In the Permanent Way

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

II

The moonlit nights which had so often shown two ghost-like figures amid the shadows of Kâli's shrine had given place to dark ones. And now, save for a whisper, there was no sign of life beneath the dim arches, since, as a rule, those two--Ramanund and the woman Fate had sent him--shunned the smoky flare of the lamps, and the half-seen watchfulness of that hideous figure within the closed fretwork doors. Yet sometimes little Anunda would insist on their sitting right in the very threshold of the Mother who, she said, would be angry if they distrusted Her. But at other times she would meet her lover, finger to lip, and lead him hastily to the darkest corner lest he should wake the goddess to direful anger at this desecration of Her holy place. Then again, she would laugh recklessly, hang the chaplets she had brought with her round his neck, cense him with sweet matches, and tell him, truthfully, that he was the only god she feared.

Altogether, as he sat with his arm round her, Ramanund used often to wonder helplessly if it were not all a dream. If so, it was not the calm controlled dream he had cherished as the love story suitable to a professor of mathematics. The heroine of that was to have been wise, perhaps a little sad, and Anunda was--well! it was difficult to say what she was, save absolutely entrancing in her every mood. She was like a firefly on a dark night flashing here and there brilliantly, lucidly; yet giving no clue to her own self except this--that she did not match with the exact sciences. Nor, for the matter of that, with the situation; for there were grave dangers in these nightly assignations.

In addition, their surroundings were anything but cheerful, anything but suitable to dreams. Cholera had the whole city in its grip now, and as those two had whispered of Love and Life many a soul, within earshot of a man's raised voice, had passed out of both into the grave. But Anunda never seemed to think of these things. She was the bravest and yet the timidest child alive; at least so Ramanund used to tell her fondly when she laughed at discovery, and yet trembled at the very idea of marriage.

Honestly, she would have been quite satisfied to have him as her lover only, but for the impossibility of keeping him on those terms. An impossibility because--as she told him with tears--she was only on a visit to the Brahmins downstairs and would have to return homewards when the dark month of Kâli-worship was over. And here followed one of those tales--scarcely credible to English ears--of the cold-blooded profligacy to which widows have to yield as the only means of making their lives bearable. Whereat Ramanund set his teeth and swore he would have revenge some day. Meanwhile it made him all the more determined to save her, and at the same time realise his cherished dream of defying his world by marrying a widow. Yet his boldness only had the effect of making little Anunda more timid and cautious.

"What need for names, my lord," she would say evasively when he pressed her for particulars of her past. "Is it not enough that I am of pure Brahmin race? Before Kâli, my lord need have no fears for that, and I have found favour in my lord's eyes. What, then, are the others to my lord? Let the wicked ones go."

"But if people do such things they should be punished by the law," fumed Ramanund, who, even with her arms round him, and a chaplet of chumpak blossom encircling his neck, could not quite forget that he was a schoolmaster. "You forget that we live in a new age, or perhaps you do not know it. That is one of the things I must teach you, sweetheart, when we are married."

The slender bit of a hand which lay in his gave a queer little clasp of denial, and the close-cropped head on his shoulder stirred in a shake of incredulity.

"We cannot marry. I am a widow. It would be better--so----" and the "so" was made doubly eloquent by the quiver of content with which, yielding to the pressure of his arm, she nestled closer to him. Ramanund's brain whirled, as she had a knack of making it whirl, but he stuck to his point manfully.

"Silly child! Of course we can marry. The law does not forbid it, and that is all we have to think of. It is legal, and no one has a right to interfere. Besides, as I told you, it is quite easy. To-morrow, the darkest night of Kâli's month, is our opportunity. Every one will be wearied out by excitement"--here his face hardened and his voice rose. "Excitement! I tell you it is disgraceful that these sacrifices should be permitted. I admit they are nothing here to what they are down country, but we of the Sacred Land should set an example. The law should interfere to stop such demoralising, brutalising scenes. If we, the educated, were only allowed a voice in such matters, if we were not gagged and blindfolded from engaging in the amelioration of our native land----" he paused and pulled himself up by bending down to kiss her in Western fashion, whereat she hid her face in quick shame, for modesty is as much a matter of custom as anything else. "But I will teach you all this when we are married. To-morrow, then, in the hour before dawn, when the worshippers will be drunk with wine and blood, you will meet me on the landing--not here, child, this will be no sight for you or me then. Ah! it is horrible even to think of it; the blood, the needless, reckless----"

Again he pulled himself up and went on: "I shall have a hired carriage at the end of the alley in which we will drive to the railway station; and then, Anunda, it will only be two tickets--two railway tickets."

"Two railway tickets," echoed Anunda in muffled tones from his shoulder; "I came up in the railway from----" She paused, then added quickly:

"They put me in a cage, and I cried."

"You will not be put in a cage this time," replied Ramanund with a superior smile; "you will come with me, and we will go to Benares."

Her face came up to his this time anxiously. "Benares? Why Benares?"

"Because good and evil come alike from Benares," he answered exultantly. "Mayhap you have been there, Anunda, and seen the evil, the superstition. But it is in Benares also that the true faith lives still. My friend has written to his friends there, and they will receive us with open arms; virtuous women will shelter you till the marriage arrangements are complete."

She shook her head faintly. "We cannot be married--I am a widow," she repeated obstinately; "but I will go with you all the same." Then seeing a certain reproach in his face she frowned. "Dost think I am wicked, my lord? I am not wicked at all; but Mai Kâli gave me a lover, not a husband." Here the frown relaxed into a brilliant smile. "My husband is dead, and I do not care for dead men. I care for you, my lord, my god."

Ramanund's brain whirled again, but he clung to the first part of her speech as a safeguard.

"You are foolish to say we cannot be married. If you read the newspapers you would see that widows--child-widows such as you are, heart's-delight--are married, regularly married by priests of our religion. Those old days of persecution are over, Anunda. The law has legalised such unions, and no one dare say a word."

A comical look came to her brilliant little face. "And my lord's mother--will she say nothing?"

The question pierced even Ramanund's coat of culture. He fully intended telling his revered parent of his approaching marriage, and the thought of doing so, even in the general way which he proposed to himself, was fraught with sheer terror. What then would it be when he had to present her with this daughter-in-law in the concrete? He took refuge from realities by giving a lecture on the individual rights of man, while Anunda played like a child with the chumpak garland with which she had adorned him.

And so with a grey glimmer the rapid dawn began to dispute possession of those dim arches with the smoky flare of the lamps, making those two rise reluctantly and steal with echoing footsteps past the malignant half-seen figure behind the closed fretwork doors. The blood-red glint of those outstretched arms with their suggestion of clasping and closing on all within their reach, must have roused a reminiscence of that past defiance in the young schoolmaster's brain; for he paused before the shrine, his arms still round Anunda, to say triumphantly:

"Good-bye, Kâli mai! Good-bye for ever."

The girl, clinging to him fearfully, looked round into the shadows on either side. "Hush, my lord, who knows whether She really sleeps; and She is in dangerous mood. They say so." Her light foot marked her meaning by a tap on the echomy floor.

"What, reckless one!" said her lover in fond jest. "Hast grown so full of courage that thou wouldst signal them to come? Art not afraid what they might do?"

The panic on her face startled him. "Ramu," she whispered, "for my sake say it once--'Jai Kâli ma!' Say it; it will not hurt."

"Nothing will hurt, Anunda," he answered sharply. "Nothing can hurt."

"Can it not? Sometimes I have fancied, downstairs, that they suspect, Ramu!--if----"

"If they do, what then? To-morrow will see us far away. I tell you the times are changed. Why there is a police station within hail almost. Nay, sweetheart! I will not say it. Come, the dawn breaks."

"For my sake, Ramu, for my sake," she pleaded, even as he drew her with him, reluctant yet willing.

And now on the landing where the brick and the stone met, he paused again, his pulses throbbing with passion, to think that this was their last parting.

"Take heart, beloved," he whispered. "Sure I am Ram and thou art Anunda. Who can hinder God's happiness when He gives it?"[^[20]]

The conceit upon the meaning of their names brought a faint smile to her face, and yet once more she whispered doubtfully: "But this is happiness. Ah, Ramu! it would be better--so----"

"It will be better," he corrected. "It is quite easy, heart's beloved. A hired carriage and two railway tickets, that is all! As for Mai Kâli--I defy her!"

Suddenly through the darkness, which seemed to hold them closer to each other, came a sound making them start asunder. It was the clang of the bell which hung before the shrine.

"Kâli ma! Kâli ma!" Anunda's pitiful little sobbing cry blent with the clang as she fled downstairs, and the mingled sound sent a strange thrill of fear to Ramanund's heart. Kâli herself could not have heard; but if there had been others beside themselves amid the shadows?

He climbed to his lodging on the roof full of vague anxiety and honest relief that the strain and the stress and the passion of the last fortnight was so nearly at an end. It was lucky, he told himself, that it had happened during holiday time, or the exact sciences must have suffered--for of course the idea of Anunda's yielding to them was preposterous; Anunda who had made him forget everything save that he was her lover. He fell asleep thinking of her, and slept even through the wailing which arose ere long in the next lodging. The wailing of a household over an only son reft from it by Kâli ma.

"The wrath of the gods is on the house," said Ramanund's widowed mother when he came down late next morning. "And I wonder not when children disobey their parents. But I will hear thy excuses no longer, Ramo. God knows but my slackness hitherto hath been the cause of that poor boy's death. The holy man downstairs holds that She is angry for our want of faith, and many folks believe him, and vow some sacrifice of purification. So shall I, Ramanund. This very day I will speak to my cousin Gungo of her daughter."

"Thou wilt do nothing of the kind, mother," replied Ramanund quietly. "I have made my own arrangements. I am going to marry a widow, a young and virtuous widow."

He felt dimly surprised at his own courage, perhaps a little elated, seeing how severe the qualms of anticipation had been; so he looked his mother in the face fairly as, startled out of all senses save sight, she stared at him as if he had been a ghost. Then suddenly she threw her arms above her head and beat her palms together fiercely.

"Mai Kâli! Mai Kâli! justly art Thou incensed. Ai! Kirpo! Ai! Bishun! listen, hear. This is the cause. My son, the light of mine eyes, the son of my prayers, has done this thing. He is the cursed one! He would bring a widow to a Brahmin hearth. Jai Kâli ma! Jai Kâli ma!"

"Mother! mother! for God's sake," pleaded Ramanund, aghast at the prospect of having the secret of his heart made bazaar property. "Think; give me time."

"Time!" she echoed wildly. "What time is there when folks die every minute for thy sin? Oh, Raino, son of my prayer, repent--do atonement. Lo! come with me even now and humble thyself before Her feet. I will ask no more but that to-day--no more." She thrust her hands feverishly into his as if to drag him to the shrine. "For my sake, Ramo, for the sake of many a poor mother, remember whose son thou art, and forsake not thy fathers utterly."

"Mother!" he faltered; "mother!" And then silence fell between them. For what words could bridge the gulf which the rapid flood of another nation's learning had torn between these two? A gulf not worn away by generations of culture, but reft recklessly through solid earth. Simply there was nothing he felt to be said, as with a heart aching at the utter impossibility of their ever understanding each other, he did his best to sooth her superstitious fears.

But here he was met by a conviction, an obstinacy which surprised him; for he had been too much occupied during the last fortnight to observe the signs of the times around him, and knew nothing of the religious terror which, carefully fomented by the priests as a means of extortion, had seized upon the neighbourhood. When, however, it did dawn upon him that the general consensus of opinion lay towards a signal expression of the Goddess' anger, which needed signal propitiation by more numerous sacrifices, his indignation knew no bounds, and carried him beyond the personal question into general condemnation, so that, ere many minutes were over, she was attempting to sooth him in her turn. That God was above all was, however, their one bond of unity; in that they both agreed. The truth would be made manifest by the sickness being stayed or increased by the sacrifices. Meanwhile the very thought of these latter, while it roused his anger, horrified his refinement into a certain silence, and kept him prisoner to the roof all day for fear of meeting some struggling victim on its way upstairs to the second story. This did not matter so much, however, since all his arrangements were made, and he had even taken the precaution to secure his railway tickets through a branch of Cook's agency which had been lately opened in the city. He took them out of his pocket sometimes and looked at them, feeling a vague comfort in their smug, civilised appearance. Fate must needs be commonplace and secure, surely, with such vouchers for safe conduct as these!

So the long hot day dragged its slow length along. Every now and again the death-wail, near or distant, would rise in even, discordant rhythm on the hot air; and as the sun set it began, loudly imperative, under his very roof. The only son was being carried out to the burning ghât, and the cries and sobs utterly overwhelmed the shouts and shufflings of feet, the moans and murmur of voices, which all day long had come from the second story. It was a relief that it should be so; that the ear might no longer be all unwillingly on the strain to catch some sound that would tell of a death-struggle in the slaughter-house downstairs. And yet the scene being enacted, perchance, on that three-cornered landing which, for once, visualised itself to Ramanund's clear brain, was not one in which to find much consolation. The crowds of mourners edging the bier down the narrow stairs, the crowd of worshippers dragging the victims up. He wondered which stood aside to give place to the other--the Living or the Dead? The flower-decked corpse or the flower-decked victim? Flowers and blood! Blood and flowers for a Demon of Death who was satisfied with neither! Ramanund, excited, overstrained, wearied by many a sleepless night of happiness, covered his face with his hands to shut out the sight even of the book which he tried to read.

So, as the sun sunk red in the western haze leaving the roof cooler, he fell asleep and slept soundly.

When he woke it was dark, and yet, as he stood up stretching himself, a faint paling of the horizon warned him that there was light beneath it--light that was coming to the world. The moon? Confused as he was by sleep, the thought came to him, only to be set aside by memory. There was no moon; for this was the dark night of Kâli.

The dark night! Then that must be the dawn when he had promised to meet Anunda on the threshold! Was it possible that he had slept so long? Yet not too long, since the dawn had not yet come, and he was ready. Hurriedly feeling for the safety of those precious tickets, and taking up a Gladstone bag which he had already packed, he stole down from the roof cautiously; and from thence to the landing. There was a new odour now blending with the perfumes of the flowers, and the incense, and the women: an odour which sickened him as he stood waiting and watching in the now deserted threshold. It was the odour of the shambles; an odour which seemed also to lie heavy on the breath and shorten it.

So by quick strides the grey glimmer through the stone lattice grew and grew to whiteness. Yet no one came, and there was no light step on the staircase below to tell of a late-comer.

"Anunda! Anunda!" he whispered more than once, even his low tones seeming to stir the heavy atmosphere into waves of sweet sickening perfume. Was it possible that she was waiting for him within--in the old place?

That must be it, surely, or else something had happened. What?

With a beating heart he moved on into the ante-shrine picking his steps in an almost morbid terror of what he might be treading upon.

"Anunda! Anunda!"

There was no answer save, heavier than before, that sort of scented, wave coming back from his own words.

She was not there, and something must have happened.... Not there! Impossible, with those tickets in his pocket, that hired carriage waiting at the end of the alley, that police station round the corner!...

He strode forward with renewed courage, heedless of the damp clamminess at his feet; strode recklessly right into the yellow flare of the lamps. Save for that ghastly crimson upon the floor, the walls, the canopy, the place lay unchanged, and quiet as the grave. No! there was a change; the iron doors were open, and there, upon the low stone-slab before those clutching arms, lay something....

God in Heaven! what was it?

A head--a small dark----

Ramanund's scream caught in the big bell which hung above him, and the last thing he heard, as he fell forward on that crimson floor, was its faint booming echo of his own cry.

* * * * *

When he came to himself again, six weeks had passed by. The heat was over, the cholera had gone, and he lay in one of the new wards of a new hospital whither his anxious friends had had him conveyed when they found how ill he was. The very strangeness of his environment held him silent for the first few moments of consciousness; then with a rush it all came back upon him and, weak as he was, he sat up in bed wildly.

"Anunda! Anunda! My God! the shrine!--the blood!"

"It is a bad sign," remarked the doctor to one of his friends significantly when they had persuaded him to lie down again quietly, more from inability to sit up, than from obedience. "It is a bad sign when the delusions remain after the fever has left the brain. However, it is early days yet, and we must hope for the best."

"You should rid your mind of such things," said the pleader a week or two afterwards when, despite Ramanund's growing strength of body, he still reverted again and again to that terrible dark night of Kâli, imploring them to search out the criminals and have them brought to justice. "There is, pardon me, not a tittle of evidence for truth of your story; but circumstantial proof to contrary as I will state categorically. First, known dislike to and hatred for Kâli and such like, leading to language in my hearing calculated to break the peace. Second, known excitement consequent perhaps on general sickness, stress of examinations before holiday times, and such like, leading to general look of fatigue and absent-mindedness noticeable to friends as myself. Third, known physical horror of blood leading to much recrimination of sacrifices, and such like; even to extent of shutting yourself up all day, as per mother's evidence, from fear of disagreeables. Finally, profound feverish sleep watched by same mother with dubiosity several times, ending in sleep-walk to the reeking shrine where you are found by Brahmins after dawn unconscious. What can be closer chain of convincing proof?"

"We have made every inquiry," said his other friends soothingly, "short of informing the police; and we can find no trace of what you assert. Human sacrifices in times of great sickness may sometimes, doubtless, be on the tapis, but this one we believe is but figment of a still clouded brain. You must have patience. All will come clear in time."

And when he asked for his new friend, the friend in whom he had partly confided his love story, they shook their heads sadly. "He was almost last victim to cholera," they said, "the cause has lost a shining light. All the more need, Ramanund, why thou shouldst shake off these idle fancies, and be our leader to perfect freedom of thought and action."

Perfect freedom of thought and action! Ramanund as he lay slowly recovering of his brain fever wondered if he would ever have the heart to believe in such a thing again. Wondered if he would ever again dare to call himself a representative of India--that India which had killed Anunda. For that the horrible sight he had seen on the slab of stone beneath Kâli's clutching arms was no dream or delusion, but a reality, he never for an instant doubted. Why they had done her to death, was the only uncertainty which tortured him as he lay hopelessly silent; silent because there was no use in words when none believed them. Had it been simply a religious sacrifice to stay the plague--a sacrifice known to thousands who would guard the secret as a divine obligation? The choice falling, naturally enough, on one who was a stranger, and utterly helpless in the hands of her priestly relations? Or was it merely the jôgi's revenge for his challenge. Or was it jealousy. Had they discovered the intrigue, and was the man who had drawn the trident of Siva on his forehead also the man of whom poor little Anunda had spoken with such terror? Yet what did it matter, since she was dead? What did anything matter beside the memory of that piteous whisper, "Oh Ramu! it would be better--so----"

Ah! why had he tried to interfere with the old ways?--why had he sought for more--why had he not let her be happy while she could, in her own way?

