo;s my turn.&rdquo; And he&rsquo;d
+      face round to his front, fair sweating wi&rsquo; pride, to sing th&rsquo; tenor solos.
+      But he were grandest i&rsquo; th&rsquo; choruses, waggin&rsquo; his head, flinging his arms
+      round like a windmill, and singin&rsquo; hisself black in the face. A rare
+      singer were Jesse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yo&rsquo; see, I was not o&rsquo; much account wi&rsquo; &lsquo;em all exceptin&rsquo; to &lsquo;Liza
+      Roantree, and I had a deal o&rsquo; time settin&rsquo; quiet at meetings and horotorio
+      practises to hearken their talk, and if it were strange to me at
+      beginnin&rsquo;, it got stranger still at after, when I was shut on it, and
+      could study what it meaned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Just after th&rsquo; horotorios come off, &lsquo;Liza, as had allus been weakly like,
+      was took very bad. I walked Dr. Warbottom&rsquo;s horse up and down a deal of
+      times while he were inside, where they wouldn&rsquo;t let me go, though I fair
+      ached to see her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;She&rsquo;ll be better i&rsquo; noo, lad&mdash;better i&rsquo; noo,&rdquo; he used to say. &ldquo;Tha
+      mun ha&rsquo; patience.&rdquo; Then they said if I was quiet I might go in, and th&rsquo; 
+      Reverend Amos Barraclough used to read to her lyin&rsquo; propped up among th&rsquo; 
+      pillows. Then she began to mend a bit, and they let me carry her on to th&rsquo; 
+      settle, and when it got warm again she went about same as afore. Th&rsquo; 
+      preacher and me and Blast was a deal together i&rsquo; them days, and i&rsquo; one way
+      we was rare good comrades. But I could ha&rsquo; stretched him time and again
+      with a good will. I mind one day he said he would like to go down into th&rsquo; 
+      bowels o&rsquo; th&rsquo; earth, and see how th&rsquo; Lord had builded th&rsquo; framework o&rsquo; th&rsquo; 
+      everlastin&rsquo; hills. He were one of them chaps as had a gift o&rsquo; sayin&rsquo; 
+      things. They rolled off the tip of his clever tongue, same as Mulvaney
+      here, as would ha&rsquo; made a rare good preacher if he had nobbut given his
+      mind to it. I lent him a suit o&rsquo; miner&rsquo;s kit as almost buried th&rsquo; little
+      man, and his white face down i&rsquo; th&rsquo; coat-collar and hat-flap looked like
+      the face of a boggart, and he cowered down i&rsquo; th&rsquo; bottom o&rsquo; the waggon. I
+      was drivin&rsquo; a tram as led up a bit of an incline up to th&rsquo; cave where the
+      engine was pumpin&rsquo;, and where th&rsquo; ore was brought up and put into th&rsquo; 
+      waggons as went down o&rsquo; themselves, me puttin&rsquo; th&rsquo; brake on and th&rsquo; horses
+      a-trottin&rsquo; after. Long as it was daylight we were good friends, but when
+      we got fair into th&rsquo; dark, and could nobbut see th&rsquo; day shinin&rsquo; at the
+      hole like a lamp at a street-end, I feeled downright wicked. Ma religion
+      dropped all away from me when I looked back at him as were always comin&rsquo; 
+      between me and &lsquo;Liza. The talk was &lsquo;at they were to be wed when she got
+      better, an&rsquo; I couldn&rsquo;t get her to say yes or nay to it. He began to sing a
+      hymn in his thin voice, and I came out wi&rsquo; a chorus that was all cussin&rsquo; 
+      an&rsquo; swearin&rsquo; at my horses, an&rsquo; I began to know how I hated him. He were
+      such a little chap, too. I could drop him wi&rsquo; one hand down Garstang&rsquo;s
+      Copper-hole&mdash;a place where th&rsquo; beck slithered ower th&rsquo; edge on a
+      rock, and fell wi&rsquo; a bit of a whisper into a pit as no rope i&rsquo; Greenhow
+      could plump.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Learoyd rooted up the innocent violets. &lsquo;Ay, he should see th&rsquo; 
+      bowels o&rsquo; th&rsquo; earth an&rsquo; never naught else. I could take him a mile or two
+      along th&rsquo; drift, and leave him wi&rsquo; his candle doused to cry hallelujah,
+      wi&rsquo; none to hear him and say amen. I was to lead him down th&rsquo; ladder-way
+      to th&rsquo; drift where Jesse Roantree was workin&rsquo;, and why shouldn&rsquo;t he slip
+      on th&rsquo; ladder, wi&rsquo; my feet on his fingers till they loosed grip, and I put
+      him down wi&rsquo; my heel? If I went fust down th&rsquo; ladder I could click hold on
+      him and chuck him over my head, so as he should go squshin&rsquo; down the
+      shaft, breakin&rsquo; his bones at ev&rsquo;ry timberin&rsquo; as Bill Appleton did when he
+      was fresh, and hadn&rsquo;t a bone left when he wrought to th&rsquo; bottom. Niver a
+      blasted leg to walk from Pately. Niver an arm to put round &lsquo;Liza
+      Roantree&rsquo;s waist. Niver no more&mdash;niver no more.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thick lips curled back over the yellow teeth, and that flushed face
+      was not pretty to look upon. Mulvaney nodded sympathy, and Ortheris, moved
+      by his comrade&rsquo;s passion, brought up the rifle to his shoulder, and
+      searched the hillside for his quarry, muttering ribaldry about a sparrow,
+      a spout, and a thunder-storm. The voice of the watercourse supplied the
+      necessary small talk till Learoyd picked up his story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But it&rsquo;s none so easy to kill a man like you. When I&rsquo;d given up my horses
+      to th&rsquo; lad as took my place and I was showin&rsquo; th&rsquo; preacher th&rsquo; workin&rsquo;s,
+      shoutin&rsquo; into his ear across th&rsquo; clang o&rsquo; th&rsquo; pumpin&rsquo; engines, I saw he
+      were afraid o&rsquo; naught; and when the lamplight showed his black eyes, I
+      could feel as he was masterin&rsquo; me again. I were no better nor Blast
+      chained up short and growlin&rsquo; i&rsquo; the depths of him while a strange dog
+      went safe past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Th&rsquo;art a coward and a fool,&rdquo; I said to mysen; an&rsquo; I wrestled i&rsquo; my mind
+      again&rsquo; him till, when we come to Garstang&rsquo;s Copper-hole, I laid hold o&rsquo; 
+      the preacher and lifted him up over my head and held him into the darkest
+      on it. &ldquo;Now, lad,&rdquo; I says &ldquo;it&rsquo;s to be one or t&rsquo;other on us&mdash;thee or
+      me&mdash;for &lsquo;Liza Roantree. Why, isn&rsquo;t thee afraid for thysen?&rdquo; I says,
+      for he were still i&rsquo; my arms as a sack. &ldquo;Nay; I&rsquo;m but afraid for thee, my
+      poor lad, as knows naught,&rdquo; says he. I set him down on th&rsquo; edge, an&rsquo; th&rsquo; 
+      beck run stiller, an&rsquo; there was no more buzzin&rsquo; in my head like when th&rsquo; 
+      bee come through th&rsquo; window o&rsquo; Jesse&rsquo;s house. &ldquo;What dost tha mean?&rdquo; says
+      I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve often thought as thou ought to know,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;but &lsquo;twas hard to
+      tell thee. &lsquo;Liza Roantree&rsquo;s for neither on us, nor for nobody o&rsquo; this
+      earth. Dr. Warbottom says&mdash;and he knows her, and her mother before
+      her&mdash;that she is in a decline, and she cannot live six months longer.
+      He&rsquo;s known it for many a day. Steady, John! Steady!&rdquo; says he. And that
+      weak little man pulled me further back and set me again&rsquo; him, and talked
+      it all over quiet and still, me turnin&rsquo; a bunch o&rsquo; candles in my hand, and
+      counting them ower and ower again as I listened. A deal on it were th&rsquo; 
+      regular preachin&rsquo; talk, but there were a vast lot as made me begin to
+      think as he were more of a man than I&rsquo;d ever given him credit for, till I
+      were cut as deep for him as I were for mysen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Six candles we had, and we crawled and climbed all that day while they
+      lasted, and I said to mysen, &ldquo;&lsquo;Liza Roantree hasn&rsquo;t six months to live.&rdquo;
+       And when we came into th&rsquo; daylight again we were like dead men to look at,
+      an&rsquo; Blast come behind us without so much as waggin&rsquo; his tail. When I saw
+      &lsquo;Liza again she looked at me a minute and says, &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s telled tha? For I
+      see tha knows.&rdquo; And she tried to smile as she kissed me, and I fair broke
+      down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yo&rsquo; see, I was a young chap i&rsquo; them days, and had seen naught o&rsquo; life,
+      let alone death, as is allus a-waitin&rsquo;. She telled me as Dr. Warbottom
+      said as Greenhow air was too keen, and they were goin&rsquo; to Bradford, to
+      Jesse&rsquo;s brother David, as worked i&rsquo; a mill, and I mun hold up like a man
+      and a Christian, and she&rsquo;d pray for me. Well, and they went away, and the
+      preacher that same back end o&rsquo; th&rsquo; year were appointed to another circuit,
+      as they call it, and I were left alone on Greenhow Hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I tried, and I tried hard, to stick to th&rsquo; chapel, but &lsquo;tweren&rsquo;t th&rsquo; same
+      thing at after. I hadn&rsquo;t &lsquo;Liza&rsquo;s voice to follow i&rsquo; th&rsquo; singin&rsquo;, nor her
+      eyes a-shinin&rsquo; acrost their heads. And i&rsquo; th&rsquo; class-meetings they said as
+      I mun have some experiences to tell, and I hadn&rsquo;t a word to say for mysen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Blast and me moped a good deal, and happen we didn&rsquo;t behave ourselves
+      over well, for they dropped us and wondered however they&rsquo;d come to take us
+      up. I can&rsquo;t tell how we got through th&rsquo; time, while i&rsquo; th&rsquo; winter I gave
+      up my job and went to Bradford. Old Jesse were at th&rsquo; door o&rsquo; th&rsquo; house,
+      in a long street o&rsquo; little houses. He&rsquo;d been sendin&rsquo; th&rsquo; children &lsquo;way as
+      were clatterin&rsquo; their clogs in th&rsquo; causeway, for she were asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;Is it thee?&rdquo; he says; &ldquo;but you&rsquo;re not to see her. I&rsquo;ll none have her
+      wakened for a nowt like thee. She&rsquo;s goin&rsquo; fast, and she mun go in peace.
+      Thou&rsquo;lt never be good for naught i&rsquo; th&rsquo; world, and as long as thou lives
+      thou&rsquo;ll never play the big fiddle. Get away, lad, get away!&rdquo; So he shut
+      the door softly i&rsquo; my face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nobody never made Jesse my master, but it seemed to me he was about
+      right, and I went away into the town and knocked up against a recruiting
+      sergeant. The old tales o&rsquo; th&rsquo; chapel folk came buzzin&rsquo; into my head. I
+      was to get away, and this were th&rsquo; regular road for the likes o&rsquo; me. I
+      &lsquo;listed there and then, took th&rsquo; Widow&rsquo;s shillin&rsquo;, and had a bunch o&rsquo; 
+      ribbons pinned i&rsquo; my hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But next day I found my way to David Roantree&rsquo;s door, and Jesse came to
+      open it. Says he, &ldquo;Thou&rsquo;s come back again wi&rsquo; th&rsquo; devil&rsquo;s colours flyin&rsquo;&mdash;thy
+      true colours, as I always telled thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But I begged and prayed of him to let me see her nobbut to say good-bye,
+      till a woman calls down th&rsquo; stairway, &ldquo;She says John Learoyd&rsquo;s to come
+      up.&rdquo; Th&rsquo; old man shifts aside in a flash, and lays his hand on my arm,
+      quite gentle like. &ldquo;But thou&rsquo;lt be quiet, John,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;for she&rsquo;s rare
+      and weak. Thou was allus a good lad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Her eyes were all alive wi&rsquo; light, and her hair was thick on the pillow
+      round her, but her cheeks were thin&mdash;thin to frighten a man that&rsquo;s
+      strong. &ldquo;Nay, father, yo mayn&rsquo;t say th&rsquo; devil&rsquo;s colours. Them ribbons is
+      pretty.&rdquo; An&rsquo; she held out her hands for th&rsquo; hat, an&rsquo; she put all straight
+      as a woman will wi&rsquo; ribbons. &ldquo;Nay, but what they&rsquo;re pretty,&rdquo; she says.
+      &ldquo;Eh, but I&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; liked to see thee i&rsquo; thy red coat, John, for thou was
+      allus my own lad&mdash;my very own lad, and none else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She lifted up her arms, and they come round my neck i&rsquo; a gentle grip, and
+      they slacked away, and she seemed fainting. &ldquo;Now yo&rsquo; mun get away, lad,&rdquo;
+       says Jesse, and I picked up my hat and I came downstairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Th&rsquo; recruiting sergeant were waitin&rsquo; for me at th&rsquo; corner public-house.
+      &ldquo;Yo&rsquo;ve seen your sweetheart?&rdquo; says he. &ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;ve seen her,&rdquo; says I.
+      &ldquo;Well, we&rsquo;ll have a quart now, and you&rsquo;ll do your best to forget her,&rdquo;
+       says he, bein&rsquo; one o&rsquo; them smart, bustlin&rsquo; chaps. &ldquo;Ay, sergeant,&rdquo; says I.
+      &ldquo;Forget her.&rdquo; And I&rsquo;ve been forgettin&rsquo; her ever since.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw away the wilted clump of white violets as he spoke. Ortheris
+      suddenly rose to his knees, his rifle at his shoulder, and peered across
+      the valley in the clear afternoon light. His chin cuddled the stock, and
+      there was a twitching of the muscles of the right cheek as he sighted;
+      Private Stanley Ortheris was engaged on his business. A speck of white
+      crawled up the watercourse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;See that beggar? . . . Got &lsquo;im.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seven hundred yards away, and a full two hundred down the hillside, the
+      deserter of the Aurangabadis pitched forward, rolled down a red rock, and
+      lay very still, with his face in a clump of blue gentians, while a big
+      raven flapped out of the pine wood to make investigation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s a clean shot, little man,&rsquo; said Mulvaney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Learoyd thoughtfully watched the smoke clear away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Happen there was a lass tewed up wi&rsquo; him, too,&rsquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ortheris did not reply. He was staring across the valley, with the smile
+      of the artist who looks on the completed work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE MAN WHO WAS
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ The Earth gave up her dead that tide,
+      Into our camp he came,
+ And said his say, and went his way,
+      And left our hearts aflame.
+
+ Keep tally&mdash;on the gun-butt score
+      The vengeance we must take,
+ When God shall bring full reckoning,
+      For our dead comrade&rsquo;s sake.
+                        BALLAD.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person till
+      he tucks in his shirt. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only when he
+      insists upon being treated as the most easterly of western peoples instead
+      of the most westerly of easterns that he becomes a racial anomaly
+      extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows which side of his
+      nature is going to turn up next.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dirkovitch was a Russian&mdash;a Russian of the Russians&mdash;who
+      appeared to get his bread by serving the Czar as an officer in a Cossack
+      regiment, and corresponding for a Russian newspaper with a name that was
+      never twice alike. He was a handsome young Oriental, fond of wandering
+      through unexplored portions of the earth, and he arrived in India from
+      nowhere in particular. At least no living man could ascertain whether it
+      was by way of Balkh, Badakshan, Chitral, Beluchistan, or Nepaul, or
+      anywhere else. The Indian Government, being in an unusually affable mood,
+      gave orders that he was to be civilly treated and shown everything that
+      was to be seen. So he drifted, talking bad English and worse French, from
+      one city to another, till he foregathered with Her Majesty&rsquo;s White Hussars
+      in the city of Peshawur, which stands at the mouth of that narrow swordcut
+      in the hills that men call the Khyber Pass. He was undoubtedly an officer,
+      and he was decorated after the manner of the Russians with little
+      enamelled crosses, and he could talk, and (though this has nothing to do
+      with his merits) he had been given up as a hopeless task, or cask, by the
+      Black Tyrone, who individually and collectively, with hot whisky and
+      honey, mulled brandy, and mixed spirits of every kind, had striven in all
+      hospitality to make him drunk. And when the Black Tyrone, who are
+      exclusively Irish, fail to disturb the peace of head of a foreigner&mdash;that
+      foreigner is certain to be a superior man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The White Hussars were as conscientious in choosing their wine as in
+      charging the enemy. All that they possessed, including some wondrous
+      brandy, was placed at the absolute disposition of Dirkovitch, and he
+      enjoyed himself hugely&mdash;even more than among the Black Tyrones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he remained distressingly European through it all. The White Hussars
+      were &lsquo;My dear true friends,&rsquo; &lsquo;Fellow-soldiers glorious,&rsquo; and &lsquo;Brothers
+      inseparable.&rsquo; He would unburden himself by the hour on the glorious future
+      that awaited the combined arms of England and Russia when their hearts and
+      their territories should run side by side and the great mission of
+      civilising Asia should begin. That was unsatisfactory, because Asia is not
+      going to be civilised after the methods of the West. There is too much
+      Asia and she is too old. You cannot reform a lady of many lovers, and Asia
+      has been insatiable in her flirtations aforetime. She will never attend
+      Sunday-school or learn to vote save with swords for tickets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dirkovitch knew this as well as any one else, but it suited him to talk
+      special-correspondently and to make himself as genial as he could. Now and
+      then he volunteered a little, a very little, information about his own
+      sotnia of Cossacks, left apparently to look after themselves somewhere at
+      the back of beyond. He had done rough work in Central Asia, and had seen
+      rather more help-yourself fighting than most men of his years. But he was
+      careful never to betray his superiority, and more than careful to praise
+      on all occasions the appearance, drill, uniform, and organisation of Her
+      Majesty&rsquo;s White Hussars. And indeed they were a regiment to be admired.
+      When Lady Durgan, widow of the late Sir John Durgan, arrived in their
+      station, and after a short time had been proposed to by every single man
+      at mess, she put the public sentiment very neatly when she explained that
+      they were all so nice that unless she could marry them all, including the
+      colonel and some majors already married, she was not going to content
+      herself with one hussar. Wherefore she wedded a little man in a rifle
+      regiment, being by nature contradictious; and the White Hussars were going
+      to wear crape on their arms, but compromised by attending the wedding in
+      full force, and lining the aisle with unutterable reproach. She had jilted
+      them all&mdash;from Basset-Holmer the senior captain to little Mildred the
+      junior subaltern, who could have given her four thousand a year and a
+      title.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only persons who did not share the general regard for the White
+      Hussars were a few thousand gentlemen of Jewish extraction who lived
+      across the border, and answered to the name of Pathan. They had once met
+      the regiment officially and for something less than twenty minutes, but
+      the interview, which was complicated with many casualties, had filled them
+      with prejudice. They even called the White Hussars children of the devil
+      and sons of persons whom it would be perfectly impossible to meet in
+      decent society. Yet they were not above making their aversion fill their
+      money-belts. The regiment possessed carbines&mdash;beautiful Martini-Henri
+      carbines that would lob a bullet into an enemy&rsquo;s camp at one thousand
+      yards, and were even handier than the long rifle. Therefore they were
+      coveted all along the border, and since demand inevitably breeds supply,
+      they were supplied at the risk of life and limb for exactly their weight
+      in coined silver&mdash;seven and one-half pounds weight of rupees, or
+      sixteen pounds sterling reckoning the rupee at par. They were stolen at
+      night by snaky-haired thieves who crawled on their stomachs under the nose
+      of the sentries; they disappeared mysteriously from locked arm-racks, and
+      in the hot weather, when all the barrack doors and windows were open, they
+      vanished like puffs of their own smoke. The border people desired them for
+      family vendettas and contingencies. But in the long cold nights of the
+      northern Indian winter they were stolen most extensively. The traffic of
+      murder was liveliest among the hills at that season, and prices ruled
+      high. The regimental guards were first doubled and then trebled. A trooper
+      does not much care if he loses a weapon&mdash;Government must make it good&mdash;but
+      he deeply resents the loss of his sleep. The regiment grew very angry, and
+      one rifle-thief bears the visible marks of their anger upon him to this
+      hour. That incident stopped the burglaries for a time, and the guards were
+      reduced accordingly, and the regiment devoted itself to polo with
+      unexpected results; for it beat by two goals to one that very terrible
+      polo corps the Lushkar Light Horse, though the latter had four ponies
+      apiece for a short hour&rsquo;s fight, as well as a native officer who played
+      like a lambent flame across the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They gave a dinner to celebrate the event. The Lushkar team came, and
+      Dirkovitch came, in the fullest full uniform of a Cossack officer, which
+      is as full as a dressing-gown, and was introduced to the Lushkars, and
+      opened his eyes as he regarded. They were lighter men than the Hussars,
+      and they carried themselves with the swing that is the peculiar right of
+      the Punjab Frontier Force and all Irregular Horse. Like everything else in
+      the Service it has to be learnt, but, unlike many things, it is never
+      forgotten, and remains on the body till death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great beam-roofed mess-room of the White Hussars was a sight to be
+      remembered. All the mess plate was out on the long table&mdash;the same
+      table that had served up the bodies of five officers after a forgotten
+      fight long and long ago&mdash;the dingy, battered standards faced the door
+      of entrance, clumps of winter-roses lay between the silver candlesticks,
+      and the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked down on their
+      successors from between the heads of sambhur, nilghai, markhor, and, pride
+      of all the mess, two grinning snow-leopards that had cost Basset-Holmer
+      four months&rsquo; leave that he might have spent in England, instead of on the
+      road to Thibet and the daily risk of his life by ledge, snow-slide, and
+      grassy slope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The servants in spotless white muslin and the crest of their regiments on
+      the brow of their turbans waited behind their masters, who were clad in
+      the scarlet and gold of the White Hussars, and the cream and silver of the
+      Lushkar Light Horse. Dirkovitch&rsquo;s dull green uniform was the only dark
+      spot at the board, but his big onyx eyes made up for it. He was
+      fraternising effusively with the captain of the Lushkar team, who was
+      wondering how many of Dirkovitch&rsquo;s Cossacks his own dark wiry
+      down-countrymen could account for in a fair charge. But one does not speak
+      of these things openly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The talk rose higher and higher, and the regimental band played between
+      the courses, as is the immemorial custom, till all tongues ceased for a
+      moment with the removal of the dinner-slips and the first toast of
+      obligation, when an officer rising said, &lsquo;Mr. Vice, the Queen,&rsquo; and little
+      Mildred from the bottom of the table answered, &lsquo;The Queen, God bless her,&rsquo; 
+      and the big spurs clanked as the big men heaved themselves up and drank
+      the Queen upon whose pay they were falsely supposed to settle their
+      mess-bills. That Sacrament of the Mess never grows old, and never ceases
+      to bring a lump into the throat of the listener wherever he be by sea or
+      by land. Dirkovitch rose with his &lsquo;brothers glorious,&rsquo; but he could not
+      understand. No one but an officer can tell what the toast means; and the
+      bulk have more sentiment than comprehension. Immediately after the little
+      silence that follows on the ceremony there entered the native officer who
+      had played for the Lushkar team. He could not, of course, eat with the
+      mess, but he came in at dessert, all six feet of him, with the blue and
+      silver turban atop, and the big black boots below. The mess rose joyously
+      as he thrust forward the hilt of his sabre in token of fealty for the
+      colonel of the White Hussars to touch, and dropped into a vacant chair
+      amid shouts of: &lsquo;Rung ho, Hira Singh!&rsquo; (which being translated means &lsquo;Go
+      in and win&rsquo;). &lsquo;Did I whack you over the knee, old man?&rsquo; &lsquo;Ressaidar Sahib,
+      what the devil made you play that kicking pig of a pony in the last ten
+      minutes?&rsquo; &lsquo;Shabash, Ressaidar Sahib!&rsquo; Then the voice of the colonel, &lsquo;The
+      health of Ressaidar Hira Singh!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the shouting had died away Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was the
+      cadet of a royal house, the son of a king&rsquo;s son, and knew what was due on
+      these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular:&mdash;&lsquo;Colonel Sahib and
+      officers of this regiment. Much honour have you done me. This will I
+      remember. We came down from afar to play you. But we were beaten.&rsquo; (&lsquo;No
+      fault of yours, Ressaidar Sahib. Played on our own ground y&rsquo;know. Your
+      ponies were cramped from the railway. Don&rsquo;t apologise!&rsquo;) &lsquo;Therefore
+      perhaps we will come again if it be so ordained.&rsquo; (&lsquo;Hear! Hear! Hear,
+      indeed! Bravo! Hsh!&rsquo;) &lsquo;Then we will play you afresh&rsquo; (&lsquo;Happy to meet
+      you.&rsquo;) &lsquo;till there are left no feet upon our ponies. Thus far for sport.&rsquo; 
+      He dropped one hand on his sword-hilt and his eye wandered to Dirkovitch
+      lolling back in his chair. &lsquo;But if by the will of God there arises any
+      other game which is not the polo game, then be assured, Colonel Sahib and
+      officers, that we will play it out side by side, though THEY,&rsquo; again his
+      eye sought Dirkovitch, &lsquo;though THEY I say have fifty ponies to our one
+      horse.&rsquo; And with a deep-mouthed Rung ho! that sounded like a musket-butt
+      on flagstones he sat down amid leaping glasses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dirkovitch, who had devoted himself steadily to the brandy&mdash;the
+      terrible brandy aforementioned&mdash;did not understand, nor did the
+      expurgated translations offered to him at all convey the point. Decidedly
+      Hira Singh&rsquo;s was the speech of the evening, and the clamour might have
+      continued to the dawn had it not been broken by the noise of a shot
+      without that sent every man feeling at his defenceless left side. Then
+      there was a scuffle and a yell of pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Carbine-stealing again!&rsquo; said the adjutant, calmly sinking back in his
+      chair. &lsquo;This comes of reducing the guards. I hope the sentries have killed
+      him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The feet of armed men pounded on the verandah flags, and it was as though
+      something was being dragged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why don&rsquo;t they put him in the cells till the morning?&rsquo; said the colonel
+      testily. &lsquo;See if they&rsquo;ve damaged him, sergeant.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mess sergeant fled out into the darkness and returned with two
+      troopers and a corporal, all very much perplexed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Caught a man stealin&rsquo; carbines, sir,&rsquo; said the corporal. &lsquo;Leastways &lsquo;e
+      was crawlin&rsquo; towards the barricks, sir, past the main road sentries, an&rsquo; 
+      the sentry &lsquo;e sez, sir&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The limp heap of rags upheld by the three men groaned. Never was seen so
+      destitute and demoralised an Afghan. He was turbanless, shoeless, caked
+      with dirt, and all but dead with rough handling. Hira Singh started
+      slightly at the sound of the man&rsquo;s pain. Dirkovitch took another glass of
+      brandy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;WHAT does the sentry say?&rsquo; said the colonel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sez &lsquo;e speaks English, sir,&rsquo; said the corporal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the sergeant!
+      If he spoke all the Tongues of the Pentecost you&rsquo;ve no business&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the bundle groaned and muttered. Little Mildred had risen from his
+      place to inspect. He jumped back as though he had been shot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Perhaps it would be better, sir, to send the men away,&rsquo; said he to the
+      colonel, for he was a much privileged subaltern. He put his arms round the
+      ragbound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair. It may not have
+      been explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in his being six feet
+      four and big in proportion. The corporal seeing that an officer was
+      disposed to look after the capture, and that the colonel&rsquo;s eye was
+      beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and his men. The mess was
+      left alone with the carbine-thief, who laid his head on the table and wept
+      bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably, as little children weep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hira Singh leapt to his feet. &lsquo;Colonel Sahib,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;that man is no
+      Afghan, for they weep Ai! Ai! Nor is he of Hindustan, for they weep Oh!
+      Ho! He weeps after the fashion of the white men, who say Ow! Ow!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now where the dickens did you get that knowledge, Hira Singh?&rsquo; said the
+      captain of the Lushkar team.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hear him!&rsquo; said Hira Singh simply, pointing at the crumpled figure that
+      wept as though it would never cease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He said, &ldquo;My God!&rdquo;&rsquo; said little Mildred. &lsquo;I heard him say it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The colonel and the mess-room looked at the man in silence. It is a
+      horrible thing to hear a man cry. A woman can sob from the top of her
+      palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man must cry from his
+      diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Poor devil!&rsquo; said the colonel, coughing tremendously. &lsquo;We ought to send
+      him to hospital. He&rsquo;s been man-handled.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the adjutant loved his carbines. They were to him as his
+      grandchildren, the men standing in the first place. He grunted
+      rebelliously: &lsquo;I can understand an Afghan stealing, because he&rsquo;s built
+      that way. But I can&rsquo;t understand his crying. That makes it worse.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The brandy must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair and
+      stared at the ceiling. There was nothing special in the ceiling beyond a
+      shadow as of a huge black coffin. Owing to some peculiarity in the
+      construction of the mess-room this shadow was always thrown when the
+      candles were lighted. It never disturbed the digestion of the White
+      Hussars. They were in fact rather proud of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is he going to cry all night?&rsquo; said the colonel, &lsquo;or are we supposed to
+      sit up with little Mildred&rsquo;s guest until he feels better?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man in the chair threw up his head and stared at the mess. &lsquo;Oh, my
+      God!&rsquo; he said, and every soul in the mess rose to his feet. Then the
+      Lushkar captain did a deed for which he ought to have been given the
+      Victoria Cross&mdash;distinguished gallantry in a fight against
+      overwhelming curiosity. He picked up his team with his eyes as the hostess
+      picks up the ladies at the opportune moment, and pausing only by the
+      colonel&rsquo;s chair to say, &lsquo;This isn&rsquo;t OUR affair, you know, sir,&rsquo; led them
+      into the verandah and the gardens. Hira Singh was the last to go, and he
+      looked at Dirkovitch. But Dirkovitch had departed into a brandy-paradise
+      of his own. His lips moved without sound and he was studying the coffin on
+      the ceiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;White&mdash;white all over,&rsquo; said Basset-Holmer, the adjutant. &lsquo;What a
+      pernicious renegade he must be! I wonder where he came from?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The colonel shook the man gently by the arm, and &lsquo;Who are you?&rsquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no answer. The man stared round the mess-room and smiled in the
+      colonel&rsquo;s face. Little Mildred, who was always more of a woman than a man
+      till &lsquo;Boot and saddle&rsquo; was sounded, repeated the question in a voice that
+      would have drawn confidences from a geyser. The man only smiled.
+      Dirkovitch at the far end of the table slid gently from his chair to the
+      floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No son of Adam in this present imperfect world can mix the Hussars&rsquo; 
+      champagne with the Hussars&rsquo; brandy by five and eight glasses of each
+      without remembering the pit whence he was digged and descending thither.
+      The band began to play the tune with which the White Hussars from the date
+      of their formation have concluded all their functions. They would sooner
+      be disbanded than abandon that tune; it is a part of their system. The man
+      straightened himself in his chair and drummed on the table with his
+      fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t see why we should entertain lunatics,&rsquo; said the colonel. &lsquo;Call a
+      guard and send him off to the cells. We&rsquo;ll look into the business in the
+      morning. Give him a glass of wine first though.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Mildred filled a sherry-glass with the brandy and thrust it over to
+      the man. He drank, and the tune rose louder, and he straightened himself
+      yet more. Then he put out his long-taloned hands to a piece of plate
+      opposite and fingered it lovingly. There was a mystery connected with that
+      piece of plate, in the shape of a spring which converted what was a
+      seven-branched candlestick, three springs on each side and one in the
+      middle, into a sort of wheel-spoke candelabrum. He found the spring,
+      pressed it, and laughed weakly. He rose from his chair and inspected a
+      picture on the wall, then moved on to another picture, the mess watching
+      him without a word. When he came to the mantelpiece he shook his head and
+      seemed distressed. A piece of plate representing a mounted hussar in full
+      uniform caught his eye. He pointed to it, and then to the mantelpiece with
+      inquiry in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is it&mdash;Oh what is it?&rsquo; said little Mildred. Then as a mother
+      might speak to a child, &lsquo;That is a horse. Yes, a horse.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very slowly came the answer in a thick, passionless guttural&mdash;&lsquo;Yes, I&mdash;have
+      seen. But&mdash;where is THE horse?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You could have heard the hearts of the mess beating as the men drew back
+      to give the stranger full room in his wanderings. There was no question of
+      calling the guard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again he spoke&mdash;very slowly, &lsquo;Where is OUR horse?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is but one horse in the White Hussars, and his portrait hangs
+      outside the door of the mess-room. He is the piebald drum-horse, the king
+      of the regimental band, that served the regiment for seven-and-thirty
+      years, and in the end was shot for old age. Half the mess tore the thing
+      down from its place and thrust it into the man&rsquo;s hands. He placed it above
+      the mantel-piece, it clattered on the ledge as his poor hands dropped it,
+      and he staggered towards the bottom of the table, falling into Mildred&rsquo;s
+      chair. Then all the men spoke to one another something after this fashion,
+      &lsquo;The drum-horse hasn&rsquo;t hung over the mantelpiece since &lsquo;67.&rsquo; &lsquo;How does he
+      know?&rsquo; &lsquo;Mildred, go and speak to him again.&rsquo; &lsquo;Colonel, what are you going
+      to do?&rsquo; &lsquo;Oh, dry up, and give the poor devil a chance to pull himself
+      together.&rsquo; &lsquo;It isn&rsquo;t possible anyhow. The man&rsquo;s a lunatic.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Mildred stood at the colonel&rsquo;s side talking in his ear. &lsquo;Will you
+      be good enough to take your seats please, gentlemen!&rsquo; he said, and the
+      mess dropped into the chairs. Only Dirkovitch&rsquo;s seat, next to little
+      Mildred&rsquo;s, was blank, and little Mildred himself had found Hira Singh&rsquo;s
+      place. The wide-eyed mess-sergeant filled the glasses in deep silence.
+      Once more the colonel rose, but his hand shook and the port spilled on the
+      table as he looked straight at the man in little Mildred&rsquo;s chair and said
+      hoarsely, &lsquo;Mr. Vice, the Queen.&rsquo; There was a little pause, but the man
+      sprung to his feet and answered without hesitation, &lsquo;The Queen, God bless
+      her!&rsquo; and as he emptied the thin glass he snapped the shank between his
+      fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long and long ago, when the Empress of India was a young woman and there
+      were no unclean ideals in the land, it was the custom of a few messes to
+      drink the Queen&rsquo;s toast in broken glass, to the vast delight of the
+      mess-contractors. The custom is now dead, because there is nothing to
+      break anything for, except now and again the word of a Government, and
+      that has been broken already.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That settles it,&rsquo; said the colonel, with a gasp. &lsquo;He&rsquo;s not a sergeant.
+      What in the world is he?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The entire mess echoed the word, and the volley of questions would have
+      scared any man. It was no wonder that the ragged, filthy invader could
+      only smile and shake his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From under the table, calm and smiling, rose Dirkovitch, who had been
+      roused from healthful slumber by feet upon his body. By the side of the
+      man he rose, and the man shrieked and grovelled. It was a horrible sight
+      coming so swiftly upon the pride and glory of the toast that had brought
+      the strayed wits together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dirkovitch made no offer to raise him, but little Mildred heaved him up in
+      an instant. It is not good that a gentleman who can answer to the Queen&rsquo;s
+      toast should lie at the feet of a subaltern of Cossacks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hasty action tore the wretch&rsquo;s upper clothing nearly to the waist, and
+      his body was seamed with dry black scars. There is only one weapon in the
+      world that cuts: in parallel lines, and it is neither the cane nor the
+      cat. Dirkovitch saw the marks, and the pupils of his eyes dilated. Also
+      his face changed. He said something that sounded like Shto ve takete, and
+      the man fawning answered, Chetyre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rsquo; said everybody together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;His number. That is number four, you know.&rsquo; Dirkovitch spoke very
+      thickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What has a Queen&rsquo;s officer to do with a qualified number?&rsquo; said the
+      Colonel, and an unpleasant growl ran round the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How can I tell?&rsquo; said the affable Oriental with a sweet smile. &lsquo;He is a&mdash;how
+      you have it?&mdash;escape&mdash;run-a-way, from over there.&rsquo; He nodded
+      towards the darkness of the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Speak to him if he&rsquo;ll answer you, and speak to him gently,&rsquo; said little
+      Mildred, settling the man in a chair. It seemed most improper to all
+      present that Dirkovitch should sip brandy as he talked in purring,
+      spitting Russian to the creature who answered so feebly and with such
+      evident dread. But since Dirkovitch appeared to understand no one said a
+      word. All breathed heavily, leaning forward, in the long gaps of the
+      conversation. The next time that they have no engagements on hand the
+      White Hussars intend to go to St. Petersburg in a body to learn Russian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He does not know how many years ago,&rsquo; said Dirkovitch, facing the mess,
+      &lsquo;but he says it was very long ago in a war. I think that there was an
+      accident. He says he was of this glorious and distinguished regiment in
+      the war.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The rolls! The rolls! Holmer, get the rolls!&rsquo; said little Mildred, and
+      the adjutant dashed off bare-headed to the orderly-room, where the
+      muster-rolls of the regiment were kept. He returned just in time to hear
+      Dirkovitch conclude, &lsquo;Therefore, my dear friends, I am most sorry to say
+      there was an accident which would have been reparable if he had apologised
+      to that our colonel, which he had insulted.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then followed another growl which the colonel tried to beat down. The mess
+      was in no mood just then to weigh insults to Russian colonels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He does not remember, but I think that there was an accident, and so he
+      was not exchanged among the prisoners, but he was sent to another place&mdash;how
+      do you say?&mdash;the country. SO, he says, he came here. He does not know
+      how he came. Eh? He was at Chepany&rsquo;&mdash;the man caught the word, nodded,
+      and shivered&mdash;&lsquo;at Zhigansk and Irkutsk. I cannot understand how he
+      escaped. He says, too, that he was in the forests for many years, but how
+      many years he has forgotten&mdash;that with many things. It was an
+      accident; done because he did not apologise to that our colonel. Ah!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of echoing Dirkovitch&rsquo;s sigh of regret, it is sad to record that
+      the White Hussars livelily exhibited un-Christian delight and other
+      emotions, hardly restrained by their sense of hospitality. Holmer flung
+      the frayed and yellow regimental rolls on the table, and the men flung
+      themselves at these.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Steady! Fifty-six&mdash;fifty-five&mdash;fifty-four,&rsquo; said Holmer. &lsquo;Here
+      we are. &ldquo;Lieutenant Austin Limmason. MISSING.&rdquo; That was before Sebastopol.
+      What an infernal shame! Insulted one of their colonels, and was quietly
+      shipped off. Thirty years of his life wiped out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But he never apologised. Said he&rsquo;d see him damned first,&rsquo; chorused the
+      mess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Poor chap! I suppose he never had the chance afterwards. How did he come
+      here?&rsquo; said the colonel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dingy heap in the chair could give no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do you know who you are?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It laughed weakly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do you know that you are Limmason&mdash;Lieutenant Limmason of the White
+      Hussars?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swiftly as a shot came the answer, in a slightly surprised tone, &lsquo;Yes, I&rsquo;m
+      Limmason, of course.&rsquo; The light died out in his eyes, and the man
+      collapsed, watching every motion of Dirkovitch with terror. A flight from
+      Siberia may fix a few elementary facts in the mind, but it does not seem
+      to lead to continuity of thought. The man could not explain how, like a
+      homing pigeon, he had found his way to his own old mess again. Of what he
+      had suffered or seen he knew nothing. He cringed before Dirkovitch as
+      instinctively as he had pressed the spring of the candlestick, sought the
+      picture of the drum-horse, and answered to the toast of the Queen. The
+      rest was a blank that the dreaded Russian tongue could only in part
+      remove. His head bowed on his breast, and he giggled and cowered
+      alternately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The devil that lived in the brandy prompted Dirkovitch at this extremely
+      inopportune moment to make a speech. He rose, swaying slightly, gripped
+      the table-edge, while his eyes glowed like opals, and began:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Fellow-soldiers glorious&mdash;true friends and hospitables. It was an
+      accident, and deplorable&mdash;most deplorable.&rsquo; Here he smiled sweetly
+      all round the mess. &lsquo;But you will think of this little, little thing. So
+      little, is it not? The Czar! Posh! I slap my fingers&mdash;I snap my
+      fingers at him. Do I believe in him? No! But in us Slav who has done
+      nothing, HIM I believe. Seventy&mdash;how much&mdash;millions peoples that
+      have done nothing&mdash;not one thing. Posh! Napoleon was an episode.&rsquo; He
+      banged a hand on the table. &lsquo;Hear you, old peoples, we have done nothing
+      in the world&mdash;out here. All our work is to do; and it shall be done,
+      old peoples. Get a-way!&rsquo; He waved his hand imperiously, and pointed to the
+      man. &lsquo;You see him. He is not good to see. He was just one little&mdash;oh,
+      so little&mdash;accident, that no one remembered. Now he is THAT! So will
+      you be, brother-soldiers so brave&mdash;so will you be. But you will never
+      come back. You will all go where he is gone, or&rsquo;&mdash;he pointed to the
+      great coffin-shadow on the ceiling, and muttering, &lsquo;Seventy millions&mdash;get
+      a-way, you old peoples,&rsquo; fell asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sweet, and to the point,&rsquo; said little Mildred. &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the use of getting
+      wroth? Let&rsquo;s make this poor devil comfortable.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that was a matter suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands of
+      the White Hussars. The lieutenant had returned only to go away again three
+      days later, when the wail of the Dead March, and the tramp of the
+      squadrons, told the wondering Station, who saw no gap in the mess-table,
+      that an officer of the regiment had resigned his new-found commission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Dirkovitch, bland, supple, and always genial, went away too by a night
+      train. Little Mildred and another man saw him off, for he was the guest of
+      the mess, and even had he smitten the colonel with the open hand, the law
+      of that mess allowed no relaxation of hospitality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good-bye, Dirkovitch, and a pleasant journey,&rsquo; said little Mildred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Au revoir,&rsquo; said the Russian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Indeed! But we thought you were going home?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, but I will come again. My dear friends, is that road shut?&rsquo; He
+      pointed to where the North Star burned over the Khyber Pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By Jove! I forgot. Of course. Happy to meet you, old man, any time you
+      like. Got everything you want? Cheroots, ice, bedding? That&rsquo;s all right.
+      Well, au revoir, Dirkovitch.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Um,&rsquo; said the other man, as the tail-lights of the train grew small. &lsquo;Of&mdash;all&mdash;the&mdash;unmitigated&mdash;!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Mildred answered nothing, but watched the North Star and hummed a
+      selection from a recent Simla burlesque that had much delighted the White
+      Hussars. It ran&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     I&rsquo;m sorry for Mister Bluebeard,
+     I&rsquo;m sorry to cause him pain;
+     But a terrible spree there&rsquo;s sure to be
+     When he comes back again.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE HEAD OF THE DISTRICT
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    There&rsquo;s a convict more in the Central Jail,
+       Behind the old mud wall;
+     There&rsquo;s a lifter less on the Border trail,
+       And the Queen&rsquo;s Peace over all,
+                                    Dear boys
+     The Queen&rsquo;s Peace over all.
+
+    For we must bear our leader&rsquo;s blame,
+       On us the shame will fall,
+     If we lift our hand from a fettered land
+       And the Queen&rsquo;s Peace over all,
+                                    Dear boys,
+     The Queen&rsquo;s Peace over all!
+                      THE RUNNING OF SHINDAND.
+</pre>
+    <h3>
+      I
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Indus had risen in flood without warning. Last night it was a fordable
+      shallow; to-night five miles of raving muddy water parted bank and caving
+      bank, and the river was still rising under the moon. A litter borne by six
+      bearded men, all unused to the work, stopped in the white sand that
+      bordered the whiter plain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s God&rsquo;s will,&rsquo; they said. &lsquo;We dare not cross to-night, even in a boat.
+      Let us light a fire and cook food. We be tired men.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They looked at the litter inquiringly. Within, the Deputy Commissioner of
+      the Kot-Kumharsen district lay dying of fever. They had brought him across
+      country, six fighting-men of a frontier clan that he had won over to the
+      paths of a moderate righteousness, when he had broken down at the foot of
+      their inhospitable hills. And Tallantire, his assistant, rode with them,
+      heavy-hearted as heavy-eyed with sorrow and lack of sleep. He had served
+      under the sick man for three years, and had learned to love him as men
+      associated in toil of the hardest learn to love&mdash;or hate. Dropping
+      from his horse he parted the curtains of the litter and peered inside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Orde&mdash;Orde, old man, can you hear? We have to wait till the river
+      goes down, worse luck.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I hear,&rsquo; returned a dry whisper. &lsquo;Wait till the river goes down. I
+      thought we should reach camp before the dawn. Polly knows. She&rsquo;ll meet
+      me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the litter-men stared across the river and caught a faint twinkle
+      of light on the far side. He whispered to Tallantire, &lsquo;There are his
+      camp-fires, and his wife. They will cross in the morning, for they have
+      better boats. Can he live so long?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tallantire shook his head. Yardley-Orde was very near to death. What need
+      to vex his soul with hopes of a meeting that could not be? The river
+      gulped at the banks, brought down a cliff of sand, and snarled the more
+      hungrily. The litter-men sought for fuel in the waste-dried camel-thorn
+      and refuse of the camps that had waited at the ford. Their sword-belts
+      clinked as they moved softly in the haze of the moonlight, and
+      Tallantire&rsquo;s horse coughed to explain that he would like a blanket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m cold too,&rsquo; said the voice from the litter. &lsquo;I fancy this is the end.
+      Poor Polly!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tallantire rearranged the blankets. Khoda Dad Khan, seeing this, stripped
+      off his own heavy-wadded sheepskin coat and added it to the pile. &lsquo;I shall
+      be warm by the fire presently,&rsquo; said he. Tallantire took the wasted body
+      of his chief into his arms and held it against his breast. Perhaps if they
+      kept him very warm Orde might live to see his wife once more. If only
+      blind Providence would send a three-foot fall in the river!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s better,&rsquo; said Orde faintly. &lsquo;Sorry to be a nuisance, but is&mdash;is
+      there anything to drink?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They gave him milk and whisky, and Tallantire felt a little warmth against
+      his own breast. Orde began to mutter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It isn&rsquo;t that I mind dying,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s leaving Polly and the
+      district. Thank God! we have no children. Dick, you know, I&rsquo;m dipped&mdash;awfully
+      dipped&mdash;debts in my first five years&rsquo; service. It isn&rsquo;t much of a
+      pension, but enough for her. She has her mother at home. Getting there is
+      the difficulty. And&mdash;and&mdash;you see, not being a soldier&rsquo;s wife&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll arrange the passage home, of course,&rsquo; said Tallantire quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s not nice to think of sending round the hat; but, good Lord! how many
+      men I lie here and remember that had to do it! Morten&rsquo;s dead&mdash;he was
+      of my year. Shaughnessy is dead, and he had children; I remember he used
+      to read us their school-letters; what a bore we thought him! Evans is dead&mdash;Kot-Kumharsen
+      killed him! Ricketts of Myndonie is dead&mdash;and I&rsquo;m going too. &ldquo;Man
+      that is born of a woman is small potatoes and few in the hill.&rdquo; That
+      reminds me, Dick; the four Khusru Kheyl villages in our border want a
+      one-third remittance this spring. That&rsquo;s fair; their crops are bad. See
+      that they get it, and speak to Ferris about the canal. I should like to
+      have lived till that was finished; it means so much for the North-Indus
+      villages&mdash;but Ferris is an idle beggar&mdash;wake him up. You&rsquo;ll have
+      charge of the district till my successor comes. I wish they would appoint
+      you permanently; you know the folk. I suppose it will be Bullows, though.
+      &lsquo;Good man, but too weak for frontier work; and he doesn&rsquo;t understand the
+      priests. The blind priest at Jagai will bear watching. You&rsquo;ll find it in
+      my papers,&mdash;in the uniform-case, I think. Call the Khusru Kheyl men
+      up; I&rsquo;ll hold my last public audience. Khoda Dad Khan!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leader of the men sprang to the side of the litter, his companions
+      following.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Men, I&rsquo;m dying,&rsquo; said Orde quickly, in the vernacular; &lsquo;and soon there
+      will be no more Orde Sahib to twist your tails and prevent you from
+      raiding cattle.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;God forbid this thing!&rsquo; broke out the deep bass chorus. &lsquo;The Sahib is not
+      going to die.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, he is; and then he will know whether Mahomed speaks truth, or Moses.
+      But you must be good men, when I am not here. Such of you as live in our
+      borders must pay your taxes quietly as before. I have spoken of the
+      villages to be gently treated this year. Such of you as live in the hills
+      must refrain from cattle-lifting, and burn no more thatch, and turn a deaf
+      ear to the voice of the priests, who, not knowing the strength of the
+      Government, would lead you into foolish wars, wherein you will surely die
+      and your crops be eaten by strangers. And you must not sack any caravans,
+      and must leave your arms at the police-post when you come in; as has been
+      your custom, and my order. And Tallantire Sahib will be with you, but I do
+      not know who takes my place. I speak now true talk, for I am as it were
+      already dead, my children,&mdash;for though ye be strong men, ye are
+      children.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And thou art our father and our mother,&rsquo; broke in Khoda Dad Khan with an
+      oath. &lsquo;What shall we do, now there is no one to speak for us, or to teach
+      us to go wisely!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There remains Tallantire Sahib. Go to him; he knows your talk and your
+      heart. Keep the young men quiet, listen to the old men, and obey. Khoda
+      Dad Khan, take my ring. The watch and chain go to thy brother. Keep those
+      things for my sake, and I will speak to whatever God I may encounter and
+      tell him that the Khusru Kheyl are good men. Ye have my leave to go.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Khoda Dad Khan, the ring upon his finger, choked audibly as he caught the
+      well-known formula that closed an interview. His brother turned to look
+      across the river. The dawn was breaking, and a speck of white showed on
+      the dull silver of the stream. &lsquo;She comes,&rsquo; said the man under his breath.
+      &lsquo;Can he live for another two hours?&rsquo; And he pulled the newly-acquired
+      watch out of his belt and looked uncomprehendingly at the dial, as he had
+      seen Englishmen do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two hours the bellying sail tacked and blundered up and down the
+      river, Tallantire still clasping Orde in his arms, and Khoda Dad Khan
+      chafing his feet. He spoke now and again of the district and his wife,
+      but, as the end neared, more frequently of the latter. They hoped he did
+      not know that she was even then risking her life in a crazy native boat to
+      regain him. But the awful foreknowledge of the dying deceived them.
+      Wrenching himself forward, Orde looked through the curtains and saw how
+      near was the sail. &lsquo;That&rsquo;s Polly,&rsquo; he said simply, though his mouth was
+      wried with agony. &lsquo;Polly and&mdash;the grimmest practical joke ever played
+      on a man. Dick&mdash;you&rsquo;ll&mdash;have&mdash;to&mdash;explain.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And an hour later Tallantire met on the bank a woman in a gingham
+      riding-habit and a sun-hat who cried out to him for her husband&mdash;her
+      boy and her darling&mdash;while Khoda Dad Khan threw himself face-down on
+      the sand and covered his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The very simplicity of the notion was its charm. What more easy to win a
+      reputation for far-seeing statesmanship, originality, and, above all,
+      deference to the desires of the people, than by appointing a child of the
+      country to the rule of that country? Two hundred millions of the most
+      loving and grateful folk under Her Majesty&rsquo;s dominion would laud the fact,
+      and their praise would endure for ever. Yet he was indifferent to praise
+      or blame, as befitted the Very Greatest of All the Viceroys. His
+      administration was based upon principle, and the principle must be
+      enforced in season and out of season. His pen and tongue had created the
+      New India, teeming with possibilities&mdash;loud-voiced, insistent, a
+      nation among nations&mdash;all his very own. Wherefore the Very Greatest
+      of All the Viceroys took another step in advance, and with it counsel of
+      those who should have advised him on the appointment of a successor to
+      Yardley-Orde. There was a gentleman and a member of the Bengal Civil
+      Service who had won his place and a university degree to boot in fair and
+      open competition with the sons of the English. He was cultured, of the
+      world, and, if report spoke truly, had wisely and, above all,
+      sympathetically ruled a crowded district in South-Eastern Bengal. He had
+      been to England and charmed many drawing-rooms there. His name, if the
+      Viceroy recollected aright, was Mr. Grish Chunder De, M. A. In short, did
+      anybody see any objection to the appointment, always on principle, of a
+      man of the people to rule the people? The district in South-Eastern Bengal
+      might with advantage, he apprehended, pass over to a younger civilian of
+      Mr. G. C. De&rsquo;s nationality (who had written a remarkably clever pamphlet
+      on the political value of sympathy in administration); and Mr. G. C. De
+      could be transferred northward to Kot-Kumharsen. The Viceroy was averse,
+      on principle, to interfering with appointments under control of the
+      Provincial Governments. He wished it to be understood that he merely
+      recommended and advised in this instance. As regarded the mere question of
+      race, Mr. Grish Chunder De was more English than the English, and yet
+      possessed of that peculiar sympathy and insight which the best among the
+      best Service in the world could only win to at the end of their service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stern, black-bearded kings who sit about the Council-board of India
+      divided on the step, with the inevitable result of driving the Very
+      Greatest of All the Viceroys into the borders of hysteria, and a
+      bewildered obstinacy pathetic as that of a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The principle is sound enough,&rsquo; said the weary-eyed Head of the Red
+      Provinces in which Kot-Kumharsen lay, for he too held theories. &lsquo;The only
+      difficulty is&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Put the screw on the District officials; brigade De with a very strong
+      Deputy Commissioner on each side of him; give him the best assistant in
+      the Province; rub the fear of God into the people beforehand; and if
+      anything goes wrong, say that his colleagues didn&rsquo;t back him up. All these
+      lovely little experiments recoil on the District-Officer in the end,&rsquo; said
+      the Knight of the Drawn Sword with a truthful brutality that made the Head
+      of the Red Provinces shudder. And on a tacit understanding of this kind
+      the transfer was accomplished, as quietly as might be for many reasons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is sad to think that what goes for public opinion in India did not
+      generally see the wisdom of the Viceroy&rsquo;s appointment. There were not
+      lacking indeed hireling organs, notoriously in the pay of a tyrannous
+      bureaucracy, who more than hinted that His Excellency was a fool, a
+      dreamer of dreams, a doctrinaire, and, worst of all, a trifler with the
+      lives of men. &lsquo;The Viceroy&rsquo;s Excellence Gazette,&rsquo; published in Calcutta,
+      was at pains to thank &lsquo;Our beloved Viceroy for once more and again thus
+      gloriously vindicating the potentialities of the Bengali nations for
+      extended executive and administrative duties in foreign parts beyond our
+      ken. We do not at all doubt that our excellent fellow-townsman, Mr. Grish
+      Chunder De, Esq., M. A., will uphold the prestige of the Bengali,
+      notwithstanding what underhand intrigue and peshbundi may be set on foot
+      to insidiously nip his fame and blast his prospects among the proud
+      civilians, some of which will now have to serve under a despised native
+      and take orders too. How will you like that, Misters? We entreat our
+      beloved Viceroy still to substantiate himself superiorly to race-prejudice
+      and colour-blindness, and to allow the flower of this now OUR Civil
+      Service all the full pays and allowances granted to his more fortunate
+      brethren.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;When does this man take over charge? I&rsquo;m alone just now, and I gather
+      that I&rsquo;m to stand fast under him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Would you have cared for a transfer?&rsquo; said Bullows keenly. Then, laying
+      his hand on Tallantire&rsquo;s shoulder: &lsquo;We&rsquo;re all in the same boat; don&rsquo;t
+      desert us. And yet, why the devil should you stay, if you can get another
+      charge?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It was Orde&rsquo;s,&rsquo; said Tallantire simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, it&rsquo;s De&rsquo;s now. He&rsquo;s a Bengali of the Bengalis, crammed with code
+      and case law; a beautiful man so far as routine and deskwork go, and
+      pleasant to talk to. They naturally have always kept him in his own home
+      district, where all his sisters and his cousins and his aunts lived,
+      somewhere south of Dacca. He did no more than turn the place into a
+      pleasant little family preserve, allowed his subordinates to do what they
+      liked, and let everybody have a chance at the shekels. Consequently he&rsquo;s
+      immensely popular down there.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve nothing to do with that. How on earth am I to explain to the
+      district that they are going to be governed by a Bengali? Do you&mdash;does
+      the Government, I mean&mdash;suppose that the Khusru Kheyl will sit quiet
+      when they once know? What will the Mahomedan heads of villages say? How
+      will the police&mdash;Muzbi Sikhs and Pathans&mdash;how will THEY work
+      under him? We couldn&rsquo;t say anything if the Government appointed a sweeper;
+      but my people will say a good deal, you know that. It&rsquo;s a piece of cruel
+      folly!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;My dear boy, I know all that, and more. I&rsquo;ve represented it, and have
+      been told that I am exhibiting &ldquo;culpable and puerile prejudice.&rdquo; By Jove,
+      if the Khusru Kheyl don&rsquo;t exhibit something worse than that I don&rsquo;t know
+      the Border! The chances are that you will have the district alight on your
+      hands, and I shall have to leave my work and help you pull through. I
+      needn&rsquo;t ask you to stand by the Bengali man in every possible way. You&rsquo;ll
+      do that for your own sake.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For Orde&rsquo;s. I can&rsquo;t say that I care twopence personally.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t be an ass. It&rsquo;s grievous enough, God knows, and the Government will
+      know later on; but that&rsquo;s no reason for your sulking. YOU must try to run
+      the district, YOU must stand between him and as much insult as possible;
+      YOU must show him the ropes; YOU must pacify the Khusru Kheyl, and just
+      warn Curbar of the Police to look out for trouble by the way. I&rsquo;m always
+      at the end of a telegraph-wire, and willing to peril my reputation to hold
+      the district together. You&rsquo;ll lose yours, of course, If you keep things
+      straight, and he isn&rsquo;t actually beaten with a stick when he&rsquo;s on tour,
+      he&rsquo;ll get all the credit. If anything goes wrong, you&rsquo;ll be told that you
+      didn&rsquo;t support him loyally.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I know what I&rsquo;ve got to do,&rsquo; said Tallantire wearily, &lsquo;and I&rsquo;m going to
+      do it. But it&rsquo;s hard.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The work is with us, the event is with Allah,&mdash;as Orde used to say
+      when he was more than usually in hot water.&rsquo; And Bullows rode away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That two gentlemen in Her Majesty&rsquo;s Bengal Civil Service should thus
+      discuss a third, also in that service, and a cultured and affable man
+      withal, seems strange and saddening. Yet listen to the artless babble of
+      the Blind Mullah of Jagai, the priest of the Khusru Kheyl, sitting upon a
+      rock overlooking the Border. Five years before, a chance-hurled shell from
+      a screw-gun battery had dashed earth in the face of the Mullah, then
+      urging a rush of Ghazis against half a dozen British bayonets. So he
+      became blind, and hated the English none the less for the little accident.
+      Yardley-Orde knew his failing, and had many times laughed at him therefor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dogs you are,&rsquo; said the Blind Mullah to the listening tribesmen round the
+      fire. &lsquo;Whipped dogs! Because you listened to Orde Sahib and called him
+      father and behaved as his children, the British Government have proven how
+      they regard you. Orde Sahib ye know is dead.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ai! ai! ai!&rsquo; said half a dozen voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was a man. Comes now in his stead, whom think ye? A Bengali of Bengal&mdash;an
+      eater of fish from the South.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A lie!&rsquo; said Khoda Dad Khan. &lsquo;And but for the small matter of thy
+      priesthood, I&rsquo;d drive my gun butt-first down thy throat.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oho, art thou there, lickspittle of the English? Go in to-morrow across
+      the Border to pay service to Orde Sahib&rsquo;s successor, and thou shalt slip
+      thy shoes at the tent-door of a Bengali, as thou shalt hand thy offering
+      to a Bengali&rsquo;s black fist. This I know; and in my youth, when a young man
+      spoke evil to a Mullah holding the doors of Heaven and Hell, the gun-butt
+      was not rammed down the Mullah&rsquo;s gullet. No!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Blind Mullah hated Khoda Dad Khan with Afghan hatred; both being
+      rivals for the headship of the tribe; but the latter was feared for bodily
+      as the other for spiritual gifts. Khoda Dad Khan looked at Orde&rsquo;s ring and
+      grunted, &lsquo;I go in to-morrow because I am not an old fool, preaching war
+      against the English. If the Government, smitten with madness, have done
+      this, then...&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then,&rsquo; croaked the Mullah, &lsquo;thou wilt take out the young men and strike
+      at the four villages within the Border?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Or wring thy neck, black raven of Jehannum, for a bearer of ill-tidings.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Khoda Dad Khan oiled his long locks with great care, put on his best
+      Bokhara belt, a new turban-cap and fine green shoes, and accompanied by a
+      few friends came down from the hills to pay a visit to the new Deputy
+      Commissioner of Kot-Kumharsen. Also he bore tribute&mdash;four or five
+      priceless gold mohurs of Akbar&rsquo;s time in a white handkerchief. These the
+      Deputy Commissioner would touch and remit. The little ceremony used to be
+      a sign that, so far as Khoda Dad Khan&rsquo;s personal influence went, the
+      Khusru Kheyl would be good boys,&mdash;till the next time; especially if
+      Khoda Dad Khan happened to like the new Deputy Commissioner. In
+      Yardley-Orde&rsquo;s consulship his visit concluded with a sumptuous dinner and
+      perhaps forbidden liquors; certainly with some wonderful tales and great
+      good-fellowship. Then Khoda Dad Khan would swagger back to his hold,
+      vowing that Orde Sahib was one prince and Tallantire Sahib another, and
+      that whosoever went a-raiding into British territory would be flayed
+      alive. On this occasion he found the Deputy Commissioner&rsquo;s tents looking
+      much as usual. Regarding himself as privileged he strode through the open
+      door to confont a suave, portly Bengali in English costume writing at a
+      table. Unversed in the elevating influence of education, and not in the
+      least caring for university degrees, Khoda Dad Khan promptly set the man
+      down for a Babu&mdash;the native clerk of the Deputy Commissioner&mdash;a
+      hated and despised animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ugh!&rsquo; said he cheerfully. &lsquo;Where&rsquo;s your master, Babujee?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am the Deputy Commissioner,&rsquo; said the gentleman in English. Now he
+      overvalued the effects of university degrees, and stared Khoda Dad Khan in
+      the face. But if from your earliest infancy you have been accustomed to
+      look on battle, murder, and sudden death, if spilt blood affects your
+      nerves as much as red paint, and, above all, if you have faithfully
+      believed that the Bengali was the servant of all Hindustan, and that all
+      Hindustan was vastly inferior to your own large, lustful self, you can
+      endure, even though uneducated, a very large amount of looking over. You
+      can even stare down a graduate of an Oxford college if the latter has been
+      born in a hothouse, of stock bred in a hothouse, and fearing physical pain
+      as some men fear sin; especially if your opponent&rsquo;s mother has frightened
+      him to sleep in his youth with horrible stories of devils inhabiting
+      Afghanistan, and dismal legends of the black North. The eyes behind the
+      gold spectacles sought the floor. Khoda Dad Khan chuckled, and swung out
+      to find Tallantire hard by. &lsquo;Here,&rsquo; said he roughly, thrusting the coins
+      before him, &lsquo;touch and remit. That answers for MY good behaviour. But, O
+      Sahib, has the Government gone mad to send a black Bengali dog to us? And
+      am I to pay service to such an one? And are you to work under him? What
+      does it mean?&rsquo; &lsquo;It is an order,&rsquo; said Tallantire. He had expected
+      something of this kind. &lsquo;He is a very clever S-sahib.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He a Sahib! He&rsquo;s a kala admi&mdash;a black man&mdash;unfit to run at the
+      tail of a potter&rsquo;s donkey. All the peoples of the earth have harried
+      Bengal. It is written. Thou knowest when we of the North wanted women or
+      plunder whither went we? To Bengal&mdash;where else? What child&rsquo;s talk is
+      this of Sahibdom&mdash;after Orde Sahib too! Of a truth the Blind Mullah
+      was right.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What of him?&rsquo; asked Tallantire uneasily. He mistrusted that old man with
+      his dead eyes and his deadly tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, now, because of the oath that I sware to Orde Sahib when we watched
+      him die by the river yonder, I will tell. In the first place, is it true
+      that the English have set the heel of the Bengali on their own neck, and
+      that there is no more English rule in the land?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am here,&rsquo; said Tallantire, &lsquo;and I serve the Maharanee of England.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The Mullah said otherwise, and further that because we loved Orde Sahib
+      the Government sent us a pig to show that we were dogs, who till now have
+      been held by the strong hand. Also that they were taking away the white
+      soldiers, that more Hindustanis might come, and that all was changing.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the worst of ill-considered handling of a very large country. What
+      looks so feasible in Calcutta, so right in Bombay, so unassailable in
+      Madras, is misunderstood by the North and entirely changes its complexion
+      on the banks of the Indus. Khoda Dad Khan explained as clearly as he could
+      that, though he himself intended to be good, he really could not answer
+      for the more reckless members of his tribe under the leadership of the
+      Blind Mullah. They might or they might not give trouble, but they
+      certainly had no intention whatever of obeying the new Deputy
+      Commissioner. Was Tallantire perfectly sure that in the event of any
+      systematic border-raiding the force in the district could put it down
+      promptly?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tell the Mullah if he talks any more fool&rsquo;s talk,&rsquo; said Tallantire
+      curtly, &lsquo;that he takes his men on to certain death, and his tribe to
+      blockade, trespass-fine, and blood-money. But why do I talk to one who no
+      longer carries weight in the counsels of the tribe?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Khoda Dad Khan pocketed that insult. He had learned something that he much
+      wanted to know, and returned to his hills to be sarcastically complimented
+      by the Mullah, whose tongue raging round the camp-fires was deadlier flame
+      than ever dung-cake fed.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Be pleased to consider here for a moment the unknown district of
+      Kot-Kumharsen. It lay cut lengthways by the Indus under the line of the
+      Khusru hills&mdash;ramparts of useless earth and tumbled stone. It was
+      seventy miles long by fifty broad, maintained a population of something
+      less than two hundred thousand, and paid taxes to the extent of forty
+      thousand pounds a year on an area that was by rather more than half sheer,
+      hopeless waste. The cultivators were not gentle people, the miners for
+      salt were less gentle still, and the cattle-breeders least gentle of all.
+      A police-post in the top right-hand corner and a tiny mud fort in the top
+      left-hand corner prevented as much salt-smuggling and cattle-lifting as
+      the influence of the civilians could not put down; and in the bottom
+      right-hand corner lay Jumala, the district headquarters&mdash;a pitiful
+      knot of lime-washed barns facetiously rented as houses, reeking with
+      frontier fever, leaking in the rain, and ovens in the summer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was to this place that Grish Chunder De was travelling, there formally
+      to take over charge of the district. But the news of his coming had gone
+      before. Bengalis were as scarce as poodles among the simple Borderers, who
+      cut each other&rsquo;s heads open with their long spades and worshipped
+      impartially at Hindu and Mahomedan shrines. They crowded to see him,
+      pointing at him, and diversely comparing him to a gravid milch-buffalo, or
+      a broken-down horse, as their limited range of metaphor prompted. They
+      laughed at his police-guard, and wished to know how long the burly Sikhs
+      were going to lead Bengali apes. They inquired whether he had brought his
+      women with him, and advised him explicitly not to tamper with theirs. It
+      remained for a wrinkled hag by the roadside to slap her lean breasts as he
+      passed, crying, &lsquo;I have suckled six that could have eaten six thousand of
+      HIM. The Government shot them, and made this That a king!&rsquo; Whereat a
+      blue-turbaned huge-boned plough-mender shouted, &lsquo;Have hope, mother o&rsquo; 
+      mine! He may yet go the way of thy wastrels.&rsquo; And the children, the little
+      brown puff-balls, regarded curiously. It was generally a good thing for
+      infancy to stray into Orde Sahib&rsquo;s tent, where copper coins were to be won
+      for the mere wishing, and tales of the most authentic, such as even their
+      mothers knew but the first half of. No! This fat black man could never
+      tell them how Pir Prith hauled the eye-teeth out of ten devils; how the
+      big stones came to lie all in a row on top of the Khusru hills, and what
+      happened if you shouted through the village-gate to the gray wolf at even
+      &lsquo;Badl Khas is dead.&rsquo; Meantime Grish Chunder De talked hastily and much to
+      Tallantire, after the manner of those who are &lsquo;more English than the
+      English,&rsquo;&mdash;of Oxford and &lsquo;home,&rsquo; with much curious book-knowledge of
+      bump-suppers, cricket-matches, hunting-runs, and other unholy sports of
+      the alien. &lsquo;We must get these fellows in hand,&rsquo; he said once or twice
+      uneasily; &lsquo;get them well in hand, and drive them on a tight rein. No use,
+      you know, being slack with your district.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And a moment later Tallantire heard Debendra Nath De, who brotherliwise
+      had followed his kinsman&rsquo;s fortune and hoped for the shadow of his
+      protection as a pleader, whisper in Bengali, &lsquo;Better are dried fish at
+      Dacca than drawn swords at Delhi. Brother of mine, these men are devils,
+      as our mother said. And you will always have to ride upon a horse!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night there was a public audience in a broken-down little town thirty
+      miles from Jumala, when the new Deputy Commissioner, in reply to the
+      greetings of the subordinate native officials, delivered a speech. It was
+      a carefully thought-out speech, which would have been very valuable had
+      not his third sentence begun with three innocent words, &lsquo;Hamara hookum hai&mdash;It
+      is my order.&rsquo; Then there was a laugh, clear and bell-like, from the back
+      of the big tent, where a few border landholders sat, and the laugh grew
+      and scorn mingled with it, and the lean, keen face of Debendra Nath De
+      paled, and Grish Chunder turning to Tallantire spake: &lsquo;YOU&mdash;you put
+      up this arrangement.&rsquo; Upon that instant the noise of hoofs rang without,
+      and there entered Curbar, the District Superintendent of Police, sweating
+      and dusty. The State had tossed him into a corner of the province for
+      seventeen weary years, there to check smuggling of salt, and to hope for
+      promotion that never came. He had forgotten how to keep his white uniform
+      clean, had screwed rusty spurs into patent-leather shoes, and clothed his
+      head indifferently with a helmet or a turban. Soured, old, worn with heat
+      and cold, he waited till he should be entitled to sufficient pension to
+      keep him from starving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tallantire,&rsquo; said he, disregarding Grish Chunder De, &lsquo;come outside. I
+      want to speak to you.&rsquo; They withdrew. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s this,&rsquo; continued Curbar. &lsquo;The
+      Khusru Kheyl have rushed and cut up half a dozen of the coolies on
+      Ferris&rsquo;s new canal-embankment; killed a couple of men and carried off a
+      woman. I wouldn&rsquo;t trouble you about that&mdash;Ferris is after them and
+      Hugonin, my assistant, with ten mounted police. But that&rsquo;s only the
+      beginning, I fancy. Their fires are out on the Hassan Ardeb heights, and
+      unless we&rsquo;re pretty quick there&rsquo;ll be a flare-up all along our Border.
+      They are sure to raid the four Khusru villages on our side of the line;
+      there&rsquo;s been bad blood between them for years; and you know the Blind
+      Mullah has been preaching a holy war since Orde went out. What&rsquo;s your
+      notion?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Damn!&rsquo; said Tallantire thoughtfully. &lsquo;They&rsquo;ve begun quick. Well, it seems
+      to me I&rsquo;d better ride off to Fort Ziar and get what men I can there to
+      picket among the lowland villages, if it&rsquo;s not too late. Tommy Dodd
+      commands at Fort Ziar, I think. Ferris and Hugonin ought to teach the
+      canal-thieves a lesson, and&mdash;No, we can&rsquo;t have the Head of the Police
+      ostentatiously guarding the Treasury. You go back to the canal. I&rsquo;ll wire
+      Bullows to come into Jumala with a strong police-guard, and sit on the
+      Treasury. They won&rsquo;t touch the place, but it looks well.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&mdash;I&mdash;I insist upon knowing what this means,&rsquo; said the voice of
+      the Deputy Commissioner, who had followed the speakers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh!&rsquo; said Curbar, who being in the Police could not understand that
+      fifteen years of education must, on principle, change the Bengali into a
+      Briton. &lsquo;There has been a fight on the Border, and heaps of men are
+      killed. There&rsquo;s going to be another fight, and heaps more will be killed.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What for?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Because the teeming millions of this district don&rsquo;t exactly approve of
+      you, and think that under your benign rule they are going to have a good
+      time. It strikes me that you had better make arrangements. I act, as you
+      know, by your orders. What do you advise?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&mdash;I take you all to witness that I have not yet assumed charge of
+      the district,&rsquo; stammered the Deputy Commissioner, not in the tones of the
+      &lsquo;more English.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah, I thought so. Well, as I was saying, Tallantire, your plan is sound.
+      Carry it out. Do you want an escort?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No; only a decent horse. But how about wiring to headquarters?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I fancy, from the colour of his cheeks, that your superior officer will
+      send some wonderful telegrams before the night&rsquo;s over. Let him do that,
+      and we shall have half the troops of the province coming up to see what&rsquo;s
+      the trouble. Well, run along, and take care of yourself&mdash;the Khusru
+      Kheyl jab upwards from below, remember. Ho! Mir Khan, give Tallantire
+      Sahib the best of the horses, and tell five men to ride to Jumala with the
+      Deputy Commissioner Sahib Bahadur. There is a hurry toward.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was; and it was not in the least bettered by Debendra Nath De
+      clinging to a policeman&rsquo;s bridle and demanding the shortest, the very
+      shortest way to Jumala. Now originality is fatal to the Bengali. Debendra
+      Nath should have stayed with his brother, who rode steadfastly for Jumala
+      on the railway-line, thanking gods entirely unknown to the most catholic
+      of universities that he had not taken charge of the district, and could
+      still&mdash;happy resource of a fertile race!&mdash;fall sick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I grieve to say that when he reached his goal two policemen, not
+      devoid of rude wit, who had been conferring together as they bumped in
+      their saddles, arranged an entertainment for his behoof. It consisted of
+      first one and then the other entering his room with prodigious details of
+      war, the massing of bloodthirsty and devilish tribes, and the burning of
+      towns. It was almost as good, said these scamps, as riding with Curbar
+      after evasive Afghans. Each invention kept the hearer at work for half an
+      hour on telegrams which the sack of Delhi would hardly have justified. To
+      every power that could move a bayonet or transfer a terrified man, Grish
+      Chunder De appealed telegraphically. He was alone, his assistants had
+      fled, and in truth he had not taken over charge of the district. Had the
+      telegrams been despatched many things would have occurred; but since the
+      only signaller in Jumala had gone to bed, and the station-master, after
+      one look at the tremendous pile of paper, discovered that railway
+      regulations forbade the forwarding of imperial messages, policemen Ram
+      Singh and Nihal Singh were fain to turn the stuff into a pillow and slept
+      on it very comfortably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tallantire drove his spurs into a rampant skewbald stallion with
+      china-blue eyes, and settled himself for the forty-mile ride to Fort Ziar.
+      Knowing his district blindfold, he wasted no time hunting for short cuts,
+      but headed across the richer grazing-ground to the ford where Orde had
+      died and been buried. The dusty ground deadened the noise of his horse&rsquo;s
+      hoofs, the moon threw his shadow, a restless goblin, before him, and the
+      heavy dew drenched him to the skin. Hillock, scrub that brushed against
+      the horse&rsquo;s belly, unmetalled road where the whip-like foliage of the
+      tamarisks lashed his forehead, illimitable levels of lowland furred with
+      bent and speckled with drowsing cattle, waste, and hillock anew, dragged
+      themselves past, and the skewbald was labouring in the deep sand of the
+      Indus-ford. Tallantire was conscious of no distinct thought till the nose
+      of the dawdling ferry-boat grounded on the farther side, and his horse
+      shied snorting at the white headstone of Orde&rsquo;s grave. Then he uncovered,
+      and shouted that the dead might hear, &lsquo;They&rsquo;re out, old man! Wish me
+      luck.&rsquo; In the chill of the dawn he was hammering with a stirrup-iron at
+      the gate of Fort Ziar, where fifty sabres of that tattered regiment, the
+      Belooch Beshaklis were supposed to guard Her Majesty&rsquo;s interests along a
+      few hundred miles of Border. This particular fort was commanded by a
+      subaltern, who, born of the ancient family of the Derouletts, naturally
+      answered to the name of Tommy Dodd. Him Tallantire found robed in a
+      sheepskin coat, shaking with fever like an aspen, and trying to read the
+      native apothecary&rsquo;s list of invalids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So you&rsquo;ve come, too,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;Well, we&rsquo;re all sick here, and I don&rsquo;t
+      think I can horse thirty men; but we&rsquo;re bub&mdash;bub&mdash;bub blessed
+      willing. Stop, does this impress you as a trap or a lie?&rsquo; He tossed a
+      scrap of paper to Tallantire, on which was written painfully in crabbed
+      Gurmukhi, &lsquo;We cannot hold young horses. They will feed after the moon goes
+      down in the four border villages issuing from the Jagai pass on the next
+      night.&rsquo; Then in English round hand&mdash;&lsquo;Your sincere friend.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good man!&rsquo; said Tallantire. &lsquo;That&rsquo;s Khoda Dad Khan&rsquo;s work, I know. It&rsquo;s
+      the only piece of English he could ever keep in his head, and he is
+      immensely proud of it. He is playing against the Blind Mullah for his own
+      hand&mdash;the treacherous young ruffian!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t know the politics of the Khusru Kheyl, but if you&rsquo;re satisfied, I
+      am. That was pitched in over the gate-head last night, and I thought we
+      might pull ourselves together and see what was on. Oh, but we&rsquo;re sick with
+      fever here and no mistake! Is this going to be a big business, think you?&rsquo; 
+      said Tommy Dodd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tallantire gave him briefly the outlines of the case, and Tommy Dodd
+      whistled and shook with fever alternately. That day he devoted to
+      strategy, the art of war, and the enlivenment of the invalids, till at
+      dusk there stood ready forty-two troopers, lean, worn, and dishevelled,
+      whom Tommy Dodd surveyed with pride, and addressed thus: &lsquo;O men! If you
+      die you will go to Hell. Therefore endeavour to keep alive. But if you go
+      to Hell that place cannot be hotter than this place, and we are not told
+      that we shall there suffer from fever. Consequently be not afraid of
+      dying. File out there!&rsquo; They grinned, and went.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It will be long ere the Khusru Kheyl forget their night attack on the
+      lowland villages. The Mullah had promised an easy victory and unlimited
+      plunder; but behold, armed troopers of the Queen had risen out of the very
+      earth, cutting, slashing, and riding down under the stars, so that no man
+      knew where to turn, and all feared that they had brought an army about
+      their ears, and ran back to the hills. In the panic of that flight more
+      men were seen to drop from wounds inflicted by an Afghan knife jabbed
+      upwards, and yet more from long-range carbine-fire. Then there rose a cry
+      of treachery, and when they reached their own guarded heights, they had
+      left, with some forty dead and sixty wounded, all their confidence in the
+      Blind Mullah on the plains below. They clamoured, swore, and argued round
+      the fires; the women wailing for the lost, and the Mullah shrieking curses
+      on the returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Khoda Dad Khan, eloquent and unbreathed, for he had taken no part in
+      the fight, rose to improve the occasion. He pointed out that the tribe
+      owed every item of its present misfortune to the Blind Mullah, who had
+      lied in every possible particular and talked them into a trap. It was
+      undoubtedly an insult that a Bengali, the son of a Bengali, should presume
+      to administer the Border, but that fact did not, as the Mullah pretended,
+      herald a general time of license and lifting; and the inexplicable madness
+      of the English had not in the least impaired their power of guarding their
+      marches. On the contrary, the baffled and out-generalled tribe would now,
+      just when their food-stock was lowest, be blockaded from any trade with
+      Hindustan until they had sent hostages for good behaviour, paid
+      compensation for disturbance, and blood-money at the rate of thirty-six
+      English pounds per head for every villager that they might have slain.