When he left the hospital he found his mother installed in a new lodging. It would not be good for him, his friends had said, to return to the old environment while his mind was still clouded by delusions, so she had performed the utmost act of self-denial of which an Hindu woman is capable, and removed herself and her belongings from the house where she had lived her life. But she would have done anything for Ramanund at any time; how much more so now, when the Goddess had shown that She still held him as her faithful servant by signs and wonders. Had She not drawn him in his sleep to Her very feet, on Her dark night?--he who would never cross Her threshold! And had he not been found there prostrate amid the blood of sacrifices, with one of Her garlands round his neck?--he who would never wear a flower!

"A garland," faltered Ramanund when she told him this exultantly. Ay! a garland which she would cherish as her dearest possession since the Goddess Herself must have thrown it around him--a garland which she should show him--if--if he ever again talked foolishness as he had talked that day when he had frightened her so, not knowing that he was already in a fever.

"Show it me now, mother," he said quietly.

So she showed it to him. The chumpak blossoms were but yellow shreds upon a string, scentless, unrecognisable; here and there clogged black with the blood of sacrifice which had stained them as he fell.

"Take it away!" he cried fiercely, thrusting it from him. "Take it away! Oh! curses on the cruelty--curses on the----"

"Jai Kâli ma!" interrupted his mother as she laid the relic back in the little casket whence she had taken it. "Jai Kâli ma! for She stayed the sickness."

Ramanund looked at her in dull dazed wonder. But it was true what she said. The cholera had slackened from that very time when he had been found lying at the Goddess' feet.

[GLORY-OF-WOMAN]

This is the story of a backwater; one of those still nooks sheltered by sedges whither the sere and yellow leaves drift and rest, while the current beyond slips by swift as ever. Why this particular backwater should have called itself a Technical School of Art-needlework has nothing to do with the story. Briefly it was a sort of almshouse where twelve old Mohammedan ladies drew a poor monthly pittance of some few rupees, and sat contentedly enough year after year twining gold thread on to fine net. What became of the work when it was done has also nothing to do with the story. Perhaps it was sold to eke out the funds of a charity which did its fair share of solacing sorrow in keeping twelve pairs of small, soft, high-bred hands from the quern-handle; that last resource of the poor in India now, as it was when the Great Mogul refused to allow the importation of Western machinery on the ground that God's best gift to the poor was the millstone about their necks.

It was in this odd little courtyard, packed away decorously in the very heart of the loose-living, gambling, gold-worker's quarter, that Glory-of-Woman found shelter after many years of patient, peaceful privation; for Fakr-un-nissa (that was how her name ran in the soft courtly tongue of the most brutal of cities) was a Syyedani; in other words, of the poorest and proudest, too poor to bring a dowry to a husband of her own rank, too generous to take one without it, too proud to stoop to a partner beneath her--or rather too gentle, too conservative. There are hundreds such women in Delhi, and Fakr-un-nissa had been more fortunate than most, seeing that being learned in the Koran she had kept body and soul together by recitations at fast and festival in the zenanas, and so been spared hard labour. Perhaps it was this which made her look younger than her fifty and odd years; at all events there was scarcely a wrinkle on her small oval face, and her tall, slender figure showed no sign of age.

She was the youngest of the scholars, and every evening when the gold thread and the filmy net had been locked away in a queer little carven coffer, she was the last to slip her small feet into one of those twelve pairs of curly shoes which all day long had been ranged against the slip of wall doing duty as a screen at the door, and the last to use the rickety dhooli which the charity provided for the modest conveyance of the fair ones to their homes. It provided a chaperone too, in the shape of a big lump of a girl about twenty, who sat on the steps all day chattering to the passers-by, giggling at their jokes, and chewing pân. It was a queer arrangement seeing that Khâdjiya Khânum, the eldest of the scholars, was past eighty; but then age had nothing to do with the fact that she was a Syyedani, and Juntu only a gad-about. There was another pair of shoes, however, placed in a corner apart from the rest; for it had come to be a recognised custom in the backwater that there should always be a thirteenth pair of feet ready to slip into any vacancy made by the sure decay which comes alike to rest as to unrest. And so, five years before, when Fakr-un-nissa had stepped into the last pair of shoes left by a deserted wife who had gone down into the grave leaving one forlorn daughter behind her, the old ladies had cast about to choose a suitable aspirant. Not that they really had the right to appoint any one, but because experience showed them that the claims of a gratuitous worker were seldom overlooked when opportunity came for urging them. This time the choice fell, naturally enough, on the daughter of the dead scholar. Just in her teens, she was hopelessly alone in the world; for her mother, after estranging her own people by a marriage with a Mohammedan Râjpoot, had quarrelled with her husband's family; but not before little Yâsmin had been married, and had, according to the Rânghar custom, become a widow for life by the death of her childish bridegroom. For race is stronger than religion and the old Râjpoot ideas have survived conversion. So Yâsmin in her turn waited for a vacancy in the shoes; or rather Noorbânu waited, since the old ladies would have nothing to do with the flowery, half-heathen name, and set themselves diligently to transform her into a "Lady-of-light." It was not altogether a successful attempt, for the girl's wild Râjpoot blood waxed rebellious sometimes; but as a rule Fakr-un-nissa's soft voice with its polished periods and careful intonation would bring her back to obedience.

"Lo! thou shouldst mind me, Heart's Delight," Glory-of-Woman would say with a smile. "Do I not stand in Thy mother's shoes? Thou art young now, Yâsmina; so was I once; yet thou wilt be as I am, some day."

And Yâsmina would make a face. "Well! that is better than being like Khâdjiya Khânum, or Maimâna Begum with her little eyes."

So the years passed bringing no blank to the roll of high-sounding names, no break in the row of shoes, no vacant place in the semicircle of old women which chased the sunshine round the court during the cold months, and the shade during the hot ones. For they felt the stress of the seasons in their old bones. Otherwise winter and summer were alike to them; as was the green leaf and the sere since they had never seen either. But Yâsmin felt the spring-time in her blood and began to weary of being at every one's beck and call.

"She is a Rânghar! Bury a dog's tail for twelve years, and it will still be crooked," said Maimâna Begum. She was full to the brim of proverbial wisdom, and had a little clique of her own in that semicircle of flimsy net, glittering gold thread, and withered hands. Mumtâza Mahul's head, and those of half a dozen Lights, or Desires, or Ornaments of the Palace, the World, or, of Woman, wagged in assent to her words. It was easy to change a name but not a nature; and had every one heard that some one had seen Noor-Bânu talking to a woman with whom she ought not to have been talking?

Glory-of-Woman's thin face grew eager. "'Tis a cousin, Mai Khâdjiya. The girl told me of it and I have inquired. A cousin of the father's, married--yea! married, indeed, to a trooper, like he is, serving the Sirkar somewhere. Such folks lose hold on old ways, yet mean no harm. We must not judge them as ourselves."

"Wâh, Fakr-un-nissa! Wouldst say the Devil meant no harm next. Thy heart spoils thy faith. I marvel at thee, thou who dost fast and pray more than is needful."

The ring of bitterness in old Khâdjiya's tones was explained by the fact that it was nigh the end of the first ten days' fast of Mohurrum-tide and she had not chosen that any, despite her age, should exceed her in the observance thereof. And Fakr-un-nissa's zeal had raised the price of self-complacency beyond reason.

"More than is needful!" echoed Maimâna Begum with a like tartness. "Art not rash to say so, Mai Khâdjiya? Sure the virtue of some folk is situate as the tongue among thirty-two teeth. It needs care to preserve itself."

The white shrouded figures chuckled. They were not really ill-humoured, or evilly disposed towards Glory-of-Woman; it was simply that her excellent example had made all their old bodies rather fretful. "And as for the girl," continued the acrid voice, "she is a cat on the wall. God only knows on which side she will jump down."

Fakr-un-nissa's eyes flashed, and her fingers entangled themselves in the gold thread. "Then, for sure, it is our part to make the right side more pleasant than the wrong; not to be always finding fault because she is young. Yea, 'tis so; for look you, it seems ever to me that we are to blame--that we are in her place. Five long years is it since she hath waited."

Khâdjiya Khânum's hands dropped from her work and flew out in vehement crackings of every joint against ill-luck. "Tobah, Tobah! (For shame, for shame!) Mistress Fakr-un-nissa. Die if thou wilt to make room for the hussy. As for me, I wait on the will of the Lord."

A murmur of assent ran through the semicircle once more.

"Nay, nay! I meant not so," protested Fakr-un-nissa hastily. "Lo, death comes to all, and goeth not by age. I meant but this,--sure 'tis hard to put it to words--that the old should make room for the young, or make the waiting bearable."

"Tchu! If the heart be set on a frog, what doth it care for a fairy?" insisted the hoarder of other folk's wisdom. "Dost mean to hint that in this place the girl hath not had virtue set constantly before her, ay, and preached too? It seems to me that we have it almost to satiety. Is it not so, sisters?"

Once more the chuckle ran round the circle, and Glory-of-Woman sat still more upright. "Amongst thy other proverbs, canst not recollect the one which says, 'Between the two priests the fowl killed for dinner became unlawful to eat'?" Then the temper died from her face and she went on in a softer tone: "I find no harm in the girl, and what wrong hath she done this day more than another?"

"No more, for sure," put in Mumtâza Mahul, "since she is late at work every day; that is no new thing, is it, sisters?"

"Yet she finishes her task as quick as any,--as I, anyhow," persisted Yâsmina's advocate, who having come to the gold thread late in life found it apt to knot.

"Wâh-illâh! What a fuss about a wilful girl," put in a new voice. "She is no worse than others, and needs restraint no more. She hath grown saucy since we gave her money instead of broken victuals. Put her back to the old footing, say I, when she had nought of her own."

Khâdjiya Khânum's veiled head nodded sagely. "Thou hast it, Hameda-bânu. Lo, I, for one, know not why the girl was ever given such freedom, save indeed that it tallies with Fakr-un-nissa's indecent hastening of Providence. I am for the old plan."

"And I,"--"And I,"--"And I,"--assented a chorus of set, certain voices.

Glory-of-Woman's fingers flew faster. "Then will ye drive the girl from us altogether. I know it, I feel it. Yea, I, Fakr-un-nissa, singer of the Koran till my tone failed me, remember it;--those days when some other song seemed better and one must needs sing it! Think, sisters, remember! The eyes of the body are two; the eye of the soul is one." The work had dropped from her hands which were stretched out in eager entreaty. "'Tis but patience for a year or two. Then, since there is no harm in her, she will settle down as--as I--as I did. 'Tis but the youth in her veins, and God knows that is soon past for a woman; yet one's glory remains." Her voice regaining some of its past strength, recollecting all its old skill under the stimulus of both memory and hope, filled the little courtyard,--and availed nothing.

Half an hour afterwards, struck dumb, as sensitive natures are, by the stress of passion around her, she was watching with stupid inaction Yâsmin's final vengeance on that decorous row of curly shoes behind the screening wall. To right and left, to this corner and that, they sped before the reckless young feet while the reckless young voice rose in mockery. "Lo, I wait no longer for old women's shoes. I will have new ones of my own. Khujju, and Mujju, and the rest of ye can sort them for yourselves, or go down to the grave one foot at a time as seemeth to ye best. I care not; I wait no longer."

One pair flew full in Maimâna Begum's face, and then came a pause before the last pair, an odd sound between a laugh and a sob, a sudden sweep of the net veil over the shoulder, and a half-defiant nod to the old white fingers. "These shall stay, because they were my mother's, and because----"

The next moment she was gone, leaving the twelve old women sitting in the sunshine, breathless, silenced by her youth, her unreason, her fire. Even Fakr-un-nissa had no word of defence. But after a time, when Juntu, full of smiles and winks, came from the steps to aid the cackle which arose as the silencing effect of the shock wore away, Glory-of-Woman began to feel the old pain at her heart once more. "Because they were my mother's, and because----" She could fill up the pause in two ways: "Because they are yours, and you have been kinder than the others"; "Because they should by rights be mine." Both answers were disturbing. She leaned back against the wall, pressing her thin hands to the thin breast which had known so little of a woman's life, save only that craving for another song.

"Towards the bazaar, sayest thou?" came Khâdjiya's wrathfully satisfied voice. "To the bazaar, and in Mohurrum-tide, too! That means the worst, and we were none too soon in getting rid of her, Heaven be praised!"

"The cousin lives close to the Chowk," put in Fakr-un-nissa faintly. "Mayhap the girl goes there."

Juntu laughed. "The cousin is a bad one; no better."

Whereat Maimâna Begum remarked sagely that whether the knife fell on the melon or the melon on the knife was all one; the melon suffered. Yâsmin's reputation was hopelessly hurt by that going bazaar-wards.

"For a Syyedâni perchance," retorted Juntu with some acerbity. "Yet this I say: there is no harm in the girl though she be younger than some folk who need dhoolis to their virtue." She hated the proverb-monger who never from year's end to year's end gave her a cowrie or so much even as a word of thanks. And then being Mohurrum-tide, when in all pious houses the Assemblage of Mourning must be held, the work was folded away in the old carved coffer, the desecrated shoes sorted into pairs, and one by one the old ladies were smuggled into the curtained dhooli and trotted away to their homes, with buxom Juntu chattering and laughing alongside.

"Dost recite the Mursiâh[^[21]] at the Nawâb's this year, Fakr-un-nissa?" asked Humeda-bânu, wrapping herself carefully in a thick white veil.

Glory-of-Woman shook her head. "They have a new one. Last Mohurrum I grew hoarse. Perhaps 'twas the fever; it had held me for days."

"Fever!" echoed the other. "Say rather the fasting. Thou hast a dead look in the face even now, and as for me, God knows whether I feel hungry or sick. Thou shouldst remember that thou art growing old."

"I do remember it," said Fakr-un-nissa half to herself.

In truth she did. As she sate awaiting her turn for the curtained dhooli she felt very cold, very helpless. Yâsmin, whom she had loved, had broken loose from all tradition and gone bazaar-wards. The very idea was terrifying. The brain behind that high narrow forehead of Fakr-un-nissa's could barely grasp the situation. For fifty years it had circled round the one central duty of pious seclusion, and Yâsmin's choice seemed almost incredible. For there was no harm in the girl; she had always been responsive to kind words. If she, Fakr-un-nissa, could only have had speech with her alone! The thought made her restless and sent her to the door, to peep, closely veiled, round the screen and watch the dhooli containing Humeda-bânu disappear from the steps. Yet she had done her best, giving the girl in secret what she could spare of the pittance; and this year there would be no recitation-fees to eke out the remainder. Perhaps the others were right, and this generosity of hers had fostered the girl's independence. Khâdjiya and Maimâna would say so, for sure, if they knew. Then was she to blame?--she who loved the girl, who had taken the mother's shoes. The mere possibility was a terror to the conscience where the womanhood that was in her had found its only chance of blossoming. It is the same East and West. Glory-of-Woman, as she stood, tall and thin, leaning against the dull brick screen, had as much claim to saintship as any in the canonised calendar; and wherefore not? Had not she spent nearly fifty years in learning the lives of the saints by heart, and chanting the dirge of martyred virtue? It came back to her dimly as she stood there. The sombre dresses of the mourning assemblage, the glittering Imâm-bârah[^[22]] dressed with such care by reverent hands; and then her own voice above the answering chorus of moaning and sobbing. She had power then, she was helpless now; helpless and old, yet not old enough apparently to die; though when all was said and done, it was not her turn, but Khâdjiya Khânum's. Yet she had taken the mother's shoes, and had sat there silent when perhaps a word from her might have saved that awful journey to the bazaar. Then the thought came to her that the saints were never helpless,--not even the blessed Fâtima herself--Glory-of-Woman had fasted and prayed for long days and nights; she felt miserably ill in soul and body, in the very mood therefore to slip her feet into the pair of shoes Yâsmin's recklessness had spared, and, almost as recklessly, pass without a pause to the doorstep. The next instant she was back again in shelter, breathless, palpitating. Yet might it not be the voice of God? And no one would know; she might be back ere Juntu returned, and even if she were not, the gad-about had a kind heart. Besides, another rupee from the pittance would silence her in any case.

East and West nothing is impossible to such religious exaltation as changed the slow current in Fakr-un-nissa's veins to a stream of fire scorching and shrivelling every thought save the one,--that she stood in the mother's shoes yet had said no word. She wrapped her thick shroud of a veil tighter round her and stepped deliberately into the alley. The glory of woman, its motherhood, was hers indeed in that instant, though she did not realise it; though the thin breast heaving with her quickened breath had never felt the lip-clasp of a child.

It was a long, low room, opening by arches to a wooden balcony without, into which, half-fainting with pure physical fatigue, she stumbled after Heaven knows what trivial--yet to her sheer ignorance almost awful--difficulties by the way. Yet she was not afraid; indeed as she had passed through the crowded streets it had been wonder which had come to her. That this should be a time of fasting and mourning, and yet none seem to care! Had the world no time to bewail dead virtue? Had it forgotten the Faith? And this, too, was no mourning assemblage, though in some of the faces of the lounging men she recognised the features of her own race, the race of the Prophet himself. Had they forgotten also? She shrank back an instant, until--beside a flaunting woman whose profession was writ large enough for even fifty years of pious seclusion to decipher it instinctively--she saw a slender figure crouching half-sullen, half-defiant. The face was still veiled, but she knew it.

"Yâsmin!" she cried breathlessly. "Come back! Come back to us!"

The girl sprang to her feet with a fierce cry, and was beside the tall white form in an instant, screening it with swift arms that strove to force it back. "Go! I say go! Why art thou here? Thou shouldst not have come hither! Go! See, I will come also if thou wilt not go without me."

"Not so fast, my pigeon," tittered the flaunting woman, answering the half-surprised looks of the men with nods and winks. "Thou art in my charge now, since thou hast left the saints. Who is this woman? Let her speak her claim."

Yâsmin's hand flew to Fakr-un-nissa's mouth. "Not a word, Amma,[^[23]] not a word. See, I will go; quick, let us go."

The surprise had lessened, and a man's voice rose with a laugh. "What, let thee go for nothing, with an unknown? Nay, Mistress Chambelé, that were unwise. She is thy cousin; the claims of kinship must be considered."

"The claims of numbers, too," put in another. "Let the veiled one unveil since she has come among us."

"Nay, brothers," interrupted a third hastily in a lower voice, "mayhap she is one of the saintly women, and----"

A laugh checked the speech. "So much the better. What doth a saint here?"

Some one had barred the doorway with thrust-out arm, and half a dozen others with jeering faces lounged against the wall crying languidly, "Unveil, unveil." But Yâsmin's arms clasped close. "I will go," she panted. "I will go with her. She,--she is my mother."

Chambelé's titter rang high and shrill. "Wâh! That is a tale! See you, friends; her mother hath been dead five years. Enough of this, little fool! Thou hast made thy choice already; there is no place for thee yonder with the saints."

"She hath her mother's," cried Fakr-un-nissa, freeing herself from Yâsmin's hold with new strength, born of the girl's words. "Lo, she speaks truth, my sister! I stand in her mother's shoes. Let her go in peace, and she shall have them surely."

Something in the urbane polish of her speech awoke memory in the men, and one, older than the rest, said with a frown, "Yea, 'tis enough, Chambelé; let the woman go, and the child also if she wish it. She will come back another day if she be of this sort; if not, there are others."

"But not without a ransom," interrupted one with an evil face and evil eyes which had seen enough of Yâsmin's figure beneath the veil to think her presence gave unwonted piquancy to the business.

"Yea, a ransom, a ransom for coming here, and spoiling pleasure! Let the saint pay the price of the sinner; unveil! unveil!" cried half a dozen jeering voices.

The sunshine without streamed through the arches in broad bands upon the floor, but Fakr-un-nissa's tall muffled figure stood in shadow by the door. A fighting quail was calling boastfully from a shrouded cage over the way; the cries of the noisy bazaar floated up to the balcony, a harmonious background to Chambelé's noisier laugh. Then, suddenly, came a step forward into the sunlight, and the heavy white veil fell in billowy curves like a cloud about Fakr-un-nissa's feet. For the first time in her life Glory-of-Woman stood unsheltered from the gaze of men's eyes. And those eyes saw something worth seeing, despite her fifty and odd years: a woman beautiful in her age, graceful as ever in the sweeping white draperies of the graceful Delhi dress; but a woman forgetful utterly of the womanhood, even of the motherhood in her, as with one swift outspreading of the arms she broke into the opening lines of the Mursiâh, that dirge of martyred virtue which is as closely interwoven with all that is best in the life of a Mussulman as "Hark, the herald angels sing!" is with the Christian's tender memories of home; a dirge sacred to the day and the hour; a dirge forgotten by this new world. Fakr-un-nissa remembered nothing else. Many and many a time listless indifferent hearts had responded to the fervour of her declamation; women's hearts, it is true, and that was a woman's derisive laugh! But above it rose a man's swift curse commanding silence for all save that skilful voice; and not silence only--for that was a sigh! So the cadences rang truer and stronger out into the sunlight making the passers-by pause to listen.

"An Assemblage at Chambelé's house!" sneered some one. "That is a sinner's ransom indeed."

But Glory-of-Woman heard nothing save those responsive sighs, saw nothing but the orthodox beatings of the breast with which one or two of the elder men gave in to custom.

The last ameen left her still blind, still deaf. Then came a laugh. "With half her years I'd take the saint before the sinner," said the man with the evil face.

Glory-of-Woman stood for a second as if turned to stone. Then she threw up her hands with a cry and sank in a huddled heap upon the white curves of her fallen veil.

"God smite your soul to eternal damnation!" cried a man's voice.

But Glory-of-Woman was to hear no man's voice again. She had kept her promise, and the last pair of curly shoes behind the screen was vacant. In due time Noor-bânu slipped into them, for the eleven old ladies and Juntu made peace with her for the sake of Fakr-un-nissa.

"Lo! the ways of Providence are not our ways," said Khâdjiya Khânum piously over her horn spectacles. "And she was ever in a hurry. For my part I wait on the will of the Lord."

Maimâna Begum cackled under her breath. "Hair-oil is wasted on a bald head," she said in a whisper to Humeda-bânu. "Her time is near, hurry or no hurry. Who comes, must go."

[AT THE GREAT DURBAR]

He sat, cuddled up in a cream-coloured cotton blanket, edged with crimson, shoo-ing away the brown rats from the curved cobs of Indian corn. The soft mists of a northern November hung over the landscape in varying density. Heavy over the dank sugar-cane patch by the well, lighter on the green fodder crop, dewy among the moisture-loving leaves of the sprouting vetches, and here, in the field of ripening maize, scarcely visible between the sparse stems. He was an old man with a thin white beard tucked away behind his ears and a kindly look on his high-featured face. Every now and then he took up a little clod of earth from the dry, crumbling ridge of soil which divided the field he was watching from the surrounding ones, and threw it carefully among the maize, saying in a gentle, grumbling voice, "Ari, brothers! Does no shame come to you?"

It had no perceptible effect on the rats, who, owing to the extreme sparsity of the crop, could be seen every here and there deliberately climbing up a swaying stem to seat themselves on a cob and begin breakfast systematically. In the calm, windless silence you could almost hear the rustle and rasp of their sharp white teeth. But Nânuk Singh--as might have been predicted from his seventy and odd years of life in the fields--was somewhat hard of hearing; somewhat near of vision also. For when so many years have been spent watching the present furrow cling to the curves of the past one, in sure and certain hope of similar furrows in the future, or in listening to the endless lamentations of a water-wheel ceasing not by day or night to proclaim an eternity of toil and harvest, both eyes and ears are apt to grow dull towards new sights and sounds. Nânuk's had, at any rate, even though the old familiar ones no longer occupied them; fate having decreed that in his old age the peasant farmer should have neither furrows nor water-wheel of his own. How this had come about needs a whole statute book of Western laws to understand. Nânuk himself never attempted the task. To him it was, briefly, the will of God. His district-officer, however, when the case fell under his notice by reason of the transfer of the land, thought differently; and having a few minutes' leisure from office drudgery to spare for really important work, made yet one more representation regarding the scandalous rates of interest, the cruelty of time-foreclosures, and the general injustice of applying the maxim "caveat emptor" to transactions in which one party is practically a child and the other a Jew. A futile representation, of course, since the Government, so experts affirm, is not strong enough to attack the Frankenstein monster of Law which it has created.

In a measure, nevertheless, old Nânuk was right in attributing his ruin to fate, since it had followed naturally from the death of his three sons. One, the eldest, dying of malarial fever in the prime of life, leaving, alas! a young family of girls. Another, the youngest, swept off by cholera just as his hand began to close firmly round his dead brother's plough-handle. The third, when on the eve of getting his discharge from a frontier regiment in order to take his brothers' places by his father's side, being struck down ingloriously in one of the petty border raids of which our Punjab peasant soldiers have always to bear the brunt.

And this loss of able hands led inevitably to the loss of ill-kept oxen; while from the lack of well-cattle came that gradual shrinkage of the irrigated area where some crop is certain--rain or no rain--which means a less gradual sinking further and further into debt; until, as had been the case with Nânuk, the owner loses all right in the land save the doubtful one of toil. Even this had passed from the old man's slackening hold after his wife died, and the daughters-in-law, with starvation staring them in the face, had drifted away back to their own homes, leaving him to live as best he could on the acre or so of unirrigated land lent to him out of sheer charity. For public opinion still has some power over the usurer in a village of strong men, and all his fellows respected old Nânuk, who stood six feet two, barefoot, and had tales to tell of the gentle art of singlestick as applied to the equitable settling of accounts in the old days, before Western laws had taken the job out of the creditor's hands.

Strangely enough, however, Nânuk, as he sat coping inadequately with the brown rats, felt less resentment against the usurer who had robbed him, or the law which permitted the robbery, than he did against the weather. The former had made no pretence of favouring him; the latter, year after year, had tempted his farmer's soul to lavish sowings by copious rain at seed time, and thereinafter withheld the moisture necessary for a bare return of measure for measure. Briefly, he had gambled in grain, and he had lost. Lost hopelessly in this last harvest of maize, since, when the sound cobs should be separated from those which the wanton teeth had spoilt, they would not yield the amount of Government revenue which the old man had to pay; certainly would not do so if the cobs became scarcer day by day and the rats more throng. In fact, the necessity for action ere matters grew worse appeared to strike Nânuk, making him, after a time, draw out a small sickle and begin to harvest the remaining stalks one by one.

"Bullah! neighbour Nânuk," cried the new man who, better equipped for the tasks with sons and cattle, was driving the wheel and curving the furrows for the usurer, "I would, for thy sake, the task was harder. And as if the crop were not poor enough, the dissolute rats must needs play the wanton with the half of it. But, 'tis the same all over the land, and between them and the revenue we poor folk of the plough will have no share."

Nânuk stood looking meditatively at a very fine cob out of which a pair of sharp white teeth were taking a last nibble, while a pair of wicked black eyes watched him fearlessly.

"They are God's creatures also, and have a right to live on the soil as we others," he said slowly.

"Then they should pay the revenue," grumbled Dittu. "Why should you, who have no crop whereon to pay? Ai teri!" he added sharply to one of the oxen he was driving to their work, "sleepest thou? and the well silent! Dost want to bring me to Nânuk's plight?"

So with a prod of the goad, he passed on, leaving old Nânuk still looking at the brown rat on the corncob. Why, indeed, should he have to pay for God's other creatures? In the old days justice would have been meted out to such as he. The crop would have been divided into heaps, so many for the owner of the soil, so many for the tiller, so many for the State. Then if Puramêshwar[^[24]] sent rats instead of rain the heaps were smaller. That was all. And if the equity of this had been patent to those older rulers, who had scarcely given a thought in other ways to the good of their subjects, why should it not be patent to those new ones who, God keep them! gave justice without respect of persons, so far as in them lay? There must be a mistake somewhere; the facts could not have been properly placed before the Lât-sahib--that vice-regent of God upon earth. This conviction came home slowly to the old man as he finished his harvesting; slowly but surely, so that when he had spread the cobs out to dry on his cotton blanket he walked over to the well, and, between the whiffs of the general pipe, hinted that he thought of laying the matter before the authorities. "I will take the produce of my field," he said, "in my hand--it will not be more than five seers when the good is sifted from the bad--and I will say to the Lât-sahib, 'This is because Puramêshwar sent rats instead of rain. Take your share, and ask no more.'"

Dittu, the new man, laughed scornfully. "Better take a rat also, since all parties to the case must be present by the law."

He intended it as a joke, but Nânuk took it quite seriously. "That is true," he assented; "I will take a rat also; then there can be no mistake."

That evening, when he sat with his cronies on the mud daïs beneath the peepul tree, where he was welcome to a pull out of anybody's pipe, he spoke again of his intention. The younger folk laughed, but the seniors thought that it could at least do no harm. Nânuk's case was a hard one; it was quite clear he could not pay the revenue, and it was better to go to the fountain-head in such matters, since underlings could do nothing but take fees. So, while the stars came out in the evening sky, they sat and told tales of Nausherwân, and many another worthy whose memory lingers in native minds by reason of perfectly irrational acts of despotic clemency, such as even Socialists do not dream of now-a-days. The corn-cobs then being harvested, dried, and shelled, he set to work with the utmost solemnity on rat-traps; but here at once he realised his mistake. By harvesting his own crop he had driven the little raiders further afield; and though he could easily have caught one in his neighbour's patch, a desire to deal perfectly fair with those who, in his experience, dealt perfectly fairly with facts, made him stipulate for a rat out of his own.

This necessitated the baiting of his property with some of the corn in order to attract the wanton creatures again; and even then, though he sat for hours holding the cord by which an earthen dish was to be made to fall upon the unsuspecting intruder, he was unsuccessful.

"Trra! not catch rats!" cried a most venerable old pantaloon to whom he applied for advice, remembering him in his boyhood as one almost godlike in his supreme knowledge of such things. "Wait awhile; 'tis a trick--a mere trick--but when you once know it you cannot forget it." All that day the old men sat together in the sunshine, profoundly busy, and towards evening they went forth together to the field, chattering and laughing like a couple of schoolboys. It was long after dusk ere they returned, full of mutual recrimination. The one had coughed too much, the other had wheezed perpetually; there was no catching of rats possible under such circumstances. Then the old pantaloon went a-hunting by himself, full of confidence, only to return dejected; then Nânuk, full of determination, sat up all one moonlight night in the field where--now that he had no crop to benefit by it--the night-dew gathered heavily on every leaf and blade, on Nânuk, too, as he sat crouched up in his cotton blanket, thinking of what he should say to the Lât-sahib when the rat was caught, which it was not. Finally, with angry misgivings as to the capabilities of the present generation of boys, the old pantaloon suggested the offering of one whole anna for the first rat captured in Nânuk's maize-field. Before the day was over a score or two of the village lads, long-limbed, bright-eyed, were vociferously maintaining the prior claims of as many brown rats, safely confined in little earthen pipkins with a rag tied round the top. They stood in a row, like an offering of sweets to some deity, round Nânuk's bed, for--as was not to be wondered at after his night-watch--he was down with an attack of the chills. That was nothing new. He had had them every autumn since he was born; but he was not accustomed to be surrounded on such occasions by brown rats appealing to him for justice. It ended in his, with feverish hands, giving one anna to each of the boys, and reserving his selection until he was in a more judicial frame of mind. Still, it would not do to starve God's creatures, so every morning while the fever lingered--for it had got a grip on him somehow--he went round the pipkins and fed the rats with some of the maize. And every morning, rather to his relief, there were fewer of them to feed, since they nibbled their way out once they discovered that the top of their prison was but cloth. So as he lay, sometimes hot, sometimes cold, the idea came to him, foolishly enough, that this was a process of divine selection, and that if he only waited the day when but one rat should remain, his mission would bear the seal of success. An idea like this only needs presentation to a mind, or lack of mind, like old Nânuk's. So what with the harvesting and the rat-catching, and the fever and the omen-awaiting, it was close on the new year when, with a brown rat, now quite tame, tied up in a pipkin, some five seers of good grain tied up in the corner of his cotton blanket, and Heaven knows what a curious conglomeration of thought bound up in his still feverish brain, the old man set out from his village to find the Lât-sahib. Such things are still done in India, such figures are still to be seen, making some civilised people stand out of the road bareheaded, as they do to a man on his way to the grave--a man who has lived his life, whose day is past.

Owing also to the fever and the paying for rats, etc., old Nânuk's pockets were ill-provided for the journey, but that mattered little in a country where a pilgrimage on foot is in itself presumptive evidence of saintship. Besides, the brown rat--to which Nânuk had attached a string lest one of the parties to the suit might escape him on the road--was a perpetual joy to the village children, who scarcely knew if it were greater fun to peep at it in its pipkin or see it peeping out of the old man's cotton blanket, when in the evenings it nibbled away at its share of Nânuk's dinner. They used to ask endless questions as to why he carried it about, and what he was going to do with it, until, half in jest, half in earnest, he told them he was the mudâ-ee (plaintiff) and the rat the mudee-âla (defendant) in a case they were going to lay before the Lât-sahib; an explanation perfectly intelligible to even the babes and sucklings, who in a Punjabi village now-a-days lisp in numbers of petitions and pleaders.

So the mudâ-ee and mudee-âla trampled along together amicably, sometimes by curving wheel-tracks among the furrows--ancient rights-of-way over the wide fields, as transient yet immutable as the furrows themselves; and there, with the farmer's eye-heritage of generations, he noted each change of tint in the growing wheat, from the faintest yellowing to the solid dark green with its promise of a full ear to come. Sometimes by broad lanes, telling yet once more the strange old Indian tale of transience and permanence, of death and renewed birth, in the deep grass-set ruts through which the traffic of centuries had passed rarely, yet inevitably. And here with the same knowledgeable eye he would mark the homing herds of village cattle, and infer from their condition what the unseen harvest had been which gave them their fodder. Finally, out upon the hard white high-road, so different from the others in its self-sufficient straightness, its squared heaps of nodular limestone ready for repairs, its elaborate arrangements for growing trees where they never grew before, and where even Western orders will not make them grow. And here Nânuk's eyes still found something familiar in the great wains creaking along in files to add their quota of corn sacks to the mountain of wheat cumbering the railway platforms all along the line. Yet even this was in its essence new, provoking the wonder in his slow brain how it could be that the increased demand for wheat and its enhanced price should have gone hand-in-hand with the financial ruin of the grower.

To say sooth, however, such problems as these flitted but vaguely through the old man's thought, and even his own spoliation was half forgotten in the one great object of that long journey which, despite his cheerful patience, had sapped his strength sadly. To find the Lât-sahib, to make his salaam, and bid the mudee-âla-jee do so likewise, to lay the produce of the field at the sahib's feet, and say that Puramêshwar had sent rats instead of rain--that in itself was sufficient for the old man as he trudged along doggedly, his eyes becoming more and more dazed by unfamiliar sights as he neared the big city.

"Bullah!" said the woman of whom he begged a night's lodging. "If we were to house and feed the wanderers on this road, we should have to starve ourselves. And thou art a Sikh. Go to thine own people. 'Tis each for each in this world." That was a new world to Nânuk.

"Doth thy rat do tricks?" asked the children critically. "What, none? Trra! we can see rats of that mettle any day in the drains, and there was a man here yesterday whose rat cooked bread and drew water. Ay! and his goat played the drum. That was a show worth seeing."

So Nânuk trudged on.

"See the Lât-sahib" sneered the yellow-legged police constable when, after much wandering through bewildering crowds, the old Sikh found himself at a meeting of roads, each one of which was barred by a baton. "Which Lât-sahib--the big one or the little?"

"The big one," replied Nânuk stoutly. There was no good in underlings; that he knew.

Police Constable number seventy-five called over to his crony number ninety-six on the next road.