+      &lsquo;And ye know that those lowland dogs will make oath that we have slain
+      scores. Will the Mullah pay the fines or must we sell our guns?&rsquo; A low
+      growl ran round the fires. &lsquo;Now, seeing that all this is the Mullah&rsquo;s
+      work, and that we have gained nothing but promises of Paradise thereby, it
+      is in my heart that we of the Khusru Kheyl lack a shrine whereat to pray.
+      We are weakened, and henceforth how shall we dare to cross into the Madar
+      Kheyl border, as has been our custom, to kneel to Pir Sajji&rsquo;s tomb? The
+      Madar men will fall upon us, and rightly. But our Mullah is a holy man. He
+      has helped two score of us into Paradise this night. Let him therefore
+      accompany his flock, and we will build over his body a dome of the blue
+      tiles of Mooltan, and burn lamps at his feet every Friday night. He shall
+      be a saint: we shall have a shrine; and there our women shall pray for
+      fresh seed to fill the gaps in our fighting-tale. How think you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A grim chuckle followed the suggestion, and the soft wheep, wheep of
+      unscabbarded knives followed the chuckle. It was an excellent notion, and
+      met a long felt want of the tribe. The Mullah sprang to his feet, glaring
+      with withered eyeballs at the drawn death he could not see, and calling
+      down the curses of God and Mahomed on the tribe. Then began a game of
+      blind man&rsquo;s buff round and between the fires, whereof Khuruk Shah, the
+      tribal poet, has sung in verse that will not die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They tickled him gently under the armpit with the knife-point. He leaped
+      aside screaming, only to feel a cold blade drawn lightly over the back of
+      his neck, or a rifle-muzzle rubbing his beard. He called on his adherents
+      to aid him, but most of these lay dead on the plains, for Khoda Dad Khan
+      had been at some pains to arrange their decease. Men described to him the
+      glories of the shrine they would build, and the little children clapping
+      their hands cried, &lsquo;Run, Mullah, run! There&rsquo;s a man behind you!&rsquo; In the
+      end, when the sport wearied, Khoda Dad Khan&rsquo;s brother sent a knife home
+      between his ribs. &lsquo;Wherefore,&rsquo; said Khoda Dad Khan with charming
+      simplicity, &lsquo;I am now Chief of the Khusru Kheyl!&rsquo; No man gainsaid him; and
+      they all went to sleep very stiff and sore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the plain below Tommy Dodd was lecturing on the beauties of a cavalry
+      charge by night, and Tallantire, bowed on his saddle, was gasping
+      hysterically because there was a sword dangling from his wrist flecked
+      with the blood of the Khusru Kheyl, the tribe that Orde had kept in leash
+      so well. When a Rajpoot trooper pointed out that the skewbald&rsquo;s right ear
+      had been taken off at the root by some blind slash of its unskilled rider,
+      Tallantire broke down altogether, and laughed and sobbed till Tommy Dodd
+      made him lie down and rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We must wait about till the morning,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;I wired to the Colonel
+      just before we left, to send a wing of the Beshaklis after us. He&rsquo;ll be
+      furious with me for monopolising the fun, though. Those beggars in the
+      hills won&rsquo;t give us any more trouble.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then tell the Beshaklis to go on and see what has happened to Curbar on
+      the canal. We must patrol the whole line of the Border. You&rsquo;re quite sure,
+      Tommy, that&mdash;that stuff was&mdash;was only the skewbald&rsquo;s ear?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, quite,&rsquo; said Tommy. &lsquo;You just missed cutting off his head. <i>I</i>
+      saw you when we went into the mess. Sleep, old man.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Noon brought two squadrons of Beshaklis and a knot of furious brother
+      officers demanding the court-martial of Tommy Dodd for &lsquo;spoiling the
+      picnic,&rsquo; and a gallop across country to the canal-works where Ferris,
+      Curbar, and Hugonin were haranguing the terror-stricken coolies on the
+      enormity of abandoning good work and high pay, merely because half a dozen
+      of their fellows had been cut down. The sight of a troop of the Beshaklis
+      restored wavering confidence, and the police-hunted section of the Khusru
+      Kheyl had the joy of watching the canal-bank humming with life as usual,
+      while such of their men as had taken refuge in the watercourses and
+      ravines were being driven out by the troopers. By sundown began the
+      remorseless patrol of the Border by police and trooper, most like the
+      cow-boys&rsquo; eternal ride round restless cattle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now,&rsquo; said Khoda Dad Khan to his fellows, pointing out a line of
+      twinkling fires below, &lsquo;ye may see how far the old order changes. After
+      their horse will come the little devil-guns that they can drag up to the
+      tops of the hills, and, for aught I know, to the clouds when we crown the
+      hills. If the tribe-council thinks good, I will go to Tallantire Sahib&mdash;who
+      loves me&mdash;and see if I can stave off at least the blockade. Do I
+      speak for the tribe?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay, speak for the tribe in God&rsquo;s name. How those accursed fires wink! Do
+      the English send their troops on the wire&mdash;or is this the work of the
+      Bengali?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Khoda Dad Khan went down the hill he was delayed by an interview with a
+      hard-pressed tribesman, which caused him to return hastily for something
+      he had forgotten. Then, handing himself over to the two troopers who had
+      been chasing his friend, he claimed escort to Tallantire Sahib, then with
+      Bullows at Jumala. The Border was safe, and the time for reasons in
+      writing had begun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thank Heaven!&rsquo; said Bullows, &lsquo;that the trouble came at once. Of course we
+      can never put down the reason in black and white, but all India will
+      understand. And it is better to have a sharp short outbreak than five
+      years of impotent administration inside the Border. It costs less. Grish
+      Chunder De has reported himself sick, and has been transferred to his own
+      province without any sort of reprimand. He was strong on not having taken
+      over the district.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of course,&rsquo; said Tallantire bitterly. &lsquo;Well, what am I supposed to have
+      done that was wrong?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, you will be told that you exceeded all your powers, and should have
+      reported, and written, and advised for three weeks until the Khusru Kheyl
+      could really come down in force. But I don&rsquo;t think the authorities will
+      dare to make a fuss about it. They&rsquo;ve had their lesson. Have you seen
+      Curbar&rsquo;s version of the affair? He can&rsquo;t write a report, but he can speak
+      the truth.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the use of the truth? He&rsquo;d much better tear up the report. I&rsquo;m
+      sick and heartbroken over it all. It was so utterly unnecessary&mdash;except
+      in that it rid us of that Babu.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Entered unabashed Khoda Dad Khan, a stuffed forage-net in his hand, and
+      the troopers behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;May you never be tired!&rsquo; said he cheerily. &lsquo;Well, Sahibs, that was a good
+      fight, and Naim Shah&rsquo;s mother is in debt to you, Tallantire Sahib. A clean
+      cut, they tell me, through jaw, wadded coat, and deep into the
+      collar-bone. Well done! But I speak for the tribe. There has been a fault&mdash;a
+      great fault. Thou knowest that I and mine, Tallantire Sahib, kept the oath
+      we sware to Orde Sahib on the banks of the Indus.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;As an Afghan keeps his knife&mdash;sharp on one side, blunt on the
+      other,&rsquo; said Tallantire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The better swing in the blow, then. But I speak God&rsquo;s truth. Only the
+      Blind Mullah carried the young men on the tip of his tongue, and said that
+      there was no more Border-law because a Bengali had been sent, and we need
+      not fear the English at all. So they came down to avenge that insult and
+      get plunder. Ye know what befell, and how far I helped. Now five score of
+      us are dead or wounded, and we are all shamed and sorry, and desire no
+      further war. Moreover, that ye may better listen to us, we have taken off
+      the head of the Blind Mullah, whose evil counsels have led us to folly. I
+      bring it for proof,&rsquo;&mdash;and he heaved on the floor the head. &lsquo;He will
+      give no more trouble, for I am chief now, and so I sit in a higher place
+      at all audiences. Yet there is an offset to this head. That was another
+      fault. One of the men found that black Bengali beast, through whom this
+      trouble arose, wandering on horseback and weeping. Reflecting that he had
+      caused loss of much good life, Alla Dad Khan, whom, if you choose, I will
+      to-morrow shoot, whipped off this head, and I bring it to you to cover
+      your shame, that ye may bury it. See, no man kept the spectacles, though
+      they were of gold.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly rolled to Tallantire&rsquo;s feet the crop-haired head of a spectacled
+      Bengali gentleman, open-eyed, open-mouthed&mdash;the head of Terror
+      incarnate. Bullows bent down. &lsquo;Yet another blood-fine and a heavy one,
+      Khoda Dad Khan, for this is the head of Debendra Nath, the man&rsquo;s brother.
+      The Babu is safe long since. All but the fools of the Khusru Kheyl know
+      that.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, I care not for carrion. Quick meat for me. The thing was under our
+      hills asking the road to Jumala and Alla Dad Khan showed him the road to
+      Jehannum, being, as thou sayest, but a fool. Remains now what the
+      Government will do to us. As to the blockade&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Who art thou, seller of dog&rsquo;s flesh,&rsquo; thundered Tallantire, &lsquo;to speak of
+      terms and treaties? Get hence to the hills&mdash;go, and wait there
+      starving, till it shall please the Government to call thy people out for
+      punishment&mdash;children and fools that ye be! Count your dead, and be
+      still. Best assured that the Government will send you a MAN!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay,&rsquo; returned Khoda Dad Khan, &lsquo;for we also be men.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he looked Tallantire between the eyes, he added, &lsquo;And by God, Sahib,
+      may thou be that man!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Before my Spring I garnered Autumn&rsquo;s gain,
+     Out of her time my field was white with grain,
+       The year gave up her secrets to my woe.
+     Forced and deflowered each sick season lay,
+     In mystery of increase and decay;
+     I saw the sunset ere men saw the day,
+       Who am too wise in that I should not know.
+                             BITTER WATERS.
+</pre>
+    <h3>
+      I
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But if it be a girl?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Lord of my life, it cannot be. I have prayed for so many nights, and sent
+      gifts to Sheikh Badl&rsquo;s shrine so often, that I know God will give us a son&mdash;a
+      man-child that shall grow into a man. Think of this and be glad. My mother
+      shall be his mother till I can take him again, and the mullah of the
+      Pattan mosque shall cast his nativity&mdash;God send he be born in an
+      auspicious hour!&mdash;and then, and then thou wilt never weary of me, thy
+      slave.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Since when hast thou been a slave, my queen?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Since the beginning&mdash;till this mercy came to me. How could I be sure
+      of thy love when I knew that I had been bought with silver?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, that was the dowry. I paid it to thy mother.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And she has buried it, and sits upon it all day long like a hen. What
+      talk is yours of dower! I was bought as though I had been a Lucknow
+      dancing-girl instead of a child.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Art thou sorry for the sale?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have sorrowed; but to-day I am glad. Thou wilt never cease to love me
+      now?&mdash;answer, my king.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Never&mdash;never. No.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Not even though the mem-log&mdash;the white women of thy own blood&mdash;love
+      thee? And remember, I have watched them driving in the evening; they are
+      very fair.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have seen fire-balloons by the hundred. I have seen the moon, and&mdash;then
+      I saw no more fire-balloons.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ameera clapped her hands and laughed. &lsquo;Very good talk,&rsquo; she said. Then
+      with an assumption of great stateliness, &lsquo;It is enough. Thou hast my
+      permission to depart,&mdash;if thou wilt.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man did not move. He was sitting on a low red-lacquered couch in a
+      room furnished only with a blue and white floor-cloth, some rugs, and a
+      very complete collection of native cushions. At his feet sat a woman of
+      sixteen, and she was all but all the world in his eyes. By every rule and
+      law she should have been otherwise, for he was an Englishman, and she a
+      Mussulman&rsquo;s daughter bought two years before from her mother, who, being
+      left without money, would have sold Ameera shrieking to the Prince of
+      Darkness if the price had been sufficient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a contract entered into with a light heart; but even before the
+      girl had reached her bloom she came to fill the greater portion of John
+      Holden&rsquo;s life. For her, and the withered hag her mother, he had taken a
+      little house overlooking the great red-walled city, and found,&mdash;when
+      the marigolds had sprung up by the well in the courtyard and Ameera had
+      established herself according to her own ideas of comfort, and her mother
+      had ceased grumbling at the inadequacy of the cooking-places, the distance
+      from the daily market, and at matters of house-keeping in general,&mdash;that
+      the house was to him his home. Any one could enter his bachelor&rsquo;s bungalow
+      by day or night, and the life that he led there was an unlovely one. In
+      the house in the city his feet only could pass beyond the outer courtyard
+      to the women&rsquo;s rooms; and when the big wooden gate was bolted behind him
+      he was king in his own territory, with Ameera for queen. And there was
+      going to be added to this kingdom a third person whose arrival Holden felt
+      inclined to resent. It interfered with his perfect happiness. It
+      disarranged the orderly peace of the house that was his own. But Ameera
+      was wild with delight at the thought of it, and her mother not less so.
+      The love of a man, and particularly a white man, was at the best an
+      inconstant affair, but it might, both women argued, be held fast by a
+      baby&rsquo;s hands. &lsquo;And then,&rsquo; Ameera would always say, &lsquo;then he will never
+      care for the white mem-log. I hate them all&mdash;I hate them all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He will go back to his own people in time,&rsquo; said the mother; &lsquo;but by the
+      blessing of God that time is yet afar off.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holden sat silent on the couch thinking of the future, and his thoughts
+      were not pleasant. The drawbacks of a double life are manifold. The
+      Government, with singular care, had ordered him out of the station for a
+      fortnight on special duty in the place of a man who was watching by the
+      bedside of a sick wife. The verbal notification of the transfer had been
+      edged by a cheerful remark that Holden ought to think himself lucky in
+      being a bachelor and a free man. He came to break the news to Ameera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is not good,&rsquo; she said slowly, &lsquo;but it is not all bad. There is my
+      mother here, and no harm will come to me&mdash;unless indeed I die of pure
+      joy. Go thou to thy work and think no troublesome thoughts. When the days
+      are done I believe... nay, I am sure. And&mdash;and then I shall lay HIM
+      in thy arms, and thou wilt love me for ever. The train goes to-night, at
+      midnight is it not? Go now, and do not let thy heart be heavy by cause of
+      me. But thou wilt not delay in returning? Thou wilt not stay on the road
+      to talk to the bold white mem-log. Come back to me swiftly, my life.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he left the courtyard to reach his horse that was tethered to the
+      gate-post, Holden spoke to the white-haired old watchman who guarded the
+      house, and bade him under certain contingencies despatch the filled-up
+      telegraph-form that Holden gave him. It was all that could be done, and
+      with the sensations of a man who has attended his own funeral Holden went
+      away by the night mail to his exile. Every hour of the day he dreaded the
+      arrival of the telegram, and every hour of the night he pictured to
+      himself the death of Ameera. In consequence his work for the State was not
+      of first-rate quality, nor was his temper towards his colleagues of the
+      most amiable. The fortnight ended without a sign from his home, and, torn
+      to pieces by his anxieties, Holden returned to be swallowed up for two
+      precious hours by a dinner at the club, wherein he heard, as a man hears
+      in a swoon, voices telling him how execrably he had performed the other
+      man&rsquo;s duties, and how he had endeared himself to all his associates. Then
+      he fled on horseback through the night with his heart in his mouth. There
+      was no answer at first to his blows on the gate, and he had just wheeled
+      his horse round to kick it in when Pir Khan appeared with a lantern and
+      held his stirrup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Has aught occurred?&rsquo; said Holden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The news does not come from my mouth, Protector of the Poor, but&mdash;&rsquo; 
+      He held out his shaking hand as befitted the bearer of good news who is
+      entitled to a reward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holden hurried through the courtyard. A light burned in the upper room.
+      His horse neighed in the gateway, and he heard a shrill little wail that
+      sent all the blood into the apple of his throat. It was a new voice, but
+      it did not prove that Ameera was alive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Who is there?&rsquo; he called up the narrow brick staircase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a cry of delight from Ameera, and then the voice of the mother,
+      tremulous with old age and pride&mdash;&lsquo;We be two women and&mdash;the&mdash;man&mdash;thy&mdash;son.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the threshold of the room Holden stepped on a naked dagger, that was
+      laid there to avert ill-luck, and it broke at the hilt under his impatient
+      heel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;God is great!&rsquo; cooed Ameera in the half-light. &lsquo;Thou hast taken his
+      misfortunes on thy head.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay, but how is it with thee, life of my life? Old woman, how is it with
+      her?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She has forgotten her sufferings for joy that the child is born. There is
+      no harm; but speak softly,&rsquo; said the mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It only needed thy presence to make me all well,&rsquo; said Ameera. &lsquo;My king,
+      thou hast been very long away. What gifts hast thou for me? Ah, ah! It is
+      I that bring gifts this time. Look, my life, look. Was there ever such a
+      babe? Nay, I am too weak even to clear my arm from him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Rest then, and do not talk. I am here, bachari [little woman].&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well said, for there is a bond and a heel-rope [peecharee] between us now
+      that nothing can break. Look&mdash;canst thou see in this light? He is
+      without spot or blemish. Never was such a man-child. Ya illah! he shall be
+      a pundit&mdash;no, a trooper of the Queen. And, my life, dost thou love me
+      as well as ever, though I am faint and sick and worn? Answer truly.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yea. I love as I have loved, with all my soul. Lie still, pearl, and
+      rest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then do not go. Sit by my side here&mdash;so. Mother, the lord of this
+      house needs a cushion. Bring it.&rsquo; There was an almost imperceptible
+      movement on the part of the new life that lay in the hollow of Ameera&rsquo;s
+      arm. &lsquo;Aho!&rsquo; she said, her voice breaking with love. &lsquo;The babe is a
+      champion from his birth. He is kicking me in the side with mighty kicks.
+      Was there ever such a babe! And he is ours to us&mdash;thine and mine. Put
+      thy hand on his head, but carefully, for he is very young, and men are
+      unskilled in such matters.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very cautiously Holden touched with the tips of his fingers the downy
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He is of the faith,&rsquo; said Ameera; &lsquo;for lying here in the night-watches I
+      whispered the call to prayer and the profession of faith into his ears.
+      And it is most marvellous that he was born upon a Friday, as I was born.
+      Be careful of him, my life; but he can almost grip with his hands.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holden found one helpless little hand that closed feebly on his finger.
+      And the clutch ran through his body till it settled about his heart. Till
+      then his sole thought had been for Ameera. He began to realise that there
+      was some one else in the world, but he could not feel that it was a
+      veritable son with a soul. He sat down to think, and Ameera dozed lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Get hence, sahib,&rsquo; said her mother under her breath. &lsquo;It is not good that
+      she should find you here on waking. She must be still.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I go,&rsquo; said Holden submissively. &lsquo;Here be rupees. See that my baba gets
+      fat and finds all that he needs.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chink of the silver roused Ameera. &lsquo;I am his mother, and no hireling,&rsquo; 
+      she said weakly. &lsquo;Shall I look to him more or less for the sake of money?
+      Mother, give it back. I have born my lord a son.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deep sleep of weakness came upon her almost before the sentence was
+      completed. Holden went down to the courtyard very softly with his heart at
+      ease. Pir Khan, the old watchman, was chuckling with delight. &lsquo;This house
+      is now complete,&rsquo; he said, and without further comment thrust into
+      Holden&rsquo;s hands the hilt of a sabre worn many years ago when he, Pir Khan,
+      served the Queen in the police. The bleat of a tethered goat came from the
+      well-kerb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There be two,&rsquo; said Pir Khan, &lsquo;two goats of the best. I bought them, and
+      they cost much money; and since there is no birth-party assembled their
+      flesh will be all mine. Strike craftily, sahib! &lsquo;Tis an ill-balanced sabre
+      at the best. Wait till they raise their heads from cropping the
+      marigolds.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And why?&rsquo; said Holden, bewildered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For the birth-sacrifice. What else? Otherwise the child being unguarded
+      from fate may die. The Protector of the Poor knows the fitting words to be
+      said.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holden had learned them once with little thought that he would ever speak
+      them in earnest. The touch of the cold sabre-hilt in his palm turned
+      suddenly to the clinging grip of the child upstairs&mdash;the child that
+      was his own son&mdash;and a dread of loss filled him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Strike!&rsquo; said Pir Khan. &lsquo;Never life came into the world but life was paid
+      for it. See, the goats have raised their heads. Now! With a drawing cut!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hardly knowing what he did Holden cut twice as he muttered the Mahomedan
+      prayer that runs: &lsquo;Almighty! In place of this my son I offer life for
+      life, blood for blood, head for head, bone for bone, hair for hair, skin
+      for skin.&rsquo; The waiting horse snorted and bounded in his pickets at the
+      smell of the raw blood that spirted over Holden&rsquo;s riding-boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well smitten!&rsquo; said Pir Khan, wiping the sabre. &lsquo;A swordsman was lost in
+      thee. Go with a light heart, Heaven-born. I am thy servant, and the
+      servant of thy son. May the Presence live a thousand years and... the
+      flesh of the goats is all mine?&rsquo; Pir Khan drew back richer by a month&rsquo;s
+      pay. Holden swung himself into the saddle and rode off through the
+      low-hanging wood-smoke of the evening. He was full of riotous exultation,
+      alternating with a vast vague tenderness directed towards no particular
+      object, that made him choke as he bent over the neck of his uneasy horse.
+      &lsquo;I never felt like this in my life,&rsquo; he thought. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll go to the club and
+      pull myself together.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A game of pool was beginning, and the room was full of men. Holden
+      entered, eager to get to the light and the company of his fellows, singing
+      at the top of his voice&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    In Baltimore a-walking, a lady I did meet!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Did you?&rsquo; said the club-secretary from his corner. &lsquo;Did she happen to
+      tell you that your boots were wringing wet? Great goodness, man, it&rsquo;s
+      blood!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bosh!&rsquo; said Holden, picking his cue from the rack. &lsquo;May I cut in? It&rsquo;s
+      dew. I&rsquo;ve been riding through high crops. My faith! my boots are in a mess
+      though!
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &lsquo;And if it be a girl she shall wear a wedding-ring,
+     And if it be a boy he shall fight for his king,
+     With his dirk, and his cap, and his little jacket blue,
+     He shall walk the quarter-deck&mdash;&rsquo; 
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yellow on blue&mdash;green next player,&rsquo; said the marker monotonously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He shall walk the quarter-deck,&mdash;Am I green, marker? He shall walk
+      the quarter-deck,&mdash;eh! that&rsquo;s a bad shot,&mdash;As his daddy used to
+      do!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t see that you have anything to crow about,&rsquo; said a zealous junior
+      civilian acidly. &lsquo;The Government is not exactly pleased with your work
+      when you relieved Sanders.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Does that mean a wigging from headquarters?&rsquo; said Holden with an
+      abstracted smile. &lsquo;I think I can stand it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The talk beat up round the ever-fresh subject of each man&rsquo;s work, and
+      steadied Holden till it was time to go to his dark empty bungalow, where
+      his butler received him as one who knew all his affairs. Holden remained
+      awake for the greater part of the night, and his dreams were pleasant
+      ones.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How old is he now?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ya illah! What a man&rsquo;s question! He is all but six weeks old; and on this
+      night I go up to the housetop with thee, my life, to count the stars. For
+      that is auspicious. And he was born on a Friday under the sign of the Sun,
+      and it has been told to me that he will outlive us both and get wealth.
+      Can we wish for aught better, beloved?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There is nothing better. Let us go up to the roof, and thou shalt count
+      the stars&mdash;but a few only, for the sky is heavy with cloud.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The winter rains are late, and maybe they come out of season. Come,
+      before all the stars are hid. I have put on my richest jewels.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thou hast forgotten the best of all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ai! Ours. He comes also. He has never yet seen the skies.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ameera climbed the narrow staircase that led to the flat roof. The child,
+      placid and unwinking, lay in the hollow of her right arm, gorgeous in
+      silver-fringed muslin with a small skull-cap on his head. Ameera wore all
+      that she valued most. The diamond nose-stud that takes the place of the
+      Western patch in drawing attention to the curve of the nostril, the gold
+      ornament in the centre of the forehead studded with tallow-drop emeralds
+      and flawed rubies, the heavy circlet of beaten gold that was fastened
+      round her neck by the softness of the pure metal, and the chinking
+      curb-patterned silver anklets hanging low over the rosy ankle-bone. She
+      was dressed in jade-green muslin as befitted a daughter of the Faith, and
+      from shoulder to elbow and elbow to wrist ran bracelets of silver tied
+      with floss silk, frail glass bangles slipped over the wrist in proof of
+      the slenderness of the hand, and certain heavy gold bracelets that had no
+      part in her country&rsquo;s ornaments but, since they were Holden&rsquo;s gift and
+      fastened with a cunning European snap, delighted her immensely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat down by the low white parapet of the roof, overlooking the city
+      and its lights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They are happy down there,&rsquo; said Ameera. &lsquo;But I do not think that they
+      are as happy as we. Nor do I think the white mem-log are as happy. And
+      thou?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I know they are not.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How dost thou know?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They give their children over to the nurses.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have never seen that,&rsquo; said Ameera with a sigh, &lsquo;nor do I wish to see.
+      Ahi!&mdash;she dropped her head on Holden&rsquo;s shoulder,&mdash;&lsquo;I have
+      counted forty stars, and I am tired. Look at the child, love of my life,
+      he is counting too.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The baby was staring with round eyes at the dark of the heavens. Ameera
+      placed him in Holden&rsquo;s arms, and he lay there without a cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What shall we call him among ourselves?&rsquo; she said. &lsquo;Look! Art thou ever
+      tired of looking? He carries thy very eyes. But the mouth&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is thine, most dear. Who should know better than I?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Tis such a feeble mouth. Oh, so small! And yet it holds my heart between
+      its lips. Give him to me now. He has been too long away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, let him lie; he has not yet begun to cry.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;When he cries thou wilt give him back&mdash;eh? What a man of mankind
+      thou art! If he cried he were only the dearer to me. But, my life, what
+      little name shall we give him?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The small body lay close to Holden&rsquo;s heart. It was utterly helpless and
+      very soft. He scarcely dared to breathe for fear of crushing it. The caged
+      green parrot that is regarded as a sort of guardian-spirit in most native
+      households moved on its perch and fluttered a drowsy wing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There is the answer,&rsquo; said Holden. &lsquo;Mian Mittu has spoken. He shall be
+      the parrot. When he is ready he will talk mightily and run about. Mian
+      Mittu is the parrot in thy&mdash;in the Mussulman tongue, is it not?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why put me so far off?&rsquo; said Ameera fretfully. &lsquo;Let it be like unto some
+      English name&mdash;but not wholly. For he is mine.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then call him Tota, for that is likest English.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ay, Tota, and that is still the parrot. Forgive me, my lord, for a minute
+      ago, but in truth he is too little to wear all the weight of Mian Mittu
+      for name. He shall be Tota&mdash;our Tota to us. Hearest thou, O small
+      one? Littlest, thou art Tota.&rsquo; She touched the child&rsquo;s cheek, and he
+      waking wailed, and it was necessary to return him to his mother, who
+      soothed him with the wonderful rhyme of Are koko, Jare koko! which says:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Oh crow! Go crow! Baby&rsquo;s sleeping sound,
+     And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound.
+     Only a penny a pound, baba, only a penny a pound.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Reassured many times as to the price of those plums, Tota cuddled himself
+      down to sleep. The two sleek, white well-bullocks in the courtyard were
+      steadily chewing the cud of their evening meal; old Pir Khan squatted at
+      the head of Holden&rsquo;s horse, his police sabre across his knees, pulling
+      drowsily at a big water-pipe that croaked like a bull-frog in a pond.
+      Ameera&rsquo;s mother sat spinning in the lower verandah, and the wooden gate
+      was shut and barred. The music of a marriage-procession came to the roof
+      above the gentle hum of the city, and a string of flying-foxes crossed the
+      face of the low moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have prayed,&rsquo; said Ameera after a long pause, &lsquo;I have prayed for two
+      things. First, that I may die in thy stead if thy death is demanded, and
+      in the second that I may die in the place of the child. I have prayed to
+      the Prophet and to Beebee Miriam [the Virgin Mary]. Thinkest thou either
+      will hear?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;From thy lips who would not hear the lightest word?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I asked for straight talk, and thou hast given me sweet talk. Will my
+      prayers be heard?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How can I say? God is very good.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of that I am not sure. Listen now. When I die, or the child dies, what is
+      thy fate? Living, thou wilt return to the bold white mem-log, for kind
+      calls to kind.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Not always.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;With a woman, no; with a man it is otherwise. Thou wilt in this life,
+      later on, go back to thine own folk. That I could almost endure, for I
+      should be dead. But in thy very death thou wilt be taken away to a strange
+      place and a paradise that I do not know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Will it be paradise?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Surely, for who would harm thee? But we two&mdash;I and the child&mdash;shall
+      be elsewhere, and we cannot come to thee, nor canst thou come to us. In
+      the old days, before the child was born, I did not think of these things;
+      but now I think of them always. It is very hard talk.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It will fall as it will fall. To-morrow we do not know, but to-day and
+      love we know well. Surely we are happy now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So happy that it were well to make our happiness assured. And thy Beebee
+      Miriam should listen to me; for she is also a woman. But then she would
+      envy me! It is not seemly for men to worship a woman.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holden laughed aloud at Ameera&rsquo;s little spasm of jealousy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is it not seemly? Why didst thou not turn me from worship of thee, then?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thou a worshipper! And of me? My king, for all thy sweet words, well I
+      know that I am thy servant and thy slave, and the dust under thy feet. And
+      I would not have it otherwise. See!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Holden could prevent her she stooped forward and touched his feet;
+      recovering herself with a little laugh she hugged Tota closer to her
+      bosom. Then, almost savagely&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is it true that the bold white mem-log live for three times the length of
+      my life? Is it true that they make their marriages not before they are old
+      women?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They marry as do others&mdash;when they are women.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That I know, but they wed when they are twenty-five. Is that true?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That is true.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ya illah! At twenty-five! Who would of his own will take a wife even of
+      eighteen? She is a woman&mdash;aging every hour. Twenty-five! I shall be
+      an old woman at that age, and&mdash;Those mem-log remain young for ever.
+      How I hate them!&rsquo; &lsquo;What have they to do with us?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I cannot tell. I know only that there may now be alive on this earth a
+      woman ten years older than I who may come to thee and take thy love ten
+      years after I am an old woman, gray-headed, and the nurse of Tota&rsquo;s son.
+      That is unjust and evil. They should die too.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now, for all thy years thou art a child, and shalt be picked up and
+      carried down the staircase.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tota! Have a care for Tota, my lord! Thou at least art as foolish as any
+      babe!&rsquo; Ameera tucked Tota out of harm&rsquo;s way in the hollow of her neck, and
+      was carried downstairs laughing in Holden&rsquo;s arms, while Tota opened his
+      eyes and smiled after the manner of the lesser angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a silent infant, and, almost before Holden could realise that he
+      was in the world, developed into a small gold-coloured little god and
+      unquestioned despot of the house overlooking the city. Those were months
+      of absolute happiness to Holden and Ameera&mdash;happiness withdrawn from
+      the world, shut in behind the wooden gate that Pir Khan guarded. By day
+      Holden did his work with an immense pity for such as were not so fortunate
+      as himself, and a sympathy for small children that amazed and amused many
+      mothers at the little station-gatherings. At nightfall he returned to
+      Ameera,&mdash;Ameera, full of the wondrous doings of Tota; how he had been
+      seen to clap his hands together and move his fingers with intention and
+      purpose&mdash;which was manifestly a miracle&mdash;how later, he had of
+      his own initiative crawled out of his low bedstead on to the floor and
+      swayed on both feet for the space of three breaths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And they were long breaths, for my heart stood still with delight,&rsquo; said
+      Ameera.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Tota took the beasts into his councils&mdash;the well-bullocks, the
+      little gray squirrels, the mongoose that lived in a hole near the well,
+      and especially Mian Mittu, the parrot, whose tail he grievously pulled,
+      and Mian Mittu screamed till Ameera and Holden arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O villain! Child of strength! This to thy brother on the house-top!
+      Tobah, tobah! Fie! Fie! But I know a charm to make him wise as Suleiman
+      and Aflatoun [Solomon and Plato]. Now look,&rsquo; said Ameera. She drew from an
+      embroidered bag a handful of almonds. &lsquo;See! we count seven. In the name of
+      God!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She placed Mian Mittu, very angry and rumpled, on the top of his cage, and
+      seating herself between the babe and the bird she cracked and peeled an
+      almond less white than her teeth. &lsquo;This is a true charm, my life, and do
+      not laugh. See! I give the parrot one half and Tota the other.&rsquo; Mian Mittu
+      with careful beak took his share from between Ameera&rsquo;s lips, and she
+      kissed the other half into the mouth of the child, who ate it slowly with
+      wondering eyes. &lsquo;This I will do each day of seven, and without doubt he
+      who is ours will be a bold speaker and wise. Eh, Tota, what wilt thou be
+      when thou art a man and I am gray-headed?&rsquo; Tota tucked his fat legs into
+      adorable creases. He could crawl, but he was not going to waste the spring
+      of his youth in idle speech. He wanted Mian Mittu&rsquo;s tail to tweak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he was advanced to the dignity of a silver belt&mdash;which, with a
+      magic square engraved on silver and hung round his neck, made up the
+      greater part of his clothing&mdash;he staggered on a perilous journey down
+      the garden to Pir Khan and proffered him all his jewels in exchange for
+      one little ride on Holden&rsquo;s horse, having seen his mother&rsquo;s mother
+      chaffering with pedlars in the verandah. Pir Khan wept and set the untried
+      feet on his own gray head in sign of fealty, and brought the bold
+      adventurer to his mother&rsquo;s arms, vowing that Tota would be a leader of men
+      ere his beard was grown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One hot evening, while he sat on the roof between his father and mother
+      watching the never-ending warfare of the kites that the city boys flew, he
+      demanded a kite of his own with Pir Khan to fly it, because he had a fear
+      of dealing with anything larger than himself, and when Holden called him a
+      &lsquo;spark,&rsquo; he rose to his feet and answered slowly in defence of his
+      new-found individuality, &lsquo;Hum&rsquo;park nahin hai. Hum admi hai [I am no spark,
+      but a man].&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The protest made Holden choke and devote himself very seriously to a
+      consideration of Tota&rsquo;s future. He need hardly have taken the trouble. The
+      delight of that life was too perfect to endure. Therefore it was taken
+      away as many things are taken away in India&mdash;suddenly and without
+      warning. The little lord of the house, as Pir Khan called him, grew
+      sorrowful and complained of pains who had never known the meaning of pain.
+      Ameera, wild with terror, watched him through the night, and in the
+      dawning of the second day the life was shaken out of him by fever&mdash;the
+      seasonal autumn fever. It seemed altogether impossible that he could die,
+      and neither Ameera nor Holden at first believed the evidence of the little
+      body on the bedstead. Then Ameera beat her head against the wall and would
+      have flung herself down the well in the garden had Holden not restrained
+      her by main force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One mercy only was granted to Holden. He rode to his office in broad
+      daylight and found waiting him an unusually heavy mail that demanded
+      concentrated attention and hard work. He was not, however, alive to this
+      kindness of the gods.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The first shock of a bullet is no more than a brisk pinch. The wrecked
+      body does not send in its protest to the soul till ten or fifteen seconds
+      later. Holden realised his pain slowly, exactly as he had realised his
+      happiness, and with the same imperious necessity for hiding all trace of
+      it. In the beginning he only felt that there had been a loss, and that
+      Ameera needed comforting, where she sat with her head on her knees
+      shivering as Mian Mittu from the house-top called, Tota! Tota! Tota! Later
+      all his world and the daily life of it rose up to hurt him. It was an
+      outrage that any one of the children at the band-stand in the evening
+      should be alive and clamorous, when his own child lay dead. It was more
+      than mere pain when one of them touched him, and stories told by over-fond
+      fathers of their children&rsquo;s latest performances cut him to the quick. He
+      could not declare his pain. He had neither help, comfort, nor sympathy;
+      and Ameera at the end of each weary day would lead him through the hell of
+      self-questioning reproach which is reserved for those who have lost a
+      child, and believe that with a little&mdash;just a little&mdash;more care
+      it might have been saved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Perhaps,&rsquo; Ameera would say, &lsquo;I did not take sufficient heed. Did I, or
+      did I not? The sun on the roof that day when he played so long alone and I
+      was&mdash;ahi! braiding my hair&mdash;it may be that the sun then bred the
+      fever. If I had warned him from the sun he might have lived. But, oh my
+      life, say that I am guiltless! Thou knowest that I loved him as I love
+      thee. Say that there is no blame on me, or I shall die&mdash;I shall die!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There is no blame,&mdash;before God, none. It was written and how could
+      we do aught to save? What has been, has been. Let it go, beloved.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was all my heart to me. How can I let the thought go when my arm tells
+      me every night that he is not here? Ahi! Ahi! O Tota, come back to me&mdash;come
+      back again, and let us be all together as it was before!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Peace, peace! For thine own sake, and for mine also, if thou lovest me&mdash;rest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By this I know thou dost not care; and how shouldst thou? The white men
+      have hearts of stone and souls of iron. Oh, that I had married a man of
+      mine own people&mdash;though he beat me&mdash;and had never eaten the
+      bread of an alien!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Am I an alien&mdash;mother of my son?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What else&mdash;Sahib?... Oh, forgive me&mdash;forgive! The death has
+      driven me mad. Thou art the life of my heart, and the light of my eyes,
+      and the breath of my life, and&mdash;and I have put thee from me, though
+      it was but for a moment. If thou goest away, to whom shall I look for
+      help? Do not be angry. Indeed, it was the pain that spoke and not thy
+      slave.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I know, I know. We be two who were three. The greater need therefore that
+      we should be one.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were sitting on the roof as of custom. The night was a warm one in
+      early spring, and sheet-lightning was dancing on the horizon to a broken
+      tune played by far-off thunder. Ameera settled herself in Holden&rsquo;s arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The dry earth is lowing like a cow for the rain, and I&mdash;I am afraid.