"Ari, brother! Here is another durbari. Canst let him in on thy beat? I have no room on mine." And then they both laughed, whereat old Nânuk, taking courage, moved on a step, only to be caught and dragged back, hustled, and abused. What! was the Great Durbar for the like of him--the Great Durbar on which lakhs and crores had been spent--the Great Durbar all India had been thinking of for months? Wâh! Whence had he come if he had not heard of the Great Durbar, and what had he thought was the meaning of the Venetian masts and triumphal arches, the flags and the watered roads? Did he think such things were always? Ari! if it came to such ignorance as that, mayhap he would not know what this was coming along the road.

It was a disciplined tramp of feet, an even glitter of bayonets, a straight line of brown faces, a swing and a sweep, as a company of the Guides came past in their kâkhi and crimson uniform. Old Nânuk looked at it wistfully.

"Nay, brother," he said, "I know that. 'Twas my son's regiment, God rest him!"

"Thou shouldst sit down, old man," said a bystander kindly. "Of a truth thou canst go no further till the show is over. Hark! there are the guns again. 'Twill be Bairânpore likely, since Hurriâna has gone past. Wâh! it is a show--a rare show!"

So down the watered road, planted out in miserable attempts at decoration with barbers' poles unworthy of a slum in the East End, came a bevy of Australian horses, wedged at a trot between huge kettledrums, which were being whacked barbarically by men who rose in their stirrups with the conscientious precision of a newly imported competition-wallah. Then more Australian horses again in an orfeverie barouche lined with silver, where, despite the glow of colour, the blinding flash of diamonds in an Indian sun, despite even the dull wheat-green glitter of the huge emerald tiara about the turban, the eye forgot these things to fix itself upon the face which owned them all; a face haggard, sodden, superlatively handsome even in its soddenness; indifferent, but with an odd consciousness of the English boy who--dressed as for a flower show--sat silently beside his charge. Behind them with a clatter and flutter of pennons came a great trail of wild horsemen, showing as they swept past, dark, lowering faces among the sharp spear points.

And the guns beat on their appointed tale, till, with the last, a certain satisfaction came to that sodden face, since there were none short in the salute--as yet. The measure of his misdoings was not full as yet.[^[25]]

The crowd ebbed and flowed irregularly to border the straight white roads, where at intervals the great tributary chiefs went backwards and forwards to pay their State visits, but Nânuk and his rat--the plaintiff and the defendant--waited persistently for their turn to pass on. It was long in coming; for even when the last flash and dash of barbaric splendour had disappeared, the roar of cannon began louder, nearer, regular to a second in its even beat.

"That is the Lât-salute" said one man to another in the crowd. "Let us wait and see the Lât, brother, ere we go."

Nânuk overheard the words, and looked along the road anxiously, then stood feeling more puzzled than ever; for there was nothing to see here but a plain closed carriage with a thin red and gold trail of the body-guard behind it and before. The sun was near to its setting, and sent a red angry flare upon a bank of clouds which had risen in the east, and the dust of many feet swept past in whirls before a rising wind.

"It will rain ere nightfall," declared the crowd, contentedly, as it melted away citywards. "And the crops will be good, praise to God."

Once more Nânuk overheard, and this time a glad recognition seemed to rouse him from a dream. Yes! the crops would be good. Down by the well, on the land he and his had ploughed for so many years, the wheat would be green--green as those emeralds above that sodden face.

"The Lât has gone out," joked Constable Seventy-five as he went off duty; "but there are plenty of other things worth seeing to such an ignoramus as thou."

True; only by this time Nânuk was almost past seeing aught save that all things were unfamiliar in those miles and miles of regiments and rajahs, electric lights and newly macadamised roads, tents and make-believe gardens, all pivoted, as it were, round the Royal Standard of England, which was planted out in the centre of the Viceroy's camp. As he wandered aimlessly about the vast canvas city, hustled here, sent back there, the galloping orderlies, the shuffling elephants, the carriages full of English ladies, the subalterns cracking their tandem whips, and the native outriders had but one word for him.

"Hut! Hut!" (Stand back--stand back!)

A heavy drop of rain came as a welcome excuse to his dogged perseverance for sheltering awhile under a thorn bush. He was more tired than hungry, though he had not tasted food that day; and it needed a sharp nip from the defendant's teeth, as it sought for something eatable in the folds of his blanket, to remind him that others of God's creatures had a better appetite than he. But what was he to give? There was the five seers of grain still, of course; but who was to apportion the shares; who was to say, "This much for the plaintiff, this much for the defendant, this much for the State?" The familiar idea seemed to give him support in the bewildering inrush of new impressions, and he held to it as a drowning man in a waste of unknown waters clutches at a straw.

Nevertheless, the parties to the suit must not be allowed to starve meanwhile, and if they took equal shares surely that would be just?

The rain now fell in torrents, and the kikar-bush scarcely gave him any shelter as, with a faint smile, he sat watching the brown rat at work upon the corn, and counting the number of grains the wanton teeth appropriated as their portion. For so much, and no more, would be his also. It was not a sumptuous repast, but uncooked maize requires mastication, and that took up time. So that it was dark ere he stood up, soaked through to the skin, and looked perplexedly at the long lines of twinkling lights which had sprung up around him. And hark! what was that? It was the dinner bugle at a mess close by, followed, as by an echo, by another and another and another--quite a chorus of cheerful invitations to dinner. But Nânuk knew nothing of such feasts as were spread there in the wilderness. He had lived all his life on wheat and lentils, though, being a Sikh, he would eat wild boar or deer if it could be got, or take a tot of country spirits on occasion to make life seem less dreary. He stood listening, shivering a little with the cold, and then went on his way, since the Lât-sahib must be found, the case decided, before this numbing forgetfulness crept over everything.

Sometimes he inquired of those he met. More often he did not, but wandered on aimlessly through the maze of light, driven and hustled as he had been by day. And as he wandered the bands of the various camps were playing, say, the march in "Tannhäuser," or "Linger longer, Loo." But sooner or later they all paused to break suddenly into a stave or two of another tune, as the colonel gave "The Queen" to his officers.

Of all this, again, Nânuk knew nothing. Even at the best of times, he had been ignorant as a babe unborn of anything beyond his fields, and now he remembered nothing save that he and the brown rat were suitors in a case against Puramêshwar and the State.

So the night passed. It was well on into the chilliest time before the dawn, when the slumber, which comes to all the world for that last dead hour of darkness having rid him of all barriers, he found himself beneath what had been the goal of his hopes ever since he had first seen its strange white rays piercing the night--the great ball of electric light which crowned the flagstaff whereon the Standard of England hung dank and heavy; for the wind had dropped, the rain had ceased, and a thick white mist clung close even to the round bole of the mast, which was set in the centre of a stand of chrysanthemums. The colours of the blossoms were faintly visible in the downward gleam of the light spreading in a small circle through the mist.

So far good. This was the "Standard of Sovereignty," no doubt--the "Lamp of Safety"--the guide by day and night to faithful subjects seeking justice before the king. This Nânuk understood; this he had heard of in those tales of Nausherwân and his like, told beneath the village peepul tree.

Here, then, he would stay--he and the defendant--till the dawn brought a hearing. He sat down, his back to the flowers, his head buried in his knees. And as he sat, immovable, the mist gathered upon him as it had gathered in the field. But he was not thinking now what he should say to the Lât-sahib. He was past that.

He did not hear the jingle and clash of arms which, after a time, came through the fog, or the voice which said cheerfully--

"'Appy Noo Year, to you, mate!"

"Same to you, Tommy, and many of 'em; but it's rather you nor I, for it's chillin' to the vitals."

They were changing guards on this New Year's morning, and Private Smith, as he took his first turn under the long strip of canvas stretched as a sun-shelter between the two sentry-boxes, acknowledged the truth of his comrade's remark by beating his arms upon his breast like any cabman. Yet he was hot enough in his head, for he had been singing "Auld Lang Syne" and drinking rum for the greater part of the night, and, though sufficiently sober to pass muster on New Year's Eve, was drunk enough to be intensely patriotic. So, as he walked up and down, there was a little lilt in his step which attempted to keep time to the stave of "God Save our Gracious Queen," which he was whistling horribly out of tune. On the morrow--or, rather, to-day, since the dawn was at hand--there was to be the biggest review in which he had ever taken part; six and twenty thousand troops marching up to the Royal Standard and saluting! They had been practising it for weeks, and the thrill of it, the pride and power of it, had somehow got into Private Smith's head--with the rum. It made him take a turn beyond that strip of canvas, round the flagstaff he was supposed to guard.

"'Alt! 'oo goes there?"

The challenge rang loudly, rousing Nânuk from a dream which was scarcely less unreal than the past twelve hours of waking had been to his ignorance. He stumbled up stiffly--a head taller than the sentry--and essayed a salaam.

"'Ullo! What the devil are you doin' here? Hut, you nigger! Goramighty! wot's that?"

It was the defendant, which Nânuk had brought out to salaam also, and which, alarmed at the sudden introduction, began darting about wildly at the end of its string. Private Smith fell back a step, and then pulled himself together with a violent effort, uncertain if the rat were real; but the cold night air was against him.

"Wash'er-mean?--Wash'er doin'--'ere?--Wash'er-got?" he asked, conglomerately, and Nânuk, understanding nothing, went down on his knees the better to untie the knot in the corner of his blanket. "Poggle,"[^[26]] commented Private Smith, recovering himself as he looked down at the heap of maize, the defendant, and the old man talking about Puramêshvar. Then, being in a benevolent mood, he wagged his head sympathetically. "Pore old Johnny! wot's 'e want, with 'is rat and 'is popcorn? Fine lookin' old chap, though--but we licked them Sickies, and, by gum! we'll lick 'em again, if need be!"

The thought made him begin to whistle once more as he bent unsteadily to look at something which glittered faintly as the old man laid it on the top of the pile of corn.

It was his son's only medal.

"Hillo!" said Private Smith, bringing himself up with a lurch, "so that is it, eh, mate? Gor-save-a-Queen! Now wot's up, sonny? 'Orse guards been a-doing wot they didn't ought to 'ave done? Well, that ain't no noos, is it, comrade? But we'll drink the old lady's 'elth all the same. Lordy! if you've bin doin' extra dooty on the rag all night you won't mind a lick o' the lap--eh? Lor' bless you!--I don' want it. I've had as mush as me and Lee-Mitford can carry 'ome without takin' a day-tour by orderly room--Woy! you won't, won't yer? Come now, Johnny, don't be a fool--it's rum, I tell yer, and you Sickies ain't afraid o' rum. Wot! you won't drink 'er 'elth, you mutineering nigger? Then I'll make yer. Feel that--now then, ''Ere's a 'elth unto'w her Majesty.'"

Perhaps it was the unmistakable prick of a bayonet in his stomach, perhaps it was the equally unmistakable smell of the liquor arousing a craving for comfort in the old man, but he suddenly seized the flask which Private Smith had dragged from his pocket, and, throwing his head back, poured the contents down his throat; the action--due to his desire not to touch the bottle with his lips--giving him an almost ludicrous air of eagerness.

Private Smith burst into a roar of laughter.

"Gor-save-the-Queen!" And as he spoke the first gun of the hundred and one which are fired at daybreak on the anniversary of her Most Gracious Majesty's assumption of the title Kaiser-i-Hind boomed out sullenly through the fog.

But Nânuk did not hear it. He had stumbled to his feet and fallen sidewise to the ground.

* * * * *

"I gather, then," remarked the surgeon-captain precisely, "that before gun-fire this morning you found the old man in a state of collapse below the flagstaff--is this so?"

Private Smith, sober to smartness and smart to stiffness, saluted; but there was an odd trepidation on his face. "Yes, sir--I done my best for 'im, sir. I put 'im in the box, sir, and give 'im my greatcoat, and I rub 'is 'ands and feet, sir. I done my level best for 'im, not being able, you see, sir, to go off guard. I couldn't do no more."

"You did very well, my man; but if you had happened to have some stimulant--any alcohol, for instance."

Private Smith's very smartness seemed to leave him in a sudden slackness of relief. "Which it were a tot of rum, sir, as I 'appened to 'ave in my greatcoat pocket. It done 'im no 'arm, sir, did it?"

The surgeon-captain smiled furtively. "It saved his life, probably; but you might have mentioned it before. How much did he take?"

"About 'arf a pint, sir--more nor less." Private Smith spoke under his breath with an attempt at regret; then he became loquacious. "Beggin' your pardon, sir, but I was a bit on myself, and 'e just poured it down like as it was milk, and then 'e tumbled over and I thought 'e was dead, and it sobered me like. So I done my level best for 'im all through."

Perhaps he had; for old Nânuk Singh found a comfortable spot in which to spend his remaining days when the regimental doolie carried him that New Year's morning from the flagstaff to the hospital. He lay ill of rheumatic fever for weeks, and when he recovered it was to find himself and his rat quite an institution among the gaunt, listless convalescents waiting for strength in their long dressing-gowns. The story of how the old Sikh had drunk the Queen's health has assumed gigantic proportions under Private Smith's care, and something in the humour and the pathos of it tickled the fancy of his hearers, who, when the unfailing phrase, "An' so I done my level best for him, I did," came to close the recital, would turn to the old man and say:

"Pore old Johnny--an' Gord knows what 'e wanted with 'is rat and 'is popcorn!"

That was true, since Nâuuk Singh did not remember even the name of his own village; and, though he still talked about the plaintiff and the defendant, Puramêshwar and the State, he was apparently content to await his chance of a hearing at another and greater durbar.

[THE BLUE-THROATED GOD]

We sat after lunch in the stern of the steam launch watching the bridge grow from the semblance of a caterpillar hung across the horizon between clusters of temples and topes, to that of some monstrous skeleton whose vaulting ribs rose high overhead into the pale sky.

Bannerman and I had come out from England together, and come up-country together; I to take up work at the bridge, he on a sporting tour, with letters of introduction to the chief engineer. We had been doing the sights of the native city, and now, in company with several officials of sorts, were on our way home to the reaches above. And as we surged through the yellow-brown flood we talked vaguely and airily of old gods and new, of Siva's religion of stern reality, and Krishna's pleasure-loving cult.

"You should read Prem Sâgar, sir," said Mr. Chuckerbutty, the native assistant-engineer, aside to Bannerman, who had given his vote for the latter; "it is of much merit, containing the loves of Krishna and other cognate matter."

"It's a mere question of temperament," went on Bannerman, unheeding the interruption. "Some people are born to one thing, some to another. I was born to enjoy myself--Hullo! what's that?"

That was a low note like a bird's, a flash in the sunlight beyond the huge pier along which we were edging our way up the current, and then a cloop like a cork.

"Sambo," said some one.

"His name is Rudra, sir," replied Mr. Chuckerbutty.

"Nilkunta,[^[27]] Huzoor," suggested the captain of the launch. I looked from one to the other interrogatively.

"The bridge-diver," said the first speaker, "sees after the foundations and that sort of thing--knows the bottom of the river as well as most of us know the top. A queer sort of animal--there he is to your right."

Out of the yellow-brown flood a grave yellow-brown face crowned by a curious brass pot not unlike a tiara, then two yellow-brown arms, reminding me unpleasantly of snakes, curved up in the overhead stroke as the swimmer slipped down to where a rope hung from one of the huge ribs. He swarmed up it like a monkey, to sit still as a carven image on the outermost buttress of the pier, his legs crossed under him, his hands resting on his knees, his eyes fixed on the swirling water below, so that the full eyelids drooping over them gave them an empty, sightless look.

"By George!" said Bannerman carelessly, "he reminds me of the big idol over at the temple. What's its name, Chuckerbutty? You're posted in such things; I'm not."

The assistant-engineer, mindful of the B.A. degree superadded to his ancestral beliefs, became evasive.

"Well, it doesn't matter. I mean the brute like a land crab with a superfluity of arms. The brute we were talking of just now who crowds life and all its joys into one eternal and infernal birth and death--the most uninteresting events of life to my mind."

Bannerman was right. That figure on the buttress could not fail to remind one of Siva, or Mahadeo,--the Creator and the Destroyer,--barring, of course, the arms. And as I looked, the two which the figure possessed rose slowly from its knees and hovered up in the oddest fashion above its head; then sank again as slowly, leaving one with the impression of any number of circumambient members.

"Does it when he dives," said a boy who was watching also; "must have thought he saw something in the stream. He brings up all sorts of things."

The notion was absorbing until Chuckerbutty's idiomatic English, in reply to a query of Bannerman's, roused me.

"Sambo is nickname; but indubitably verbal corruption of the Sanskrit Sambhu, lord or master. Rudra, real name, has equivalent synonymous meaning. The most ancient god mentioned in Rig Veda. Symbolised in eight attributes, sun, moon, water, earth, air, fire, ether, and soul of man. In other words, the visible and invisible universe--as Siva the Creator, the Preserver, the Destroyer."

Chuckerbutty puffed at his cigar in quite a European fashion.

"What rot!" murmured Bannerman under his breath.

"And as for Nilkunta," put in the boy, "that is simple. It means blue-throated, and Sambo is tattooed all round."

"Yet is that also name of Siva," interposed Chuckerbutty with importance. "As per Mahabharata--

'To soften human ills dread Siva drank

The poisonous flood which stained his azure neck.'

"Nil-kunt is also sometimes applied to the bird kingfisher by Europeans; but this is erroneous. It belongs properly----"

I heard no more, my thoughts being with that odd figure again. It was certainly a most extraordinary resemblance.

"Well, if you really are going to fish for mahseer at Hurdwar, Mr. Bannerman, you should take advantage of that man's knowledge," said the chief pompously. "He goes on leave next week--his home is somewhere in the hills--and he knows everything that is to be known about fishing."

Bannerman laughed. "Back myself against him any day, even on the Ganges. I expect I've as much general good luck--in everyway--as any one in this world."

He gave you that impression. In addition he was eminently handsome--if a trifle dark for a country where people fight shy of any admixture of blood. Extraordinarily graceful and supple too, doing everything with extraordinary grace and skill. Beyond that, rich. For the rest, cosmopolitan in mind and manners. As for morals, that does not enter into the equation of a pleasant chance acquaintance, and the only blemish I could lay finger on was an excess of jewellery. But that was a hobby of his. He was for ever waylaying the passers-by and wanting to make a deal for their ornaments, regardless of injured feelings. It was a mere question of money, like everything else, he asserted, and he generally succeeded in getting what he fancied. Apparently he fancied Sambo, or Rudra, or Nilkunta--whichever you choose to call him--for, a day or two afterwards, the man came to me clothed in the loose garments and aggressive turban usually worn by Mohammedans. He looked less startling, but the type of face was utterly new to me.

"I am a hunter, Huzoor," he said gravely; indeed I think his face was the gravest I ever saw. "I kill to live; I live to kill. That is all. I come from the mountains, and I know the river. Wherefore not, since it is my birthplace? None know it as I; others may claim it, but it is mine, and the fish also. It is all one to Nil-kunt the diver, Huzoor. Eshspoon bait, feather fly, or poach-net. I kill to live; I live to kill. That is the old way, the best way; and if the Huzoor comes with 'Buniah-man' sahib, he will catch big fish."

"And the sahib also, I hope?"

"The sahib thinks he knows, but he is a stranger to the river and the old ways. He must learn them."

A week after this, Bannerman and I were encamped on the south side of the gorge through which the sacred river debouches on the plains, with Sambo, who was on leave, as our boatman. And curiously out of place he looked in the English-built wherry which my host had insisted on bringing up by rail. He had never, he said, been able to stand the discomforts of a Noah's Ark, and he did not intend to begin self-denial, even though he was in the birthplace of the most ascetic cult the world had ever known; if indeed the worshippers of Siva had right on their side in claiming Hurdwar as Hara-dwara--the gate of Siva. For his part he inclined to the Vaishnâva view. Hari-dwara, gate of Vishnu, was just as likely a derivation. It was only the change of a letter; and yet that made all the difference between believing in pleasure or penance. He talked away in his reckless fashion about this as we fished fruitlessly, the first evening; fruitlessly, for I was crippled with a slight sprain of the wrist, and Bannerman caught nothing. And Sambo sat gravely sculling, with a perfectly immovable face, until Bannerman, who was changing his fly for the fiftieth time at least, leant forward suddenly and laid his hand on the other's wrist.

"That's a fine cat's-eye," he said, looking at a ring on the supple brown finger. "How much will you take for it?"

"I do not sell," replied Sambo, still without a quiver of expression. The water dropped from the upheld oar like molten gold. I could hear it fall in the silence, as those two sat looking at each other. But my eyes were on those hands clasped upon each other; they were extraordinarily alike in contour and not far apart in colour.

"Ten rupees! twenty! forty!" he went on. "What! you won't? Here! let me see it closer. I don't believe it is worth more--even to me--unless I'm mistaken. Hand it over, man!"

Bannerman turned the ring over curiously, and a sudden interest came to his face.

"It isn't worth five, but I've taken a fancy to it. Fifty! a hundred! a thousand!"

"I do not sell," repeated Sambo indifferently.

"Not sell! then you're a fool! Here, catch!"

He spun the ring like a coin high into the air. Perhaps he had meant it to fall into the boat, but it did not, and as I leant over in dismay I could see it sinking in shimmering circles through the sunlit water.

Sambo did not even seem surprised, but crossing the oars leisurely proceeded to strip.

"It does not matter," he said briefly. "Mai Gunga[^[28]] is kind to me, and I know my way to her bosom."

A minute or so afterwards he came up from the depths with the ring fast held in his teeth.

"The fish are lying between the shallow and the deep," he remarked, as if nothing had happened. "If the Huzoor will believe me, he will catch them."

Apparently the faith was wanting, for we did not see a fin till I commenced fishing; and even then the luck was all with me. Bannerman began to grow restive, suggesting that in a boat "one man's sport was another man's spoil"; so we moved across the range of the Siwaliks to higher ground. We pitched our tents between the river and a backwater, where the boat--which despite my advice Bannerman insisted on bringing round by road--lay moored beneath a big cotton tree. A desirable resting-place certainly; cool and shadowy, and haunted by many a kingfisher busy among the shoals of silvery fishlets in the still water. Across the river, just above its great race to the gorge below, stood a group of Hindu temples backed by sun-steeped slopes ablaze with flowering, scented shrubs. Further up, however, the hills sank almost to the level, leaving a wedge of sky clear, before rising again in swift gradations of blue, cleft by a purple chasm marking the further course of the river towards the snows of Kedarnath.

"You live yonder, do you not?" I asked of Sambo, pointing to the peaks, as I stood settling my tackle.

For the first time a slow smile showed on the man's fine delicate face. "No, Huzoor. I live everywhere. Wherever there are things to kill, and that is in most places. But not here, sahib," he continued hastily, turning to Bannerman, who was about to launch his minnow into a likely spot. "This pool is sacred to the god yonder."

And sure enough, close to the water's edge, beneath the shade of a banyan tree, stood a crowned image of Maha-deo, with his eight arms, his necklace of snakes, and chaplet of skulls.

"Dash it all," muttered Bannerman impatiently, "as if the world were not full enough of limitations as it is! I'll have it out with that old land crab some day."

His irritation grew as the days passed bringing continued ill-luck. But what wonder, he said, when the fish were fed and pampered by the priests morning and evening, that they would not take his lure? For his part he did not believe there was a fin in any other pool in the river--at least when he fished it.

"The Huzoor can see, if he chooses," said Sambo gravely.

"I suppose I can--as well as you, anyhow," retorted Bannerman.

"Then let him look." As he spoke Sambo swung himself into the branch of a cotton tree which, swaying with his weight, scattered its huge scarlet flowers on the water. Perhaps it was this, engendering a hope of food; perhaps it was the curious low whistle he made, but instantly the calm surface of the pool wavered, shifted, and broke into ripples. Sambo stretched himself full length on the branch and craned forward with his long blue neck.

"Plenty of them, Huzoor! Beauties! That one with the scar is full twenty sirs weight. See! I will catch it."

He slid from the branch like an otter to reappear a second afterwards with the fish bent round his neck like a yoke of silver.

"It is bad luck," he continued, "and the Huzoor must do puja[^[29]] to the great god. That is the only way."

Bannerman's face was a study, and to soothe him I remarked that I had been lucky enough without any one's help.

"How does the Huzoor know?" asked Sambo boldly. "If he had been up by dawn he might have thought otherwise, since the blood of the cock I sacrificed in his name still reddens the feet of Ishwara."

"The devil you did," I exclaimed laughing; "then sacrifice two for Bannerman sahib to-morrow."

The latter, however, turned on him fiercely. "If you dare," he began; then pulled himself together, muttered something about its being "d----d rot," and went off declaring he would fish no more till dusk drove the glare from the water.

I found him hours after lolling on his bed, and reading a translation of the Prem Sâgar. It was as amusing and true to life as a modern French novel, he was pleased to remark, and Krishna with his milkmaids the wisest of gods. In fact after dinner, as we sat smoking outside, he recurred to the subject, denouncing the folly of all ascetic cults from Baal downwards.

"You are awfully well up in it all," I said, surprised at his knowledge.

"Seems to come to me, to-night, somehow," he replied gaily; "things do, you know--previous state of existence and all that rot. Besides, it's needed when a fellow calmly suggests my making a blood offering! To a brute of a land crab too--a miserable fetish evolved from the fears of a semi-ape-a creature incapable of rising above the limitations of his own discomfort, counting this lovely life as mere birth and death, and ignoring the joys between--the only realities in the world."

He went on in this fashion, till, declaring that he meant to be up by dawn, both to catch a fish and prevent the blood sacrifice, he turned in. I could hear him humming the refrain of a French song as I sat on the scented flood of moonlight.

It was not a night surely to waste in sleep! The very flowers kept the memory of their colours, and every now and again I could hear the silvery splash of a fish rising on the level reaches beyond. But from below came a vibration in the air like the first breathing of an organ note. That was the river racing to the gorge.

Scarcely knowing what I did, I strolled over to the backwater which circled round the oasis of the valley. A fringe of trees marked its course, and behind them the hill sloped up in a tangle of jasmine and pomegranate, while on the river side grew shingle and grass tufted with oleanders. In the distance, faint yet clear, came a snatch or two of Bannerman's fin-de-siècle song. And then suddenly, round a bend, rose the low note of a kingfisher. Could it be a kingfisher at that hour of the night?

By all the gods, old and new, what was this? Sambo? Could that be Sambo knee-deep in the water? Sambo with a golden tiara on his head and girt about the waist with a regal robe? Purple and red--at least you guessed the colour, just as you guessed that the shadowy pillar of that long neck was blue. Were those his arms curved above him, or were they snakes, swaying, swaying in the moonlight with hooded heads and open jaws? And was that cry Sambo's or the kingfisher's? Then, and not till then, I saw the bird perched on a branch above the strange figure; and even as I looked it swooped straight into those swaying snake-like arms, bearing something in its mouth.

I suppose in my surprise I made some exclamation, for the figure turned quickly. Then, for the first time, I felt sure it was only the diver in his diving dress. The next instant he was beside me on the bank, holding out a small land crab for my inspection.

"It is the best bait, Huzoor. Better than phantom or eshspoon."

I felt utterly bewildered and not a little aggrieved at his everyday appearance. "But, but," I began, "how the mischief did you make the bird?----"

His hand went up to his throat as if in explanation. "'Tis the trick of their cry, Huzoor; besides birds are afraid of the holy snake; and even the Huzoor doubted his own eyes. It is good bait. If Buniah-man sahib will consent to use it, he will have luck."

"Of course he will use it," I replied angrily; and then a sudden doubt seized me. "I don't know, though. I don't seem to understand. I can't see----"

"The Huzoor has two eyes," he interrupted, with another of his slow smiles. "Does he want a third, like mine?"

A third! Then I noticed a central spot on his forehead set in an oval of white. In good sooth it was not unlike a third eye placed upright between the others. I had seen similar ones painted on the images of Siva.

"'Tis but a caste sign, Huzoor," he explained; "I wear it sometimes." He stooped as he spoke, gathered some dust in his fingers and rubbed out the mark. "Lo! it grows late. Midnight is past. If the Huzoor rises with the sun 'tis time he slept."

True enough; but as I strolled homewards to the tent my eyes fell by chance on the shade beneath the great banyan tree where the idol stood. The plinth was empty! It lay reflected in the water vacant, bare! Scarcely knowing what I did, or why I did it, I ran back to where I had left Sambo, calling him by all his names in turn. But there was no answer, and when in hopeless bewilderment I retraced my steps it was only to find myself mistaken. The eight-armed image stood in its accustomed place, reflected in the still water.

I was glad when the dawn came; one of those lemon-coloured dawns when the sky grows light at once.

"Had the jolliest dreams," said Bannerman, coming out of his tent. "Dreamt I was Krishna among the milkmaids. Wish I could find one in this fish-forsaken place, I'd---- Hullo, what the mischief is that on my line?"

It was Sambo's land crab neatly impaled on a Stuart tackle. I began an explanation only to stop short at the--to me--absolutely incomprehensible intensity of both the faces before me. Dimly I seemed to recognise the situation and then it escaped me again.

"Tomfoolery! One might as well fish with that ridiculous fetish at once," came Bannerman's jeering voice. "What was it Chuckerbutty drivelled about? eight attributes--tall order for any god! Well! here they go. No, Sambo, you may keep one--the soul of a man, if there be such a thing----"

He had torn off five of the crab's legs, leaving three; two of them the nipping claws, which, with gaping jaws, swayed about seeking reprisals.

"There! take your offering, Siva! snakes, and souls, and all!" He flung the maimed creature full in the idol's face as we sculled past it. I shall never forget Sambo's look.

"You shouldn't do that sort of thing," I remonstrated in a low voice. "If the priests saw it;--then this man----"

"Bah! Nilkunta won't mind, and rupees will settle anything." I tried to make him understand they would not in these fastnesses of the Hindu faith, but almost immediately afterwards his attention wandered to a woman's figure which, as we rowed up the river, was outlined equally against earth and sky, while figure, earth, and sky shared equally the perfect reflection in the water.

"By George, a milkmaid!" he cried. She was not unlike one in dress, certainly, but her face, marked with the crescent of Siva on the forehead, was of a different type; beautiful too, and Bannerman simply couldn't take his eyes off her.

"Who is she? Who can she be? Sambo! Rudra! Nilkunta! whichever you are--do you know who she can be?" he queried in hot excitement.

"She is somebody's house, Huzoor." The voice was cold as an icicle.

"Somebody's house! What a way to mention a woman, beautiful--beautiful as--but it's the old Puritanical game! A house--a hearth mother--the British matron in Eastern disguise--Mrs. Grundy in a sâri. I say, Nil-kunt, whose house do you think she is? I should like to buy the freehold."

"She is your slave's house," replied the man without a wink.

"The dickens she is," blurted out my companion, somewhat abashed for the time. Perhaps that was Sambo's intention. At any rate I have no means of knowing if he spoke the truth or not. Indeed, looking back on it all, I scarcely seem to know what really happened, and what must have been sheer fancy. Only this remains clear; a growing antagonism between these two, a growing disinclination on Bannerman's part to do anything but lounge away his days.

"Can't help it, my dear fellow," he would say, "it's the air, or something. If I had a shepherd's pipe I'd play it. And as for flowers! Do you know some one puts a bunch of them on my pillow every night. I believe it's the milkmaid!"

There were flowers, too, garlanded round his door, while just over the way those ominous splashes of red on Ishwara's feet seemed to grow deeper and deeper.

At last I put the case baldly and crudely before him. Something was going on which I didn't understand, which might get him into mischief at any moment, and I appealed to his good sense to put the Siwaliks between him and a temptation which seemed to have fascinated him. He laughed, admitted the fact, and yielded; the more readily because our time was almost up.

For the first two days he was rewarded by success in the lower reaches; possibly--since fish shy at novelty--because we used a native Noah's Ark, our own boat remaining in the backwater till we could send coolies to fetch it. On the third he left the river early on plea of a headache. As he had been in wild spirits all day, quoting the Prem Sâgar and singing French songs, I half thought he was going in for fever, the day being exceptionally hot. But on my return at dusk the servants asked if I would wait dinner for the sahib or not. Beset by immediate misgivings I rushed into his tent, where I found a slip of paper impaled like a bait on some tackle lying on the table.

"Off to the divine milkmaid! Don't wait. Vogue la galère!"

"How far?" I asked Sambo breathlessly.

"Twenty kos by the road--the sahib borrowed the police inspector's mare--not half that over the hills. But the moon is late, and the snakes love the dark."

If it had been the darkness of Egypt I had no choice but to follow, and half an hour afterwards I was stumbling along after Sambo. Even by daylight the hills, heat-cracked, rain-seared, strewn with sharp rocks, were bad walking; on a dark, hot night, with the snakes' eyes gleaming from the stones, they were horrible--most horrible. The straight fingers of the stiff candelabra bushes pointing up and up, the gnarled stunted trees growing into strange shapes, reminding one involuntarily of those antediluvian animals whose bones lie buried all along the Siwaliks. A cold sweat of suspense lay upon my forehead despite the scorching blast tearing down the ravines; scorching yet laden with the scent of earth, as from a new-made grave.

"There has been rain in the hills beyond," said Sambo's voice out of the dark. I lost sight of him constantly, and at the best of times he was little more than another weird shape among the shadows. "Holy Maha-deo! Have a care, Huzoor! Let the snake pass in peace!"

As he spoke something curved over my instep. Such things take the nerve out of a European; but I stumbled on, peering into the darkness, trying to think of Bannerman's danger, and not of that next step and what it might bring. But it came at last--just as we dipped into a cooler, moister glen, where I could hear the flying foxes hovering from tree to tree--a slither of the foot, and then a spiral coil up my leg gripping the muscles tight. My shriek echoed from the heat-hardened, resounding rocks until the whole hillside seemed peopled by my fear; and even when Sambo, stooping down, uncoiled the snake and threw it into the darkness, I could scarcely realise that I was none the worse for having put my heel on a viper's head. My nerve seemed gone, I could not move except at a snail's pace.

"Time speeds," came Sambo's voice again. "The moon rises but the clouds gather. If the Huzoor would only not mind----"

"I'd mind nothing if I could see--see as you seem to do," I muttered, ashamed yet aggrieved.

"That is it," he replied, "the Huzoor cannot see, and the holy snakes do not know him as they know me. If the sahib will let me put the caste mark on his forehead as it is on mine he need not fear. It can do no harm, Huzoor."

True; besides the very idea by suggesting confidence might restore it.

"Lest the dust should fall into the Huzoor's eyes," said the voice softly, and I felt long thin fingers on my eyelids; then something on my forehead, cold and hard, cold and hard like a ring---- The effect of such pressure when the eyes are closed is always confusing, and I felt as if I was dozing off when the same soft voice roused me.

"The Huzoor can see now."

I opened my eyes with a start as if from sleep. Had the moon risen or whence came that pale light by which I saw--what did I not see? Everything, surely, that had been created since the world began; the tiny watersprites in the half-stagnant pools, the flying motes in the dim air. Or did I dream it? Did I only feel and know that they were there, part of those endless, endless æons of life and death in which I was a unit.

"Sambo," I gasped feebly, but there was no answer. Where was I? By degrees memory returned. This must be the Gayâtri glen, for there, at the further end, stood the great image of the dread Maha-deo where the pilgrims worshipped; and surely the odd light came from that gleaming cat'seye on its forehead? Surely, too, the snakes curled and swayed, the outstretched hands opened and shut? My own went up to my forehead in my bewilderment, when, suddenly, the light seemed to fade, till I could just see Nilkunta's blue throat as he stood beside me.

"The Huzoor has scratched his forehead; the blood trickles from it. See, I have brought a tulsi leaf. There! that is better." I felt the coolness between my eyes, and something of my bewilderment seemed to pass away.

"It is the Gayâtri, Huzoor, and yonder is Maha-deo. He is but half-way, so we must press on. The sahib can see now; there is no fear."

None. Yet did I see them, or was I only conscious of that teeming life in the jungles? Of the tiger crouching by our path, the snakes slipping from it, the deer standing to watch us, and strangest of all, those shapes hiding in the dim shadows--undreamt-of monsters, neither fish, flesh, nor fowl? Was it a dream? or--the idea brought a faint hysterical laugh--was it the Zoological Gardens and the British Museum rolled into one?

"We must cross the river, Huzoor," said the dim form flitting before me; "Buniah-man sahib will have taken the boat."

I suppose it was the usual rope bridge swung across the narrowing chasm of the river, but it seemed to me that night as if I walked on air. Below me, not ten feet from the lowest curve of the loop, was the Ganges, wrinkled and seamed, slipping giddily eastwards: overhead, a stream of clouds speeding eastwards also.