+      It was not like this when we counted the stars. But thou lovest me as much
+      as before, though a bond is taken away? Answer!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I love more because a new bond has come out of the sorrow that we have
+      eaten together, and that thou knowest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yea, I knew,&rsquo; said Ameera in a very small whisper. &lsquo;But it is good to
+      hear thee say so, my life, who art so strong to help. I will be a child no
+      more, but a woman and an aid to thee. Listen! Give me my sitar and I will
+      sing bravely.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took the light silver-studded sitar and began a song of the great hero
+      Rajah Rasalu. The hand failed on the strings, the tune halted, checked,
+      and at a low note turned off to the poor little nursery-rhyme about the
+      wicked crow&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound.
+     Only a penny a pound, baba&mdash;only . . .
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then came the tears, and the piteous rebellion against fate till she
+      slept, moaning a little in her sleep, with the right arm thrown clear of
+      the body as though it protected something that was not there. It was after
+      this night that life became a little easier for Holden. The ever-present
+      pain of loss drove him into his work, and the work repaid him by filling
+      up his mind for nine or ten hours a day. Ameera sat alone in the house and
+      brooded, but grew happier when she understood that Holden was more at
+      ease, according to the custom of women. They touched happiness again, but
+      this time with caution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It was because we loved Tota that he died. The jealousy of God was upon
+      us,&rsquo; said Ameera. &lsquo;I have hung up a large black jar before our window to
+      turn the evil eye from us, and we must make no protestations of delight,
+      but go softly underneath the stars, lest God find us out. Is that not good
+      talk, worthless one?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had shifted the accent on the word that means &lsquo;beloved,&rsquo; in proof of
+      the sincerity of her purpose. But the kiss that followed the new
+      christening was a thing that any deity might have envied. They went about
+      henceforward saying, &lsquo;It is naught, it is naught;&rsquo; and hoping that all the
+      Powers heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Powers were busy on other things. They had allowed thirty million
+      people four years of plenty wherein men fed well and the crops were
+      certain, and the birth-rate rose year by year; the districts reported a
+      purely agricultural population varying from nine hundred to two thousand
+      to the square mile of the overburdened earth; and the Member for Lower
+      Tooting, wandering about India in pot-hat and frock-coat, talked largely
+      of the benefits of British rule and suggested as the one thing needful the
+      establishment of a duly qualified electoral system and a general bestowal
+      of the franchise. His long-suffering hosts smiled and made him welcome,
+      and when he paused to admire, with pretty picked words, the blossom of the
+      blood-red dhak-tree that had flowered untimely for a sign of what was
+      coming, they smiled more than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the Deputy Commissioner of Kot-Kumharsen, staying at the club for a
+      day, who lightly told a tale that made Holden&rsquo;s blood run cold as he
+      overheard the end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He won&rsquo;t bother any one any more. Never saw a man so astonished in my
+      life. By Jove, I thought he meant to ask a question in the House about it.
+      Fellow-passenger in his ship&mdash;dined next him&mdash;bowled over by
+      cholera and died in eighteen hours. You needn&rsquo;t laugh, you fellows. The
+      Member for Lower Tooting is awfully angry about it; but he&rsquo;s more scared.
+      I think he&rsquo;s going to take his enlightened self out of India.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;d give a good deal if he were knocked over. It might keep a few
+      vestrymen of his kidney to their own parish. But what&rsquo;s this about
+      cholera? It&rsquo;s full early for anything of that kind,&rsquo; said the warden of an
+      unprofitable salt-lick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t know,&rsquo; said the Deputy Commissioner reflectively. &lsquo;We&rsquo;ve got
+      locusts with us. There&rsquo;s sporadic cholera all along the north&mdash;at
+      least we&rsquo;re calling it sporadic for decency&rsquo;s sake. The spring crops are
+      short in five districts, and nobody seems to know where the rains are.
+      It&rsquo;s nearly March now. I don&rsquo;t want to scare anybody, but it seems to me
+      that Nature&rsquo;s going to audit her accounts with a big red pencil this
+      summer.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Just when I wanted to take leave, too!&rsquo; said a voice across the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There won&rsquo;t be much leave this year, but there ought to be a great deal
+      of promotion. I&rsquo;ve come in to persuade the Government to put my pet canal
+      on the list of famine-relief works. It&rsquo;s an ill-wind that blows no good. I
+      shall get that canal finished at last.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is it the old programme then,&rsquo; said Holden; &lsquo;famine, fever, and cholera?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh no. Only local scarcity and an unusual prevalence of seasonal
+      sickness. You&rsquo;ll find it all in the reports if you live till next year.
+      You&rsquo;re a lucky chap. YOU haven&rsquo;t got a wife to send out of harm&rsquo;s way. The
+      hill-stations ought to be full of women this year.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I think you&rsquo;re inclined to exaggerate the talk in the bazars&rsquo; said a
+      young civilian in the Secretariat. &lsquo;Now I have observed&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I daresay you have,&rsquo; said the Deputy Commissioner, &lsquo;but you&rsquo;ve a great
+      deal more to observe, my son. In the meantime, I wish to observe to you&mdash;&rsquo; 
+      and he drew him aside to discuss the construction of the canal that was so
+      dear to his heart. Holden went to his bungalow and began to understand
+      that he was not alone in the world, and also that he was afraid for the
+      sake of another,&mdash;which is the most soul-satisfying fear known to
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two months later, as the Deputy had foretold, Nature began to audit her
+      accounts with a red pencil. On the heels of the spring-reapings came a cry
+      for bread, and the Government, which had decreed that no man should die of
+      want, sent wheat. Then came the cholera from all four quarters of the
+      compass. It struck a pilgrim-gathering of half a million at a sacred
+      shrine. Many died at the feet of their god; the others broke and ran over
+      the face of the land carrying the pestilence with them. It smote a walled
+      city and killed two hundred a day. The people crowded the trains, hanging
+      on to the footboards and squatting on the roofs of the carriages, and the
+      cholera followed them, for at each station they dragged out the dead and
+      the dying. They died by the roadside, and the horses of the Englishmen
+      shied at the corpses in the grass. The rains did not come, and the earth
+      turned to iron lest man should escape death by hiding in her. The English
+      sent their wives away to the hills and went about their work, coming
+      forward as they were bidden to fill the gaps in the fighting-line. Holden,
+      sick with fear of losing his chiefest treasure on earth, had done his best
+      to persuade Ameera to go away with her mother to the Himalayas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why should I go?&rsquo; said she one evening on the roof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There is sickness, and people are dying, and all the white mem-log have
+      gone.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All of them?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All&mdash;unless perhaps there remain some old scald-head who vexes her
+      husband&rsquo;s heart by running risk of death.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay; who stays is my sister, and thou must not abuse her, for I will be a
+      scald-head too. I am glad all the bold mem-log are gone.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do I speak to a woman or a babe? Go to the hills and I will see to it
+      that thou goest like a queen&rsquo;s daughter. Think, child. In a red-lacquered
+      bullock-cart, veiled and curtained, with brass peacocks upon the pole and
+      red cloth hangings. I will send two orderlies for guard, and&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Peace! Thou art the babe in speaking thus. What use are those toys to me?
+      HE would have patted the bullocks and played with the housings. For his
+      sake, perhaps,&mdash;thou hast made me very English&mdash;I might have
+      gone. Now, I will not. Let the mem-log run.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Their husbands are sending them, beloved.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Very good talk. Since when hast thou been my husband to tell me what to
+      do? I have but borne thee a son. Thou art only all the desire of my soul
+      to me. How shall I depart when I know that if evil befall thee by the
+      breadth of so much as my littlest finger-nail&mdash;is that not small?&mdash;I
+      should be aware of it though I were in paradise. And here, this summer
+      thou mayest die&mdash;ai, janee, die! and in dying they might call to tend
+      thee a white woman, and she would rob me in the last of thy love!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But love is not born in a moment or on a death-bed!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What dost thou know of love, stoneheart? She would take thy thanks at
+      least and, by God and the Prophet and Beebee Miriam the mother of thy
+      Prophet, that I will never endure. My lord and my love, let there be no
+      more foolish talk of going away. Where thou art, I am. It is enough.&rsquo; She
+      put an arm round his neck and a hand on his mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are not many happinesses so complete as those that are snatched
+      under the shadow of the sword. They sat together and laughed, calling each
+      other openly by every pet name that could move the wrath of the gods. The
+      city below them was locked up in its own torments. Sulphur fires blazed in
+      the streets; the conches in the Hindu temples screamed and bellowed, for
+      the gods were inattentive in those days. There was a service in the great
+      Mahomedan shrine, and the call to prayer from the minarets was almost
+      unceasing. They heard the wailing in the houses of the dead, and once the
+      shriek of a mother who had lost a child and was calling for its return. In
+      the gray dawn they saw the dead borne out through the city gates, each
+      litter with its own little knot of mourners. Wherefore they kissed each
+      other and shivered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a red and heavy audit, for the land was very sick and needed a
+      little breathing-space ere the torrent of cheap life should flood it anew.
+      The children of immature fathers and undeveloped mothers made no
+      resistance. They were cowed and sat still, waiting till the sword should
+      be sheathed in November if it were so willed. There were gaps among the
+      English, but the gaps were filled. The work of superintending
+      famine-relief, cholera-sheds, medicine-distribution, and what little
+      sanitation was possible, went forward because it was so ordered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holden had been told to keep himself in readiness to move to replace the
+      next man who should fall. There were twelve hours in each day when he
+      could not see Ameera, and she might die in three. He was considering what
+      his pain would be if he could not see her for three months, or if she died
+      out of his sight. He was absolutely certain that her death would be
+      demanded&mdash;so certain that when he looked up from the telegram and saw
+      Pir Khan breathless in the doorway, he laughed aloud. &lsquo;And?&rsquo; said he,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;When there is a cry in the night and the spirit flutters into the throat,
+      who has a charm that will restore? Come swiftly, Heaven-born! It is the
+      black cholera.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holden galloped to his home. The sky was heavy with clouds, for the
+      long-deferred rains were near and the heat was stifling. Ameera&rsquo;s mother
+      met him in the courtyard, whimpering, &lsquo;She is dying. She is nursing
+      herself into death. She is all but dead. What shall I do, sahib?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ameera was lying in the room in which Tota had been born. She made no sign
+      when Holden entered, because the human soul is a very lonely thing and,
+      when it is getting ready to go away, hides itself in a misty borderland
+      where the living may not follow. The black cholera does its work quietly
+      and without explanation. Ameera was being thrust out of life as though the
+      Angel of Death had himself put his hand upon her. The quick breathing
+      seemed to show that she was either afraid or in pain, but neither eyes nor
+      mouth gave any answer to Holden&rsquo;s kisses. There was nothing to be said or
+      done. Holden could only wait and suffer. The first drops of the rain began
+      to fall on the roof, and he could hear shouts of joy in the parched city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The soul came back a little and the lips moved. Holden bent down to
+      listen. &lsquo;Keep nothing of mine,&rsquo; said Ameera. &lsquo;Take no hair from my head.
+      SHE would make thee burn it later on. That flame I should feel. Lower!
+      Stoop lower! Remember only that I was thine and bore thee a son. Though
+      thou wed a white woman to-morrow, the pleasure of receiving in thy arms
+      thy first son is taken from thee for ever. Remember me when thy son is
+      born&mdash;the one that shall carry thy name before all men. His
+      misfortunes be on my head. I bear witness&mdash;I bear witness&rsquo;&mdash;the
+      lips were forming the words on his ear&mdash;&lsquo;that there is no God but&mdash;thee,
+      beloved!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she died. Holden sat still, and all thought was taken from him,&mdash;till
+      he heard Ameera&rsquo;s mother lift the curtain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is she dead, sahib?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She is dead.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then I will mourn, and afterwards take an inventory of the furniture in
+      this house. For that will be mine. The sahib does not mean to resume it?
+      It is so little, so very little, sahib, and I am an old woman. I would
+      like to lie softly.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For the mercy of God be silent a while. Go out and mourn where I cannot
+      hear.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sahib, she will be buried in four hours.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I know the custom. I shall go ere she is taken away. That matter is in
+      thy hands. Look to it, that the bed on which&mdash;on which she lies&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Aha! That beautiful red-lacquered bed. I have long desired&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That the bed is left here untouched for my disposal. All else in the
+      house is thine. Hire a cart, take everything, go hence, and before sunrise
+      let there be nothing in this house but that which I have ordered thee to
+      respect.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I am an old woman. I would stay at least for the days of mourning, and
+      the rains have just broken. Whither shall I go?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What is that to me? My order is that there is a going. The house-gear is
+      worth a thousand rupees and my orderly shall bring thee a hundred rupees
+      to-night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That is very little. Think of the cart-hire.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It shall be nothing unless thou goest, and with speed. O woman, get hence
+      and leave me with my dead!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother shuffled down the staircase, and in her anxiety to take stock
+      of the house-fittings forgot to mourn. Holden stayed by Ameera&rsquo;s side and
+      the rain roared on the roof. He could not think connectedly by reason of
+      the noise, though he made many attempts to do so. Then four sheeted ghosts
+      glided dripping into the room and stared at him through their veils. They
+      were the washers of the dead. Holden left the room and went out to his
+      horse. He had come in a dead, stifling calm through ankle-deep dust. He
+      found the courtyard a rain-lashed pond alive with frogs; a torrent of
+      yellow water ran under the gate, and a roaring wind drove the bolts of the
+      rain like buckshot against the mud-walls. Pir Khan was shivering in his
+      little hut by the gate, and the horse was stamping uneasily in the water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have been told the sahib&rsquo;s order,&rsquo; said Pir Khan. &lsquo;It is well. This
+      house is now desolate. I go also, for my monkey-face would be a reminder
+      of that which has been. Concerning the bed, I will bring that to thy house
+      yonder in the morning; but remember, sahib, it will be to thee a knife
+      turning in a green wound. I go upon a pilgrimage, and I will take no
+      money. I have grown fat in the protection of the Presence whose sorrow is
+      my sorrow. For the last time I hold his stirrup.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He touched Holden&rsquo;s foot with both hands and the horse sprang out into the
+      road, where the creaking bamboos were whipping the sky and all the frogs
+      were chuckling. Holden could not see for the rain in his face. He put his
+      hands before his eyes and muttered&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh you brute! You utter brute!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The news of his trouble was already in his bungalow. He read the knowledge
+      in his butler&rsquo;s eyes when Ahmed Khan brought in food, and for the first
+      and last time in his life laid a hand upon his master&rsquo;s shoulder, saying,
+      &lsquo;Eat, sahib, eat. Meat is good against sorrow. I also have known. Moreover
+      the shadows come and go, sahib; the shadows come and go. These be curried
+      eggs.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holden could neither eat nor sleep. The heavens sent down eight inches of
+      rain in that night and washed the earth clean. The waters tore down walls,
+      broke roads, and scoured open the shallow graves on the Mahomedan
+      burying-ground. All next day it rained, and Holden sat still in his house
+      considering his sorrow. On the morning of the third day he received a
+      telegram which said only, &lsquo;Ricketts, Myndonie. Dying. Holden relieve.
+      Immediate.&rsquo; Then he thought that before he departed he would look at the
+      house wherein he had been master and lord. There was a break in the
+      weather, and the rank earth steamed with vapour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found that the rains had torn down the mud pillars of the gateway, and
+      the heavy wooden gate that had guarded his life hung lazily from one
+      hinge. There was grass three inches high in the courtyard; Pir Khan&rsquo;s
+      lodge was empty, and the sodden thatch sagged between the beams. A gray
+      squirrel was in possession of the verandah, as if the house had been
+      untenanted for thirty years instead of three days. Ameera&rsquo;s mother had
+      removed everything except some mildewed matting. The tick-tick of the
+      little scorpions as they hurried across the floor was the only sound in
+      the house. Ameera&rsquo;s room and the other one where Tota had lived were heavy
+      with mildew; and the narrow staircase leading to the roof was streaked and
+      stained with rain-borne mud. Holden saw all these things, and came out
+      again to meet in the road Durga Dass, his landlord,&mdash;portly, affable,
+      clothed in white muslin, and driving a Cee-spring buggy. He was
+      overlooking his property to see how the roofs stood the stress of the
+      first rains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have heard,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;you will not take this place any more, sahib?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What are you going to do with it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Perhaps I shall let it again.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then I will keep it on while I am away.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Durga Dass was silent for some time. &lsquo;You shall not take it on, sahib,&rsquo; he
+      said. &lsquo;When I was a young man I also&mdash;, but to-day I am a member of
+      the Municipality. Ho! Ho! No. When the birds have gone what need to keep
+      the nest? I will have it pulled down&mdash;the timber will sell for
+      something always. It shall be pulled down, and the Municipality shall make
+      a road across, as they desire, from the burning-ghat to the city wall, so
+      that no man may say where this house stood.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ The sky is lead and our faces are red,
+ And the gates of Hell are opened and riven,
+ And the winds of Hell are loosened and driven,
+ And the dust flies up in the face of Heaven,
+ And the clouds come down in a fiery sheet,
+ Heavy to raise and hard to be borne.
+ And the soul of man is turned from his meat,
+ Turned from the trifles for which he has striven
+ Sick in his body, and heavy hearted,
+ And his soul flies up like the dust in the sheet
+ Breaks from his flesh and is gone and departed,
+ As the blasts they blow on the cholera-horn.
+                            HIMALAYAN.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Four men, each entitled to &lsquo;life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,&rsquo; 
+      sat at a table playing whist. The thermometer marked&mdash;for them&mdash;one
+      hundred and one degrees of heat. The room was darkened till it was only
+      just possible to distinguish the pips of the cards and the very white
+      faces of the players. A tattered, rotten punkah of whitewashed calico was
+      puddling the hot air and whining dolefully at each stroke. Outside lay
+      gloom of a November day in London. There was neither sky, sun, nor
+      horizon,&mdash;nothing but a brown purple haze of heat. It was as though
+      the earth were dying of apoplexy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From time to time clouds of tawny dust rose from the ground without wind
+      or warning, flung themselves tablecloth-wise among the tops of the parched
+      trees, and came down again. Then a whirling dust-devil would scutter
+      across the plain for a couple of miles, break, and fall outward, though
+      there was nothing to check its flight save a long low line of piled
+      railway-sleepers white with the dust, a cluster of huts made of mud,
+      condemned rails, and canvas, and the one squat four-roomed bungalow that
+      belonged to the assistant engineer in charge of a section of the Gaudhari
+      State line then under construction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The four, stripped to the thinnest of sleeping-suits, played whist
+      crossly, with wranglings as to leads and returns. It was not the best kind
+      of whist, but they had taken some trouble to arrive at it. Mottram of the
+      Indian Survey had ridden thirty and railed one hundred miles from his
+      lonely post in the desert since the night before; Lowndes of the Civil
+      Service, on special duty in the political department, had come as far to
+      escape for an instant the miserable intrigues of an impoverished native
+      State whose king alternately fawned and blustered for more money from the
+      pitiful revenues contributed by hard-wrung peasants and despairing
+      camel-breeders; Spurstow, the doctor of the line, had left a
+      cholera-stricken camp of coolies to look after itself for forty-eight
+      hours while he associated with white men once more. Hummil, the assistant
+      engineer, was the host. He stood fast and received his friends thus every
+      Sunday if they could come in. When one of them failed to appear, he would
+      send a telegram to his last address, in order that he might know whether
+      the defaulter were dead or alive. There are very many places in the East
+      where it is not good or kind to let your acquaintances drop out of sight
+      even for one short week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The players were not conscious of any special regard for each other. They
+      squabbled whenever they met; but they ardently desired to meet, as men
+      without water desire to drink. They were lonely folk who understood the
+      dread meaning of loneliness. They were all under thirty years of age,&mdash;which
+      is too soon for any man to possess that knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Pilsener?&rsquo; said Spurstow, after the second rubber, mopping his forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Beer&rsquo;s out, I&rsquo;m sorry to say, and there&rsquo;s hardly enough soda-water for
+      to-night,&rsquo; said Hummil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What filthy bad management!&rsquo; Spurstow snarled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Can&rsquo;t help it. I&rsquo;ve written and wired; but the trains don&rsquo;t come through
+      regularly yet. Last week the ice ran out,&mdash;as Lowndes knows.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Glad I didn&rsquo;t come. I could ha&rsquo; sent you some if I had known, though.
+      Phew! it&rsquo;s too hot to go on playing bumblepuppy.&rsquo; This with a savage scowl
+      at Lowndes, who only laughed. He was a hardened offender.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mottram rose from the table and looked out of a chink in the shutters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What a sweet day!&rsquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The company yawned all together and betook themselves to an aimless
+      investigation of all Hummil&rsquo;s possessions,&mdash;guns, tattered novels,
+      saddlery, spurs, and the like. They had fingered them a score of times
+      before, but there was really nothing else to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Got anything fresh?&rsquo; said Lowndes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Last week&rsquo;s Gazette of India, and a cutting from a home paper. My father
+      sent it out. It&rsquo;s rather amusing.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;One of those vestrymen that call &lsquo;emselves M.P.&lsquo;s again, is it?&rsquo; said
+      Spurstow, who read his newspapers when he could get them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes. Listen to this. It&rsquo;s to your address, Lowndes. The man was making a
+      speech to his constituents, and he piled it on. Here&rsquo;s a sample: &ldquo;And I
+      assert unhesitatingly that the Civil Service in India is the preserve&mdash;the
+      pet preserve&mdash;of the aristocracy of England. What does the democracy&mdash;what
+      do the masses&mdash;get from that country, which we have step by step
+      fraudulently annexed? I answer, nothing whatever. It is farmed with a
+      single eye to their own interests by the scions of the aristocracy. They
+      take good care to maintain their lavish scale of incomes, to avoid or
+      stifle any inquiries into the nature and conduct of their administration,
+      while they themselves force the unhappy peasant to pay with the sweat of
+      his brow for all the luxuries in which they are lapped.&rdquo;&rsquo; Hummil waved the
+      cutting above his head. &lsquo;&rsquo;Ear! &lsquo;ear!&rsquo; said his audience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Lowndes, meditatively: &lsquo;I&rsquo;d give&mdash;I&rsquo;d give three months&rsquo; pay to
+      have that gentleman spend one month with me and see how the free and
+      independent native prince works things. Old Timbersides&rsquo;&mdash;this was
+      his flippant title for an honoured and decorated feudatory prince&mdash;&lsquo;has
+      been wearing my life out this week past for money. By Jove, his latest
+      performance was to send me one of his women as a bribe!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good for you! Did you accept it?&rsquo; said Mottram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No. I rather wish I had, now. She was a pretty little person, and she
+      yarned away to me about the horrible destitution among the king&rsquo;s
+      women-folk. The darlings haven&rsquo;t had any new clothes for nearly a month,
+      and the old man wants to buy a new drag from Calcutta,&mdash;solid silver
+      railings and silver lamps, and trifles of that kind. I&rsquo;ve tried to make
+      him understand that he has played the deuce with the revenues for the last
+      twenty years and must go slow. He can&rsquo;t see it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But he has the ancestral treasure-vaults to draw on. There must be three
+      millions at least in jewels and coin under his palace,&rsquo; said Hummil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Catch a native king disturbing the family treasure! The priests forbid it
+      except as the last resort. Old Timbersides has added something like a
+      quarter of a million to the deposit in his reign.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where the mischief does it all come from?&rsquo; said Mottram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The country. The state of the people is enough to make you sick. I&rsquo;ve
+      known the tax-men wait by a milch-camel till the foal was born and then
+      hurry off the mother for arrears. And what can I do? I can&rsquo;t get the court
+      clerks to give me any accounts; I can&rsquo;t raise anything more than a fat
+      smile from the commander-in-chief when I find out the troops are three
+      months in arrears; and old Timbersides begins to weep when I speak to him.
+      He has taken to the King&rsquo;s Peg heavily,&mdash;liqueur brandy for whisky,
+      and Heidsieck for soda-water.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s what the Rao of Jubela took to. Even a native can&rsquo;t last long at
+      that,&rsquo; said Spurstow. &lsquo;He&rsquo;ll go out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And a good thing, too. Then I suppose we&rsquo;ll have a council of regency,
+      and a tutor for the young prince, and hand him back his kingdom with ten
+      years&rsquo; accumulations.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Whereupon that young prince, having been taught all the vices of the
+      English, will play ducks and drakes with the money and undo ten years&rsquo; 
+      work in eighteen months. I&rsquo;ve seen that business before,&rsquo; said Spurstow.
+      &lsquo;I should tackle the king with a light hand, if I were you, Lowndes.
+      They&rsquo;ll hate you quite enough under any circumstances.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s all very well. The man who looks on can talk about the light hand;
+      but you can&rsquo;t clean a pig-stye with a pen dipped in rose-water. I know my
+      risks; but nothing has happened yet. My servant&rsquo;s an old Pathan, and he
+      cooks for me. They are hardly likely to bribe him, and I don&rsquo;t accept food
+      from my true friends, as they call themselves. Oh, but it&rsquo;s weary work!
+      I&rsquo;d sooner be with you, Spurstow. There&rsquo;s shooting near your camp.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Would you? I don&rsquo;t think it. About fifteen deaths a day don&rsquo;t incite a
+      man to shoot anything but himself. And the worst of it is that the poor
+      devils look at you as though you ought to save them. Lord knows, I&rsquo;ve
+      tried everything. My last attempt was empirical, but it pulled an old man
+      through. He was brought to me apparently past hope, and I gave him gin and
+      Worcester sauce with cayenne. It cured him; but I don&rsquo;t recommend it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How do the cases run generally?&rsquo; said Hummil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Very simply indeed. Chlorodyne, opium pill, chlorodyne, collapse, nitre,
+      bricks to the feet, and then&mdash;the burning-ghat. The last seems to be
+      the only thing that stops the trouble. It&rsquo;s black cholera, you know. Poor
+      devils! But, I will say, little Bunsee Lal, my apothecary, works like a
+      demon. I&rsquo;ve recommended him for promotion if he comes through it all
+      alive.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And what are your chances, old man?&rsquo; said Mottram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t know; don&rsquo;t care much; but I&rsquo;ve sent the letter in. What are you
+      doing with yourself generally?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sitting under a table in the tent and spitting on the sextant to keep it
+      cool,&rsquo; said the man of the survey. &lsquo;Washing my eyes to avoid ophthalmia,
+      which I shall certainly get, and trying to make a sub-surveyor understand
+      that an error of five degrees in an angle isn&rsquo;t quite so small as it
+      looks. I&rsquo;m altogether alone, y&rsquo; know, and shall be till the end of the hot
+      weather.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hummil&rsquo;s the lucky man,&rsquo; said Lowndes, flinging himself into a long
+      chair. &lsquo;He has an actual roof&mdash;torn as to the ceiling-cloth, but
+      still a roof&mdash;over his head. He sees one train daily. He can get beer
+      and soda-water and ice &lsquo;em when God is good. He has books, pictures,&mdash;-they
+      were torn from the Graphic,&mdash;&lsquo;and the society of the excellent
+      sub-contractor Jevins, besides the pleasure of receiving us weekly.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hummil smiled grimly. &lsquo;Yes, I&rsquo;m the lucky man, I suppose. Jevins is
+      luckier.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;How? Not&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes. Went out. Last Monday.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By his own hand?&rsquo; said Spurstow quickly, hinting the suspicion that was
+      in everybody&rsquo;s mind. There was no cholera near Hummil&rsquo;s section. Even
+      fever gives a man at least a week&rsquo;s grace, and sudden death generally
+      implied self-slaughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I judge no man this weather,&rsquo; said Hummil. &lsquo;He had a touch of the sun, I
+      fancy; for last week, after you fellows had left, he came into the
+      verandah and told me that he was going home to see his wife, in Market
+      Street, Liverpool, that evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I got the apothecary in to look at him, and we tried to make him lie
+      down. After an hour or two he rubbed his eyes and said he believed he had
+      had a fit,&mdash;hoped he hadn&rsquo;t said anything rude. Jevins had a great
+      idea of bettering himself socially. He was very like Chucks in his
+      language.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then he went to his own bungalow and began cleaning a rifle. He told the
+      servant that he was going to shoot buck in the morning. Naturally he
+      fumbled with the trigger, and shot himself through the head&mdash;accidentally.
+      The apothecary sent in a report to my chief, and Jevins is buried
+      somewhere out there. I&rsquo;d have wired to you, Spurstow, if you could have
+      done anything.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;re a queer chap,&rsquo; said Mottram. &lsquo;If you&rsquo;d killed the man yourself you
+      couldn&rsquo;t have been more quiet about the business.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good Lord! what does it matter?&rsquo; said Hummil calmly. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve got to do a
+      lot of his overseeing work in addition to my own. I&rsquo;m the only person that
+      suffers. Jevins is out of it,&mdash;by pure accident, of course, but out
+      of it. The apothecary was going to write a long screed on suicide. Trust a
+      babu to drivel when he gets the chance.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you let it go in as suicide?&rsquo; said Lowndes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No direct proof. A man hasn&rsquo;t many privileges in this country, but he
+      might at least be allowed to mishandle his own rifle. Besides, some day I
+      may need a man to smother up an accident to myself. Live and let live. Die
+      and let die.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You take a pill,&rsquo; said Spurstow, who had been watching Hummil&rsquo;s white
+      face narrowly. &lsquo;Take a pill, and don&rsquo;t be an ass. That sort of talk is
+      skittles. Anyhow, suicide is shirking your work. If I were Job ten times
+      over, I should be so interested in what was going to happen next that I&rsquo;d
+      stay on and watch.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah! I&rsquo;ve lost that curiosity,&rsquo; said Hummil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Liver out of order?&rsquo; said Lowndes feelingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No. Can&rsquo;t sleep. That&rsquo;s worse.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By Jove, it is!&rsquo; said Mottram. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m that way every now and then, and the
+      fit has to wear itself out. What do you take for it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nothing. What&rsquo;s the use? I haven&rsquo;t had ten minutes&rsquo; sleep since Friday
+      morning.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Poor chap! Spurstow, you ought to attend to this,&rsquo; said Mottram. &lsquo;Now you
+      mention it, your eyes are rather gummy and swollen.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spurstow, still watching Hummil, laughed lightly. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll patch him up,
+      later on. Is it too hot, do you think, to go for a ride?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Where to?&rsquo; said Lowndes wearily. &lsquo;We shall have to go away at eight, and
+      there&rsquo;ll be riding enough for us then. I hate a horse, when I have to use
+      him as a necessity. Oh, heavens! what is there to do?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Begin whist again, at chick points [&lsquo;a chick&rsquo; is supposed to be eight
+      shillings] and a gold mohur on the rub,&rsquo; said Spurstow promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Poker. A month&rsquo;s pay all round for the pool,&mdash;no limit,&mdash;and
+      fifty-rupee raises. Somebody would be broken before we got up,&rsquo; said
+      Lowndes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Can&rsquo;t say that it would give me any pleasure to break any man in this
+      company,&rsquo; said Mottram. &lsquo;There isn&rsquo;t enough excitement in it, and it&rsquo;s
+      foolish.&rsquo; He crossed over to the worn and battered little camp-piano,&mdash;wreckage
+      of a married household that had once held the bungalow,&mdash;and opened
+      the case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s used up long ago,&rsquo; said Hummil. &lsquo;The servants have picked it to
+      pieces.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The piano was indeed hopelessly out of order, but Mottram managed to bring
+      the rebellious notes into a sort of agreement, and there rose from the
+      ragged keyboard something that might once have been the ghost of a popular
+      music-hall song. The men in the long chairs turned with evident interest
+      as Mottram banged the more lustily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s good!&rsquo; said Lowndes. &lsquo;By Jove! the last time I heard that song was
+      in &lsquo;79, or thereabouts, just before I came out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ah!&rsquo; said Spurstow with pride,&rsquo; I was home in &lsquo;80.&rsquo; And he mentioned a
+      song of the streets popular at that date.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mottram executed it roughly. Lowndes criticised and volunteered
+      emendations. Mottram dashed into another ditty, not of the music-hall
+      character, and made as if to rise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sit down,&rsquo; said Hummil. &lsquo;I didn&rsquo;t know that you had any music in your
+      composition. Go on playing until you can&rsquo;t think of anything more. I&rsquo;ll
+      have that piano tuned up before you come again. Play something festive.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very simple indeed were the tunes to which Mottram&rsquo;s art and the
+      limitations of the piano could give effect, but the men listened with
+      pleasure, and in the pauses talked all together of what they had seen or
+      heard when they were last at home. A dense dust-storm sprung up outside,
+      and swept roaring over the house, enveloping it in the choking darkness of
+      midnight, but Mottram continued unheeding, and the crazy tinkle reached
+      the ears of the listeners above the flapping of the tattered
+      ceiling-cloth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the silence after the storm he glided from the more directly personal
+      songs of Scotland, half humming them as he played, into the Evening Hymn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sunday,&rsquo; said he, nodding his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go on. Don&rsquo;t apologise for it,&rsquo; said Spurstow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hummil laughed long and riotously. &lsquo;Play it, by all means. You&rsquo;re full of
+      surprises to-day. I didn&rsquo;t know you had such a gift of finished sarcasm.
+      How does that thing go?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mottram took up the tune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Too slow by half. You miss the note of gratitude,&rsquo; said Hummil. &lsquo;It ought
+      to go to the &ldquo;Grasshopper&rsquo;s Polka,&rdquo;&mdash;this way.&rsquo; And he chanted,
+      prestissimo,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Glory to thee, my God, this night. For all the blessings of the light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That shows we really feel our blessings. How does it go on?&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If in the night I sleepless lie, My soul with sacred thoughts supply; May
+      no ill dreams disturb my rest.&rsquo;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quicker, Mottram!&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Or powers of darkness me molest!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bah! what an old hypocrite you are!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t be an ass,&rsquo; said Lowndes. &lsquo;You are at full liberty to make fun of
+      anything else you like, but leave that hymn alone. It&rsquo;s associated in my
+      mind with the most sacred recollections&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Summer evenings in the country,&mdash;stained-glass window,&mdash;light
+      going out, and you and she jamming your heads together over one
+      hymn-book,&rsquo; said Mottram.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, and a fat old cockchafer hitting you in the eye when you walked
+      home. Smell of hay, and a moon as big as a bandbox sitting on the top of a
+      haycock; bats,&mdash;roses,&mdash;milk and midges,&rsquo; said Lowndes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Also mothers. I can just recollect my mother singing me to sleep with
+      that when I was a little chap,&rsquo; said Spurstow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The darkness had fallen on the room. They could hear Hummil squirming in
+      his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Consequently,&rsquo; said he testily, &lsquo;you sing it when you are seven fathom
+      deep in Hell! It&rsquo;s an insult to the intelligence of the Deity to pretend
+      we&rsquo;re anything but tortured rebels.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Take TWO pills,&rsquo; said Spurstow; &lsquo;that&rsquo;s tortured liver.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The usually placid Hummil is in a vile bad temper. I&rsquo;m sorry for his
+      coolies to-morrow,&rsquo; said Lowndes, as the servants brought in the lights
+      and prepared the table for dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they were settling into their places about the miserable goat-chops,
+      and the smoked tapioca pudding, Spurstow took occasion to whisper to
+      Mottram, &lsquo;Well done, David!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Look after Saul, then,&rsquo; was the reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What are you two whispering about?&rsquo; said Hummil suspiciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Only saying that you are a damned poor host. This fowl can&rsquo;t be cut,&rsquo; 
+      returned Spurstow with a sweet smile. &lsquo;Call this a dinner?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t help it. You don&rsquo;t expect a banquet, do you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Throughout that meal Hummil contrived laboriously to insult directly and
+      pointedly all his guests in succession, and at each insult Spurstow kicked
+      the aggrieved persons under the table; but he dared not exchange a glance
+      of intelligence with either of them. Hummil&rsquo;s face was white and pinched,
+      while his eyes were unnaturally large. No man dreamed for a moment of
+      resenting his savage personalities, but as soon as the meal was over they
+      made haste to get away. &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t go. You&rsquo;re just getting amusing, you
+      fellows. I hope I haven&rsquo;t said anything that annoyed you. You&rsquo;re such
+      touchy devils.&rsquo; Then, changing the note into one of almost abject
+      entreaty, Hummil added, &lsquo;I say, you surely aren&rsquo;t going?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;In the language of the blessed Jorrocks, where I dines I sleeps,&rsquo; said
+      Spurstow. &lsquo;I want to have a look at your coolies to-morrow, if you don&rsquo;t
+      mind. You can give me a place to lie down in, I suppose?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The others pleaded the urgency of their several duties next day, and,
+      saddling up, departed together, Hummil begging them to come next Sunday.
+      As they jogged off, Lowndes unbosomed himself to Mottram&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;... And I never felt so like kicking a man at his own table in my life.
+      He said I cheated at whist, and reminded me I was in debt! &lsquo;Told you you
+      were as good as a liar to your face! You aren&rsquo;t half indignant enough over
+      it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Not I,&rsquo; said Mottram. &lsquo;Poor devil! Did you ever know old Hummy behave
+      like that before or within a hundred miles of it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s no excuse. Spurstow was hacking my shin all the time, so I kept a
+      hand on myself. Else I should have&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, you wouldn&rsquo;t. You&rsquo;d have done as Hummy did about Jevins; judge no man
+      this weather. By Jove! the buckle of my bridle is hot in my hand! Trot out
+      a bit, and &lsquo;ware rat-holes.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten minutes&rsquo; trotting jerked out of Lowndes one very sage remark when he
+      pulled up, sweating from every pore&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Good thing Spurstow&rsquo;s with him to-night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ye-es. Good man, Spurstow. Our roads turn here. See you again next
+      Sunday, if the sun doesn&rsquo;t bowl me over.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;S&rsquo;pose so, unless old Timbersides&rsquo; finance minister manages to dress some
+      of my food. Good-night, and&mdash;God bless you!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s wrong now?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, nothing.&rsquo; Lowndes gathered up his whip, and, as he flicked Mottram&rsquo;s
+      mare on the flank, added, &lsquo;You&rsquo;re not a bad little chap,&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      all.&rsquo; And the mare bolted half a mile across the sand, on the word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the assistant engineer&rsquo;s bungalow Spurstow and Hummil smoked the pipe
+      of silence together, each narrowly watching the other. The capacity of a
+      bachelor&rsquo;s establishment is as elastic as its arrangements are simple. A
+      servant cleared away the dining-room table, brought in a couple of rude
+      native bedsteads made of tape strung on a light wood frame, flung a square
+      of cool Calcutta matting over each, set them side by side, pinned two
+      towels to the punkah so that their fringes should just sweep clear of the
+      sleepers&rsquo; nose and mouth, and announced that the couches were ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men flung themselves down, ordering the punkah-coolies by all the
+      powers of Hell to pull. Every door and window was shut, for the outside
+      air was that of an oven. The atmosphere within was only 104 degrees, as
+      the thermometer bore witness, and heavy with the foul smell of
+      badly-trimmed kerosene lamps; and this stench, combined with that of
+      native tobacco, baked brick, and dried earth, sends the heart of many a
+      strong man down to his boots, for it is the smell of the Great Indian
+      Empire when she turns herself for six months into a house of torment.
+      Spurstow packed his pillows craftily so that he reclined rather than lay,
+      his head at a safe elevation above his feet. It is not good to sleep on a
+      low pillow in the hot weather if you happen to be of thick-necked build,
+      for you may pass with lively snores and gugglings from natural sleep into
+      the deep slumber of heat-apoplexy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Pack your pillows,&rsquo; said the doctor sharply, as he saw Hummil preparing
+      to lie down at full length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night-light was trimmed; the shadow of the punkah wavered across the
+      room, and the &lsquo;flick&rsquo; of the punkah-towel and the soft whine of the rope
+      through the wall-hole followed it. Then the punkah flagged, almost ceased.
+      The sweat poured from Spurstow&rsquo;s brow. Should he go out and harangue the
+      coolie? It started forward again with a savage jerk, and a pin came out of
+      the towels. When this was replaced, a tomtom in the coolie-lines began to
+      beat with the steady throb of a swollen artery inside some brain-fevered
+      skull. Spurstow turned on his side and swore gently. There was no movement
+      on Hummil&rsquo;s part. The man had composed himself as rigidly as a corpse, his
+      hands clinched at his sides. The respiration was too hurried for any
+      suspicion of sleep. Spurstow looked at the set face. The jaws were
+      clinched, and there was a pucker round the quivering eyelids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He&rsquo;s holding himself as tightly as ever he can,&rsquo; thought Spurstow. &lsquo;What
+      in the world is the matter with him?&mdash;Hummil!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; in a thick constrained voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Can&rsquo;t you get to sleep?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Head hot? &lsquo;Throat feeling bulgy? or how?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Neither, thanks. I don&rsquo;t sleep much, you know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Feel pretty bad?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Pretty bad, thanks. There is a tomtom outside, isn&rsquo;t there? I thought it
+      was my head at first.... Oh, Spurstow, for pity&rsquo;s sake give me something
+      that will put me asleep,&mdash;sound asleep,&mdash;if it&rsquo;s only for six
+      hours!&rsquo; He sprang up, trembling from head to foot. &lsquo;I haven&rsquo;t been able to
+      sleep naturally for days, and I can&rsquo;t stand it!&mdash;I can&rsquo;t stand it!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Poor old chap!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s no use. Give me something to make me sleep. I tell you I&rsquo;m nearly
+      mad. I don&rsquo;t know what I say half my time. For three weeks I&rsquo;ve had to
+      think and spell out every word that has come through my lips before I
+      dared say it. Isn&rsquo;t that enough to drive a man mad? I can&rsquo;t see things
+      correctly now, and I&rsquo;ve lost my sense of touch. My skin aches&mdash;my
+      skin aches! Make me sleep. Oh, Spurstow, for the love of God make me sleep
+      sound. It isn&rsquo;t enough merely to let me dream. Let me sleep!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All right, old man, all right. Go slow; you aren&rsquo;t half as bad as you
+      think.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The flood-gates of reserve once broken, Hummil was clinging to him like a
+      frightened child. &lsquo;You&rsquo;re pinching my arm to pieces.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll break your neck if you don&rsquo;t do something for me. No, I didn&rsquo;t mean
+      that. Don&rsquo;t be angry, old fellow.&rsquo; He wiped the sweat off himself as he
+      fought to regain composure. &lsquo;I&rsquo;m a bit restless and off my oats, and
+      perhaps you could recommend some sort of sleeping mixture,&mdash;bromide
+      of potassium.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bromide of skittles! Why didn&rsquo;t you tell me this before? Let go of my
+      arm, and I&rsquo;ll see if there&rsquo;s anything in my cigarette-case to suit your
+      complaint.&rsquo; Spurstow hunted among his day-clothes, turned up the lamp,
+      opened a little silver cigarette-case, and advanced on the expectant
+      Hummil with the daintiest of fairy squirts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The last appeal of civilisation,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;and a thing I hate to use.
+      Hold out your arm. Well, your sleeplessness hasn&rsquo;t ruined your muscle; and
+      what a thick hide it is! Might as well inject a buffalo subcutaneously.
+      Now in a few minutes the morphia will begin working. Lie down and wait.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A smile of unalloyed and idiotic delight began to creep over Hummil&rsquo;s
+      face. &lsquo;I think,&rsquo; he whispered,&mdash;&lsquo;I think I&rsquo;m going off now. Gad! it&rsquo;s
+      positively heavenly! Spurstow, you must give me that case to keep; you&mdash;&rsquo; 
+      The voice ceased as the head fell back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Not for a good deal,&rsquo; said Spurstow to the unconscious form. &lsquo;And now, my
+      friend, sleeplessness of your kind being very apt to relax the moral fibre
+      in little matters of life and death, I&rsquo;ll just take the liberty of spiking
+      your guns.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paddled into Hummil&rsquo;s saddle-room in his bare feet and uncased a
+      twelve-bore rifle, an express, and a revolver. Of the first he unscrewed
+      the nipples and hid them in the bottom of a saddlery-case; of the second
+      he abstracted the lever, kicking it behind a big wardrobe. The third he
+      merely opened, and knocked the doll-head bolt of the grip up with the heel
+      of a riding-boot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s settled,&rsquo; he said, as he shook the sweat off his hands. &lsquo;These
+      little precautions will at least give you time to turn. You have too much
+      sympathy with gun-room accidents.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as he rose from his knees, the thick muffled voice of Hummil cried in
+      the doorway, &lsquo;You fool!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such tones they use who speak in the lucid intervals of delirium to their
+      friends a little before they die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spurstow started, dropping the pistol. Hummil stood in the doorway,
+      rocking with helpless laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That was awf&rsquo;ly good of you, I&rsquo;m sure,&rsquo; he said, very slowly, feeling for
+      his words. &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t intend to go out by my own hand at present. I say,
+      Spurstow, that stuff won&rsquo;t work. What shall I do? What shall I do?&rsquo; And
+      panic terror stood in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Lie down and give it a chance. Lie down at once.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I daren&rsquo;t. It will only take me half-way again, and I shan&rsquo;t be able to
+      get away this time. Do you know it was all I could do to come out just
+      now? Generally I am as quick as lightning; but you had clogged my feet. I
+      was nearly caught.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh yes, I understand. Go and lie down.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, it isn&rsquo;t delirium; but it was an awfully mean trick to play on me. Do
+      you know I might have died?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a sponge rubs a slate clean, so some power unknown to Spurstow had
+      wiped out of Hummil&rsquo;s face all that stamped it for the face of a man, and
+      he stood at the doorway in the expression of his lost innocence. He had
+      slept back into terrified childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is he going to die on the spot?&rsquo; thought Spurstow. Then, aloud, &lsquo;All
+      right, my son. Come back to bed, and tell me all about it. You couldn&rsquo;t
+      sleep; but what was all the rest of the nonsense?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A place,&mdash;a place down there,&rsquo; said Hummil, with simple sincerity.
+      The drug was acting on him by waves, and he was flung from the fear of a
+      strong man to the fright of a child as his nerves gathered sense or were
+      dulled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Good God! I&rsquo;ve been afraid of it for months past, Spurstow. It has made
+      every night hell to me; and yet I&rsquo;m not conscious of having done anything
+      wrong.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Be still, and I&rsquo;ll give you another dose. We&rsquo;ll stop your nightmares, you
+      unutterable idiot!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, but you must give me so much that I can&rsquo;t get away. You must make me
+      quite sleepy,&mdash;not just a little sleepy. It&rsquo;s so hard to run then.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I know it; I know it. I&rsquo;ve felt it myself. The symptoms are exactly as
+      you describe.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t laugh at me, confound you! Before this awful sleeplessness came
+      to me I&rsquo;ve tried to rest on my elbow and put a spur in the bed to sting me
+      when I fell back. Look!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By Jove! the man has been rowelled like a horse! Ridden by the nightmare
+      with a vengeance! And we all thought him sensible enough. Heaven send us
+      understanding! You like to talk, don&rsquo;t you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, sometimes. Not when I&rsquo;m frightened. THEN I want to run. Don&rsquo;t you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Always. Before I give you your second dose try to tell me exactly what
+      your trouble is.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hummil spoke in broken whispers for nearly ten minutes, whilst Spurstow
+      looked into the pupils of his eyes and passed his hand before them once or
+      twice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of the narrative the silver cigarette-case was produced, and
+      the last words that Hummil said as he fell back for the second time were,
+      &lsquo;Put me quite to sleep; for if I&rsquo;m caught I die,&mdash;I die!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, yes; we all do that sooner or later,&mdash;thank Heaven who has set
+      a term to our miseries,&rsquo; said Spurstow, settling the cushions under the
+      head. &lsquo;It occurs to me that unless I drink something I shall go out before
+      my time. I&rsquo;ve stopped sweating, and&mdash;I wear a seventeen-inch collar.&rsquo; 
+      He brewed himself scalding hot tea, which is an excellent remedy against
+      heat-apoplexy if you take three or four cups of it in time. Then he
+      watched the sleeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A blind face that cries and can&rsquo;t wipe its eyes, a blind face that chases
+      him down corridors! H&rsquo;m! Decidedly, Hummil ought to go on leave as soon as
+      possible; and, sane or otherwise, he undoubtedly did rowel himself most
+      cruelly. Well, Heaven send us understanding!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At mid-day Hummil rose, with an evil taste in his mouth, but an unclouded
+      eye and a joyful heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I was pretty bad last night, wasn&rsquo;t I?&rsquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have seen healthier men. You must have had a touch of the sun. Look
+      here: if I write you a swingeing medical certificate, will you apply for
+      leave on the spot?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why not? You want it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes, but I can hold on till the weather&rsquo;s a little cooler.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why should you, if you can get relieved on the spot?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Burkett is the only man who could be sent; and he&rsquo;s a born fool.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, never mind about the line. You aren&rsquo;t so important as all that. Wire
+      for leave, if necessary.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hummil looked very uncomfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I can hold on till the Rains,&rsquo; he said evasively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You can&rsquo;t. Wire to headquarters for Burkett.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I won&rsquo;t. If you want to know why, particularly, Burkett is married, and
+      his wife&rsquo;s just had a kid, and she&rsquo;s up at Simla, in the cool, and Burkett
+      has a very nice billet that takes him into Simla from Saturday to Monday.
+      That little woman isn&rsquo;t at all well. If Burkett was transferred she&rsquo;d try
+      to follow him. If she left the baby behind she&rsquo;d fret herself to death. If
+      she came,&mdash;and Burkett&rsquo;s one of those selfish little beasts who are
+      always talking about a wife&rsquo;s place being with her husband,&mdash;she&rsquo;d
+      die. It&rsquo;s murder to bring a woman here just now. Burkett hasn&rsquo;t the
+      physique of a rat. If he came here he&rsquo;d go out; and I know she hasn&rsquo;t any
+      money, and I&rsquo;m pretty sure she&rsquo;d go out too. I&rsquo;m salted in a sort of way,
+      and I&rsquo;m not married. Wait till the Rains, and then Burkett can get thin
+      down here. It&rsquo;ll do him heaps of good.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do you mean to say that you intend to face&mdash;what you have faced,
+      till the Rains break?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, it won&rsquo;t be so bad, now you&rsquo;ve shown me a way out of it. I can always
+      wire to you. Besides, now I&rsquo;ve once got into the way of sleeping, it&rsquo;ll be
+      all right. Anyhow, I shan&rsquo;t put in for leave. That&rsquo;s the long and the
+      short of it.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;My great Scott! I thought all that sort of thing was dead and done with.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bosh! You&rsquo;d do the same yourself. I feel a new man, thanks to that
+      cigarette-case. You&rsquo;re going over to camp now, aren&rsquo;t you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Yes; but I&rsquo;ll try to look you up every other day, if I can.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m not bad enough for that. I don&rsquo;t want you to bother. Give the coolies
+      gin and ketchup.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then you feel all right?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Fit to fight for my life, but not to stand out in the sun talking to you.
+      Go along, old man, and bless you!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hummil turned on his heel to face the echoing desolation of his bungalow,
+      and the first thing he saw standing in the verandah was the figure of
+      himself. He had met a similar apparition once before, when he was
+      suffering from overwork and the strain of the hot weather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;This is bad,&mdash;already,&rsquo; he said, rubbing his eyes. &lsquo;If the thing
+      slides away from me all in one piece, like a ghost, I shall know it is
+      only my eyes and stomach that are out of order. If it walks&mdash;my head
+      is going.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He approached the figure, which naturally kept at an unvarying distance
+      from him, as is the use of all spectres that are born of overwork. It slid
+      through the house and dissolved into swimming specks within the eyeball as
+      soon as it reached the burning light of the garden. Hummil went about his
+      business till even. When he came in to dinner he found himself sitting at
+      the table. The vision rose and walked out hastily. Except that it cast no
+      shadow it was in all respects real.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No living man knows what that week held for Hummil. An increase of the
+      epidemic kept Spurstow in camp among the coolies, and all he could do was
+      to telegraph to Mottram, bidding him go to the bungalow and sleep there.
+      But Mottram was forty miles away from the nearest telegraph, and knew
+      nothing of anything save the needs of the survey till he met, early on
+      Sunday morning, Lowndes and Spurstow heading towards Hummil&rsquo;s for the
+      weekly gathering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hope the poor chap&rsquo;s in a better temper,&rsquo; said the former, swinging
+      himself off his horse at the door. &lsquo;I suppose he isn&rsquo;t up yet.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll just have a look at him,&rsquo; said the doctor. &lsquo;If he&rsquo;s asleep there&rsquo;s
+      no need to wake him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And an instant later, by the tone of Spurstow&rsquo;s voice calling upon them to
+      enter, the men knew what had happened. There was no need to wake him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The punkah was still being pulled over the bed, but Hummil had departed
+      this life at least three hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The body lay on its back, hands clinched by the side, as Spurstow had seen
+      it lying seven nights previously. In the staring eyes was written terror
+      beyond the expression of any pen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mottram, who had entered behind Lowndes, bent over the dead and touched
+      the forehead lightly with his lips. &lsquo;Oh, you lucky, lucky devil!&rsquo; he
+      whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Lowndes had seen the eyes, and withdrew shuddering to the other side
+      of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Poor chap! poor old chap! And the last time I met him I was angry.
+      Spurstow, we should have watched him. Has he&mdash;?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Deftly Spurstow continued his investigations, ending by a search round the
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, he hasn&rsquo;t,&rsquo; he snapped. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s no trace of anything. Call the
+      servants.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They came, eight or ten of them, whispering and peering over each other&rsquo;s
+      shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;When did your Sahib go to bed?&rsquo; said Spurstow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;At eleven or ten, we think,&rsquo; said Hummil&rsquo;s personal servant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was well then? But how should you know?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was not ill, as far as our comprehension extended. But he had slept
+      very little for three nights. This I know, because I saw him walking much,
+      and specially in the heart of the night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Spurstow was arranging the sheet, a big straight-necked hunting-spur
+      tumbled on the ground. The doctor groaned. The personal servant peeped at
+      the body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What do you think, Chuma?&rsquo; said Spurstow, catching the look on the dark
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Heaven-born, in my poor opinion, this that was my master has descended
+      into the Dark Places, and there has been caught because he was not able to
+      escape with sufficient speed. We have the spur for evidence that he fought
+      with Fear. Thus have I seen men of my race do with thorns when a spell was
+      laid upon them to overtake them in their sleeping hours and they dared not
+      sleep.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Chuma, you&rsquo;re a mud-head. Go out and prepare seals to be set on the
+      Sahib&rsquo;s property.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;God has made the Heaven-born. God has made me. Who are we, to inquire
+      into the dispensations of God? I will bid the other servants hold aloof
+      while you are reckoning the tale of the Sahib&rsquo;s property. They are all
+      thieves, and would steal.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;As far as I can make out, he died from&mdash;oh, anything; stoppage of
+      the heart&rsquo;s action, heat-apoplexy, or some other visitation,&rsquo; said
+      Spurstow to his companions. &lsquo;We must make an inventory of his effects, and
+      so on.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was scared to death,&rsquo; insisted Lowndes. &lsquo;Look at those eyes! For
+      pity&rsquo;s sake don&rsquo;t let him be buried with them open!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Whatever it was, he&rsquo;s clear of all the trouble now,&rsquo; said Mottram softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spurstow was peering into the open eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come here,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;Can you see anything there?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t face it!&rsquo; whimpered Lowndes. &lsquo;Cover up the face! Is there any
+      fear on earth that can turn a man into that likeness? It&rsquo;s ghastly. Oh,
+      Spurstow, cover it up!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No fear&mdash;on earth,&rsquo; said Spurstow. Mottram leaned over his shoulder
+      and looked intently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I see nothing except some gray blurs in the pupil. There can be nothing
+      there, you know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Even so. Well, let&rsquo;s think. It&rsquo;ll take half a day to knock up any sort of
+      coffin; and he must have died at midnight. Lowndes, old man, go out and
+      tell the coolies to break ground next to Jevins&rsquo;s grave. Mottram, go round
+      the house with Chuma and see that the seals are put on things. Send a
+      couple of men to me here, and I&rsquo;ll arrange.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The strong-armed servants when they returned to their own kind told a
+      strange story of the doctor Sahib vainly trying to call their master back
+      to life by magic arts,&mdash;to wit, the holding of a little green box
+      that clicked to each of the dead man&rsquo;s eyes, and of a bewildered muttering
+      on the part of the doctor Sahib, who took the little green box away with
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The resonant hammering of a coffin-lid is no pleasant thing to hear, but
+      those who have experience maintain that much more terrible is the soft
+      swish of the bed-linen, the reeving and unreeving of the bed-tapes, when
+      he who has fallen by the roadside is apparelled for burial, sinking
+      gradually as the tapes are tied over, till the swaddled shape touches the
+      floor and there is no protest against the indignity of hasty disposal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the last moment Lowndes was seized with scruples of conscience. &lsquo;Ought
+      you to read the service,&mdash;from beginning to end?&rsquo; said he to
+      Spurstow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I intend to. You&rsquo;re my senior as a civilian. You can take it if you
+      like.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I didn&rsquo;t mean that for a moment. I only thought if we could get a
+      chaplain from somewhere,&mdash;I&rsquo;m willing to ride anywhere,&mdash;and
+      give poor Hummil a better chance. That&rsquo;s all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bosh!&rsquo; said Spurstow, as he framed his lips to the tremendous words that
+      stand at the head of the burial service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After breakfast they smoked a pipe in silence to the memory of the dead.
+      Then Spurstow said absently&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Tisn&rsquo;t in medical science.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Things in a dead man&rsquo;s eye.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For goodness&rsquo; sake leave that horror alone!&rsquo; said Lowndes. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve seen a
+      native die of pure fright when a tiger chivied him. I know what killed
+      Hummil.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The deuce you do! I&rsquo;m going to try to see.&rsquo; And the doctor retreated into
+      the bath-room with a Kodak camera. After a few minutes there was the sound
+      of something being hammered to pieces, and he emerged, very white indeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Have you got a picture?&rsquo; said Mottram. &lsquo;What does the thing look like?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It was impossible, of course. You needn&rsquo;t look, Mottram. I&rsquo;ve torn up the
+      films. There was nothing there. It was impossible.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That,&rsquo; said Lowndes, very distinctly, watching the shaking hand striving
+      to relight the pipe, &lsquo;is a damned lie.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mottram laughed uneasily. &lsquo;Spurstow&rsquo;s right,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;We&rsquo;re all in such
+      a state now that we&rsquo;d believe anything. For pity&rsquo;s sake let&rsquo;s try to be
+      rational.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no further speech for a long time. The hot wind whistled
+      without, and the dry trees sobbed. Presently the daily train, winking
+      brass, burnished steel, and spouting steam, pulled up panting in the
+      intense glare. &lsquo;We&rsquo;d better go on on that,&rsquo; said Spurstow. &lsquo;Go back to
+      work. I&rsquo;ve written my certificate. We can&rsquo;t do any more good here, and
+      work&rsquo;ll keep our wits together. Come on.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one moved. It is not pleasant to face railway journeys at mid-day in
+      June. Spurstow gathered up his hat and whip, and, turning in the doorway,
+      said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There may be Heaven,&mdash;there must be Hell. Meantime, there is our
+      life here. We-ell?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither Mottram nor Lowndes had any answer to the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE MUTINY OF THE MAVERICKS
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  Sec. 7.  { Cause       }              { in forces }   Regular forces,
+  (I)      { Consipiring }              { belonging }   Reserve forces,
+           { with other  }   a mutiny   { to Her    }   Auxiliary forces.
+           { persons to  }   sedition   { Majesty&rsquo;s }   Navy.
+           { cause       }
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      When three obscure gentlemen in San Francisco argued on insufficient
+      premises they condemned a fellow-creature to a most unpleasant death in a
+      far country, which had nothing whatever to do with the United States. They
+      foregathered at the top of a tenement-house in Tehama Street, an unsavoury
+      quarter of the city, and, there calling for certain drinks, they conspired
+      because they were conspirators by trade, officially known as the Third
+      Three of the I.A.A.&mdash;an institution for the propagation of pure
+      light, not to be confounded with any others, though it is affiliated to
+      many. The Second Three live in Montreal, and work among the poor there;
+      the First Three have their home in New York, not far from Castle Garden,
+      and write regularly once a week to a small house near one of the big
+      hotels at Boulogne. What happens after that, a particular section of
+      Scotland Yard knows too well, and laughs at. A conspirator detests
+      ridicule. More men have been stabbed with Lucrezia Borgia daggers and
+      dropped into the Thames for laughing at Head Centres and Triangles than
+      for betraying secrets; for this is human nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Third Three conspired over whisky cocktails and a clean sheet of
+      notepaper against the British Empire and all that lay therein. This work
+      is very like what men without discernment call politics before a general
+      election. You pick out and discuss, in the company of congenial friends,
+      all the weak points in your opponents&rsquo; organisation, and unconsciously
+      dwell upon and exaggerate all their mishaps, till it seems to you a
+      miracle that the hated party holds together for an hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Our principle is not so much active demonstration&mdash;that we leave to
+      others&mdash;as passive embarrassment, to weaken and unnerve,&rsquo; said the
+      first man. &lsquo;Wherever an organisation is crippled, wherever a confusion is
+      thrown into any branch of any department, we gain a step for those who
+      take on the work; we are but the forerunners.&rsquo; He was a German enthusiast,
+      and editor of a newspaper, from whose leading articles he quoted
+      frequently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That cursed Empire makes so many blunders of her own that unless we
+      doubled the year&rsquo;s average I guess it wouldn&rsquo;t strike her anything special
+      had occurred,&rsquo; said the second man. &lsquo;Are you prepared to say that all our
+      resources are equal to blowing off the muzzle of a hundred-ton gun or
+      spiking a ten-thousand-ton ship on a plain rock in clear daylight? They
+      can beat us at our own game. &lsquo;Better join hands with the practical
+      branches; we&rsquo;re in funds now. Try a direct scare in a crowded street. They
+      value their greasy hides.&rsquo; He was the drag upon the wheel, and an
+      Americanised Irishman of the second generation, despising his own race and
+      hating the other. He had learned caution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third man drank his cocktail and spoke no word. He was the strategist,
+      but unfortunately his knowledge of life was limited. He picked a letter
+      from his breast-pocket and threw it across the table. That epistle to the
+      heathen contained some very concise directions from the First Three in New
+      York. It said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The boom in black iron has already affected the eastern markets, where
+      our agents have been forcing down the English-held stock among the smaller
+      buyers who watch the turn of shares. Any immediate operations, such as
+      western bears, would increase their willingness to unload. This, however,
+      cannot be expected till they see clearly that foreign iron-masters are
+      witting to co-operate. Mulcahy should be dispatched to feel the pulse of
+      the market, and act accordingly. Mavericks are at present the best for our
+      purpose.&mdash;P.D.Q.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a message referring to an iron crisis in Pennsylvania, it was
+      interesting, if not lucid. As a new departure in organised attack on an
+      outlying English dependency, it was more than interesting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second man read it through and murmured&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Already? Surely they are in too great a hurry. All that Dhulip Singh
+      could do in India he has done, down to the distribution of his photographs
+      among the peasantry. Ho! Ho! The Paris firm arranged that, and he has no
+      substantial money backing from the Other Power. Even our agents in India
+      know he hasn&rsquo;t. What is the use of our organisation wasting men on work
+      that is already done? Of course the Irish regiments in India are half
+      mutinous as they stand.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This shows how near a lie may come to the truth. An Irish regiment, for
+      just so long as it stands still, is generally a hard handful to control,
+      being reckless and rough. When, however, it is moved in the direction of
+      musketry-firing, it becomes strangely and unpatriotically content with its
+      lot. It has even been heard to cheer the Queen with enthusiasm on these
+      occasions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the notion of tampering with the army was, from the point of view of
+      Tehama Street, an altogether sound one. There is no shadow of stability in
+      the policy of an English Government, and the most sacred oaths of England
+      would, even if engrossed on vellum, find very few buyers among colonies
+      and dependencies that have suffered from vain beliefs. But there remains
+      to England always her army. That cannot change except in the matter of
+      uniform and equipment. The officers may write to the papers demanding the
+      heads of the Horse Guards in default of cleaner redress for grievances;
+      the men may break loose across a country town and seriously startle the
+      publicans; but neither officers nor men have it in their composition to
+      mutiny after the continental manner. The English people, when they trouble
+      to think about the army at all, are, and with justice, absolutely assured
+      that it is absolutely trustworthy. Imagine for a moment their emotions on
+      realising that such and such a regiment was in open revolt from causes
+      directly due to England&rsquo;s management of Ireland. They would probably send
+      the regiment to the polls forthwith and examine their own consciences as
+      to their duty to Erin; but they would never be easy any more. And it was
+      this vague, unhappy mistrust that the I. A. A. were labouring to produce.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sheer waste of breath,&rsquo; said the second man after a pause in the council,
+      &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t see the use of tampering with their fool-army, but it has been
+      tried before and we must try it again. It looks well in the reports. If we
+      send one man from here you may bet your life that other men are going too.
+      Order up Mulcahy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They ordered him up&mdash;a slim, slight, dark-haired young man, devoured
+      with that blind rancorous hatred of England that only reaches its full
+      growth across the Atlantic. He had sucked it from his mother&rsquo;s breast in
+      the little cabin at the back of the northern avenues of New York; he had
+      been taught his rights and his wrongs, in German and Irish, on the canal
+      fronts of Chicago; and San Francisco held men who told him strange and
+      awful things of the great blind power over the seas. Once, when business
+      took him across the Atlantic, he had served in an English regiment, and
+      being insubordinate had suffered extremely. He drew all his ideas of
+      England that were not bred by the cheaper patriotic prints from one
+      iron-fisted colonel and an unbending adjutant. He would go to the mines if
+      need be to teach his gospel. And he went as his instructions advised
+      p.d.q.&mdash;which means &lsquo;with speed&rsquo;&mdash;to introduce embarrassment
+      into an Irish regiment, &lsquo;already half-mutinous, quartered among Sikh
+      peasantry, all wearing miniatures of His Highness Dhulip Singh, Maharaja
+      of the Punjab, next their hearts, and all eagerly expecting his arrival.&rsquo; 
+      Other information equally valuable was given him by his masters. He was to
+      be cautious, but never to grudge expense in winning the hearts of the men
+      in the regiment. His mother in New York would supply funds, and he was to
+      write to her once a month. Life is pleasant for a man who has a mother in
+      New York to send him two hundred pounds a year over and above his
+      regimental pay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In process of time, thanks to his intimate knowledge of drill and musketry
+      exercise, the excellent Mulcahy, wearing the corporal&rsquo;s stripe, went out
+      in a troopship and joined Her Majesty&rsquo;s Royal Loyal Musketeers, commonly
+      known as the &lsquo;Mavericks,&rsquo; because they were masterless and unbranded
+      cattle-sons of small farmers in County Clare, shoeless vagabonds of Kerry,
+      herders of Bally-vegan, much wanted &lsquo;moonlighters&rsquo; from the bare rainy
+      headlands of the south coast, officered by O&rsquo;Mores, Bradys, Hills,
+      Kilreas, and the like. Never to outward seeming was there more promising
+      material to work on. The First Three had chosen their regiment well. It
+      feared nothing that moved or talked save the colonel and the regimental
+      Roman Catholic chaplain, the fat Father Dennis, who held the keys of
+      heaven and hell, and blared like an angry bull when he desired to be
+      convincing. Him also it loved because on occasions of stress he was used
+      to tuck up his cassock and charge with the rest into the merriest of the
+      fray, where he always found, good man, that the saints sent him a revolver
+      when there was a fallen private to be protected, or&mdash;but this came as
+      an afterthought&mdash;his own gray head to be guarded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cautiously as he had been instructed, tenderly and with much beer, Mulcahy
+      opened his projects to such as he deemed fittest to listen. And these
+      were, one and all, of that quaint, crooked, sweet, profoundly
+      irresponsible and profoundly lovable race that fight like fiends, argue
+      like children, reason like women, obey like men, and jest like their own
+      goblins of the rath through rebellion, loyalty, want, woe, or war. The
+      underground work of a conspiracy is always dull and very much the same the
+      world over. At the end of six months&mdash;the seed always falling on good
+      ground&mdash;Mulcahy spoke almost explicitly, hinting darkly in the
+      approved fashion at dread powers behind him, and advising nothing more nor
+      less than mutiny. Were they not dogs, evilly treated? had they not all
+      their own and their national revenges to satisfy? Who in these days would
+      do aught to nine hundred men in rebellion? Who, again, could stay them if
+      they broke for the sea, licking up on their way other regiments only too
+      anxious to join? And afterwards... here followed windy promises of gold
+      and preferment, office, and honour, ever dear to a certain type of
+      Irishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he finished his speech, in the dusk of a twilight, to his chosen
+      associates, there was a sound of a rapidly unslung belt behind him. The
+      arm of one Dan Grady flew out in the gloom and arrested something. Then
+      said Dan&mdash;-
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mulcahy, you&rsquo;re a great man, an&rsquo; you do credit to whoever sent you. Walk
+      about a bit while we think of it.&rsquo; Mulcahy departed elate. He knew his
+      words would sink deep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Why the triple-dashed asterisks did ye not let me belt him?&rsquo; grunted a
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Because I&rsquo;m not a fat-headed fool. Boys, &lsquo;tis what he&rsquo;s been driving at
+      these six months&mdash;our superior corpril with his education and his
+      copies of the Irish papers and his everlasting beer. He&rsquo;s been sent for
+      the purpose and that&rsquo;s where the money comes from. Can ye not see? That
+      man&rsquo;s a gold-mine, which Horse Egan here would have destroyed with a
+      belt-buckle. It would be throwing away the gifts of Providence not to fall
+      in with his little plans. Of coorse we&rsquo;ll mut&rsquo;ny till all&rsquo;s dry. Shoot the
+      colonel on the parade-ground, massacree the company officers, ransack the
+      arsenal, and then&mdash;Boys, did he tell you what next? He told me the
+      other night when he was beginning to talk wild. Then we&rsquo;re to join with
+      the niggers, and look for help from Dhulip Singh and the Russians!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And spoil the best campaign that ever was this side of Hell! Danny, I&rsquo;d
+      have lost the beer to ha&rsquo; given him the belting he requires.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Oh, let him go this awhile, man! He&rsquo;s got no&mdash;no constructiveness,
+      but that&rsquo;s the egg-meat of his plan, and you must understand that I&rsquo;m in
+      with it, an&rsquo; so are you. We&rsquo;ll want oceans of beer to convince us&mdash;firmaments
+      full. We&rsquo;ll give him talk for his money, and one by one all the boys &lsquo;ll
+      come in and he&rsquo;ll have a nest of nine hundred mutineers to squat in an&rsquo; 
+      give drink to.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What makes me killing-mad is his wanting us to do what the niggers did
+      thirty years gone. That an&rsquo; his pig&rsquo;s cheek in saying that other regiments
+      would come along,&rsquo; said a Kerry man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That&rsquo;s not so bad as hintin&rsquo; we should loose off on the colonel.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Colonel be sugared! I&rsquo;d as soon as not put a shot through his helmet to
+      see him jump and clutch his old horse&rsquo;s head. But Mulcahy talks o&rsquo; 
+      shootin&rsquo; our comp&rsquo;ny orf&rsquo;cers accidental.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He said that, did he?&rsquo; said Horse Egan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Somethin&rsquo; like that, anyways. Can&rsquo;t ye fancy ould Barber Brady wid a
+      bullet in his lungs, coughin&rsquo; like a sick monkey, an&rsquo; sayin&rsquo;, &ldquo;Bhoys, I do
+      not mind your gettin&rsquo; dhrunk, but you must hould your liquor like men. The
+      man that shot me is dhrunk. I&rsquo;ll suspend investigations for six hours,
+      while I get this bullet cut out, an&rsquo; then&mdash;&ldquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; then,&rsquo; continued Horse Egan, for the peppery Major&rsquo;s peculiarities of
+      speech and manner were as well known as his tanned face; &ldquo;&lsquo;an&rsquo; then, ye
+      dissolute, half-baked, putty-faced scum o&rsquo; Connemara, if I find a man so
+      much as lookin&rsquo; confused, begad, I&rsquo;ll coort-martial the whole company. A
+      man that can&rsquo;t get over his liquor in six hours is not fit to belong to
+      the Mavericks!&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shout of laughter bore witness to the truth of the sketch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s pretty to think of,&rsquo; said the Kerry man slowly. &lsquo;Mulcahy would have
+      us do all the devilmint, and get clear himself, someways. He wudn&rsquo;t be
+      takin&rsquo; all this fool&rsquo;s throuble in shpoilin&rsquo; the reputation of the
+      regiment&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Reputation of your grandmother&rsquo;s pig!&rsquo; said Dan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Well, an&rsquo; HE had a good reputation tu; so it&rsquo;s all right. Mulcahy must
+      see his way to clear out behind him, or he&rsquo;d not ha&rsquo; come so far, talkin&rsquo; 
+      powers of darkness.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Did you hear anything of a regimental court-martial among the Black
+      Boneens, these days? Half a company of &lsquo;em took one of the new draft an&rsquo; 
+      hanged him by his arms with a tent-rope from a third story verandah. They
+      gave no reason for so doin&rsquo;, but he was half dead. I&rsquo;m thinking that the
+      Boneens are short-sighted. It was a friend of Mulcahy&rsquo;s, or a man in the
+      same trade. They&rsquo;d a deal better ha&rsquo; taken his beer,&rsquo; returned Dan
+      reflectively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Better still ha&rsquo; handed him up to the Colonel,&rsquo; said Horse Egan, &lsquo;onless&mdash;but
+      sure the news wud be all over the counthry an&rsquo; give the reg&rsquo;ment a bad
+      name.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; there&rsquo;d be no reward for that man&mdash;he but went about talkin&rsquo;,&rsquo; 
+      said the Kerry man artlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You speak by your breed,&rsquo; said Dan with a laugh. &lsquo;There was never a Kerry
+      man yet that wudn&rsquo;t sell his brother for a pipe o&rsquo; tobacco an&rsquo; a pat on
+      the back from a p&rsquo;liceman.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Praise God I&rsquo;m not a bloomin&rsquo; Orangeman,&rsquo; was the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No, nor never will be,&rsquo; said Dan. &lsquo;They breed MEN in Ulster. Would you
+      like to thry the taste of one?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Kerry man looked and longed, but forbore. The odds of battle were too
+      great.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then you&rsquo;ll not even give Mulcahy a&mdash;a strike for his money,&rsquo; said
+      the voice of Horse Egan, who regarded what he called &lsquo;trouble&rsquo; of any kind
+      as the pinnacle of felicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan answered not at all, but crept on tip-toe, with large strides, to the
+      mess-room, the men following. The room was empty. In a corner, cased like
+      the King of Dahomey&rsquo;s state umbrella, stood the regimental Colours. Dan
+      lifted them tenderly and unrolled in the light of the candles the record
+      of the Mavericks&mdash;tattered, worn, and hacked. The white satin was
+      darkened everywhere with big brown stains, the gold threads on the crowned
+      harp were frayed and discoloured, and the Red Bull, the totem of the
+      Mavericks, was coffee-hued. The stiff, embroidered folds, whose price is
+      human life, rustled down slowly. The Mavericks keep their colours long and
+      guard them very sacredly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Vittoria, Salamanca, Toulouse, Waterloo, Moodkee, Ferozshah, an&rsquo; Sobraon&mdash;that
+      was fought close next door here, against the very beggars he wants us to
+      join. Inkermann, The Alma, Sebastopol! What are those little businesses
+      compared to the campaigns of General Mulcahy? The Mut&rsquo;ny, think o&rsquo; that;
+      the Mut&rsquo;ny an&rsquo; some dirty little matters in Afghanistan; an&rsquo; for that an&rsquo; 
+      these an&rsquo; those&rsquo;&mdash;Dan pointed to the names of glorious battles&mdash;&lsquo;that
+      Yankee man with the partin&rsquo; in his hair comes an&rsquo; says as easy as &ldquo;have a
+      drink.&rdquo;... Holy Moses, there&rsquo;s the captain!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was the mess-sergeant who came in just as the men clattered out,
+      and found the colours uncased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that day dated the mutiny of the Mavericks, to the joy of Mulcahy and
+      the pride of his mother in New York&mdash;the good lady who sent the money
+      for the beer. Never, so far as words went, was such a mutiny. The
+      conspirators, led by Dan Grady and Horse Egan, poured in daily. They were
+      sound men, men to be trusted, and they all wanted blood; but first they
+      must have beer. They cursed the Queen, they mourned over Ireland, they
+      suggested hideous plunder of the Indian country side, and then, alas&mdash;some
+      of the younger men would go forth and wallow on the ground in spasms of
+      wicked laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The genius of the Irish for conspiracies is remarkable. None the less they
+      would swear no oaths but those of their own making, which were rare and
+      curious, and they were always at pains to impress Mulcahy with the risks
+      they ran. Naturally the flood of beer wrought demoralisation. But Mulcahy
+      confused the causes of things, and when a very muzzy Maverick smote a
+      sergeant on the nose or called his commanding officer a bald-headed old
+      lard-bladder and even worse names, he fancied that rebellion and not
+      liquor was at the bottom of the outbreak. Other gentlemen who have
+      concerned themselves in larger conspiracies have made the same error.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hot season, in which they protested no man could rebel, came to an
+      end, and Mulcahy suggested a visible return for his teachings. As to the
+      actual upshot of the mutiny he cared nothing. It would be enough if the
+      English, infatuatedly trusting to the integrity of their army, should be
+      startled with news of an Irish regiment revolting from political
+      considerations. His persistent demands would have ended, at Dan&rsquo;s
+      instigation, in a regimental belting which in all probability would have
+      killed him and cut off the supply of beer, had not he been sent on special
+      duty some fifty miles away from the cantonment to cool his heels in a mud
+      fort and dismount obsolete artillery. Then the colonel of the Mavericks,
+      reading his newspaper diligently, and scenting Frontier trouble from afar,
+      posted to the army headquarters and pled with the Commander-in-chief for
+      certain privileges, to be granted under certain contingencies; which
+      contingencies came about only a week later, when the annual little war on
+      the border developed itself and the colonel returned to carry the good
+      news to the Mavericks. He held the promise of the Chief for active
+      service, and the men must get ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the evening of the same day, Mulcahy, an unconsidered corporal&mdash;yet
+      great in conspiracy&mdash;returned to cantonments, and heard sounds of
+      strife and howlings from afar off. The mutiny had broken out and the
+      barracks of the Mavericks were one white-washed pandemonium. A private
+      tearing through the barrack-square, gasped in his ear, &lsquo;Service! Active
+      service. It&rsquo;s a burnin&rsquo; shame.&rsquo; Oh joy, the Mavericks had risen on the eve
+      of battle! They would not&mdash;noble and loyal sons of Ireland&mdash;serve
+      the Queen longer. The news would flash through the country side and over
+      to England, and he&mdash;Mulcahy&mdash;the trusted of the Third Three, had
+      brought about the crash. The private stood in the middle of the square and
+      cursed colonel, regiment, officers, and doctor, particularly the doctor,
+      by his gods. An orderly of the native cavalry regiment clattered through
+      the mob of soldiers. He was half lifted, half dragged from his horse,
+      beaten on the back with mighty hand-claps till his eyes watered, and
+      called all manner of endearing names. Yes, the Mavericks had fraternised
+      with the native troops. Who then was the agent among the latter that had
+      blindly wrought with Mulcahy so well?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An officer slunk, almost ran, from the mess to a barrack. He was mobbed by
+      the infuriated soldiery, who closed round but did not kill him, for he
+      fought his way to shelter, flying for the life. Mulcahy could have wept
+      with pure joy and thankfulness. The very prisoners in the guard-room were
+      shaking the bars of their cells and howling like wild beasts, and from
+      every barrack poured the booming as of a big war-drum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mulcahy hastened to his own barrack. He could hardly hear himself speak.