"She rises fast," muttered Sambo. "Mai Gunga is in a hurry to-night."

The whole world was in a hurry. I seemed to hear flying feet keeping time with our own. Not an instant's pause was there even for breath until we reached the last declivity above the little oasis of the valley. The moon had risen, but the clouds hurrying across her face gave greater uncertainty to the scene; still I could see a woman's figure standing with widespread arms by the edge of the rising river. I could see a man sending a boat across the shallows with mighty strokes. And above the growing rush of the water I could hear two murmuring voices, which seemed to fill the world with soft antagonism. "Ooma! Ooma!" from the hills; "Râdha! Râdha!" from the valley. These were calling to the woman, and, as in a dream, I seemed to remember and understand; Râdha, the queen of pleasure; Ooma, the mother of the universe. Krishna's mistress, and Siva's wife!

I looked round for Sambo. He was gone; so I ran on alone feeling there was no time to be lost. My foot slipped and I fell heavily. But I was up again in a second unhurt, save, perhaps, for that scratch on my forehead, whence I could feel the blood flowing as I dashed into the shadow of the banyan tree. Merciful heaven! what was this? A glare as of noonday, and two radiant forms with a cowering woman between them! between the chaplets of skulls and the chaplets of flowers. And behind them was an empty plinth! Before I had time to realise what I saw, came shouts and cries, a mêlée and a scuffle. Armed men ran out of the shadows, and then Sambo's voice was insistent, "Run, sahib, run! 'Tis your only chance. The boat--the boat!" Then some one hit me over the head from behind, and when I came to myself I was lying in the bottom of the boat. Bannerman was standing beside me shaking his fist impotently at the twinkling lights on the bank, and Sambo sat aft steering as best he could; for the oars had gone and we were racing with the flood towards the rapids. They had bound up my head with something, but I still felt stunned, and the rush of the rising river surged in my ears through the thin planks as I lay. So perhaps it was only my fancy that those two sat talking, talking, arguing, arguing, about the old, old problems.

Till suddenly I sat up to the clear sound of Sambo's voice.

"It is not to be done, Huzoor. We are in the hands of fate. If death comes, it will come, but it will end in birth."

The answer was that half-jeering laugh I knew so well. "I'll chance it, Nil-kunt; I don't believe you."

Bannerman had stripped to the skin, and stood forward looking at the narrowing rush of the river. I could see the great logs of wood, swept from the hill-forests above, dancing along beside us on the curved surface of the stream--so curved by the very force of the current that as our boat, steered by Sambo's skill, kept the centre, the dim banks slid past below us. Across them, just ahead, a curved thread not four feet, now the flood had risen, above the water. The rope bridge! Then I understood.

"Don't!" I cried feebly. "No man--can--withstand the force--of the stream."

He crooked his knees beneath the thwarts and held up his arms.

"Don't----" I cried again.

The boat slackened for an instant; for an instant only. Then it shot on, leaving Bannerman clinging to the rope--shot on round the bend, leaving him hanging there between birth and death. But Sambo never took his watchful eyes off those merry, dancing logs, which meant destruction.

The horror of it all was too much. I fainted. When consciousness returned, Sambo, grave and composed, was bending over me. We were drifting fast into the backwater before my own bungalow, and behind us, looking spectral in the first glint of dawn, lay the great bridge, the flare of the watch-fires on its piers telling of the severity of the flood.

"The Huzoor is at home," said the man quietly; "if Buniah-man sahib had taken my advice he would have been at home also."

We had been a whole day and night on the river; but he seemed no more fatigued than I, who had escaped all the suspense. For the rest, no trace remained of the adventure save an oval scratch on my forehead surrounding the faint vestiges of something like an eye.

"It is the mark of Siva," said my servant piously--he had come down with haste by rail to bring the news of my death--"doubtless he took the Huzoor under his protection; for which I will offer a blood oblation without delay."

Bannerman's body was never found; but some months after, when I was inspecting foundations, I heard the kingfisher's cry, and the familiar cloop of a dive at the further side of the pier. Then Sambo, Rudra, Nilkunta--whatever you please to call him--showed his yellow-brown face above the yellow-brown flood bearing a ring in his mouth: a Palais Royal affair--two diamond hearts transfixed by a ruby arrow.

I had seen Bannerman wear it a hundred times, but I had never seen the inscription engraved inside.

"Thy lips, oh! beloved Life, are nectar."

It was a quotation from the Krishna or Prem Sâgar!

[A TOURIST TICKET][^[30]]

"Dost forget, brother, that it is the Fast?" said Raheem, as with gentle, determined hand he pushed the leaf-cup of sweets further from the board on which his tools lay. There were not many of them, though the inlaid work upon the sandal-wood comb he was making showed delicate as lace. It suited the delicate hands employed upon it; in a way also it suited the delicate brain behind the high narrow forehead, which had a look of ill-health about the temples, where the thick, coarse, black hair was also delicately streaked with silver; sure sign, in a land where grayness is long deferred, of a troubled body or mind. Raheem had barely touched middle age; in his case the trouble seemed to be in both body and mind, to judge by his hollow eyes and the expression in them as they rested on a younger man, who sat, as a visitor, on the plinth of the combmaker's shop. His feet were in the gutter, and his handsome head was nodding gaily to various acquaintances in the steady stream of passers-by; for the odd little shop was wedged into the outer angle of a sharp bend in the narrow bazaar, so that as Raheem sat working at his scented combs he could see both ways--could see all the world, coming and going, from dawn till dark.

Hoshyar laughed, nodding his handsome head once more: "Yea! I forgot that thou dost fast for both of us, and pray for both of us. Mayhap in the end, brother, thou mayest have to go to Paradise for both of us, despite all thy pains."

The busy hand ceased to work in a gesture of negation. "Say not such things, Hoshyar. We go together, or go not at all. Thou knowest that was my promise to the dead."

Hoshyar ate another comfit before replying with a shrug of the shoulders: "'Twas not on stamped paper, though, and promises are naught nowadays without it. 'Tis bad policy to be over-pious, brother. As all know, the saint's beard goes in relics, and to tell truth, I would be better pleased to leave Paradise to those who wish for it. The world suits me. I was not born to be religious, as thou wert."

The comb-maker looked at him with a sort of perplexed patience. "God knows His own work," he said in a low voice. "The Potter makes; the World fills. I remember when thou first wentest to school, Hoshyar, how thou didst weep because it prevented thee from prayer-time. And at the festivals,--dost remember, brother, thou hadst a little coat of brocade? Mother cut it from our father's old one she cherished so----"

"Old tales, old tales!" interrupted Hoshyar, rising with another shrug of his shoulders. "If thou hadst wished me to continue in them, why didst send me to school to learn new ones? Why didst not make me a comb-carver instead of a clerk? Then might I have saved money, as thou hast, gone on the great pilgrimage, as thou hast, and worn a green turban like thine to show it, as thou dost----"

A sharp spasm of pain swept over the older man's face, but there was anger also in his voice. "As thou wouldst have done also, clerk though thou art, if----"

"Yea, I know, I know!" interrupted Hoshyar impatiently; "if I had not emptied the bag so often. But 'tis a pity to let money lie idle. And that time when thou hadst the sum needed for the journey, I would have gone. I meant to have gone,--I swear it; but the leave failed, and thou wouldst not, surely, have had me give up my post? Then, ere the leave came, the money had gone instead. I can never keep it lying idle, and so----"

Raheem's anger faded, leaving nothing but the pain. What use was there in finishing the sentence, in reproaching the sinner with having done far worse than let good money lie idle? The fact only made the pilgrimage a greater necessity than ever, if Nakir and Munkir, the recording angels, were to be bribed to leniency. "Thou shalt have the green turban yet," he said quietly, "if thou wilt have patience. But my combs are not like Peera's over the way: he makes a dozen to my one; ay, and sells them, too, for folk buy ever the cheapest thing, nowadays, even for an Eed-offering."[^[31]]

There was almost an incredulous wonder in his voice as he went on working, while Hoshyar stood kicking one patent-leather shoe viciously against a loose brick in the pavement. "And in the meantime the future pilgrim must live," he remarked jestingly, as if, even to his effrontery, it was easier to treat what he had to say thus, than in earnest. "So if thou couldst spare a rupee or two from the bag, Raheem----"

His brother's eyes looked up, full of reproach. "I know what thou wouldst say," he went on pettishly. "I have had more than my share this month; but I need it sorely. The skinflints at the office have cut my pay for being late,--as if I could help the tram car passing full five minutes before its time,--so I had to walk. And then the mixed train, which is ever an hour late, chose to be punctual; so there was none to receive the waybills." He paused, and seeing the doubt on Raheem's face, continued: "As for the combs, if thou hast difficulty in selling, I might try. That one thou madest last with jasmine flowers in ivory,--'tis a deft piece of work, and I know one who might buy it."

"Not Yasmeena?" asked Raheem, his face hardening, despite the girl-like flush which came to it.

Hoshyar laughed uneasily. "Thou hast Yasmeena on thy brain, brother. She is no worse than others of her trade, and that will last till all men are of thy way of thinking. Yasmeena! Nay, thou knowest she hath not the money to pay for such costly gew-gaws, for she is not as the others, now; she is not to be bought or sold herself."

A man more of the world than Raheem, noting the change of tone in the last words, would have augured much of Yasmeena's power over the speaker; but the comb-maker was too simple for such wisdom. "If she buys it not, well and good," he replied, relaxing his frown; "but I will lend myself to no truck between thee and her. And as for the rupees----" He sighed, yet there was no hesitation in the hands which began to unlock a brass-bound box lying beside his board. "Thou wouldst rise earlier, brother," he continued, almost tenderly, as he counted three rupees from a little bag into the outstretched palm awaiting the gift, "if thou wouldst sleep a little earlier also. Lo! I sleep and wake with the birds, since my work must be of the light."

It streamed full upon him and his tools as he spoke, a pale gold flame of sunshine, searching for each flaw, each failure.

"Couldst not make it five, Raheem?" came the sordid voice. "That is bare bread."

The flame of the sunshine had found a resting-place in Raheem's eyes as he looked at the beggar from head to foot. "And this is salvation," he replied, dropping the bag back into the box with a chink, and turning the key upon it.

Salvation! Yes; that is what it really meant to Raheem. It meant salvation for one soul; but for which? After his brother had gone he asked himself this question for the hundredth time, asked it almost feverishly. Ought he to trust to the chance? Was it likely that he would have time ere his life ended--that life which had always been so uncertain--to make provision for both himself and Hoshyar in death? It would not do to trust Hoshyar with the money. He, Raheem, must make the pilgrimage for him; and was it likely when the rupees came so slowly and went so fast that the hoard in the bag would be complete for years? Ought he not then to make over--as according to the canon, he could do if he chose--the virtue of that past pilgrimage to his brother, and take the risk of the coming one upon himself? Hoshyar needed virtue sorely, and yet the very thought of going forth to the Judgment-Seat without the panoply in which for long years he had found peace and shelter was a terror to Raheem. Could he do it? Nay, it was too much; and yet,--if that promise to the dead were broken wilfully,--what good would imputed righteousness be before the Throne?

And meanwhile Hoshyar his brother, a clerk in the railway, sat smoking a vile cigar at the feet of Yasmeena, who, lounging on a string bed, was drawing the scented sandal-wood comb, inlaid with the flowers whose name she bore, through her sleek hair. "Give it me, beloved," she said scornfully; "then thy promise to the saint will be secure. I must have it; 'tis the prettiest in the bazaar; even Gulanâri, with all her airs, has not its marrow. See, I will sell it to her when I tire of it, and then thou canst give back his three rupees to the miser. Three rupees! I shall spend that in a day. And Monday is the Eed. I must have a new gown for it, or----"

She did not finish her sentence, but her look was eloquent; and Hoshyar, as he lay awake that night, her meaning driven home by hints of coming coldness, racked his brains for some means of procuring the dress. Raheem meanwhile lay awake also, thinking of a very different costume; of a robe of righteousness, a wedding-garment. Those three rupees given to Hoshyar had been meant for an Eed-offering, the Eed which drew so near. There was no time to earn more. Should he go empty-handed to give thanks for the added virtue of having been granted life to keep the Great Fast, or should he offer up his pilgrimage by making it over once and for all to his brother?

Hoshyar had been asleep for hours, and the sparrows were astir ere Raheem found any answer. He would wait another day, he told himself, before deciding; so he sat in the sunlight seeking perfection in his delicate curves and lines, while the pale gold rays peeped and pryed for flaws and failures.

"Have you a comb like that, finished?" asked a foreign voice, making him raise his head and salaam hopefully.

"None so good, Huzoor; but I have others." He took them from the brass-bound box and waited; then noting the Englishman's look, said wistfully: "I had one yesterday, but it,--it is gone. I could finish this one quickly for the Huzoor if,--if he pleased." There was a catch in his breath. If he could sell something, surely he might keep salvation a little longer.

"Can you finish it by Monday evening?"

It would mean working extra hours, mean working through the Festival when all the world rested; but what was that in comparison with the reward? Ten minutes afterwards Raheem was putting three rupees into the bag. He had sold out his stock, and, still more wonderful, had a promise of twenty rupees more on account for future work if he brought the comb punctually on the Monday evening. He had not done such a business for years. The Eed-offering was secure, and the chances of his hoard reaching the necessary amount for a speedy pilgrimage doubled.

The sun shone brighter and purer than ever on the crowds assembled in the Eedgâh,--a huge enclosure, set with trees and with a mere façade of a mosque upon its western front, which lay beyond the city walls. It shone on no more brilliant figure than Yasmeena's, who, in the gayest of new dresses, was saying her prayers effusively; for if the daily life be doubtful, there is all the more need to have the full advantage of festivals; a theory which obtains all over the world. But Raheem, despite his green turban of the Passed Pilgrim, despite the three rupees given scrupulously in charity to his neighbour, felt glad to escape, when prayers were over, to his work. And yet the sight was one to stir most hearts: the long lines of men, women, and children,--thousands and thousands and thousands of them,--half-seen amid the shading trees; the boom of the firework-signal from the eastern gate echoing like a cannon from the wide walls, and ending in a silence like the grave; fifty thousand living, breathing beings shoulder to shoulder, and not a sound, not a quiver; only the swish of a bird's wings, only the hush of a breeze among the leaves. Then suddenly came a great shout as from one throat, and the long lines bent like a field of corn before a mighty wind. "God is great; there is no god but God!"

And afterwards he had been used, wifeless, childless himself, to wander with kindly eyes among the merry family parties picnicking beneath the trees, watching the little ones' delight over their new toys, the old men's delight over their grandchildren. Then, often, he would hear folk say in a whisper: "Look at his turban! He is a Hâjji; he has been to Mecca. Look, children, he has found salvation. God grant you to follow in his steps!" But on this Eed he took off the sign of saintship ere he began work; yet as he worked he shivered as if he were cold without it.

The weight of the twenty rupees, however, which, when the comb was finished and taken to the sahib at the hotel, were duly paid into his hand, seemed to make his heart feel lighter. It meant two months' work, and that meant two months' food. Then Hoshyar must have at least five rupees. Still enough would remain to bring the hoard in the brass-bound box within measurable distance of salvation, to make it possible perhaps for him to wear his green turban without a heart-ache. His present lack of the distinguishing mark seemed to strike even the Englishman's eye, making him say kindly: "I thought you wore the green, and you look the sort certainly; if not I have something which may interest you. Here, Baboo, one of those leaflets, please. If you want to hear more, go to the address of the Agency. I'm off to-night."

Raheem, with a salaam, tucked the little printed page into his common-place white headgear and trudged homewards, tired and dispirited. It was too dark to begin work again as a distraction, and he had not had the heart, somehow, to prepare himself a feast as on other Eeds; so, bethinking him of the leaflet in his turban, he took it out and began to read. It was in the Arabic lettering of the Holy Book he knew so well, and his eyes were keen; still the wording puzzled him. A pilgrimage to Mecca,--exceptional opportunity,--specially chartered vessel,--Firmân,--absolute orthodoxy guaranteed,--to start in a month's time,--a limited number of tickets available at Moulvie Futtehdeen's, near the mosque, Imambarah bazaar! Briefly, it was the prospectus of a pilgrimage, which was being organised as a speculation by a well-known firm, whose travelling agent combined the business with a private venture of his own in all the artistic productions he could pick up by the way; whence came the purchase of Raheem's combs.

"Thou hast the waybill, I see, Hâjji," came a cracked, wistful voice, as an old man who was passing paused at the plinth; an older man even than his looks, for the sparse beard was palpably dyed, and his dress still had a youthful jauntiness about it. His face, however, betrayed him by its wrinkles. He carried a huge dhol (a kind of drum) slung by a cord about his neck, and as he spoke his lissom fingers slid and curved over the stretched goat-skin making a muffled, trembling boom. "Not that it means aught to thee," he went on in a grumble to match. "Thou hast the ticket to Paradise already. Would I had it also! I go no nearer it, yet, than damning myself by playing to profligates, and so putting by a nest-egg against my desire. How else, since drum-banging is my trade, and drums ever keep bad company? But I grow old, I grow old. Thus the sin is greater to a soul which should have learned wisdom; but the pay is less by reason of fingers growing stiff. So I am wicked both ways, and ere next year's pilgrimage this empty maw of a thing may have swallowed me up, body and soul." He gave a more vicious knuckling to the drum, which hummed and boomed in response.

"Next year's?" echoed Raheem.

"Ay; it comes every year, they say. There was a man at Gulanâri's,--God knows, neighbour, I must burn if I die in such company, and I so old! 'Tis the drum drags me to it--seest thou! it will play naught but dance-tunes, though I swear I am weary of them as a lame squirrel with her nest in the sky. I would play hymns, but that I am hindered; and a man's belly, Hâjji Raheem, will not stay empty as a drum and not shrink; so----"

"About the pilgrimage," suggested Raheem, knowing the drum-player's talk of old.

"Ay, ay, for sure! The man--a saint for all his company--there, seest thou, is the pull of it---- Had I but the green turban, this devil of a drum might take me where it would. But as I was saying, this man said it was true, every word. He had been and returned comfortably for the money."

"For so little," murmured Raheem, looking once more at the price named. It was far less than what his previous experience told him would be required.

"Little!" echoed the drum-banger, reproachfully. "That comes of making decent combs. Didst thou try to wheedle salvation from a thing that hath neither heart nor bowels of compassion, that is naught but a devil of a noise that grows worse instead of better when 'tis whacked, thou wouldst tell a different tale. Well, the cat, says the proverb, killed seventy rats and went on a pilgrimage, so I must wait my turn, though if I have not more than seventy sins, may I never play a measure again. I swarm with them, neighbour, as flies on sugar." He tucked the tempter further under his arm, and moved on, muttering to himself: "And I have but half the money saved, so I am lost if I get not virtue on a reduction."

Raheem sat looking at the paper stupidly, as the mingled growl of the drum and its beater died away. Then suddenly those delicate hands of his reached out swiftly to the brass-bound box. Surely he had so much, or would have so much when those twenty rupees were earned!

So it came to pass in the following days that every minute of the light found him at work on the scented combs, and whenever he finished one, he spent some of his scanty rest in toiling over to the Imambarâh bazaar, and paying over its fairly earned price to swell the deposit which secured to him one of the limited supply of tickets. Finally on one night, the very night before the day of starting, he packed up the combs complete, took the price of the last one over to the Moulvie, and received in return a neat little booklet full of incomprehensible printed papers. He felt almost afraid of his new possession, with its gay tie to keep everything in its place within the cover. Supposing he lost something and found himself stranded? He broke out at the thought into a cold sweat, and hunted hurriedly for the extra ticket which the Moulvie had told him was to be used to the junction, since the railway which passed through the town was not on the direct line. He found it, an ordinary third-class ticket, tucked away safely; but the fright made him resolve on keeping it separate and hanging the precious remainder in a bag round his neck. The empty money-bag would do; or better still, there were some bits left yet of Hoshyar's little coat of brocade, and the ticket deserved a fine holder.

As he sat stitching away at the familiar fragments, however, by the flicker of the cresset, a certain remorse assailed him at having seen so little of his brother during the past month. True, Hoshyar, for various reasons, preferred coming to see him; but ever since the Eed, Raheem had been dimly conscious that something seemed to have come between him and the soul he meant to save. Was it that he knew in his heart it ought to be already saved? There was no longer any need, however, for such questions. So soon as the bag was finished he would go over and find Hoshyar; would find and tell him the great secret, the secret which even Raheem's small store of worldly wisdom had kept jealously.

A sound at the plinth made him look up, and there was Hoshyar himself. Something in his face made the sewer say quickly: "I set aside the money for thee, Hoshyar, though thou camest not. It is here, five rupees."

Hoshyar looked at the little pile with a queer expression, and leaving the plinth came within the reach of a whisper. "That will not serve me to-night," he said quietly. "I must have thirty."

"Thirty!" echoed Raheem. "I have it not."

"Thou hast it in the box. See here, brother, thou hast told me always that the money was mine--for my salvation. Well, I need it; I must have it." He spoke almost carelessly as one who has a certainty of succeeding; and in truth he thought so. Once before Raheem had almost emptied the bag to save him from ruin, and he had calculated deliberately on its being emptied again when he had bought Yasmeena her new dress out of office-funds which would have to be replaced at the end of the month. Raheem would not have given a pice for such a purpose, of course; but with detection and disgrace staring his brother in the face it would be different. Besides, the money was his, for his salvation. "Listen, Raheem," he went on, summoning up a penitential tone; but his brother interrupted him swiftly, a sort of dread in his dark, hollow eyes. "There is naught in the box now, brother," he said, with a catch of fear in his voice. "I have naught but this;" he laid his hand lightly upon the booklet, and its very touch seemed to bring comfort, for he smiled. "'Tis my salvation, Hoshyar, for I have given thee my pilgrimage. See, I am making a holder for it. Dost recognise the stuff? 'Tis a bit of the little brocade coat, brother."

Hoshyar had caught up the booklet, glanced at it, and now flung it down with a passionate oath. "Salvation,--fool, 'tis perdition!" Then he laughed suddenly, a loud, bitter laugh. "That is an end," he said, rising to go. "I only waste time here. Good-bye, Raheem; 'tis well thou hast a keepsake of me; thou art not likely to see much of me these seven years to come."

"What dost mean, brother?" began the comb-maker, fearfully; but Hoshyar, without another word, turned back to the bazaar.

"'Tis thou that art the fool," said Yasmeena, with a yawn, after Hoshyar had raged for a quarter of an hour of his ill-luck, of his brother's foolery, of her extravagance. "Why didst not take the ticket? It must be worth something, surely?" Then a sudden interest came to her languid eyes, where vice itself seemed weary. "Seest thou, beloved, I have an idea! Old Deena the drum-player is for ever talking of second-hand salvation. He hath forty rupees saved for it; that would leave me ten as commission. He need not know; I can say I got it; we of the bazaar get most things at times in our profession. And the money was thine,--for thy salvation, remember."

Hoshyar looked at her as a man looks at a venomous snake he has no power to kill.

"Lo, Baboo-ji!" said a trollop of a girl, lounging in with a giggle. "Thy brother Raheem asks for thee below. 'Tis the first time, methinks, he hath entered such a house, for he stands like a child, clasping a brocaded bag as if there were pests about, and it held camphor."

Yasmeena sat up among her quilts and looked at Hoshyar. "Bid the good creature to the courtyard at the back," she said in a level voice. "Thou wilt like to see him alone, doubtless, Hoshyar. And, Merun, bid some man take him a sherbet; he would be affrighted of a houri. Make it of sandal-essence, girl, and bring it to me to see that it is rightly flavoured. Thou likest not sandal-essence, Hoshyar, 'tis true, but 'tis most refreshing to those who have walked, and thou needst not touch it."

Hoshyar's look changed. It was the look now which a bird gives to the snake.

Raheem was at the station next day in plenty of time, though, rather to his surprise, he had slept later than usual that morning, and slept heavily also; perhaps because he seemed not to have a care left in the world after Hoshyar had retracted all his reproaches and bidden him go in peace. Peace,--what else could remain in a man's heart after that renunciation in the dark deserted mosque upon the homeward way, which had left Raheem's conscience clear at last, left him without a wedding-garment and yet content? And now, with his ticket to the junction duly snipped, his bundle in one hand and the other assuring itself of the booklet's safety in the brocade bag, he passed down the platform in the rear of the rush from the waiting-shed, looking diffidently for a seat in the close-packed carriages, which with their iron bars and struggling occupants looked like cages of wild beasts.

"Here, neighbour Hâjji, here!" cried a cracked, familiar voice full of elation, full of importance. "Now that demon of a drum hath gone there is room for a saint or two. He is Hâjji already, my masters, and will be a good companion. But 'tis done cheaper nowadays, and I, I swear, have it cheaper than ye all. How much, is a secret; but the Lord kept his eye on old Deena." So he went on boastfully, till even his voice was drowned in the great shout which went up as the train moved on. He was back on his own good fortune, however, when the hundred and fifty and odd passengers in their carriage, separated into scores by iron bars, had subsided into a mere babel of speaking voices. "No cover, say you?" he replied resentfully to a captious criticism on his ticket. "What good is a cover? Dew is pretty, but it don't quench thirst; so I, being a pilgrim, drink plain water. My ticket will take me as far as thine."

Raheem, crouched up between the drum-player and a fat butcher, heard vaguely, and fingered the outline of his treasure in its bag of brocade, feeling glad he had so honoured it; for it took him further than Mecca, further than this world. The Gates of Pearl were set ajar for him, and he could see through them to the glory and glitter of Paradise. And so, after a rush through a long stretch of desert sand, the train slackened, rousing him from a dream. This must be the junction, and he must take out the other ticket; but not while a score of folk were struggling over him in their rush to be out first. He was out last, of course, and had barely time to snatch the booklet from its bag, ere an official warned him to hurry up. So panting, confused, his bundle in one hand, his treasure in the other, he sped over the bridge to the next platform.

"Tickets, tickets, all tickets!" came another alien voice, and he paused to obey, setting his bundle on the ground in order to have both hands for his task. But the opening of the cover was to him as the closing of the Book of Life; for it was empty.

"Pass on, pass on!" came the not unkindly voice of command once more. "Out of the way, you there, and don't stand like a fool. You've dropped it likely; run back and see; there's time yet."

So over the bridge again went Raheem, in frantic hope, back on his steps again in frantic despair. "I had it, Huzoor, indeed I had it! Here is the cover!"

The ticket-collector shook his head, and Raheem, with a dazed look, turned away quietly.

"Trra!" came the voice of the drum-player sententiously and safely from the window of a carriage. "He hath lost the inside; that comes of a cover. Well, well, prayers are over; up with the carpet! But he is Hâjji already, my masters, so 'tis not as though it were one of us sinners."

"Keep thy sins to thyself, chatterer," retorted his next neighbour tartly, as the train moved on. "We be virtuous men enough."

"If you haven't money to go on, you must go back. The booking-office is over there, and the up-mail will be in in a few hours."

This official view of the question, given by the authorities as they gathered round the disappointed pilgrim, was simplicity itself, even to Raheem. He never thought of connecting his ticketless cover with Deena's coverless ticket. The fact that his chance was gone absorbed him utterly; he had lost salvation, for the very thought of taking back his gift to Hoshyar was impossible to him. That was the outcome of it all. So he sat patiently waiting for his train to come in; sat patiently, after he had found a place in it, waiting for it to go on, so absolutely absorbed in his loss, that he did not even hear his neighbours' comments on the delay.

"Line clear at last!" said the guard joyfully to the driver as he came out of the telegraph-office, where but one instant before the welcome signal had echoed. "Steam away all you know, sonny, and make up lost time. I promised my girl to be punctual; there's a hop on at her house."

So, with a shriek, they were off for a twenty-mile scamper across the desert; out with a bump over the points, out with a whistle past the last signal, out with a flash by the telegraph-posts. But something else was flashing by the posts also; for a message came clicking into the station they had left not a minute ago, "Mistake--line blocked--down-mail."

"My God!" said the station-master in a thick voice, standing up blindly. He was an old Mutiny man, but he was white as a sheet.

"It isn't our fault, father," began his son, a slim young fellow, showing mixed blood.

"D----n it all, sir," shouted the other furiously, "what does it matter whose fault it is? What's to be done?"

Nothing could be done, save to telegraph back quick as kind nature could carry it: "Line blocked--up-mail also." Fateful words! The line blocked both ways, and not a signal for twenty miles! Half an hour of warning at the least, and nothing to be done; nothing save to accept the disaster!

"Bring up the relief-engine sharp, Smith," said the Traffic Superintendent at the terminus when, ere a minute was past, the hopeless news reached him. "Graham, run over for Dr. Westlake, for Harrison, too, if he's there; splints, bandages, dressers, and all that. Davies, wire back to the other end to send what they can from their reserve."

And so, swiftly as hands and brains could compass it, two more engines fled shrieking into the growing dusk of evening behind those two, the down-mail and the up-mail, coming nearer and nearer to each other on the single line.

"Twenty minutes since they started, about," said one man, who was standing with a watch in his hand, in curiously quiet tones. "It must be soon now; and there is a curve about the middle. I hope to God there is no friend of mine in either!"

"Royston's in the down," replied another studiously even voice. "He was going to see his wife. But the firsts are well back; it's the thirds, poor devils----" He paused, and the others nodded.

The thirds, doubtless! And in one of them, far forward, crouched Raheem, staring out into the calm dusk, absorbed in the horror of going back, going back to die before he had saved his own soul!

So, suddenly, through and above the rush and the roar and the rattle that he scarcely heard, came a new sound forcing him to listen. It was a quivering, clamorous, insistent whistle. It brought no recognition to his ignorance, or to the ignorance of those around him, but far back in the first-class carriages white faces peered out into the gloom, and foreign voices called to each other: "Danger whistle--what's up?" Still, it was a strange, disturbing sound with a strange echo. And was that an echo of the rush, and the roar, and the rattle? Raheem sat up quickly. Was it the end of all things? Why had they struck him--Who--Hoshyar! Then thought ended in a scream of pain.

"There is a man caught by the feet under that wheel," said Dr. Westlake not many minutes after, as he came out of the hideous pile of wreckage all grimed and smirched. "He is breathing yet, so have him out sharp. We may save him, but these others----" He passed on to seek work significantly.

And so Raheem, stunned and with both feet crushed to a jelly, was dug out; the only man left alive in the forward third-class carriage of the up-mail. He was still unconscious when it came to be his turn for the doctors in the crowded hospital. "Badly nourished," said Dr. Westlake, "but it is his only chance. Harrison, the eucalyptus sawdust, please; it is a good case for it, and we shall be short of dressings."

So two days afterwards Raheem, recovering from a slight concussion of the brain, found himself in a strangely comfortable bed with a curious hump of a thing over his feet under the coverlet. He did not know that there were no feet there; that they had both been amputated at the ankle, and that he was a cripple for life. And there was no reason why he should find it out, since the sawdust did its work without more ado, much to the doctor's delight, who, as he took Raheem's temperature, talked of first intents and septic dressings to his assistant. In fact, they were both so pleased that it came upon them by surprise one day, when Raheem, with clasped hands, asked when he was to die.

"Die? Rubbish!" said Dr. Westlake, cheerfully. "Not from this, at any rate, and we will do what we can for the lungs afterwards."

Raheem's face did not lose its anxiety. "And when, if the Huzoor will say, shall I be able to walk again?" As he lay in the comfortable bed he had been making up his mind to sacrifice all comfort, to leave life behind him, and start on foot for death, with his face towards Mecca.

"Walk?" echoed the doctor, with a significant look at his assistant. Then he sat down on the edge of the cot, and told the truth.

Raheem heard it, looking incredulously at the cradle; and then suddenly he interrupted a platitude about its being better to be a cripple than to die, with an eager question: "Then the Huzoor means that I shall never be able to walk again?"

The doctor nodded.

"May God reward the Huzoor for ever and ever," said Raheem in a whisper, raising both hands in a salute; and his face was one radiant smile.

Dr. Westlake looked at his assistant as they passed on to the next cot. "They are an incomprehensible people," he said in rather an injured tone. "I never expected to hear a man thank me rapturously for cutting off both his feet."

He did not know that cripples are especially exempted from the duty of pilgrimage, and that the patient was repeating his version of the text: "It is better to enter halt into life, than, having two feet, to be cast into hell."

[THE KING'S WELL]

This is one of poor Craddock's many stories which he told me when we were in the wilderness together, engaged--like another Moses and Aaron--in preparing a way for a Western people across the desert, and dividing its sand waves by a pathway of red-brick ballast edged with steel. In other words, in making the railway on which he afterwards met his death in trying to prevent a survival of past ages from being in the permanent way of civilisation.

We used to sit at the door of my little tent--two Englishmen adrift on a sand sea--and I used to listen while he talked; for the life he had led made him the best of company, and his combined ignorance and knowledge of the East was a perpetual surprise. Some of his stories were grossly, frankly impossible, but this one, despite its strangeness, I believed unhesitatingly; as any one would have done who had seen, as I saw, the indescribable world-tarnish which long years of loose living brings to the kindliest face, leave it clear, bright, and eager to a rejuvenescence of love, and pity, and pain.

The sun had dipped below the rising rim of the great sand-circle whose centre we were, but the sky was still a cloudless expanse of yellow radiance dazzling to the eyes from sheer excess of light. There was nothing far or near to differentiate one part of earth or heaven from another save the thin red line of ridiculous little flags we had been planting out during the day; and I remember thinking that I could not for the life of me tell the exact spot where, five minutes before, I had seen the last curved glint of the sun disappear--for one bit of horizon seemed to the full as bright as another.

"Looks like the yaller bottle in the chemist's shop; don't it, sir?" remarked Craddock cheerfully--"leastways, as I used to think when I was a boy. Lordy! Lordy! boys is--is boys, I do assure you. Old Pargiter's shop to our village was over against the public, sir, next the church, an' comin' 'ome o' evenin's from the catechism, sir, it seemed Je-rewsalem the Golden. Expect it was the anathysts, an' sapphiras, an' rubies, an' them sort o' stones did it, for boys--is boys, you see, sir." He gave an apologetic smear to his corn-coloured moustache as if to wipe away the flavour of his own sentiment--the wrist-smear of those whose hands are habitually soiled.

"It is like a topaz seen against the light," I replied, accepting both confidence and excuse with the calm indifference which always encouraged Craddock to further indulgence. "I don't think I ever saw it quite so dazzlingly clear, did you?"

He paused awhile, and the blue eyes, bloodshot by exposure to unspeakable lights and unspeakable darknesses of all sorts and kinds, grew a trifle absent.

"I dunno but what I 'ave, sir; leastways it looks more light-like from the bottom o' a well. As, savin' your presence, sir, is only nat'ral."

"From the bottom of a well?" I echoed. "When was that, Craddock? you never told me that yarn."

He paused again. "No, sir. It ain't a pleasing interlood, for 'twas in the Mutiny time, sir, w'en we was all mad devils, black an' white--white an' black----," and then suddenly, as I have said, some past pity and passion and pain seemed to come back upon him with a rush, so that he sat staring into that cloudless sky as if he saw a vision, and his voice came at last half to himself, "By the Lord as made me I dunno which was worse, black nor white, white nor black; yet it was white as did for me, Nathaniel James Craddock, at the bottom o' the King's Well." Then he was silent again, and I sat silent too, for there never was any use in pumping Craddock. His fund of experiences was too vast for you to be sure of bringing what you wanted to the surface. So, after a time, he began again deviously:

"Not as wot it was, so to speak, a well at all, but what they calls, in the lingo, a bawly--a thing, you know, sir, with flights o' steps a-leadin' down to the bowels of the yerth--right down to the water as maybe a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet below the surface, as the sayin' is, sir. It was just a large, round, black spot o' ink, that was wot the water was, an' standin' on the stone edge you could see right up the stairs to a round yaller spot of Je-rewsalem the Golden. Two spots there were, sir, owin' to there being two flights o' steps, an' many a time as I lay like a rabbit in 'is burrow down by the water I'd tell myself luck was in there bein' two--two whites to one black, yet after all it was white as did the business for me, sir, at the bottom o' the King's bawly."

"You must have been very young in Mutiny time?" I remarked in casual aid to his lagging confidence.