+      Eighty men were pounding with fist and heel the tables and trestles&mdash;eighty
+      men, flushed with mutiny, stripped to their shirt sleeves, their knapsacks
+      half-packed for the march to the sea, made the two-inch boards thunder
+      again as they chanted to a tune that Mulcahy knew well, the Sacred War
+      Song of the Mavericks&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Listen in the north, my boys, there&rsquo;s trouble on the wind;
+     Tramp o&rsquo; Cossack hooves in front, gray great-coats behind,
+     Trouble on the Frontier of a most amazin&rsquo; kind,
+       Trouble on the waters o&rsquo; the Oxus!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then, as a table broke under the furious accompaniment&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Hurrah! hurrah! it&rsquo;s north by west we go;
+     Hurrah! hurrah! the chance we wanted so;
+     Let &lsquo;em hear the chorus from Umballa to MosCOW,
+     As we go marchin&rsquo; to the Kremling.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mother of all the saints in bliss and all the devils in cinders, where&rsquo;s
+      my fine new sock widout the heel?&rsquo; howled Horse Egan, ransacking
+      everybody&rsquo;s valise but his own. He was engaged in making up deficiencies
+      of kit preparatory to a campaign, and in that work he steals best who
+      steals last. &lsquo;Ah, Mulcahy, you&rsquo;re in good time,&rsquo; he shouted. &lsquo;We&rsquo;ve got
+      the route, and we&rsquo;re off on Thursday for a pic-nic wid the Lancers next
+      door.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An ambulance orderly appeared with a huge basket full of lint rolls,
+      provided by the forethought of the Queen for such as might need them later
+      on. Horse Egan unrolled his bandage, and flicked it under Mulcahy&rsquo;s nose,
+      chanting&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+    &lsquo;Sheepskin an&rsquo; bees&rsquo; wax, thunder, pitch, and plaster,
+     The more you try to pull it off, the more it sticks the faster.
+     As I was goin&rsquo; to New Orleans&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You know the rest of it, my Irish American-Jew boy. By gad, ye have to
+      fight for the Queen in the inside av a fortnight, my darlin&rsquo;.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A roar of laughter interrupted. Mulcahy looked vacantly down the room. Bid
+      a boy defy his father when the pantomime-cab is at the door; or a girl
+      develop a will of her own when her mother is putting the last touches to
+      the first ball-dress; but do not ask an Irish regiment to embark upon
+      mutiny on the eve of a campaign; when it has fraternised with the native
+      regiment that accompanies it, and driven its officers into retirement with
+      ten thousand clamorous questions, and the prisoners dance for joy, and the
+      sick men stand in the open, calling down all known diseases on the head of
+      the doctor, who has certified that they are &ldquo;medically unfit for active
+      service.&rdquo; At even the Mavericks might have been mistaken for mutineers by
+      one so unversed in their natures as Mulcahy. At dawn a girls&rsquo; school might
+      have learned deportment from them. They knew that their colonel&rsquo;s hand had
+      closed, and that he who broke that iron discipline would not go to the
+      front: nothing in the world will persuade one of our soldiers when he is
+      ordered to the north on the smallest of affairs that he is not immediately
+      going gloriously to slay Cossacks and cook his kettles in the palace of
+      the Czar. A few of the younger men mourned for Mulcahy&rsquo;s beer, because the
+      campaign was to be conducted on strict temperance principles, but as Dan
+      and Horse Egan said sternly, &lsquo;We&rsquo;ve got the beer-man with us. He shall
+      drink now on his own hook.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mulcahy had not taken into account the possibility of being sent on active
+      service. He had made up his mind that he would not go under any
+      circumstances, but fortune was against him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sick&mdash;you?&rsquo; said the doctor, who had served an unholy apprenticeship
+      to his trade in Tralee poorhouses. &lsquo;You&rsquo;re only home-sick, and what you
+      call varicose veins come from over-eating. A little gentle exercise will
+      cure that.&rsquo; And later, &lsquo;Mulcahy, my man, everybody is allowed to apply for
+      a sick-certificate ONCE. If he tries it twice we call him by an ugly name.
+      Go back to your duty, and let&rsquo;s hear no more of your diseases.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am ashamed to say that Horse Egan enjoyed the study of Mulcahy&rsquo;s soul in
+      those days, and Dan took an equal interest. Together they would
+      communicate to their corporal all the dark lore of death which is the
+      portion of those who have seen men die. Egan had the larger experience,
+      but Dan the finer imagination. Mulcahy shivered when the former spoke of
+      the knife as an intimate acquaintance, or the latter dwelt with loving
+      particularity on the fate of those who, wounded and helpless, had been
+      overlooked by the ambulances, and had fallen into the hands of the Afghan
+      women-folk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mulcahy knew that the mutiny, for the present at least, was dead; knew,
+      too, that a change had come over Dan&rsquo;s usually respectful attitude towards
+      him, and Horse Egan&rsquo;s laughter and frequent allusions to abortive
+      conspiracies emphasised all that the conspirator had guessed. The horrible
+      fascination of the death-stories, however, made him seek the men&rsquo;s
+      society. He learnt much more than he had bargained for; and in this
+      manner: It was on the last night before the regiment entrained to the
+      front. The barracks were stripped of everything movable, and the men were
+      too excited to sleep. The bare walls gave out a heavy hospital smell of
+      chloride of lime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And what,&rsquo; said Mulcahy in an awe-stricken whisper, after some
+      conversation on the eternal subject, &lsquo;are you going to do to me, Dan?&rsquo; 
+      This might have been the language of an able conspirator conciliating a
+      weak spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;ll see,&rsquo; said Dan grimly, turning over in his cot, &lsquo;or I rather shud
+      say you&rsquo;ll not see.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was hardly the language of a weak spirit. Mulcahy shook under the
+      bed-clothes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Be easy with him,&rsquo; put in Egan from the next cot. &lsquo;He has got his chanst
+      o&rsquo; goin&rsquo; clean. Listen, Mulcahy; all we want is for the good sake of the
+      regiment that you take your death standing up, as a man shud. There be
+      heaps an&rsquo; heaps of enemy&mdash;plenshus heaps. Go there an&rsquo; do all you can
+      and die decent. You&rsquo;ll die with a good name THERE. &lsquo;Tis not a hard thing
+      considerin&rsquo;.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Mulcahy shivered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;An&rsquo; how could a man wish to die better than fightin&rsquo;?&rsquo; added Dan
+      consolingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And if I won&rsquo;t?&rsquo; said the corporal in a dry whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;ll be a dale of smoke,&rsquo; returned Dan, sitting up and ticking off
+      the situation on his fingers, &lsquo;sure to be, an&rsquo; the noise of the firin&rsquo; &lsquo;ll
+      be tremenjus, an&rsquo; we&rsquo;ll be running about up and down, the regiment will.
+      But WE, Horse and I&mdash;we&rsquo;ll stay by you, Mulcahy, and never let you
+      go. Maybe there&rsquo;ll be an accident.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s playing it low on me. Let me go. For pity&rsquo;s sake let me go. I never
+      did you harm, and&mdash;and I stood you as much beer as I could. Oh, don&rsquo;t
+      be hard on me, Dan! You are&mdash;you were in it too. You won&rsquo;t kill me up
+      there, will you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m not thinkin&rsquo; of the treason; though you shud be glad any honest boys
+      drank with you. It&rsquo;s for the regiment. We can&rsquo;t have the shame o&rsquo; you
+      bringin&rsquo; shame on us. You went to the doctor quiet as a sick cat to get
+      and stay behind an&rsquo; live with the women at the depot&mdash;you that wanted
+      us to run to the sea in wolf-packs like the rebels none of your black
+      blood dared to be! But WE knew about your goin&rsquo; to the doctor, for he told
+      in mess, and it&rsquo;s all over the regiment. Bein&rsquo;, as we are, your best
+      friends, we didn&rsquo;t allow any one to molest you YET. We will see to you
+      ourselves. Fight which you will&mdash;us or the enemy&mdash;you&rsquo;ll never
+      lie in that cot again, and there&rsquo;s more glory and maybe less kicks from
+      fightin&rsquo; the enemy. That&rsquo;s fair speakin&rsquo;.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And he told us by word of mouth to go and join with the niggers&mdash;you&rsquo;ve
+      forgotten that, Dan,&rsquo; said Horse Egan, to justify sentence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the use of plaguin&rsquo; the man? One shot pays for all. Sleep ye
+      sound, Mulcahy. But you onderstand, do ye not?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mulcahy for some weeks understood very little of anything at all save that
+      ever at his elbow, in camp, or at parade, stood two big men with soft
+      voices adjuring him to commit hari-kari lest a worse thing should happen&mdash;to
+      die for the honour of the regiment in decency among the nearest knives.
+      But Mulcahy dreaded death. He remembered certain things that priests had
+      said in his infancy, and his mother&mdash;not the one at New York&mdash;starting
+      from her sleep with shrieks to pray for a husband&rsquo;s soul in torment. It is
+      well to be of a cultured intelligence, but in time of trouble the weak
+      human mind returns to the creed it sucked in at the breast, and if that
+      creed be not a pretty one trouble follows. Also, the death he would have
+      to face would be physically painful. Most conspirators have large
+      imaginations. Mulcahy could see himself, as he lay on the earth in the
+      night, dying by various causes. They were all horrible; the mother in New
+      York was very far away, and the Regiment, the engine that, once you fall
+      in its grip, moves you forward whether you will or won&rsquo;t, was daily coming
+      closer to the enemy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were brought to the field of Marzun-Katai, and with the Black Boneens
+      to aid, they fought a fight that has never been set down in the
+      newspapers. In response, many believe, to the fervent prayers of Father
+      Dennis, the enemy not only elected to fight in the open, but made a
+      beautiful fight, as many weeping Irish mothers knew later. They gathered
+      behind walls or flickered across the open in shouting masses, and were
+      pot-valiant in artillery. It was expedient to hold a large reserve and
+      wait for the psychological moment that was being prepared by the shrieking
+      shrapnel. Therefore the Mavericks lay down in open order on the brow of a
+      hill to watch the play till their call should come. Father Dennis, whose
+      duty was in the rear, to smooth the trouble of the wounded, had naturally
+      managed to make his way to the foremost of his boys and lay like a black
+      porpoise, at length on the grass. To him crawled Mulcahy, ashen-gray,
+      demanding absolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Wait till you&rsquo;re shot,&rsquo; said Father Dennis sweetly. &lsquo;There&rsquo;s a time for
+      everything.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan Grady chuckled as he blew for the fiftieth time into the breech of his
+      speckless rifle. Mulcahy groaned and buried his head in his arms till a
+      stray shot spoke like a snipe immediately above his head, and a general
+      heave and tremour rippled the line. Other shots followed and a few took
+      effect, as a shriek or a grunt attested. The officers, who had been lying
+      down with the men, rose and began to walk steadily up and down the front
+      of their companies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This manoeuvre, executed, not for publication, but as a guarantee of good
+      faith, to soothe men, demands nerve. You must not hurry, you must not look
+      nervous, though you know that you are a mark for every rifle within
+      extreme range, and above all if you are smitten you must make as little
+      noise as possible and roll inwards through the files. It is at this hour,
+      when the breeze brings the first salt whiff of the powder to noses rather
+      cold at the tip, and the eye can quietly take in the appearance of each
+      red casualty, that the strain on the nerves is strongest. Scotch regiments
+      can endure for half a day and abate no whit of their zeal at the end;
+      English regiments sometimes sulk under punishment, while the Irish, like
+      the French, are apt to run forward by ones and twos, which is just as bad
+      as running back. The truly wise commandant of highly strung troops allows
+      them, in seasons of waiting, to hear the sound of their own voices
+      uplifted in song. There is a legend of an English regiment that lay by its
+      arms under fire chaunting &lsquo;Sam Hall,&rsquo; to the horror of its newly appointed
+      and pious colonel. The Black Boneens, who were suffering more than the
+      Mavericks, on a hill half a mile away, began presently to explain to all
+      who cared to listen&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We&rsquo;ll sound the jubilee, from the centre to the sea, And Ireland shall be
+      free, says the Shan-van Vogh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sing, boys,&rsquo; said Father Dennis softly. &lsquo;It looks as if we cared for
+      their Afghan peas.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan Grady raised himself to his knees and opened his mouth in a song
+      imparted to him, as to most of his comrades, in the strictest confidence
+      by Mulcahy&mdash;-the Mulcahy then lying limp and fainting on the grass,
+      the chill fear of death upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Company after company caught up the words which, the I. A. A. say, are to
+      herald the general rising of Erin, and to breathe which, except to those
+      duly appointed to hear, is death. Wherefore they are printed in this
+      place.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The Saxon in Heaven&rsquo;s just balance is weighed,
+       His doom like Belshazzar&rsquo;s in death has been cast,
+     And the hand of the venger shall never be stayed
+       Till his race, faith, and speech are a dream of the past.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      They were heart-filling lines and they ran with a swirl; the I. A. A. are
+      better served by their pens than their petards. Dan clapped Mulcahy
+      merrily on the back, asking him to sing up. The officers lay down again.
+      There was no need to walk any more. Their men were soothing themselves
+      thunderously, thus&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     St. Mary in Heaven has written the vow
+       That the land shall not rest till the heretic blood,
+     From the babe at the breast to the hand at the plough,
+       Has rolled to the ocean like Shannon in flood!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll speak to you after all&rsquo;s over,&rsquo; said Father Dennis authoritatively
+      in Dan&rsquo;s ear. &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the use of confessing to me when you do this
+      foolishness? Dan, you&rsquo;ve been playing with fire! I&rsquo;ll lay you more penance
+      in a week than&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come along to Purgatory with us, Father dear. The Boneens are on the
+      move; they&rsquo;ll let us go now!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The regiment rose to the blast of the bugle as one man; but one man there
+      was who rose more swiftly than all the others, for half an inch of bayonet
+      was in the fleshy part of his leg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;ve got to do it,&rsquo; said Dan grimly. &lsquo;Do it decent, anyhow;&rsquo; and the
+      roar of the rush drowned his words, for the rear companies thrust forward
+      the first, still singing as they swung down the slope&mdash;-
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the child at the breast to the hand at the plough Shall roll to the
+      ocean like Shannon in flood!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They should have sung it in the face of England, not of the Afghans, whom,
+      it impressed as much as did the wild Irish yell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They came down singing,&rsquo; said the unofficial report of the enemy, borne
+      from village to village the next day. &lsquo;They continued to sing, and it was
+      written that our men could not abide when they came. It is believed that
+      there was magic in the aforesaid song.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dan and Horse Egan kept themselves in the neighbourhood of Mulcahy. Twice
+      the man would have bolted back in the confusion. Twice he was heaved,
+      kicked, and shouldered back again into the unpaintable inferno of a hotly
+      contested charge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end, the panic excess of his fear drove him into madness beyond all
+      human courage. His eyes staring at nothing, his mouth open and frothing,
+      and breathing as one in a cold bath, he went forward demented, while Dan
+      toiled after him. The charge checked at a high mud wall. It was Mulcahy
+      who scrambled up tooth and nail and hurled down among the bayonets the
+      amazed Afghan who barred his way. It was Mulcahy, keeping to the straight
+      line of the rabid dog, who led a collection of ardent souls at a newly
+      unmasked battery and flung himself on the muzzle of a gun as his
+      companions danced among the gunners. It was Mulcahy who ran wildly on from
+      that battery into the open plain, where the enemy were retiring in sullen
+      groups. His hands were empty, he had lost helmet and belt, and he was
+      bleeding from a wound in the neck. Dan and Horse Egan, panting and
+      distressed, had thrown themselves down on the ground by the captured guns,
+      when they noticed Mulcahy&rsquo;s charge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Mad,&rsquo; said Horse Egan critically. &lsquo;Mad with fear! He&rsquo;s going straight to
+      his death, an&rsquo; shouting&rsquo;s no use.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let him go. Watch now! If we fire we&rsquo;ll hit him, maybe.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last of a hurrying crowd of Afghans turned at the noise of shod feet
+      behind him, and shifted his knife ready to hand. This, he saw, was no time
+      to take prisoners. Mulcahy tore on, sobbing; the straight-held blade went
+      home through the defenceless breast, and the body pitched forward almost
+      before a shot from Dan&rsquo;s rifle brought down the slayer and still further
+      hurried the Afghan retreat. The two Irishmen went out to bring in their
+      dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was given the point and that was an easy death,&rsquo; said Horse Egan,
+      viewing the corpse. &lsquo;But would you ha&rsquo; shot him, Danny, if he had lived?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He didn&rsquo;t live, so there&rsquo;s no sayin&rsquo;. But I doubt I wud have bekase of
+      the fun he gave us&mdash;let alone the beer. Hike up his legs, Horse, and
+      we&rsquo;ll bring him in. Perhaps &lsquo;tis better this way.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They bore the poor limp body to the mass of the regiment, lolling
+      open-mouthed on their rifles; and there was a general snigger when one of
+      the younger subalterns said, &lsquo;That was a good man!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Phew,&rsquo; said Horse Egan, when a burial-party had taken over the burden.
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;m powerful dhry, and this reminds me there&rsquo;ll be no more beer at all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Fwhy not?&rsquo; said Dan, with a twinkle in his eye as he stretched himself
+      for rest. &lsquo;Are we not conspirin&rsquo; all we can, an&rsquo; while we conspire are we
+      not entitled to free dhrinks? Sure his ould mother in New York would not
+      let her son&rsquo;s comrades perish of drouth&mdash;if she can be reached at the
+      end of a letter.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You&rsquo;re a janius,&rsquo; said Horse Egan. &lsquo;O&rsquo; coorse she will not. I wish this
+      crool war was over an&rsquo; we&rsquo;d get back to canteen. Faith, the
+      Commander-in-Chief ought to be hanged in his own little sword-belt for
+      makin&rsquo; us work on wather.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mavericks were generally of Horse Egan&rsquo;s opinion. So they made haste
+      to get their work done as soon as possible, and their industry was
+      rewarded by unexpected peace. &lsquo;We can fight the sons of Adam,&rsquo; said the
+      tribesmen, &lsquo;but we cannot fight the sons of Eblis, and this regiment never
+      stays still in one place. Let us therefore come in.&rsquo; They came in and
+      &lsquo;this regiment&rsquo; withdrew to conspire under the leadership of Dan Grady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Excellent as a subordinate Dan failed altogether as a chief-in-command&mdash;possibly
+      because he was too much swayed by the advice of the only man in the
+      regiment who could manufacture more than one kind of handwriting. The same
+      mail that bore to Mulcahy&rsquo;s mother in New York a letter from the colonel
+      telling her how valiantly her son had fought for the Queen, and how
+      assuredly he would have been recommended for the Victoria Cross had he
+      survived, carried a communication signed, I grieve to say, by that same
+      colonel and all the officers of the regiment, explaining their willingness
+      to do &lsquo;anything which is contrary to the regulations and all kinds of
+      revolutions&rsquo; if only a little money could be forwarded to cover incidental
+      expenses. Daniel Grady, Esquire, would receive funds, vice Mulcahy, who
+      &lsquo;was unwell at this present time of writing.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both letters were forwarded from New York to Tehama Street, San Francisco,
+      with marginal comments as brief as they were bitter. The Third Three read
+      and looked at each other. Then the Second Conspirator-he who believed in
+      &lsquo;joining hands with the practical branches&rsquo;&mdash;-began to laugh, and on
+      recovering his gravity said, &lsquo;Gentlemen, I consider this will be a lesson
+      to us. We&rsquo;re left again. Those cursed Irish have let us down. I knew they
+      would, but&rsquo;-here he laughed afresh-&rsquo;I&rsquo;d give considerable to know what was
+      at the back of it all.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His curiosity would have been satisfied had he seen Dan Grady, discredited
+      regimental conspirator, trying to explain to his thirsty comrades in India
+      the non-arrival of funds from New York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE MARK OF THE BEAST
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Your Gods and my Gods-do you or I know which are the stronger? Native
+      Proverb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EAST of Suez, some hold, the direct control of Providence ceases; Man
+      being there handed over to the power of the Gods and Devils of Asia, and
+      the Church of England Providence only exercising an occasional and
+      modified supervision in the case of Englishmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This theory accounts for some of the more unnecessary horrors of life in
+      India: it may be stretched to explain my story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My friend Strickland of the Police, who knows as much of natives of India
+      as is good for any man, can bear witness to the facts of the case.
+      Dumoise, our doctor, also saw what Strickland and I saw. The inference
+      which he drew from the evidence was entirely incorrect. He is dead now; he
+      died, in a rather curious manner, which has been elsewhere described.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Fleete came to India he owned a little money and some land in the
+      Himalayas, near a place called Dharmsala. Both properties had been left
+      him by an uncle, and he came out to finance them. He was a big, heavy,
+      genial, and inoffensive man. His knowledge of natives was, of course,
+      limited, and he complained of the difficulties of the language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rode in from his place in the hills to spend New Year in the station,
+      and he stayed with Strickland. On New Year&rsquo;s Eve there was a big dinner at
+      the club, and the night was excusably wet. When men foregather from the
+      uttermost ends of the Empire, they have a right to be riotous. The
+      Frontier had sent down a contingent o&rsquo; Catch-&rsquo;em-Alive-O&rsquo;s who had not
+      seen twenty white faces for a year, and were used to ride fifteen miles to
+      dinner at the next Fort at the risk of a Khyberee bullet where their
+      drinks should lie. They profited by their new security, for they tried to
+      play pool with a curled-up hedgehog found in the garden, and one of them
+      carried the marker round the room in his teeth. Half a dozen planters had
+      come in from the south and were talking &lsquo;horse&rsquo; to the Biggest Liar in
+      Asia, who was trying to cap all their stories at once. Everybody was
+      there, and there was a general closing up of ranks and taking stock of our
+      losses in dead or disabled that had fallen during the past year. It was a
+      very wet night, and I remember that we sang &lsquo;Auld Lang Syne&rsquo; with our feet
+      in the Polo Championship Cup, and our heads among the stars, and swore
+      that we were all dear friends. Then some of us went away and annexed
+      Burma, and some tried to open up the Soudan and were opened up by Fuzzies
+      in that cruel scrub outside Suakim, and some found stars and medals, and
+      some were married, which was bad, and some did other things which were
+      worse, and the others of us stayed in our chains and strove to make money
+      on insufficient experiences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleete began the night with sherry and bitters, drank champagne steadily
+      up to dessert, then raw, rasping Capri with all the strength of whisky,
+      took Benedictine with his coffee, four or five whiskies and sodas to
+      improve his pool strokes, beer and bones at half-past two, winding up with
+      old brandy. Consequently, when he came out, at half-past three in the
+      morning, into fourteen degrees of frost, he was very angry with his horse
+      for coughing, and tried to leapfrog into the saddle. The horse broke away
+      and went to his stables; so Strickland and I formed a Guard of Dishonour
+      to take Fleete home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our road lay through the bazaar, close to a little temple of Hanuman, the
+      Monkey-god, who is a leading divinity worthy of respect. All gods have
+      good points, just as have all priests. Personally, I attach much
+      importance to Hanuman, and am kind to his people&mdash;the great gray apes
+      of the hills. One never knows when one may want a friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a light in the temple, and as we passed, we could hear voices of
+      men chanting hymns. In a native temple, the priests rise at all hours of
+      the night to do honour to their god. Before we could stop him, Fleete
+      dashed up the steps, patted two priests on the back, and was gravely
+      grinding the ashes of his cigar-butt into the forehead of the red stone
+      image of Hanuman. Strickland tried to drag him out, but he sat down and
+      said solemnly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Shee that? &lsquo;Mark of the B-beasht! <i>I</i> made it. Ishn&rsquo;t it fine?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In half a minute the temple was alive and noisy, and Strickland, who knew
+      what came of polluting gods, said that things might occur. He, by virtue
+      of his official position, long residence in the country, and weakness for
+      going among the natives, was known to the priests and he felt unhappy.
+      Fleete sat on the ground and refused to move. He said that &lsquo;good old
+      Hanuman&rsquo; made a very soft pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, without any warning, a Silver Man came out of a recess behind the
+      image of the god. He was perfectly naked in that bitter, bitter cold, and
+      his body shone like frosted silver, for he was what the Bible calls &lsquo;a
+      leper as white as snow.&rsquo; Also he had no face, because he was a leper of
+      some years&rsquo; standing and his disease was heavy upon him. We two stooped to
+      haul Fleete up, and the temple was filling and filling with folk who
+      seemed to spring from the earth, when the Silver Man ran in under our
+      arms, making a noise exactly like the mewing of an otter, caught Fleete
+      round the body and dropped his head on Fleete&rsquo;s breast before we could
+      wrench him away. Then he retired to a corner and sat mewing while the
+      crowd blocked all the doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priests were very angry until the Silver Man touched Fleete. That
+      nuzzling seemed to sober them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of a few minutes&rsquo; silence one of the priests came to Strickland
+      and said, in perfect English, &lsquo;Take your friend away. He has done with
+      Hanuman, but Hanurnan has not done with him.&rsquo; The crowd gave room and we
+      carried Fleete into the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland was very angry. He said that we might all three have been
+      knifed, and that Fleete should thank his stars that he had escaped without
+      injury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleete thanked no one. He said that he wanted to go to bed. He was
+      gorgeously drunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We moved on, Strickland silent and wrathful, until Fleete was taken with
+      violent shivering fits and sweating. He said that the smells of the bazaar
+      were overpowering, and he wondered why slaughter-houses were permitted so
+      near English residences. &lsquo;Can&rsquo;t you smell the blood?&rsquo; said Fleete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We put him to bed at last, just as the dawn was breaking, and Strickland
+      invited me to have another whisky and soda. While we were drinking he
+      talked of the trouble in the temple, and admitted that it baffled him
+      completely. Strickland hates being mystified by natives, because his
+      business in life is to overmatch them with their own weapons. He has not
+      yet succeeded in doing this, but in fifteen or twenty years he will have
+      made some small progress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They should have mauled us,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;instead of mewing at us. I wonder
+      what they meant. I don&rsquo;t like it one little bit.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said that the Managing Committee of the temple would in all probability
+      bring a criminal action against us for insulting their religion. There was
+      a section of the Indian Penal Code which exactly met Fleete&rsquo;s offence.
+      Strickland said he only hoped and prayed that they would do this. Before I
+      left I looked into Fleete&rsquo;s room, and saw him lying on his right side,
+      scratching his left breast. Then. I went to bed cold, depressed, and
+      unhappy, at seven o&rsquo;clock in the morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At one o&rsquo;clock I rode over to Strickland&rsquo;s house to inquire after Fleete&rsquo;s
+      head. I imagined that it would be a sore one. Fleete was breakfasting and
+      seemed unwell. His temper was gone, for he was abusing the cook for not
+      supplying him with an underdone chop. A man who can eat raw meat after a
+      wet night is a curiosity. I told Fleete this and he laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You breed queer mosquitoes in these parts,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve been bitten to
+      pieces, but only in one place.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let&rsquo;s have a look at the bite,&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;It may have gone down
+      since this morning.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the chops were being cooked, Fleete opened his shirt and showed us,
+      just over his left breast, a mark, the perfect double of the black
+      rosettes&mdash;the five or six irregular blotches arranged in a circle&mdash;on
+      a leopard&rsquo;s hide. Strickland looked and said, &lsquo;It was only pink this
+      morning. It&rsquo;s grown black now.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleete ran to a glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By Jove!&rsquo; he said,&rsquo; this is nasty. What is it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We could not answer. Here the chops came in, all red and juicy, and Fleete
+      bolted three in a most offensive manner. He ate on his right grinders
+      only, and threw his head over his right shoulder as he snapped the meat.
+      When he had finished, it struck him that he had been behaving strangely,
+      for he said apologetically, &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t think I ever felt so hungry in my
+      life. I&rsquo;ve bolted like an ostrich.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After breakfast Strickland said to me, &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t go. Stay here, and stay for
+      the night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing that my house was not three miles from Strickland&rsquo;s, this request
+      was absurd. But Strickland insisted, and was going to say something when
+      Fleete interrupted by declaring in a shamefaced way that he felt hungry
+      again. Strickland sent a man to my house to fetch over my bedding and a
+      horse, and we three went down to Strickland&rsquo;s stables to pass the hours
+      until it was time to go out for a ride. The man who has a weakness for
+      horses never wearies of inspecting them; and when two men are killing time
+      in this way they gather knowledge and lies the one from the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were five horses in the stables, and I shall never forget the scene
+      as we tried to look them over. They seemed to have gone mad. They reared
+      and screamed and nearly tore up their pickets; they sweated and shivered
+      and lathered and were distraught with fear. Strickland&rsquo;s horses used to
+      know him as well as his dogs; which made the matter more curious. We left
+      the stable for fear of the brutes throwing themselves in their panic. Then
+      Strickland turned back and called me. The horses were still frightened,
+      but they let us &lsquo;gentle&rsquo; and make much of them, and put their heads in our
+      bosoms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They aren&rsquo;t afraid of US,&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;D&rsquo;you know, I&rsquo;d give three
+      months&rsquo; pay if OUTRAGE here could talk.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Outrage was dumb, and could only cuddle up to his master and blow out
+      his nostrils, as is the custom of horses when they wish to explain things
+      but can&rsquo;t. Fleete came up when we were in the stalls, and as soon as the
+      horses saw him, their fright broke out afresh. It was all that we could do
+      to escape from the place unkicked. Strickland said, &lsquo;They don&rsquo;t seem to
+      love you, Fleete.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nonsense,&rsquo; said Fleete; &lsquo;my mare will follow me like a dog.&rsquo; He went to
+      her; she was in a loose-box; but as he slipped the bars she plunged,
+      knocked him down, and broke away into the garden. I laughed, but
+      Strickland was not amused. He took his moustache in both fists and pulled
+      at it till it nearly came out. Fleete, instead of going off to chase his
+      property, yawned, saying that he felt sleepy. He went to the house to lie
+      down, which was a foolish way of spending New Year&rsquo;s Day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland sat with me in the stables and asked if I had noticed anything
+      peculiar in Fleete&rsquo;s manner. I said that he ate his food like a beast; but
+      that this might have been the result of living alone in the hills out of
+      the reach of society as refined and elevating as ours for instance.
+      Strickland was not amused. I do not think that he listened to me, for his
+      next sentence referred to the mark on Fleete&rsquo;s breast, and I said that it
+      might have been caused by blister-flies, or that it was possibly a
+      birth-mark newly born and now visible for the first time. We both agreed
+      that it was unpleasant to look at, and Strickland found occasion to say
+      that I was a fool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you what I think now,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;because you would call me a
+      madman; but you must stay with me for the next few days, if you can. I
+      want you to watch Fleete, but don&rsquo;t tell me what you think till I have
+      made up my mind.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But I am dining out to-night,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;So am I,&rsquo; said Strickland, &lsquo;and
+      so is Fleete. At least if he doesn&rsquo;t change his mind.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We walked about the garden smoking, but saying nothing&mdash;because we
+      were friends, and talking spoils good tobacco&mdash;till our pipes were
+      out. Then we went to wake up Fleete. He was wide awake and fidgeting about
+      his room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I say, I want some more chops,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;Can I get them?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We laughed and said, &lsquo;Go and change. The ponies will be round in a
+      minute.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;All right,&rsquo; said Fleete. I&rsquo;ll go when I get the chops&mdash;underdone
+      ones, mind.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed to be quite in earnest. It was four o&rsquo;clock, and we had had
+      breakfast at one; still, for a long time, he demanded those underdone
+      chops. Then he changed into riding clothes and went out into the verandah.
+      His pony&mdash;the mare had not been caught&mdash;would not let him come
+      near. All three horses were unmanageable&mdash;-mad with fear&mdash;-and
+      finally Fleete said that he would stay at home and get something to eat.
+      Strickland and I rode out wondering. As we passed the temple of Hanuman,
+      the Silver Man came out and mewed at us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He is not one of the regular priests of the temple,&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;I
+      think I should peculiarly like to lay my hands on him.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no spring in our gallop on the racecourse that evening. The
+      horses were stale, and moved as though they had been ridden out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The fright after breakfast has been too much for them,&rsquo; said Strickland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the only remark he made through the remainder of the ride. Once
+      or twice I think he swore to himself; but that did not count.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We came back in the dark at seven o&rsquo;clock, and saw that there were no
+      lights in the bungalow. &lsquo;Careless ruffians my servants are!&rsquo; said
+      Strickland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My horse reared at something on the carriage drive, and Fleete stood up
+      under its nose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What are you doing, grovelling about the garden?&rsquo; said Strickland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But both horses bolted and nearly threw us. We dismounted by the stables
+      and returned to Fleete, who was on his hands and knees under the
+      orange-bushes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What the devil&rsquo;s wrong with you?&rsquo; said Strickland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nothing, nothing in the world,&rsquo; said Fleete, speaking very quickly and
+      thickly. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve been gardening-botanising you know. The smell of the earth
+      is delightful. I think I&rsquo;m going for a walk-a long walk-all night.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I saw that there was something excessively out of order somewhere,
+      and I said to Strickland, &lsquo;I am not dining out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bless you!&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;Here, Fleete, get up. You&rsquo;ll catch fever
+      there. Come in to dinner and let&rsquo;s have the lamps lit. We &lsquo;ll all dine at
+      home.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleete stood up unwillingly, and said, &lsquo;No lamps-no lamps. It&rsquo;s much nicer
+      here. Let&rsquo;s dine outside and have some more chops-lots of &lsquo;em and
+      underdone&mdash;bloody ones with gristle.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now a December evening in Northern India is bitterly cold, and Fleete&rsquo;s
+      suggestion was that of a maniac.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come in,&rsquo; said Strickland sternly. &lsquo;Come in at once.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleete came, and when the lamps were brought, we saw that he was literally
+      plastered with dirt from head to foot. He must have been rolling in the
+      garden. He shrank from the light and went to his room. His eyes were
+      horrible to look at. There was a green light behind them, not in them, if
+      you understand, and the man&rsquo;s lower lip hung down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland said, &lsquo;There is going to be trouble-big trouble-to-night. Don&rsquo;t
+      you change your riding-things.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We waited and waited for Fleete&rsquo;s reappearance, and ordered dinner in the
+      meantime. We could hear him moving about his own room, but there was no
+      light there. Presently from the room came the long-drawn howl of a wolf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      People write and talk lightly of blood running cold and hair standing up
+      and things of that kind. Both sensations are too horrible to be trifled
+      with. My heart stopped as though a knife had been driven through it, and
+      Strickland turned as white as the tablecloth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The howl was repeated, and was answered by another howl far across the
+      fields.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That set the gilded roof on the horror. Strickland dashed into Fleete&rsquo;s
+      room. I followed, and we saw Fleete getting out of the window. He made
+      beast-noises in the back of his throat. He could not answer us when we
+      shouted at him. He spat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don&rsquo;t quite remember what followed, but I think that Strickland must
+      have stunned him with the long boot-jack or else I should never have been
+      able to sit on his chest. Fleete could not speak, he could only snarl, and
+      his snarls were those of a wolf, not of a man. The human spirit must have
+      been giving way all day and have died out with the twilight. We were
+      dealing with a beast that had once been Fleete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The affair was beyond any human and rational experience. I tried to say
+      &lsquo;Hydrophobia,&rsquo; but the word wouldn&rsquo;t come, because I knew that I was
+      lying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We bound this beast with leather thongs of the punkah-rope, and tied its
+      thumbs and big toes together, and gagged it with a shoe-horn, which makes
+      a very efficient gag if you know how to arrange it. Then we carried it
+      into the dining-room, and sent a man to Dumoise, the doctor, telling him
+      to come over at once. After we had despatched the messenger and were
+      drawing breath, Strickland said, &lsquo;It&rsquo;s no good. This isn&rsquo;t any doctor&rsquo;s
+      work.&rsquo; I, also, knew that he spoke the truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The beast&rsquo;s head was free, and it threw it about from side to side. Any
+      one entering the room would have believed that we were curing a wolf&rsquo;s
+      pelt. That was the most loathsome accessory of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland sat with his chin in the heel of his fist, watching the beast
+      as it wriggled on the ground, but saying nothing. The shirt had been torn
+      open in the scuffle and showed the black rosette mark on the left breast.
+      It stood out like a blister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the silence of the watching we heard something without mewing like a
+      she-otter. We both rose to our feet, and, I answer for myself, not
+      Strickland, felt sick&mdash;actually and physically sick. We told each
+      other, as did the men in Pinafore, that it was the cat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dumoise arrived, and I never saw a little man so unprofessionally shocked.
+      He said that it was a heart-rending case of hydrophobia, and that nothing
+      could be done. At least any palliative measures would only prolong the
+      agony. The beast was foaming at the mouth. Fleete, as we told Dumoise, had
+      been bitten by dogs once or twice. Any man who keeps half a dozen terriers
+      must expect a nip now and again. Dumoise could offer no help. He could
+      only certify that Fleete was dying of hydrophobia. The beast was then
+      howling, for it had managed to spit out the shoe-horn. Dumoise said that
+      he would be ready to certify to the cause of death, and that the end was
+      certain. He was a good little man, and he offered to remain with us; but
+      Strickland refused the kindness. He did not wish to poison Dumoise&rsquo;s New
+      Year. He would only ask him not to give the real cause of Fleete&rsquo;s death
+      to the public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Dumoise left, deeply agitated; and as soon as the noise of the
+      cart-wheels had died away, Strickland told me, in a whisper, his
+      suspicions. They were so wildly improbable that he dared not say them out
+      aloud; and I, who entertained all Strickland&rsquo;s beliefs, was so ashamed of
+      owning to them that I pretended to disbelieve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Even if the Silver Man had bewtiched Fleete for polluting the image of
+      Hanuman, the punishment could not have fallen so quickly.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I was whispering this the cry outside the house rose again, and the
+      beast fell into a fresh paroxysm of struggling till we were afraid that
+      the thongs that held it would give way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Watch!&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;If this happens six times I shall take the law
+      into my own hands. I order you to help me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went into his room and came out in a few minutes with the barrels of an
+      old shot-gun, a piece of fishing-line, some thick cord, and his heavy
+      wooden bedstead. I reported that the convulsions had followed the cry by
+      two seconds in each case, and the beast seemed perceptibly weaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland muttered, &lsquo;But he can&rsquo;t take away the life! He can&rsquo;t take away
+      the life!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said, though I knew that I was arguing against myself, &lsquo;It may be a cat.
+      It must be a cat. If the Silver Man is responsible, why does he dare to
+      come here?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland arranged the wood on the hearth, put the gun-barrels into the
+      glow of the fire, spread the twine on the table and broke a walking stick
+      in two. There was one yard of fishing line, gut, lapped with wire, such as
+      is used for mahseer-fishing, and he tied the two ends together in a loop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he said, &lsquo;How can we catch him? He must be taken alive and unhurt.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said that we must trust in Providence, and go out softly with
+      polo-sticks into the shrubbery at the front of the house. The man or
+      animal that made the cry was evidently moving round the house as regularly
+      as a night-watchman. We could wait in the bushes till he came by and knock
+      him over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland accepted this suggestion, and we slipped out from a bath-room
+      window into the front verandah and then across the carriage drive into the
+      bushes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the moonlight we could see the leper coming round the corner of the
+      house. He was perfectly naked, and from time to time he mewed and stopped
+      to dance with his shadow. It was an unattractive sight, and thinking of
+      poor Fleete, brought to such degradation by so foul a creature, I put away
+      all my doubts and resolved to help Strickland from the heated gun-barrels
+      to the loop of twine-from the loins to the head and back again&mdash;-with
+      all tortures that might be needful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leper halted in the front porch for a moment and we jumped out on him
+      with the sticks. He was wonderfully strong, and we were afraid that he
+      might escape or be fatally injured before we caught him. We had an idea
+      that lepers were frail creatures, but this proved to be incorrect.
+      Strickland knocked his legs from under him and I put my foot on his neck.
+      He mewed hideously, and even through my riding-boots I could feel that his
+      flesh was not the flesh of a clean man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He struck at us with his hand and feet-stumps. We looped the lash of a
+      dog-whip round him, under the armpits, and dragged him backwards into the
+      hall and so into the dining-room where the beast lay. There we tied him
+      with trunk-straps. He made no attempt to escape, but mewed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we confronted him with the beast the scene was beyond description.
+      The beast doubled backwards into a bow as though he had been poisoned with
+      strychnine, and moaned in the most pitiable fashion. Several other things
+      happened also, but they cannot be put down here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I think I was right,&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;Now we will ask him to cure this
+      case.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the leper only mewed. Strickland wrapped a towel round his hand and
+      took the gun-barrels out of the fire. I put the half of the broken walking
+      stick through the loop of fishing-line and buckled the leper comfortably
+      to Strickland&rsquo;s bedstead. I understood then how men and women and little
+      children can endure to see a witch burnt alive; for the beast was moaning
+      on the floor, and though the Silver Man had no face, you could see
+      horrible feelings passing through the slab that took its place, exactly as
+      waves of heat play across red-hot iron&mdash;gun-barrels for instance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland shaded his eyes with his hands for a moment and we got to work.
+      This part is not to be printed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dawn was beginning to break when the leper spoke. His mewings had not
+      been satisfactory up to that point. The beast had fainted from exhaustion
+      and the house was very still. We unstrapped the leper and told him to take
+      away the evil spirit. He crawled to the beast and laid his hand upon the
+      left breast. That was all. Then he fell face down and whined, drawing in
+      his breath as he did so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We watched the face of the beast, and saw the soul of Fleete coming back
+      into the eyes. Then a sweat broke out on the forehead and the eyes-they
+      were human eyes&mdash;-closed. We waited for an hour but Fleete still
+      slept. We carried him to his room and bade the leper go, giving him the
+      bedstead, and the sheet on the bedstead to cover his nakedness, the gloves
+      and the towels with which we had touched him, and the whip that had been
+      hooked round his body. He put the sheet about him and went out into the
+      early morning without speaking or mewing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland wiped his face and sat down. A night-gong, far away in the
+      city, made seven o&rsquo;clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Exactly four-and-twenty hours!&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;And I&rsquo;ve done enough to
+      ensure my dismissal from the service, besides permanent quarters in a
+      lunatic asylum. Do you believe that we are awake?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The red-hot gun-barrel had fallen on the floor and was singeing the
+      carpet. The smell was entirely real.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That morning at eleven we two together went to wake up Fleete. We looked
+      and saw that the black leopard-rosette on his chest had disappeared. He
+      was very drowsy and tired, but as soon as he saw us, he said, &lsquo;Oh!
+      Confound you fellows. Happy New Year to you. Never mix your liquors. I&rsquo;m
+      nearly dead.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thanks for your kindness, but you&rsquo;re over time,&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;To-day
+      is the morning of the second. You&rsquo;ve slept the clock round with a
+      vengeance.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door opened, and little Dumoise put his head in. He had come on foot,
+      and fancied that we were laving out Fleete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve brought a nurse,&rsquo; said Dumoise. &lsquo;I suppose that she can come in
+      for... what is necessary.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By all means,&rsquo; said Fleete cheerily, sitting up in bed. &lsquo;Bring on your
+      nurses.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dumoise was dumb. Strickland led him out and explained that there must
+      have been a mistake in the diagnosis. Dumoise remained dumb and left the
+      house hastily. He considered that his professional reputation had been
+      injured, and was inclined to make a personal matter of the recovery.
+      Strickland went out too. When he came back, he said that he had been to
+      call on the Temple of Hanuman to offer redress for the pollution of the
+      god, and had been solemnly assured that no white man had ever touched the
+      idol and that he was an incarnation of all the virtues labouring under a
+      delusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What do you think?&rsquo; said Strickland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said, &lsquo;&ldquo;There are more things . . .&rdquo;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Strickland hates that quotation. He says that I have worn it
+      threadbare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One other curious thing happened which frightened me as much as anything
+      in all the night&rsquo;s work. When Fleete was dressed he came into the
+      dining-room and sniffed. He had a quaint trick of moving his nose when he
+      sniffed. &lsquo;Horrid doggy smell, here,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;You should really keep
+      those terriers of yours in better order. Try sulphur, Strick.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Strickland did not answer. He caught hold of the back of a chair, and,
+      without warning, went into an amazing fit of hysterics. It is terrible to
+      see a strong man overtaken with hysteria. Then it struck me that we had
+      fought for Fleete&rsquo;s soul with the Silver Man in that room, and had
+      disgraced ourselves as Englishmen for ever, and I laughed and gasped and
+      gurgled just as shamefully as Strickland, while Fleete thought that we had
+      both gone mad. We never told him what we had done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some years later, when Strickland had married and was a church-going
+      member of society for his wife&rsquo;s sake, we reviewed the incident
+      dispassionately, and Strickland suggested that I should put it before the
+      public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot myself see that this step is likely to clear up the mystery;
+      because, in the first place, no one will believe a rather unpleasant
+      story, and, in the second, it is well known to every right-minded man that
+      the gods of the heathen are stone and brass, and any attempt to deal with
+      them otherwise is justly condemned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE RETURN OF IMRAY
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ The doors were wide, the story saith,
+ Out of the night came the patient wraith,
+ He might not speak, and he could not stir
+ A hair of the Baron&rsquo;s minniver&mdash;
+ Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin,
+ He roved the castle to seek his kin.
+ And oh, &rsquo;twas a piteous thing to see
+ The dumb ghost follow his enemy!
+                             THE BARON.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Imray achieved the impossible. Without warning, for no conceivable motive,
+      in his youth, at the threshold of his career he chose to disappear from
+      the world&mdash;-which is to say, the little Indian station where he
+      lived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon a day he was alive, well, happy, and in great evidence among the
+      billiard-tables at his Club. Upon a morning, he was not, and no manner of
+      search could make sure where he might be. He had stepped out of his place;
+      he had not appeared at his office at the proper time, and his dogcart was
+      not upon the public roads. For these reasons, and because he was
+      hampering, in a microscopical degree, the administration of the Indian
+      Empire, that Empire paused for one microscopical moment to make inquiry
+      into the fate of Imray. Ponds were dragged, wells were plumbed, telegrams
+      were despatched down the lines of railways and to the nearest seaport
+      town-twelve hundred miles away; but Imray was not at the end of the
+      drag-ropes nor the telegraph wires. He was gone, and his place knew him no
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the work of the great Indian Empire swept forward, because it could
+      not be delayed, and Imray from being a man became a mystery&mdash;such a
+      thing as men talk over at their tables in the Club for a month, and then
+      forget utterly. His guns, horses, and carts were sold to the highest
+      bidder. His superior officer wrote an altogether absurd letter to his
+      mother, saying that Imray had unaccountably disappeared, and his bungalow
+      stood empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After three or four months of the scorching hot weather had gone by, my
+      friend Strickland, of the Police, saw fit to rent the bungalow from the
+      native landlord. This was before he was engaged to Miss Youghal&mdash;an
+      affair which has been described in another place&mdash;and while he was
+      pursuing his investigations into native life. His own life was
+      sufficiently peculiar, and men complained of his manners and customs.
+      There was always food in his house, but there were no regular times for
+      meals. He ate, standing up and walking about, whatever he might find at
+      the sideboard, and this is not good for human beings. His domestic
+      equipment was limited to six rifles, three shot-guns, five saddles, and a
+      collection of stiff-jointed mahseer-rods, bigger and stronger than the
+      largest salmon-rods. These occupied one-half of his bungalow, and the
+      other half was given up to Strickland and his dog Tietjens&mdash;an
+      enormous Rampur slut who devoured daily the rations of two men. She spoke
+      to Strickland in a language of her own; and whenever, walking abroad, she
+      saw things calculated to destroy the peace of Her Majesty the
+      Queen-Empress, she returned to her master and laid information. Strickland
+      would take steps at once, and the end of his labours was trouble and fine
+      and imprisonment for other people. The natives believed that Tietjens was
+      a familiar spirit, and treated her with the great reverence that is born
+      of hate and fear. One room in the bungalow was set apart for her special
+      use. She owned a bedstead, a blanket, and a drinking-trough, and if any
+      one came into Strickland&rsquo;s room at night her custom was to knock down the
+      invader and give tongue till some one came with a light. Strickland owed
+      his life to her, when he was on the Frontier, in search of a local
+      murderer, who came in the gray dawn to send Strickland much farther than
+      the Andaman Islands. Tietjens caught the man as he was crawling into
+      Strickland&rsquo;s tent with a dagger between his teeth; and after his record of
+      iniquity was established in the eyes of the law he was hanged. From that
+      date Tietjens wore a collar of rough silver, and employed a monogram on
+      her night-blanket; and the blanket was of double woven Kashmir cloth, for
+      she was a delicate dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under no circumstances would she be separated from Strickland; and once,
+      when he was ill with fever, made great trouble for the doctors, because
+      she did not know how to help her master and would not allow another
+      creature to attempt aid. Macarnaght, of the Indian Medical Service, beat
+      her over her head with a gun-butt before she could understand that she
+      must give room for those who could give quinine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A short time after Strickland had taken Imray&rsquo;s bungalow, my business took
+      me through that Station, and naturally, the Club quarters being full, I
+      quartered myself upon Strickland. It was a desirable bungalow,
+      eight-roomed and heavily thatched against any chance of leakage from rain.
+      Under the pitch of the roof ran a ceiling-cloth which looked just as neat
+      as a white-washed ceiling. The landlord had repainted it when Strickland
+      took the bungalow. Unless you knew how Indian bungalows were built you
+      would never have suspected that above the cloth lay the dark
+      three-cornered cavern of the roof, where the beams and the underside of
+      the thatch harboured all manner of rats, bats, ants, and foul things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tietjens met me in the verandah with a bay like the boom of the bell of
+      St. Paul&rsquo;s, putting her paws on my shoulder to show she was glad to see
+      me. Strickland had contrived to claw together a sort of meal which he
+      called lunch, and immediately after it was finished went out about his
+      business. I was left alone with Tietjens and my own affairs. The heat of
+      the summer had broken up and turned to the warm damp of the rains. There
+      was no motion in the heated air, but the rain fell like ramrods on the
+      earth, and flung up a blue mist when it splashed back. The bamboos, and
+      the custard-apples, the poinsettias, and the mango-trees in the garden
+      stood still while the warm water lashed through them, and the frogs began
+      to sing among the aloe hedges. A little before the light failed, and when
+      the rain was at its worst, I sat in the back verandah and heard the water
+      roar from the eaves, and scratched myself because I was covered with the
+      thing called prickly-heat. Tietjens came out with me and put her head in
+      my lap and was very sorrowful; so I gave her biscuits when tea was ready,
+      and I took tea in the back verandah on account of the little coolness
+      found there. The rooms of the house were dark behind me. I could smell
+      Strickland&rsquo;s saddlery and the oil on his guns, and I had no desire to sit
+      among these things. My own servant came to me in the twilight, the muslin
+      of his clothes clinging tightly to his drenched body, and told me that a
+      gentleman had called and wished to see some one. Very much against my
+      will, but only because of the darkness of the rooms, I went into the naked
+      drawing-room, telling my man to bring the lights. There might or might not
+      have been a caller waiting&mdash;-it seemed to me that I saw a figure by
+      one of the windows&mdash;-but when the lights came there was nothing save
+      the spikes of the rain without, and the smell of the drinking earth in my
+      nostrils. I explained to my servant that he was no wiser than he ought to
+      be, and went back to the verandah to talk to Tietjens. She had gone out
+      into the wet, and I could hardly coax her back to me; even with biscuits
+      with sugar tops. Strickland came home, dripping wet, just before dinner,
+      and the first thing he said was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Has any one called?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I explained, with apologies, that my servant had summoned me into the
+      drawing-room on a false alarm; or that some loafer had tried to call on
+      Strickland, and thinking better of it had fled after giving his name.
+      Strickiand ordered dinner, without comment, and since it was a real dinner
+      with a white tablecloth attached, we sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At nine o&rsquo;clock Strickland wanted to go to bed, and I was tired too.
+      Tietjens, who had been lying underneath the table, rose up, and swung into
+      the least exposed verandah as soon as her master moved to his own room,
+      which was next to the stately chamber set apart for Tietjens. If a mere
+      wife had wished to sleep out of doors in that pelting rain it would not
+      have mattered; but Tietjens was a dog, and therefore the better animal. I
+      looked at Strickland, expecting to see him flay her with a whip. He smiled
+      queerly, as a man would smile after telling some unpleasant domestic
+      tragedy. &lsquo;She has done this ever since I moved in here,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;Let her
+      go.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dog was Strickland&rsquo;s dog, so I said nothing, but I felt all that
+      Strickland felt In being thus made light of. Tietjens encamped outside my
+      bedroom window, and storm after storm came up, thundered on the thatch,
+      and died away. The lightning spattered the sky as a thrown egg spatters a
+      barn-door, but the light was pale blue, not yellow; and, looking through
+      my split bamboo blinds, I could see the great dog standing, not sleeping,
+      in the verandah, the hackles alift on her back and her feet anchored as
+      tensely as the drawn wire-rope of a suspension bridge. In the very short
+      pauses of the thunder I tried to sleep, but it seemed that some one wanted
+      me very urgently. He, whoever he was, was trying to call me by name, but
+      his voice was no more than a husky whisper. The thunder ceased, and
+      Tietjens went into the garden and howled at the low moon. Somebody tried
+      to open my door, walked about and about through the house and stood
+      breathing heavily in the verandahs, and just when I was falling asleep I
+      fancied that I heard a wild hammering and clamouring above my head or on
+      the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I ran into Strickland&rsquo;s room and asked him whether he was ill, and had
+      been calling for me. He was lying on his bed half dressed, a pipe in his
+      mouth. &lsquo;I thought you&rsquo;d come,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;Have I been walking round the
+      house recently?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I explained that he had been tramping in the dining-room and the
+      smoking-room and two or three other places, and he laughed and told me to
+      go back to bed. I went back to bed and slept till the morning, but through
+      all my mixed dreams I was sure I was doing some one an injustice in not
+      attending to his wants. What those wants were I could not tell; but a
+      fluttering, whispering, bolt-fumbling, lurking, loitering Someone was
+      reproaching me for my slackness, and, half awake, I heard the howling of
+      Tietjens in the garden and the threshing of the rain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I lived in that house for two days. Strickland went to his office daily,
+      leaving me alone for eight or ten hours with Tietjens for my only
+      companion. As long as the full light lasted I was comfortable, and so was
+      Tietjens; but in the twilight she and I moved into the back verandah and
+      cuddled each other for company. We were alone in the house, but none the
+      less it was much too fully occupied by a tenant with whom I did not wish
+      to interfere. I never saw him, but I could see the curtains between the
+      rooms quivering where he had just passed through; I could hear the chairs
+      creaking as the bamboos sprung under a weight that had just quitted them;
+      and I could feel when I went to get a book from the dining-room that
+      somebody was waiting in the shadows of the front verandah till I should
+      have gone away. Tietjens made the twilight more interesting by glaring
+      into the darkened rooms with every hair erect, and following the motions
+      of something that I could not see. She never entered the rooms, but her
+      eyes moved interestedly: that was quite sufficient. Only when my servant
+      came to trim the lamps and make all light and habitable she would come in
+      with me and spend her time sitting on her haunches, watching an invisible
+      extra man as he moved about behind my shoulder. Dogs are cheerful
+      companions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I explained to Strickland, gently as might be, that I would go over to the
+      Club and find for myself quarters there. I admired his hospitality, was
+      pleased with his guns and rods, but I did not much care for his house and
+      its atmosphere. He heard me out to the end, and then smiled very wearily,
+      but without contempt, for he is a man who understands things. &lsquo;Stay on,&rsquo; 
+      he said, &lsquo;and see what this thing means. All you have talked about I have
+      known since I took the bungalow. Stay on and wait. Tietjens has left me.
+      Are you going too?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had seen him through one little affair, connected with a heathen idol,
+      that had brought me to the doors of a lunatic asylum, and I had no desire
+      to help him through further experiences. He was a man to whom
+      unpleasantnesses arrived as do dinners to ordinary people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Therefore I explained more clearly than ever that I liked him immensely,
+      and would be happy to see him in the daytime; but that I did not care to
+      sleep under his roof. This was after dinner, when Tietjens had gone out to
+      lie in the verandah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&rsquo;Pon my soul, I don&rsquo;t wonder,&rsquo; said Strickland, with his eyes on the
+      ceiling-cloth. &lsquo;Look at that!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tails of two brown snakes were hanging between the cloth and the
+      cornice of the wall. They threw long shadows in the lamplight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If you are afraid of snakes of course&mdash;&rsquo; said Strickland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hate and fear snakes, because if you look into the eyes of any snake you
+      will see that it knows all and more of the mystery of man&rsquo;s fall, and that
+      it feels all the contempt that the Devil felt when Adam was evicted from
+      Eden. Besides which its bite is generally fatal, and it twists up trouser
+      legs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You ought to get your thatch overhauled,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Give me a mahseer-rod, and we&rsquo;ll poke &lsquo;em down.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They&rsquo;ll hide among the roof-beams,&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t stand
+      snakes overhead. I&rsquo;m going up into the roof. If I shake &lsquo;em down, stand by
+      with a cleaning-rod and break their backs.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was not anxious to assist Strickland in his work, but I took the
+      cleaning-rod and waited in the dining-room, while Strickland brought a
+      gardener&rsquo;s ladder from the verandah, and set it against the side of the
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The snake-tails drew themselves up and disappeared. We could hear the dry
+      rushing scuttle of long bodies running over the baggy ceiling-cloth.
+      Strickland took a lamp with him, while I tried to make clear to him the
+      danger of hunting roof-snakes between a ceiling-cloth and a thatch, apart
+      from the deterioration of property caused by ripping out ceiling-cloths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nonsense!&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;They&rsquo;re sure to hide near the walls by the
+      cloth. The bricks are too cold for &lsquo;em, and the heat of the room is just
+      what they like.&rsquo; He put his hand to the corner of the stuff and ripped it
+      from the cornice. It gave with a great sound of tearing, and Strickland
+      put his head through the opening into the dark of the angle of the
+      roof-beams. I set my teeth and lifted the rod, for I had not the least
+      knowledge of what might descend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;H&rsquo;m!&rsquo; said Strickland, and his voice rolled and rumbled in the roof.
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;s room for another set of rooms up here, and, by Jove, some one is
+      occupying &lsquo;em!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Snakes?&rsquo; I said from below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;No. It&rsquo;s a buffalo. Hand me up the two last joints of a mahseer-rod, and
+      I&rsquo;ll prod it. It&rsquo;s lying on the main roof-beam.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I handed up the rod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What a nest for owls and serpents! No wonder the snakes live here,&rsquo; said
+      Strickland, climbing farther into the roof. I could see his elbow
+      thrusting with the rod. &lsquo;Come out of that, whoever you are! Heads below
+      there! It&rsquo;s falling.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw the ceiling-cloth nearly in the centre of the room bag with a shape
+      that was pressing it downwards and downwards towards the lighted lamp on
+      the table. I snatched the lamp out of danger and stood back. Then the
+      cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split, swayed, and shot down upon
+      the table something that I dared not look at, till Strickland had slid
+      down the ladder and was standing by my side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not say much, being a man of few words; but he picked up the loose
+      end of the tablecloth and threw it over the remnants on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It strikes me,&rsquo; said he, putting down the lamp, &lsquo;our friend Imray has
+      come back. Oh! you would, would you?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a movement under the cloth, and a little snake wriggled out, to
+      be back-broken by the butt of the mahseer-rod. I was sufficiently sick to
+      make no remarks worth recording.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland meditated, and helped himself to drinks. The arrangement under
+      the cloth made no more signs of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is it Imray?&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland turned back the cloth for a moment, and looked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is Imray,&rsquo; he said; &lsquo;and his throat is cut from ear to ear.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we spoke, both together and to ourselves: &lsquo;That&rsquo;s why he whispered
+      about the house.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tietjens, in the garden, began to bay furiously. A little later her great
+      nose heaved open the dining-room door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sniffed and was still. The tattered ceiling-cloth hung down almost to
+      the level of the table, and there was hardly room to move away from the
+      discovery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tietjens came in and sat down; her teeth bared under her lip and her
+      forepaws planted. She looked at Strickland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It&rsquo;s a bad business, old lady,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;Men don&rsquo;t climb up into the
+      roofs of their bungalows to die, and they don&rsquo;t fasten up the ceiling
+      cloth behind &lsquo;em. Let&rsquo;s think it out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let&rsquo;s think it out somewhere else,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Excellent idea! Turn the lamps out. We&rsquo;ll get into my room.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not turn the lamps out. I went into Strickland&rsquo;s room first, and
+      allowed him to make the darkness. Then he followed me, and we lit tobacco
+      and thought. Strickland thought. I smoked furiously, because I was afraid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Imray is back,&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;The question is&mdash;-who killed
+      Imray? Don&rsquo;t talk, I&rsquo;ve a notion of my own. When I took this bungalow I
+      took over most of Imray&rsquo;s servants. Imray was guileless and inoffensive,
+      wasn&rsquo;t he?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I agreed; though the heap under the cloth had looked neither one thing nor
+      the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If I call in all the servants they will stand fast in a crowd and lie
+      like Aryans. What do you suggest?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Call &lsquo;em in one by one,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;They&rsquo;ll run away and give the news to all their fellows,&rsquo; said
+      Strickland. &lsquo;We must segregate &lsquo;em. Do you suppose your servant knows
+      anything about it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He may, for aught I know; but I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s likely. He has only been
+      here two or three days,&rsquo; I answered. &lsquo;What&rsquo;s your notion?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I can&rsquo;t quite tell. How the dickens did the man get the wrong side of the
+      ceiling-cloth?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a heavy coughing outside Strickland&rsquo;s bedroom door. This showed
+      that Bahadur Khan, his body-servant, had waked from sleep and wished to
+      put Strickland to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Come in,&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;It&rsquo;s a very warm night, isn&rsquo;t it?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bahadur Khan, a great, green-turbaned, six-foot Mahomedan, said that it
+      was a very warm night; but that there was more rain pending, which, by his
+      Honour&rsquo;s favour, would bring relief to the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It will be so, if God pleases,&rsquo; said Strickland, tugging off his boots.
+      &lsquo;It is in my mind, Bahadur Khan, that I have worked thee remorselessly for
+      many days&mdash;-ever since that time when thou first earnest into my
+      service. What time was that?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Has the Heaven-born forgotten? It was when Imray Sahib went secretly to
+      Europe without warning given; and I-even I-came into the honoured service
+      of the protector of the poor.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And Imray Sahib went to Europe?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is so said among those who were his servants.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And thou wilt take service with him when he returns?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Assuredly, Sahib. He was a good master, and cherished his dependants.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That is true. I am very tired, but I go buck-shooting to-morrow. Give me
+      the little sharp rifle that I use for black-buck; it is in the case
+      yonder.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man stooped over the case; handed barrels, stock, and fore-end to
+      Strickland, who fitted all together, yawning dolefully. Then he reached
+      down to the gun-case, took a solid-drawn cartridge, and slipped it into
+      the breech of the &lsquo;360 Express.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And Imray Sahib has gone to Europe secretly! That is very strange,
+      Bahadur Khan, is it not?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What do I know of the ways of the white man. Heaven-born?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Very little, truly. But thou shalt know more anon. It has reached me that
+      Imray Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and that even now
+      he lies in the next room, waiting his servant.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sahib!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lamplight slid along the barrels of the rifle as they levelled
+      themselves at Bahadur Khan&rsquo;s broad breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go and look!&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and he
+      waits thee. Go!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man picked up a lamp, and went into the dining-room, Strickland
+      following, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of the rifle. He looked
+      for a moment at the black depths behind the ceiling-cloth; at the writhing
+      snake under foot; and last, a gray glaze settling on his face, at the
+      thing under the tablecloth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hast thou seen?&rsquo; said Strickland after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I have seen. I am clay in the white man&rsquo;s hands. What does the Presence
+      do?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hang thee within the month. What else?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For killing him? Nay, Sahib, consider. Walking among us, his servants, he
+      cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old. Him he bewitched, and
+      in ten days he died of the fever&mdash;my child!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What said Imray Sahib?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He said he was a handsome child, and patted him on the head; wherefore my
+      child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight, when he had
+      come back from office, and was sleeping. Wherefore I dragged him up into
+      the roof-beams and made all fast behind him. The Heaven-born knows all
+      things. I am the servant of the Heaven-born.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strickland looked at me above the rifle, and said, in the vernacular,
+      &lsquo;Thou art witness to this saying? He has killed.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bahadur Khan stood ashen gray in the light of the one lamp. The need for
+      justification came upon him very swiftly. &lsquo;I am trapped,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;but
+      the offence was that man&rsquo;s. He cast an evil eye upon my child, and I
+      killed and hid him. Only such as are served by devils,&rsquo; he glared at
+      Tietjens, couched stolidly before him, &lsquo;only such could know what I did.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It was clever. But thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam with a rope.
+      Now, thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. Orderly!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A drowsy policeman answered Strickland&rsquo;s call. He was followed by another,
+      and Tietjens sat wondrous still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Take him to the police-station,&rsquo; said Strickland. &lsquo;There is a case
+      toward.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Do I hang, then?&rsquo; said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to escape, and
+      keeping his eyes on the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If the sun shines or the water runs&mdash;yes!&rsquo; said Strickland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bahadur Khan stepped back one long pace, quivered, and stood still. The
+      two policemen waited further orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Go!&rsquo; said Strickland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay; but I go very swiftly,&rsquo; said Bahadur Khan. &lsquo;Look! I am even now a
+      dead man.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lifted his foot, and to the little toe there clung the head of the
+      half-killed snake, firm fixed in the agony of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I come of land-holding stock,&rsquo; said Bahadur Khan, rocking where he stood.
+      &lsquo;It were a disgrace to me to go to the public scaffold: therefore I take
+      this way. Be it remembered that the Sahib&rsquo;s shirts are correctly
+      enumerated, and that there is an extra piece of soap in his washbasin. My
+      child was bewitched, and I slew the wizard. Why should you seek to slay me
+      with the rope? My honour is saved, and&mdash;and&mdash;I die.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of an hour he died, as they die who are bitten by the little
+      brown karait, and the policemen bore him and the thing under the
+      tablecloth to their appointed places. All were needed to make clear the
+      disappearance of Imray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;This,&rsquo; said Strickland, very calmly, as he climbed into bed, &lsquo;is called
+      the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I heard,&rsquo; I answered. &lsquo;Imray made a mistake.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Simply and solely through not knowing the nature of the Oriental, and the
+      coincidence of a little seasonal fever. Bahadur Khan had been with him for
+      four years.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shuddered. My own servant had been with me for exactly that length of
+      time. When I went over to my own room I found my man waiting, impassive as
+      the copper head on a penny, to pull off my boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What has befallen Bahadur Khan?&rsquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He was bitten by a snake and died. The rest the Sahib knows,&rsquo; was the
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And how much of this matter hast thou known?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;As much as might be gathered from One coming in in the twilight to seek
+      satisfaction. Gently, Sahib. Let me pull off those boots.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland
+      shouting from his side of the house&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Tietjens has come back to her place!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so she had. The great deerhound was couched statelily on her own
+      bedstead on her own blanket, while, in the next room, the idle, empty,
+      ceiling-cloth waggled as it trailed on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      NAMGAY DOOLA
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ There came to the beach a poor exile of Erin,
+ The dew on his wet robe hung heavy and chill;
+ Ere the steamer that brought him had passed out of hearin&rsquo;,
+ He was Alderman Mike inthrojuicin&rsquo; a bill!
+                       AMERICAN SONG.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Once upon a time there was a King who lived on the road to Thibet, very
+      many miles in the Himalayas. His Kingdom was eleven thousand feet above
+      the sea and exactly four miles square; but most of the miles stood on end
+      owing to the nature of the country. His revenues were rather less than
+      four hundred pounds yearly, and they were expended in the maintenance of
+      one elephant and a standing army of five men. He was tributary to the
+      Indian Government, who allowed him certain sums for keeping a section of
+      the Himalaya-Thibet road in repair. He further increased his revenues by
+      selling timber to the railway-companies; for he would cut the great deodar
+      trees in his one forest, and they fell thundering into the Sutlej river
+      and were swept down to the plains three hundred miles away and became
+      railway-ties. Now and again this King, whose name does not matter, would
+      mount a ringstraked horse and ride scores of miles to Simla-town to confer
+      with the Lieutenant-Governor on matters of state, or to assure the Viceroy
+      that his sword was at the service of the Queen-Empress. Then the Viceroy
+      would cause a ruffle of drums to be sounded, and the ringstraked horse and
+      the cavalry of the State&mdash;-two men in tatters&mdash;and the herald
+      who bore the silver stick before the King would trot back to their own
+      place, which lay between the tail of a heaven-climbing glacier and a dark
+      birch-forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, from such a King, always remembering that he possessed one veritable
+      elephant, and could count his descent for twelve hundred years, I
+      expected, when it was my fate to wander through his dominions, no more
+      than mere license to live.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night had closed in rain, and rolling clouds blotted out the lights of
+      the villages in the valley. Forty miles away, untouched by cloud or storm,
+      the white shoulder of Donga Pa&mdash;the Mountain of the Council of the
+      Gods&mdash;upheld the Evening Star. The monkeys sang sorrowfully to each
+      other as they hunted for dry roosts in the fern-wreathed trees, and the
+      last puff of the day-wind brought from the unseen villages the scent of
+      damp wood-smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine-cones.
+      That is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if once it creeps into the
+      blood of a man, that man will at the last, forgetting all else, return to
+      the hills to die. The clouds closed and the smell went away, and there
+      remained nothing in all the world except chilling white mist and the boom
+      of the Sutlej river racing through the valley below. A fat-tailed sheep,
+      who did not want to die, bleated piteously at my tent door. He was
+      scuffling with the Prime Minister and the Director-General of Public
+      Education, and he was a royal gift to me and my camp servants. I expressed
+      my thanks suitably, and asked if I might have audience of the King. The
+      Prime Minister readjusted his turban, which had fallen off in the
+      struggle, and assured me that the King would be very pleased to see me.
+      Therefore I despatched two bottles as a foretaste, and when the sheep had
+      entered upon another incarnation went to the King&rsquo;s Palace through the
+      wet. He had sent his army to escort me, but the army stayed to talk with
+      my cook. Soldiers are very much alike all the world over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Palace was a four-roomed and whitewashed mud and timber house, the
+      finest in all the hills for a day&rsquo;s journey. The King was dressed in a
+      purple velvet jacket, white muslin trousers, and a saffron-yellow turban
+      of price. He gave me audience in a little carpeted room opening off the
+      palace courtyard which was occupied by the Elephant of State. The great
+      beast was sheeted and anchored from trunk to tail, and the curve of his
+      back stood out grandly against the mist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Prime Minister and the Director-General of Public Education were
+      present to introduce me, but all the court had been dismissed, lest the
+      two bottles aforesaid should corrupt their morals. The King cast a wreath
+      of heavy-scented flowers round my neck as I bowed, and inquired how my
+      honoured presence had the felicity to be. I said that through seeing his
+      auspicious countenance the mists of the night had turned into sunshine,
+      and that by reason of his beneficent sheep his good deeds would be
+      remembered by the Gods. He said that since I had set my magnificent foot
+      in his Kingdom the crops would probably yield seventy per cent more than
+      the average. I said that the fame of the King had reached to the four
+      corners of the earth, and that the nations gnashed their teeth when they
+      heard daily of the glories of his realm and the wisdom of his moon-like
+      Prime Minister and lotus-like Director-General of Public Education.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we sat down on clean white cushions, and I was at the King&rsquo;s right
+      hand. Three minutes later he was telling me that the state of the maize
+      crop was something disgraceful, and that the railway-companies would not
+      pay him enough for his timber. The talk shifted to and fro with the
+      bottles, and we discussed very many stately things, and the King became
+      confidential on the subject of Government generally. Most of all he dwelt
+      on the shortcomings of one of his subjects, who, from all I could gather,
+      had been paralyzing the executive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;In the old days,&rsquo; said the King, &lsquo;I could have ordered the Elephant
+      yonder to trample him to death. Now I must e&rsquo;en send him seventy miles
+      across the hills to be tried, and his keep would be upon the State. The
+      Elephant eats everything.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;What be the man&rsquo;s crimes, Rajah Sahib?&rsquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Firstly, he is an outlander and no man of mine own people. Secondly,
+      since of my favour I gave him land upon his first coming, he refuses to
+      pay revenue. Am I not the lord of the earth, above and below, entitled by
+      right and custom to one-eighth of the crop? Yet this devil, establishing
+      himself, refuses to pay a single tax; and he brings a poisonous spawn of
+      babes.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Cast him into jail,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Sahib,&rsquo; the King answered, shifting a little on the cushions, &lsquo;once and
+      only once in these forty years sickness came upon me so that I was not
+      able to go abroad. In that hour I made a vow to my God that I would never
+      again cut man or woman from the light of the sun and the air of God; for I
+      perceived the nature of the punishment. How can I break my vow? Were it
+      only the lopping of a hand or a foot I should not delay. But even that is
+      impossible now that the English have rule. One or another of my people&rsquo;&mdash;he
+      looked obliquely at the Director-General of Public Education&mdash;&lsquo;would
+      at once write a letter to the Viceroy, and perhaps I should be deprived of
+      my ruffle of drums.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He unscrewed the mouthpiece of his silver water-pipe, fitted a plain amber
+      mouthpiece, and passed his pipe to me. &lsquo;Not content with refusing
+      revenue,&rsquo; he continued, &lsquo;this outlander refuses also the begar&rsquo; (this was
+      the corvee or forced labour on the roads) &lsquo;and stirs my people up to the
+      like treason. Yet he is, when he wills, an expert log-snatcher. There is
+      none better or bolder among my people to clear a block of the river when
+      the logs stick fast.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But he worships strange Gods,&rsquo; said the Prime Minister deferentially.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;For that I have no concern,&rsquo; said the King, who was as tolerant as Akbar
+      in matters of belief. &lsquo;To each man his own God and the fire or Mother
+      Earth for us all at last. It is the rebellion that offends me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The King has an army,&rsquo; I suggested. &lsquo;Has not the King burned the man&rsquo;s
+      house and left him naked to the night dews?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, a hut is a hut, and it holds the life of a man. But once, I sent my
+      army against him when his excuses became wearisome: of their heads he
+      brake three across the top with a stick. The other two men ran away. Also
+      the guns would not shoot.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had seen the equipment of the infantry. One-third of it was an old
+      muzzle-loading fowling-piece, with a ragged rust-hole where the nipples
+      should have been, one-third a wire-bound matchlock with a worm-eaten
+      stock, and one-third a four-bore flint duck-gun without a flint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But it is to be remembered,&rsquo; said the King, reaching out for the bottle,
+      &lsquo;that he is a very expert log-snatcher and a man of a merry face. What
+      shall I do to him, Sahib?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was interesting. The timid hill-folk would as soon have refused taxes
+      to their king as revenues to their Gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If it be the King&rsquo;s permission,&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;I will not strike my tents till
+      the third day and I will see this man. The mercy of the King is God-like,
+      and rebellion is like unto the sin of witchcraft. Moreover, both the
+      bottles and another be empty.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You have my leave to go,&rsquo; said the King.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning a crier went through the state proclaiming that there was a
+      log-jam on the river and that it behoved all loyal subjects to remove it.
+      The people poured down from their villages to the moist warm valley of
+      poppy-fields; and the King and I went with them. Hundreds of dressed
+      deodar-logs had caught on a snag of rock, and the river was bringing down
+      more logs every minute to complete the blockade. The water snarled and
+      wrenched and worried at the timber, and the population of the state began
+      prodding the nearest logs with a pole in the hope of starting a general
+      movement. Then there went up a shout of &lsquo;Namgay Doola! Namgay Doola!&rsquo; and
+      a large red-haired villager hurried up, stripping off his clothes as he
+      ran.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That is he. That is the rebel,&rsquo; said the King. &lsquo;Now will the dam be
+      cleared.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But why has he red hair?&rsquo; I asked, since red hair among hill-folks is as
+      common as blue or green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He is an outlander,&rsquo; said the King. &lsquo;Well done! Oh well done!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Namgay Doola had scrambled out on the jam and was clawing out the butt of
+      a log with a rude sort of boat-hook. It slid forward slowly as an
+      alligator moves, three or four others followed it, and the green water
+      spouted through the gaps they had made. Then the villagers howled and
+      shouted and scrambled across the logs, pulling and pushing the obstinate
+      timber, and the red head of Namgay Doola was chief among them all. The
+      logs swayed and chafed and groaned as fresh consignments from upstream
+      battered the now weakening dam. All gave way at last in a smother of foam,
+      racing logs, bobbing black heads and confusion indescribable. The river
+      tossed everything before it. I saw the red head go down with the last
+      remnants of the jam and disappear between the great grinding tree-trunks.