"One and twenty, sir--more by token I come to man's estate, as the sayin' is, at the bottom o' that there well. Lordy! I can see it now! A sort o' mist o' light from Je-rewsalem above a-fadin' away half down the stairs, and leavin' the rest to get darker an' darker to the black spot o' water; but it had a glint o' light on it too that come, God knows how, when the sun was low." As he spoke I had noticed a curious change in his voice; a sort of refining process, as if he were going back to a self that was less rough, less common, and the change was still more marked when, after a pause, he began again: "It was an awful hot year, sir, just a white flame of heat--a burning fiery furnace; but there wasn't none of us come through it praisin' an' magnifyin'--leastways I didn't, but then I was a wild lot. Run away from home, sir; that is how I came to be in the country, knowing a good bit of the lingo for a youngster. Served my way out before the mast, and then backed my luck. And won it too; for a Rajah fellow paid me to wrestle with his men, and play monkey tricks. Lordy! I remember the first time I got in grips with the champion, and he stood head down expectin' me to go on buttin' like a goat. There wasn't one of them could touch me, sir, but that wasn't no protection when the time came. It's an odd sort of thing, I do assure you, for a man who knows he could lick every one he sees, to be runnin' like a hare for dear life, hidin' by day an' circumventin' the villages by night; but that was how it was for three weeks before I come plumb--as the sayin' is--on the King's Well. It was right in the worst country, and I was footsore, and stumblin' like as if I were in liquor with the fever. A queer sort o' place it was as I saw it first in the dawn which come--as the dawns had a trick o' doin' in those times--a deal too soon for Nathaniel James. It was right in the open in the middle o' a lot o' broken bricks and little mounds o' mud--miles and miles of them it had seemed to me, footsore an' stumblin'; for the place had been a big city, so I'm told, sir, in the old times. And now it was nothin' but a plain o' broken brick an' graves, except for a cluster of tall old houses with the usual mud-huts a-crowdin' up round them. And I knew from what I'd heard that the biggest murdering villains o' the lot lived in them houses, poor budmarsh[^[32]] Mohammedans, proud as Lucifer, a-screwing the tails o' the ryots for a livin'--though why ryots, sir, is hard to say, for a more peaceable lot o' able-bodied men and women never was. Well, there I was in the worst place I could have chosen, and the dawn comin' sudden all in a blaze. Then, right at my feet I sees the bawly; just a hole o' broken masonry, an' the steps leading down like a rabbit burrow. They didn't seem to be much used that side furthest from the village among the graves, for the drifted sand was a-lying thick on the topmost steps, and I didn't see no footmarks to speak of, only a queer sort o' track that might 'ave bin a man's and mightn't. Anyhow I thought I'd risk it, seeing as if any one come down the one stair, I could hoof it up the other, an' there's generally a lot o' little arched recesses at the bottom o' bawlies where I could lie low. So I chanced it. An' Lordy! wasn't it cool as I hobbled down them vaulted steps. 'Twas a fine place, sir, when all was said an' done. Half-a-dozen steps or so, and then a landin', as the sayin' is, with a sort o' travellers' rest on either side; but I went right down to the bottom, so as to see what sort o' trap I'd got into. An' I found it none so bad, for there wasn't no passage round as there is in most bawlies, but only a' arched room on either side my stairs ending sheer in the drop o' ink which filled up a round sort o' well that was vaulted over up in the dark somewhere. So there wasn't no way of getting from one stair to the other but by a leap such as there wasn't one but Nathaniel James in the country side as could leap it; an' that would give me time. Still I do assure you, sir, it takes the spunk out of a fellow to go skulkin' round for three weeks with your life in your hand in baggy silk trousers an' a dressin' gown--for I'd put on what they calls a killit as the Rajah give me for smashing up another Rajah's champion--that's a dress o' state, sir, an' killit or not, it nigh killed me, for it was chock full o' embroidery an' that hot; but beggars mustn't be choosers, and that night I run off from the Palace it was all I could lay hands on. An' did its work too--just to give what them surveyor chaps calls the proper contour, as the sayin' is. Anyhow, what with the stain, a deal more knowledge of the lingo than I have now, sir, an' through my being considerable stronger than the only two fellars as caught me napping, here I was in the King's bawly watching them two round spots o' Je-rewsalem like a man in his grave a-waitin' the last trump; an' the first pair o' feet I saw on the stairs opposite set me a-tremblin' like a ferreted rabbit, even though I knew that wot with the stairs, an' the drop o' ink, I'd 'ave a good five minutes' start. But then I heard the jingles on them, sir, and knew it was only a woman from the village comin' down to fill her water-pot. There was a lot o' them come chatterin' and laughin' during the day, but always down the further stair. And Lordy! it was cool after the fiery furnace! I had a mouthful or two o' corn I'd looted, so when dusk came it seemed to me as if I couldn't move on--small blame to me, sir, seein' how cool an' quiet it was, and I so close on done. But just as I was a-callin' myself names for bein' lazy, come a footfall on my stair. Now you know, sir, them bawlies bein' arched an' all that, is awful echo-ey places, an' I do assure you I made up my mind a man was coming down, slow and deliberate-like. I looked out, an' couldn't see nothing, but there was the footfall just like a procession; an' then somethin' let loose a bellow, and I felt inclined to cut. But then I thought I'd wait a bit seein' I was stronger nor most, an' the drop o' ink was handy for a corpse. So I waited until the bellow come again; an' this time--bein' close as it were, an' out o' the echo--I knew my friend, for I do assure you, sir, it was nothin' but the biggest bull toad you ever see, coming flop, flop down the stair for his evenin' drink. A great green thing with a yaller waistcoat as sat up on the last step looked at me quite proud-like. Lordy! how I laughed! It was the first laugh I'd laughed for three week, an' it done me good; that an' seeing the bull toad go douse into the water like a man, for it set me a-longin' for a swim too, an' when I come out o' that drop o' cold ink I was a new man. Slept like a babby in its cradle and woke to see through the maze o' arches a woman on the t'other side a-rinsin' out her brass pot quite calm-like. She was a-takin' his breakfast to her man in the fields, I expect, for there was a pile o' them flapjacks on a platter beside her. I dun'no, sir, if it was the sleep, or the sight o' food and me ravenin' wolves, or just sheer devilry--for I was a wild lot--but I out o' my rabbit 'utch an' let loose a yell. You may well call 'em bawlies, sir, for I do assure you I felt kind o' queer myself havin' made all that noise. She gave no look, but let loose another yell of her own as she turned tail and ran up them stairs like a lamplighter. It seemed to me as if she was callin' on 'the King--the King,' but I didn't stop to think. Now was my time. I was over the drop o' ink clear on to the second step in my hurry, before she was half-way up to Je-rewsalem, an' I was back again to the 'utch with the flapjacks making ready to run if need be for dear life, when I heard the silver tinkle again an' women's voices. Every word, sir, I could hear through its bein' a bawly, an' I heard her"--he paused sharply, waited a second, and began again--"There was two on them now, disputin' an' half-laughin', half-cryin'; one was pullin' the other an' tellin' her she was a fool; there wasn't no King, more's the pity, and if there was she wasn't afraid seein' he was her bâpdâda;--that's ancestors, sir--but the t'other wouldn't hear of it, an' kept sayin' 'twas well enough for some folk as pretended wisdom, but every one knew the King's footmark on the stair an' had heard his voice after dusk. My friend the bull toad, thinks I, feelin' considerable easier in my mind, for I knew enough o' their ways you see, sir, to know as there wasn't much chance o' any one else comin' down my stairs if a ghost lived there; so I listened to the argufying quite interested-like. But it wasn't no good--the half-laughin' voice hadn't a chance even when it grew sober, and cried shame on bein' frightened at the spirit of the good King, who every day come down to his bawly all alone, so that any pore soul as wanted justice might go down the other stair and tell him what was amiss across the black water with no fear. 'If he was only there now instead o' bein' where saints are,' I heard her say, 'I'd go down this instant an' tell him to stop it all--but there's no one to listen nowadays--no one.' An' with that she come tinkling down the steps alone--a tall girl, sir--but, there--'tain't no good describin' her, for I never see her but in half-light till---- Well! she just rinsed out her pot like the rest o' them and filled it; but afore she went she stood so with it on her head on the t'other side o' the black water for a moment, an' said quite loud an' bold-like, 'Salaam Mâhârdj.[^[33]]

"I was that wild sort, as I might have given a bellow just to frighten her for the fun o' the thing, but I kept somehow a-thinkin' o' what she had said of the old King a-trailin' down them steps in his royal robes, and listenin' in that bawly to all the pore folks' troubles, an' a-promisin' never to forsake them but to bring justice with him down the stairs to the end o' all things. Not that he was an old King, sir, as I found out afterwards, but a young sort o' saint, as got killed afore his time. You see I heard a lot o' talk from the women as came down in companies, skeery, and just in a mortal hurry to fill their jars and git home because of the girl as said she had heard the King in the daytime. So that it came to me, sir, that I couldn't do better nor lie hidden a day or two and get strong where I was, for there wasn't no manner o' hurry. Like as not I'd get killed somehow before I got to the river, and I couldn't help anyways, seein' as I couldn't look to get into any o' the places where we was holdin' out against the black devils. An' that evenin', when the old bull toad come down for his swim, I just laughed again quite light-hearted, and says as she said, 'Salaam Mâhârâj!'

"Well, she was the only one as come alone after that, but come she did, an' every time she come she would stand an' say loud-like, but a bit wistful, 'Salaam Mâhârâj!'

"She was a tall girl, but there--it ain't no use describing her.

"So what with the women coming all together I didn't have much chance o' flapjacks, and what with the village bein' walled in an' full of them murderin' nobility, I wasn't, so to say, successful in thievin', an' at last I see it was time to move on. A bad time, too; for I heard from the women's talk as there was crowds o' sepoys about a-screwin' the pore folks' tails, an' I heard her say to 'em once as it were their fault. 'If they wasn't so frightened o' the King,' said she, 'maybe he'd come back and give 'em justice.' An' that evenin' when she come down she stood so with her arms spread out lookin' up the stair and said again, bowing down after their fashion, 'Salaam Mâhârâj!, your slave waits!'

"There was a pile o' flapjacks on the platter beside her water-pot, an' maybe it was the sight o' them, and knowin' they would be worth gold to me, or maybe because it was my last time o' askin', or maybe the devil that was in me, but I just out o' my rabbit 'utch, in my baggy silk trousers and dressing-gown--in the whole blessed killit, sir--and stood quite still on the steps. It was most dark, you see, sir, an' the contours was correc', so 'twas no wonder she give a little cry, half-glad, half-afraid, as she come up from her salaam. I guessed she'd run and leave me the flapjacks, but she wasn't that sort. A tall girl--but there, it ain't no use describin'. Well afore I could think what to do she was at it; such a tale o' wrong, sir, not about herself, though she was one of those pore souls as is born widows, but about Lord knows what of the people. An' I listened. Did you ever listen, sir, to a woman's voice just chock full o' confidence in your bein' a good sort? Well, I did; an' I dunno how 'twas, sir, but the confidence was catchin'. I was a reckless, bold chap, you see, an' I knew she had grit, so the next moment I was over that circle o' black water and beside her. She give another little cry, but, my Lord! she had grit, for she drew back quick against the wall and thrust out her hands to keep me off.

"'The King! the King!' she said, 'I thought you was the King!'

"An' with that I caught her by the hands. 'I'm not the King,' says I, 'but don't you be afraid, I'm only a pore man as won't hurt you.'

"'I'm not afraid,' she says, tryin' to make believe. 'You come down the King's stairs o' justice,' she said, 'an' that's enough.'

"Then somehow, I dunno how it was, sir, but all in a moment it come home to me that I'd go my whole pile on her, an' I drop her hands an' I says:

"'Yes! I come down the King's stairs, and I'll be a King to you for justice if you'll be a Queen to me.'

"And by God! sir, she was.

"So there we were, lookin' into each other's eyes and sayin' nothin', till she gave a queer little laugh.

"'Why,' she says, 'you're a white man!' and with that she lay her finger quick and confident on my wrist; an' sure enough, what with the swim and the dark it were white indeed--white an' shivery, too, with the touch somehow, so that I couldn't but keep her hand so and say:

"'Yes, my dear, I'm white and you're black; I'm a man and you're a woman, but it shan't make no odds. I'm King and you're Queen in this here bawly, and there shan't be nothing but justice atween us, so help me, God!'

"An' there wasn't, sir. No! though we went our whole pile on each other, I do assure you, sir."

The assurance was needless; one look at his face was enough--that world-worn face with its bloodshot eyes, fixed on the dazzling glory of the sky as if they saw a vision.

"I used to see her first against Je-rewsalem," he went on in a lower tone. "Then I could hear her come down the stairs ever so soft to stand close to the water's edge and cry, 'Salaam Mâhârâj!'--for she called me that, just for fun, you see, sir. An' there weren't much wistfulness in her voice, sir, mostly laughter, an' somethin' better nor laughter, when I come leapin' across that drop o' ink to stand beside her for a little, an' tell her--what folks say to each other when they've set their whole pile on each other, you know, sir. For she wouldn't never come down the King's stairs, sayin' it was unlucky an' what not. Excuses, sir, but I understood 'em and I didn't want her, for you see it was justice between us I'd sworn, and I was a wild lot. She had told her father--a blind old Brahman, sir, awful holy, and nigh bedridden too--and he sent word to say stop where I was. The villagers wouldn't venture down the stairs either, and if they did wouldn't harm me, being, as I say, sir, as peaceable a lot o' able-bodied men as ever was. But the maraudin', murderin' crew in the big hawelis--that's houses, sir--was harbouring those mutinous devils of Jack Pandies, and playin' high old Tommy for miles round, so I'd better lie low till justice came; as it'd sure to do at last, seein' that the Lord was King. They talks a sight, sir, about the heathen and their ignorance, but I do assure you she knew a deal more nor me; what with being of a king's family an' havin' a bedridden saint of a Brahman for a father. An' they mayn't know much book-learnin' p'r'aps, but some of 'em knows how to make a man put his whole pile on them. And she had grit, my Lord! she had grit!

"Yet there was a catch in her breath that evenin' when I was nigh mad with fear, lest she had come to harm because it was so late, and hearing her footfall on the stair I leapt over, and nearly fell back into the ink-pot through seein' her in a man's dress.

"'I'd rather you didn't come if there's danger,' said I quite sharp-like, when she told me the sepoys was setting watch because folk said the white soldiers were a-coming. 'Don't! I can't stand it here in the dark, idle, thinkin' o' you God knows how. I'll fend for myself quite well.'

"An' with that she laughed low with the little catch in her breath still, and come a bit closer so as I could slip my arm round her a little; an' by that I knew 'twas more danger than she let on--for she was not that sort.

"'Now don't you come,' says I, as I might be the King himself givin' orders, 'I won't have it. If the soldiers is comin', they'll bring justice, an' if not a little starvin' won't hurt me, for I'm gettin' quite strong again.' An' so I was, sir, what with the rest and the food an' the happiness. For I do assure you, sir, on my solemn oath, that I was happy at the bottom o' that King's bawly. Happy? By the Lord! sir, 'twas enough to make a man happy to see the look she gave me, as much as to say I was strong enough and everything enough for her; for though it was nigh dark I could see her face from its bein' so close to mine--she bein' a tall girl--but there, it ain't no use describin'. There don't seem much to say, sir, when it comes to lookin' at each other that way, an' so we stood silent a bit, till sudden I hear the old bull toad at his jinks again, and partly to ease off the sort o' burstin' feelin' at my heart I cries with a laugh, 'There's the King!'

"But she just lays her head down, pugree an' all, on my shoulder and says with a sob, 'No, here's the King. The King as I come to for justice.'"

He paused for so long, that something of the excitement which had been thrilling in his tones seemed to pass into my mind, and I felt almost a shock when he went on quite calmly:

"Well, it was arranged that she wasn't to come back for three days onless somethin' turned up. I would have it so, an' she give in at last. It was mortal dull without her, and I made up my mind when I see her again to tell her I'd back my luck once more, and fight my way safe somehow. Then when it was over I'd come back for her; for it didn't seem it could go against me as I sat down by the drop o' ink a-lookin' up to Je-rewsalem over the way, and a-wonderin' when I should see her on the top step a-comin' for justice to her King.

"Well, she come at last. It were the second day, I think, sir, and it took me all of a sudden, for, owin' to its bein' a bawly in the bowels in the yerth you couldn't hear nothin' of what was goin' on up top. I was sittin' lookin' over the way when I hear a noise behind an' a voice, 'Mâhârâj! Mâhârâj!'

"It was she, sir, down the King's steps in the man's dress, an' behind her, my God! not black devils but white ones with red coats an' set bayonets!--'Mâhârâj! Mâhârâj! Justice! Justice!'

"I was out, sir, tearing up to meet her in a second, shoutin' in English to hold hard--that she was a woman; but them cursed bawly echoes mixed it all up, an' the cursed baggy trousers and things, didn't give me no chance of a-hearin' through its bein' half-dark----

"'Mâhârâj! Mâhârâj!'

"I heard it plain enough, God knows. I hear it now sometimes, sir, an' I see her face as I saw it for the only time in the light afore I fell over her dead body a-lying on the steps half-way down the stairs o' justice.

"They told me after, as I had finished the cry for her many and many a time whilst I lay in 'orspital--for they'd struck me playful-like before they found out I was white, an' I took mortal bad; but there wasn't much use in justice then for none o' us. An' I never could tell quite how it happened, for when I went back the village was just bricks, and the corpses lyin' about thick, unburied. They had had a hard fight as they told me, had the Tommies, an' bein' fresh from Cawnpore was keen--as was nat'ral--an' she was in man's clothes, you see, when she come flyin' down the steps o' justice calling for the King."

* * * * *

He sat silent, looking out to the now darkening sky where the light had faded save in the widening rays spreading out from the grave of the sun. And down one of them, as down a golden staircase, I seemed to see a flying figure with outstretched arms pass to Jerusalem the Golden with the cry "Mâhârâj! Mâhârâj!"

But Craddock was already clearing his throat suggestively for the usual glass of whisky and water; yet ere he drank it his eyes wandered absently, helplessly, to the horizon, and I heard him mutter to himself:

"An' so 'twas white, not black, as did for Nathaniel James Craddock at the bottom o' the King's Well."

And as I looked at him drink-sodden and reckless, I understood that when the time came he too would have the right to pass down the King's stair seeking justice--and finding it.

[UMA HIMAVUTEE]