+      It rose close to the bank and blowing like a grampus. Namgay Doola wrung
+      the water out of his eyes and made obeisance to the King. I had time to
+      observe him closely. The virulent redness of his shock head and beard was
+      most startling; and in the thicket of hair wrinkled above high cheek bones
+      shone two very merry blue eyes. He was indeed an outlander, but yet a
+      Thibetan in language, habit, and attire. He spoke the Lepcha dialect with
+      an indescribable softening of the gutturals. It was not so much a lisp as
+      an accent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Whence comest thou?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;From Thibet.&rsquo; He pointed across the hills and grinned. That grin went
+      straight to my heart. Mechanically I held out my hand and Namgay Doola
+      shook it. No pure Thibetan would have understood the meaning of the
+      gesture. He went away to look for his clothes, and as he climbed back to
+      his village, I heard a joyous yell that seemed unaccountably familiar. It
+      was the whooping of Namgay Doola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You see now,&rsquo; said the King, &lsquo;why I would not kill him. He is a bold man
+      among my logs, but,&rsquo; and he shook his head like a schoolmaster, &lsquo;I know
+      that before long there will be complaints of him in the court. Let us
+      return to the Palace and do justice.&rsquo; It was that King&rsquo;s custom to judge
+      his subjects every day between eleven and three o&rsquo;clock. I saw him decide
+      equitably in weighty matters of trespass, slander, and a little
+      wife-stealing. Then his brow clouded and he summoned me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Again it is Namgay Doola,&rsquo; he said despairingly. &lsquo;Not content with
+      refusing revenue on his own part, he has bound half his village by an oath
+      to the like treason. Never before has such a thing befallen me! Nor are my
+      taxes heavy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A rabbit-faced villager, with a blush-rose stuck behind his ear, advanced
+      trembling. He had been in the conspiracy, but had told everything and
+      hoped for the King&rsquo;s favour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O King,&rsquo; said I, &lsquo;if it be the King&rsquo;s will let this matter stand over
+      till the morning. Only the Gods can do right swiftly, and it may be that
+      yonder villager has lied.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, for I know the nature of Namgay Doola; but since a guest asks let
+      the matter remain. Wilt thou speak harshly to this red-headed outlander?
+      He may listen to thee.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I made an attempt that very evening, but for the life of me I could not
+      keep my countenance. Namgay Doola grinned persuasively, and began to tell
+      me about a big brown bear in a poppy-field by the river. Would I care to
+      shoot it? I spoke austerely on the sin of conspiracy, and the certainty of
+      punishment. Namgay Doola&rsquo;s face clouded for a moment. Shortly afterwards
+      he withdrew from my tent, and I heard him singing to himself softly among
+      the pines. The words were unintelligible to me, but the tune, like his
+      liquid insinuating speech, seemed the ghost of something strangely
+      familiar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dir hane mard-i-yemen dir To weeree ala gee.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      sang Namgay Doola again and again, and I racked my brain for that lost
+      tune. It was not till after dinner that I discovered some one had cut a
+      square foot of velvet from the centre of my best camera-cloth. This made
+      me so angry that I wandered down the valley in the hope of meeting the big
+      brown bear. I could hear him grunting like a discontented pig in the
+      poppy-field, and I waited shoulder deep in the dew-dripping Indian corn to
+      catch him after his meal. The moon was at full and drew out the rich scent
+      of the tasselled crop. Then I heard the anguished bellow of a Himalayan
+      cow, one of the little black crummies no bigger than Newfoundland dogs.
+      Two shadows that looked like a bear and her cub hurried past me. I was in
+      act to fire when I saw that they had each a brilliant red head. The lesser
+      animal was trailing some rope behind it that left a dark track on the
+      path. They passed within six feet of me, and the shadow of the moonlight
+      lay velvet-black on their faces. Velvet-black was exactly the word, for by
+      all the powers of moonlight they were masked in the velvet of my
+      camera-cloth! I marvelled and went to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning the Kingdom was in uproar. Namgay Doola, men said, had gone
+      forth in the night and with a sharp knife had cut off the tail of a cow
+      belonging to the rabbit-faced villager who had betrayed him. It was
+      sacrilege unspeakable against the Holy Cow. The State desired his blood,
+      but he had retreated into his hut, barricaded the doors and windows with
+      big stones, and defied the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King and I and the populace approached the hut cautiously. There was
+      no hope of capturing the man without loss of life, for from a hole in the
+      wall projected the muzzle of an extremely well-cared-for gun&mdash;the
+      only gun in the State that could shoot. Namgay Doola had narrowly missed a
+      villager just before we came up. The Standing Army stood. It could do no
+      more, for when it advanced pieces of sharp shale flew from the windows. To
+      these were added from time to time showers of scalding water. We saw red
+      heads bobbing up and down in the hut. The family of Namgay Doola were
+      aiding their sire, and blood-curdling yells of defiance were the only
+      answers to our prayers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Never,&rsquo; said the King, puffing, &lsquo;has such a thing befallen my State. Next
+      year I will certainly buy a little cannon.&rsquo; He looked at me imploringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Is there any priest in the Kingdom to whom he will listen?&rsquo; said I, for a
+      light was beginning to break upon me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He worships his own God,&rsquo; said the Prime Minister. &lsquo;We can starve him
+      out.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Let the white man approach,&rsquo; said Namgay Doola from within. &lsquo;All others I
+      will kill. Send me the white man.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door was thrown open and I entered the smoky interior of a Thibetan
+      hut crammed with children. And every child had flaming red hair. A raw
+      cow&rsquo;s-tail lay on the floor, and by its side two pieces of black velvet&mdash;my
+      black velvet&mdash;rudely hacked into the semblance of masks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And what is this shame, Namgay Doola?&rsquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He grinned more winningly than ever. &lsquo;There is no shame,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;I did
+      but cut off the tail of that man&rsquo;s cow. He betrayed me. I was minded to
+      shoot him, Sahib. But not to death. Indeed not to death. Only in the
+      legs.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And why at all, since it is the custom to pay revenue to the King? Why at
+      all?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By the God of my father I cannot tell,&rsquo; said Namgay Doola.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And who was thy father?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The same that had this gun.&rsquo; He showed me his weapon&mdash;a Tower musket
+      bearing date 1832 and the stamp of the Honourable East India Company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And thy father&rsquo;s name?&rsquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Timlay Doola,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;At the first, I being then a little child, it is
+      in my mind that he wore a red coat.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Of that I have no doubt. But repeat the name of thy father thrice or four
+      times.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He obeyed, and I understood whence the puzzling accent in his speech came.
+      &lsquo;Thimla Dhula,&rsquo; said he excitedly. &lsquo;To this hour I worship his God.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;May I see that God?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;In a little while&mdash;at twilight time.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Rememberest thou aught of thy father&rsquo;s speech?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It is long ago. But there is one word which he said often. Thus &ldquo;Shun.&rdquo;
+       Then I and my brethren stood upon our feet, our hands to our sides. Thus.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Even so. And what was thy mother?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A woman of the hills. We be Lepchas of Darjeeling, but me they call an
+      outlander because my hair is as thou seest.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Thibetan woman, his wife, touched him on the arm gently. The long
+      parley outside the fort had lasted far into the day. It was now close upon
+      twilight&mdash;the hour of the Angelus. Very solemnly, the red-headed
+      brats rose from the floor and formed a semicircle. Namgay Doola laid his
+      gun against the wall, lighted a little oil lamp, and set it before a
+      recess in the wall. Pulling aside a curtain of dirty cloth, he revealed a
+      worn brass crucifix leaning against the helmet-badge of a long forgotten
+      East India regiment. &lsquo;Thus did my father,&rsquo; he said, crossing himself
+      clumsily. The wife and children followed suit. Then all together they
+      struck up the wailing chant that I heard on the hillside&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ Dir bane mard-i-yemen dir
+ To weeree ala gee.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I was puzzled no longer. Again and again they crooned, as if their hearts
+      would break, their version of the chorus of the Wearing of the Green&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They&rsquo;re hanging men and women too, For the wearing of the green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A diabolical inspiration came to me. One of the brats, a boy about eight
+      years old, was watching me as he sang. I pulled out a rupee, held the coin
+      between finger and thumb and looked&mdash;only looked&mdash;at the gun
+      against the wall. A grin of brilliant and perfect comprehension overspread
+      the face of the child. Never for an instant stopping the song, he held out
+      his hand for the money, and then slid the gun to my hand. I might have
+      shot Namgay Doola as he chanted. But I was satisfied. The blood-instinct
+      of the race held true. Namgay Doola drew the curtain across the recess.
+      Angelus was over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Thus my father sang. There was much more, but I have forgotten, and I do
+      not know the purport of these words, but it may be that the God will
+      understand. I am not of this people, and I will not pay revenue.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And why?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again that soul-compelling grin. &lsquo;What occupation would be to me between
+      crop and crop? It is better than scaring bears. But these people do not
+      understand.&rsquo; He picked the masks from the floor, and looked in my face as
+      simply as a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;By what road didst thou attain knowledge to make these devilries?&rsquo; I
+      said, pointing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I cannot tell. I am but a Lepcha of Darjeeling, and yet the stuff&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Which thou hast stolen.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay, surely. Did I steal? I desired it so. The stuff&mdash;the stuff&mdash;what
+      else should I have done with the stuff?&rsquo; He twisted the velvet between his
+      fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But the sin of maiming the cow&mdash;consider that.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That is true; but oh, Sahib, that man betrayed me and I had no thought&mdash;but
+      the heifer&rsquo;s tail waved in the moonlight and I had my knife. What else
+      should I have done? The tail came off ere I was aware. Sahib, thou knowest
+      more than I.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;That is true,&rsquo; said I. &lsquo;Stay within the door. I go to speak to the King.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The population of the State were ranged on the hillsides. I went forth and
+      spoke to the King.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;O King,&rsquo; said I. &lsquo;Touching this man there be two courses open to thy
+      wisdom. Thou canst either hang him from a tree, he and his brood, till
+      there remains no hair that is red within the land.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Nay&rsquo; said the King. &lsquo;Why should I hurt the little children?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had poured out of the hut door and were making plump obeisance to
+      everybody. Namgay Doola waited with his gun across his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Or thou canst, discarding the impiety of the cow-maiming, raise him to
+      honour in thy Army. He comes of a race that will not pay revenue. A red
+      flame is in his blood which comes out at the top of his head in that
+      glowing hair. Make him chief of the Army. Give him honour as may befall,
+      and full allowance of work, but look to it, O King, that neither he nor
+      his hold a foot of earth from thee henceforward. Feed him with words and
+      favour, and also liquor from certain bottles that thou knowest of, and he
+      will be a bulwark of defence. But deny him even a tuft of grass for his
+      own. This is the nature that God has given him. Moreover he has brethren&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The State groaned unanimously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But if his brethren come, they will surely fight with each other till
+      they die; or else the one will always give information concerning the
+      other. Shall he be of thy Army, O King? Choose.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King bowed his head, and I said, &lsquo;Come forth, Namgay Doola, and
+      command the King&rsquo;s Army. Thy name shall no more be Namgay in the mouths of
+      men, but Patsay Doola, for as thou hast said, I know.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Namgay Doola, new christened Patsay Doola, son of Timlay Doola, which
+      is Tim Doolan gone very wrong indeed, clasped the King&rsquo;s feet, cuffed the
+      Standing Army, and hurried in an agony of contrition from temple to
+      temple, making offerings for the sin of cattle-maiming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the King was so pleased with my perspicacity, that he offered to sell
+      me a village for twenty pounds sterling. But I buy no villages in the
+      Himalayas so long as one red head flares between the tail of the
+      heaven-climbing glacier and the dark birch-forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know that breed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BURTRAN AND BIMI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The orang-outang in the big iron cage lashed to the sheep-pen began the
+      discussion. The night was stiflingly hot, and as I and Hans Breitmann, the
+      big-beamed German, passed him, dragging our bedding to the fore-peak of
+      the steamer, he roused himself and chattered obscenely. He had been caught
+      somewhere in the Malayan Archipelago, and was going to England to be
+      exhibited at a shilling a head. For four days he had struggled, yelled,
+      and wrenched at the heavy bars of his prison without ceasing, and had
+      nearly slain a lascar, incautious enough to come within reach of the great
+      hairy paw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;It would be well for you, mine friend, if you was a liddle seasick,&rsquo; said
+      Hans Breitmann, pausing by the cage.&rsquo; You haf too much Ego in your
+      Cosmos.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The orang-outang&rsquo;s arm slid out negligently from between the bars. No one
+      would have believed that it would make a sudden snakelike rush at the
+      German&rsquo;s breast. The thin silk of the sleeping-suit tore out; Hans stepped
+      back unconcernedly to pluck a banana from a bunch hanging close to one of
+      the boats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Too much Ego,&rsquo; said he, peeling the fruit and offering it to the caged
+      devil, who was rending the silk to tatters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we laid out our bedding in the bows among the sleeping Lascars, to
+      catch any breeze that the pace of the ship might give us. The sea was like
+      smoky oil, except where it turned to fire under our forefoot and whirled
+      back into the dark in smears of dull flame. There was a thunderstorm some
+      miles away; we could see the glimmer of the lightning. The ship&rsquo;s cow,
+      distressed by the heat and the smell of the ape-beast in the cage, lowed
+      unhappily from time to time in exactly the same key as that in which the
+      look-out man answered the hourly call from the bridge. The trampling tune
+      of the engines was very distinct, and the jarring of the ash-lift, as it
+      was tipped into the sea, hurt the procession of hushed noise. Hans lay
+      down by my side and lighted a good-night cigar. This was naturally the
+      beginning of conversation. He owned a voice as soothing as the wash of the
+      sea, and stores of experiences as vast as the sea itself; for his business
+      in life was to wander up and down the world, collecting orchids and wild
+      beasts and ethnological specimens for German and American dealers. I
+      watched the glowing end of his cigar wax and wane in the gloom, as the
+      sentences rose and fell, till I was nearly asleep. The orang-outang,
+      troubled by some dream of the forests of his freedom, began to yell like a
+      soul in purgatory, and to pluck madly at the bars of the cage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If he was out now dere would not be much of us left hereabout,&rsquo; said Hans
+      lazily. &lsquo;He screams goot. See, now, how I shall tame him when he stops
+      himself.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause in the outcry, and from Hans&rsquo; mouth came an imitation of
+      a snake&rsquo;s hiss, so perfect that I almost sprang to my feet. The sustained
+      murderous sound ran along the deck, and the wrenching at the bars ceased.
+      The orang-outang was quaking in an ecstasy of pure terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dot stopped him,&rsquo; said Hans. &lsquo;I learned dot trick in Mogoung Tanjong when
+      I was collecting liddle monkeys for some peoples in Berlin. Efery one in
+      der world is afraid of der monkeys&mdash;except der snake. So I blay snake
+      against monkey, and he keep quite still. Dere was too much Ego in his
+      Cosmos. Dot is der soul-custom of monkeys. Are you asleep, or will you
+      listen, and I will tell a dale dot you shall not pelief?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There&rsquo;s no tale in the wide world that I can&rsquo;t believe,&rsquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If you haf learned pelief you haf learned somedings. Now I shall try your
+      pelief. Goot! When I was collecting dose liddle monkeys&mdash;it was in
+      &lsquo;79 or &lsquo;80, und I was in der islands of der Archipelago&mdash;over dere in
+      der dark&rsquo;&mdash;he pointed southward to New Guinea generally&mdash;&lsquo;Mein
+      Gott! I would sooner collect life red devils than liddle monkeys. When dey
+      do not bite off your thumbs dey are always dying from nostalgia&mdash;home-sick&mdash;for
+      dey haf der imperfect soul, which is midway arrested in defelopment&mdash;und
+      too much Ego. I was dere for nearly a year, und dere I found a man dot was
+      called Bertran. He was a Frenchman, und he was goot man&mdash;naturalist
+      to his bone. Dey said he was an escaped convict, but he was naturalist,
+      und dot was enough for me. He would call all der life beasts from der
+      forest, und dey would come. I said he was St. Francis of Assizi in a new
+      dransmigration produced, und he laughed und said he haf never preach to
+      der fishes. He sold dem for tripang&mdash;beche-de-mer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Und dot man, who was king of beasts-tamer men, he had in der house shust
+      such anoder as dot devil-animal in der cage&mdash;a great orang-outang dot
+      thought he was a man. He haf found him when he was a child&mdash;der
+      orang-outang&mdash;und he was child und brother und opera comique all
+      round to Betran. He had his room in dot house&mdash;not a cage, but a room&mdash;mit
+      a bed und sheets, und he would go to bed und get up in der morning und
+      smoke his cigar und eat his dinner mit Bertran, und walk mit him hand in
+      hand, which was most horrible. Herr Gott! I haf seen dot beast throw
+      himself back in his chair und laugh when Bertran haf made fun of me. He
+      was NOT a beast; he was a man, und he talked to Bertran, und Bertran
+      comprehend, for I have seen dem. Und he was always politeful to me except
+      when I talk too long to Bertran und say nodings at all to him. Den he
+      would pull me away&mdash;dis great, dark devil, mit his enormous paws&mdash;shust
+      as if I was a child. He was not a beast; he was a man. Dis I saw pefore I
+      know him three months, und Bertran he haf saw the same; and Bimi, der
+      orang-outang, haf understood us both, mit his cigar between his big
+      dog-teeth und der blue gum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I was dere a year, dere und at dere oder islands&mdash;somedimes for
+      monkeys und somedimes for butterflies und orchits. One time Bertran says
+      to me dot he will be married, because he haf found a girl dot was goot,
+      und he enquire if this marrying idee was right. I would not say, pecause
+      it was not me dot was going to be married. Den he go off courting der girl&mdash;she
+      was a half-caste French girl&mdash;very pretty. Haf you got a new light
+      for my cigar? Ouf! Very pretty. Only I say, &ldquo;Haf you thought of Bimi? If
+      he pull me away when I talk to you, what will he do to your wife? He will
+      pull her in pieces. If I was you, Bertran, I would gif my wife for
+      wedding-present der stuff figure of Bimi.&rdquo; By dot time I had learned some
+      dings about der monkey peoples. &ldquo;Shoot him?&rdquo; says Bertran. &ldquo;He is your
+      beast,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;if he was mine he would be shot now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Den I felt at der back of my neck der fingers of Bimi. Mein Gott! I tell
+      you dot he talked through dose fingers. It was der deaf-and-dumb alphabet
+      all gomplete. He slide his hairy arm round my neck, und he tilt up my chin
+      und looked into my face, shust to see if I understood his talk so well as
+      he understood mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;&ldquo;See now dere!&rdquo; says Bertran, &ldquo;und you would shoot him while he is
+      cuddlin&rsquo; you? Dot is der Teuton ingrate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But I knew dot I had made Bimi a life&rsquo;s-enemy, pecause his fingers haf
+      talk murder through the back of my neck. Next dime I see Bimi dere was a
+      pistol in my belt, und he touched it once, und I open der breech to show
+      him it was loaded. He haf seen der liddle monkeys killed in der woods: he
+      understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;So Bertran he was married, and he forgot clean about Bimi dot was
+      skippin&rsquo; alone on der beach mit der half of a human soul in his belly. I
+      was see him skip, und he took a big bough und thrash der sand till he haf
+      made a great hole like a grave. So I says to Bertran, &ldquo;For any sakes, kill
+      Bimi. He is mad mit der jealousy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Bertran haf said &ldquo;He is not mad at all. He haf obey und lofe my wife, und
+      if she speak he will get her slippers,&rdquo; und he looked at his wife agross
+      der room. She was a very pretty girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Den I said to him, &ldquo;Dost dou pretend to know monkeys und dis beast dot is
+      lashing himself mad upon der sands, pecause you do not talk to him? Shoot
+      him when he comes to der house, for he haf der light in his eye dot means
+      killing&mdash;und killing.&rdquo; Bimi come to der house, but dere was no light
+      in his eye. It was all put away, cunning&mdash;so cunning&mdash;und he
+      fetch der girl her slippers, und Bertran turn to me und say, &ldquo;Dost dou
+      know him in nine months more dan I haf known him in twelve years? Shall a
+      child stab his fader? I haf fed him, und he was my child. Do not speak
+      this nonsense to my wife or to me any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Dot next day Bertran came to my house to help me make some wood cases for
+      der specimens, und he tell me dot he haf left his wife a liddle while mit
+      Bimi in der garden. Den I finish my cases quick, und I say, &ldquo;Let us go to
+      your houses und get a trink.&rdquo; He laugh and say, &ldquo;Come along, dry mans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;His wife was not in der garden, und Bimi did not come when Bertran
+      called. Und his wife did not come when he called, und he knocked at her
+      bedroom door und dot was shut tight&mdash;locked. Den he look at me, und
+      his face was white. I broke down der door mit my shoulder, und der thatch
+      of der roof was torn into a great hole, und der sun came in upon der
+      floor. Haf you ever seen paper in der waste-basket, or cards at whist on
+      der table scattered? Dere was no wife dot could be seen. I tell you dere
+      was nodings in dot room dot might be a woman. Dere was stuff on der floor
+      und dot was all. I looked at dese things und I was very sick; but Bertran
+      looked a liddle longer at what was upon the floor und der walls, und der
+      hole in der thatch. Den he pegan to laugh, soft und low, und I knew und
+      thank Gott dot he was mad. He nefer cried, he nefer prayed. He stood all
+      still in der doorway und laugh to himself. Den he said, &ldquo;She haf locked
+      herself in dis room, and he haf torn up der thatch. Fi donc! Dot is so. We
+      will mend der thatch und wait for Bimi. He will surely come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I tell you we waited ten days in dot house, after der room was made into
+      a room again, und once or twice we saw Bimi comin&rsquo; a liddle way from der
+      woods. He was afraid pecause he haf done wrong. Bertran called him when he
+      was come to look on the tenth day, und Bimi come skipping along der beach
+      und making noises, mit a long piece of black hair in his hands. Den
+      Bertran laugh and say, &ldquo;Fi donc!&rdquo; shust as if it was a glass broken upon
+      der table; und Bimi come nearer, und Bertran was honey-sweet in his voice
+      und laughed to himself. For three days he made love to Bimi, pecause Bimi
+      would not let himself be touched. Den Bimi come to dinner at der same
+      table mit us, und the hair on his hands was all black und thick mit-mit
+      what had dried on der hands. Bertran gave him sangaree till Bimi was drunk
+      and stupid, und den&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hans paused to puff at his cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;And then?&rsquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Und den Bertran he kill him mit his hands, und I go for a walk upon der
+      beach. It was Bertran&rsquo;s own piziness. When I come back der ape he was
+      dead, und Bertran he was dying abofe him; but still he laughed liddle und
+      low und he was quite content. Now you know der formula of der strength of
+      der orang-outang&mdash;it is more as seven to one in relation to man. But
+      Bertran, he haf killed Bimi mit sooch dings as Gott gif him. Dot was der
+      miracle.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The infernal clamour in the cage recommenced. &lsquo;Aha! Dot friend of ours haf
+      still too much Ego in his Cosmos. Be quiet, dou!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hans hissed long and venomously. We could hear the great beast quaking in
+      his cage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But why in the world didn&rsquo;t you help Bertran instead of letting him be
+      killed?&rsquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;My friend,&rsquo; said Hans, composedly stretching himself to slumber, &lsquo;it was
+      not nice even to mineself dot I should live after I haf seen dot room mit
+      der hole in der thatch. Und Bertran, he was her husband. Goot-night, und&mdash;sleep
+      well.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      MOTI GUJ&mdash;MUTINEER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Once upon a time there was a coffee-planter in India who wished to clear
+      some forest land for coffee-planting. When he had cut down all the trees
+      and burned the under-wood the stumps still remained. Dynamite is expensive
+      and slow-fire slow. The happy medium for stump-clearing is the lord of all
+      beats, who is the elephant. He will either push the stump out of the
+      ground with his tusks, if he has any, or drag it out with ropes. The
+      planter, therefore, hired elephants by ones and twos and threes, and fell
+      to work. The very best of all the elephants belonged to the very worst of
+      all the drivers or mahouts; and the superior beast&rsquo;s name was Moti Guj. He
+      was the absolute property of his mahout, which would never have been the
+      case under native rule, for Moti Guj was a creature to be desired by
+      kings; and his name, being translated, meant the Pearl Elephant. Because
+      the British Government was in the land, Deesa, the mahout, enjoyed his
+      property undisturbed. He was dissipated. When he had made much money
+      through the strength of his elephant, he would get extremely drunk and
+      give Moti Guj a beating with a tent-peg over the tender nails of the
+      forefeet. Moti Guj never trampled the life out of Deesa on these
+      occasions, for he knew that after the beating was over Deesa would embrace
+      his trunk and weep and call him his love and his life and the liver of his
+      soul, and give him some liquor. Moti Guj was very fond of liquor&mdash;arrack
+      for choice, though he would drink palm-tree toddy if nothing better
+      offered. Then Deesa would go to sleep between Moti Guj&rsquo;s forefeet, and as
+      Deesa generally chose the middle of the public road, and as Moti Guj
+      mounted guard over him and would not permit horse, foot, or cart to pass
+      by, traffic was congested till Deesa saw fit to wake up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no sleeping in the daytime on the planter&rsquo;s clearing: the wages
+      were too high to risk. Deesa sat on Moti Guj&rsquo;s neck and gave him orders,
+      while Moti Guj rooted up the stumps&mdash;for he owned a magnificent pair
+      of tusks; or pulled at the end of a rope&mdash;for he had a magnificent
+      pair of shoulders, while Deesa kicked him behind the ears and said he was
+      the king of elephants. At evening time Moti Guj would wash down his three
+      hundred pounds&rsquo; weight of green food with a quart of arrack, and Deesa
+      would take a share and sing songs between Moti Guj&rsquo;s legs till it was time
+      to go to bed. Once a week Deesa led Moti Guj down to the river, and Moti
+      Guj lay on his side luxuriously in the shallows, while Deesa went over him
+      with a coir-swab and a brick. Moti Guj never mistook the pounding blow of
+      the latter for the smack of the former that warned him to get up and turn
+      over on the other side. Then Deesa would look at his feet, and examine his
+      eyes, and turn up the fringes of his mighty ears in case of sores or
+      budding ophthalmia. After inspection, the two would &lsquo;come up with a song
+      from the sea,&rsquo; Moti Guj all black and shining, waving a torn tree branch
+      twelve feet long in his trunk, and Deesa knotting up his own long wet
+      hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a peaceful, well-paid life till Deesa felt the return of the desire
+      to drink deep. He wished for an orgie. The little draughts that led
+      nowhere were taking the manhood out of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to the planter, and &lsquo;My mother&rsquo;s dead,&rsquo; said he, weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;She died on the last plantation two months ago; and she died once before
+      that when you were working for me last year,&rsquo; said the planter, who knew
+      something of the ways of nativedom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Then it&rsquo;s my aunt, and she was just the same as a mother to me,&rsquo; said
+      Deesa, weeping more than ever. &lsquo;She has left eighteen small children
+      entirely without bread, and it is I who must fill their little stomachs,&rsquo; 
+      said Deesa, beating his head on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Who brought you the news?&rsquo; said the planter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;The post&rsquo; said Deesa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;There hasn&rsquo;t been a post here for the past week. Get back to your lines!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;A devastating sickness has fallen on my village, and all my wives are
+      dying,&rsquo; yelled Deesa, really in tears this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Call Chihun, who comes from Deesa&rsquo;s village,&rsquo; said the planter.&rsquo; Chihun,
+      has this man a wife?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He!&rsquo; said Chihun. &lsquo;No. Not a woman of our village would look at him.
+      They&rsquo;d sooner marry the elephant.&rsquo; Chihun snorted. Deesa wept and
+      bellowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;You will get into a difficulty in a minute,&rsquo; said the planter.&rsquo; Go back
+      to your work!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now I will speak Heaven&rsquo;s truth&rsquo; gulped Deesa, with an inspiration. &lsquo;I
+      haven&rsquo;t been drunk for two months. I desire to depart in order to get
+      properly drunk afar off and distant from this heavenly plantation. Thus I
+      shall cause no trouble.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A flickering smile crossed the planter&rsquo;s face. &lsquo;Deesa,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;you&rsquo;ve
+      spoken the truth, and I&rsquo;d give you leave on the spot if anything could be
+      done with Moti Guj while you&rsquo;re away. You know that he will only obey your
+      orders.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;May the Light of the Heavens live forty thousand years. I shall be absent
+      but ten little days. After that, upon my faith and honour and soul, I
+      return. As to the inconsiderable interval, have I the gracious permission
+      of the Heaven-born to call up Moti Guj?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Permission was granted, and, in answer to Deesa&rsquo;s shrill yell, the lordly
+      tusker swung out of the shade of a clump of trees where he had been
+      squirting dust over himself till his master should return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Light of my heart, Protector of the Drunken, Mountain of Might, give
+      ear,&rsquo; said Deesa, standing in front of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moti Guj gave ear, and saluted with his trunk. &lsquo;I am going away,&rsquo; said
+      Deesa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moti Guj&rsquo;s eyes twinkled. He liked jaunts as well as his master. One could
+      snatch all manner of nice things from the roadside then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;But you, you fubsy old pig, must stay behind and work.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The twinkle died out as Moti Guj tried to look delighted. He hated
+      stump-hauling on the plantation. It hurt his teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;I shall be gone for ten days, O Delectable One. Hold up your near
+      forefoot and I&rsquo;ll impress the fact upon it, warty toad of a dried
+      mud-puddle.&rsquo; Deesa took a tent-peg and banged Moti Guj ten times on the
+      nails. Moti Guj grunted and shuffled from foot to foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Ten days,&rsquo; said Deesa, &lsquo;you must work and haul and root trees as Chihun
+      here shall order you. Take up Chihun and set him on your neck!&rsquo; Moti Guj
+      curled the tip of his trunk, Chihun put his foot there and was swung on to
+      the neck. Deesa handed Chihun the heavy ankus, the iron elephant-goad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chihun thumped Moti Guj&rsquo;s bald head as a paviour thumps a kerbstone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moti Guj trumpeted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Be still, hog of the backwoods. Chihun&rsquo;s your mahout for ten days. And
+      now bid me good-bye, beast after mine own heart. Oh, my lord, my king!
+      Jewel of all created elephants, lily of the herd, preserve your honoured
+      health; be virtuous. Adieu!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moti Guj lapped his trunk round Deesa and swung him into the air twice.
+      That was his way of bidding the man good-bye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;He&rsquo;ll work now,&rsquo; said Dessa to the planter. &lsquo;Have I leave to go?&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The planter nodded, and Deesa dived into the woods. Moti Guj went back to
+      haul stumps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chihun was very kind to him, but he felt unhappy and forlorn
+      notwithstanding. Chihun gave him balls of spices, and tickled him under
+      the chin, and Chihun&rsquo;s little baby cooed to him after work was over, and
+      Chihun&rsquo;s wife called him a darling; but Moti Guj was a bachelor by
+      instinct, as Deesa was. He did not understand the domestic emotions. He
+      wanted the light of his universe back again&mdash;the drink and the
+      drunken slumber, the savage beatings and the savage caresses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      None the less he worked well, and the planter wondered. Deesa had
+      vagabonded along the roads till he met a marriage procession of his own
+      caste and, drinking, dancing, and tippling, had drifted past all knowledge
+      of the lapse of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The morning of the eleventh day dawned, and there returned no Deesa. Moti
+      Guj was loosed from his ropes for the daily stint. He swung clear, looked
+      round, shrugged his shoulders, and began to walk away, as one having
+      business elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hi! ho! Come back, you,&rsquo; shouted Chihun. &lsquo;Come back, and put me on your
+      neck, Misborn Mountain. Return, Splendour of the Hillsides. Adornment of
+      all India, heave to, or I&rsquo;ll bang every toe off your fat fore-foot!&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moti Guj gurgled gently, but did not obey. Chihun ran after him with a
+      rope and caught him up. Moti Guj put his ears forward, and Chihun knew
+      what that meant, though he tried to carry it off with high words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;None of your nonsense with me,&rsquo; said he. &lsquo;To your pickets, Devil-son.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Hrrump!&rsquo; said Moti Guj, and that was all&mdash;that and the forebent
+      ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moti Guj put his hands in his pockets, chewed a branch for a toothpick,
+      and strolled about the clearing, making jest of the other elephants, who
+      had just set to work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chihun reported the state of affairs to the planter, who came out with a
+      dog-whip and cracked it furiously. Moti Guj paid the white man the
+      compliment of charging him nearly a quarter of a mile across the clearing
+      and &lsquo;Hrrumping&rsquo; him into the verandah. Then he stood outside the house
+      chuckling to himself, and shaking all over with the fun of it, as an
+      elephant will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll thrash him,&rsquo; said the planter. &lsquo;He shall have the finest thrashing
+      that ever elephant received. Give Kala Nag and Nazim twelve foot of chain
+      apiece, and tell them to lay on twenty blows.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kala Nag&mdash;which means Black Snake&mdash;and Nazim were two of the
+      biggest elephants in the lines, and one of their duties was to administer
+      the graver punishments, since no man can beat an elephant properly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They took the whipping-chains and rattled them in their trunks as they
+      sidled up to Moti Guj, meaning to hustle him between them. Moti Guj had
+      never, in all his life of thirty-nine years, been whipped, and he did not
+      intend to open new experiences. So he waited, weaving his head from right
+      to left, and measuring the precise spot in Kala Nag&rsquo;s fat side where a
+      blunt tusk would sink deepest. Kala Nag had no tusks; the chain was his
+      badge of authority; but he judged it good to swing wide of Moti Guj at the
+      last minute, and seem to appear as if he had brought out the chain for
+      amusement. Nazim turned round and went home early. He did not feel
+      fighting-fit that morning, and so Moti Guj was left standing alone with
+      his ears cocked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That decided the planter to argue no more, and Moti Guj rolled back to his
+      inspection of the clearing. An elephant who will not work, and is not tied
+      up, is not quite so manageable as an eighty-one ton gun loose in a heavy
+      sea-way. He slapped old friends on the back and asked them if the stumps
+      were coming away easily; he talked nonsense concerning labour and the
+      inalienable rights of elephants to a long &lsquo;nooning&rsquo;; and, wandering to and
+      fro, thoroughly demoralized the garden till sundown, when he returned to
+      his pickets for food.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;If you won&rsquo;t work you shan&rsquo;t eat,&rsquo; said Chihun angrily. &lsquo;You&rsquo;re a wild
+      elephant, and no educated animal at all. Go back to your jungle.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chihun&rsquo;s little brown baby, rolling on the floor of the hut, stretched its
+      fat arms to the huge shadow in the doorway. Moti Guj knew well that it was
+      the dearest thing on earth to Chihun. He swung out his trunk with a
+      fascinating crook at the end, and the brown baby threw itself shouting
+      upon it. Moti Guj made fast and pulled up till the brown baby was crowing
+      in the air twelve feet above his father&rsquo;s head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Great Chief!&rsquo; said Chihun. &lsquo;Flour cakes of the best, twelve in number,
+      two feet across, and soaked in rum shall be yours on the instant, and two
+      hundred pounds&rsquo; weight of fresh-cut young sugar-cane therewith. Deign only
+      to put down safely that insignificant brat who is my heart and my life to
+      me.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moti Guj tucked the brown baby comfortably between his forefeet, that
+      could have knocked into toothpicks all Chihun&rsquo;s hut, and waited for his
+      food. He ate it, and the brown baby crawled away. Moti Guj dozed, and
+      thought of Deesa. One of many mysteries connected with the elephant is
+      that his huge body needs less sleep than anything else that lives. Four or
+      five hours in the night suffice&mdash;two just before midnight, lying down
+      on one side; two just after one o&rsquo;clock, lying down on the other. The rest
+      of the silent hours are filled with eating and fidgeting and long
+      grumbling soliloquies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At midnight, therefore, Moti Guj strode out of his pickets, for a thought
+      had come to him that Deesa might be lying drunk somewhere in the dark
+      forest with none to look after him. So all that night he chased through
+      the undergrowth, blowing and trumpeting and shaking his ears. He went down
+      to the river and blared across the shallows where Deesa used to wash him,
+      but there was no answer. He could not find Deesa, but he disturbed all the
+      elephants in the lines, and nearly frightened to death some gypsies in the
+      woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At dawn Deesa returned to the plantation. He had been very drunk indeed,
+      and he expected to fall into trouble for outstaying his leave. He drew a
+      long breath when he saw that the bungalow and the plantation were still
+      uninjured; for he knew something of Moti Guj&rsquo;s temper; and reported
+      himself with many lies and salaams. Moti Guj had gone to his pickets for
+      breakfast. His night exercise had made him hungry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Call up your beast,&rsquo; said the planter, and Deesa shouted in the
+      mysterious elephant-language, that some mahouts believe came from China at
+      the birth of the world, when elephants and not men were masters. Moti Guj
+      heard and came. Elephants do not gallop. They move from spots at varying
+      rates of speed. If an elephant wished to catch an express train he could
+      not gallop, but he could catch the train. Thus Moti Guj was at the
+      planter&rsquo;s door almost before Chihun noticed that he had left his pickets.
+      He fell into Deesa&rsquo;s arms trumpeting with joy, and the man and beast wept
+      and slobbered over each other, and handled each other from head to heel to
+      see that no harm had befallen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &lsquo;Now we will get to work,&rsquo; said Deesa. &lsquo;Lift me up, my son and my joy.&rsquo; 
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moti Guj swung him up and the two went to the coffee-clearing to look for
+      irksome stumps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The planter was too astonished to be very angry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      L&rsquo;ENVOI
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   My new-cut ashlar takes the light
+     Where crimson-blank the windows flare;
+   By my own work, before the night,
+    Great Overseer, I make my prayer.
+
+   If there be good in that I wrought,
+     Thy hand compelled it, Master, Thine;
+   Where I have failed to meet Thy thought
+     I know, through Thee, the blame is mine.
+
+   One instant&rsquo;s toil to Thee denied
+     Stands all Eternity&rsquo;s offence,
+   Of that I did with Thee to guide
+     To Thee, through Thee, be excellence.
+
+   Who, lest all thought of Eden fade,
+     Bring&rsquo;st Eden to the craftsman&rsquo;s brain,
+   Godlike to muse o&rsquo;er his own trade
+     And Manlike stand with God again.
+
+   The depth and dream of my desire,
+     The bitter paths wherein I stray,
+   Thou knowest Who hast made the Fire,
+     Thou knowest Who hast made the Clay.
+
+   One stone the more swings to her place
+     In that dread Temple of Thy Worth
+   &mdash;It is enough that through Thy grace
+     I saw naught common on Thy earth.
+
+   Take not that vision from my ken;
+     Oh whatso&rsquo;er may spoil or speed,
+   Help me to need no aid from men
+     That I may help such men as need!
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life&rsquo;s Handicap, by Rudyard Kipling
+
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+</pre>
+
+  </body>
+</html>
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