"So ill that you must do your very best for him to-night. If any one can pull him through, you can, remember that."
"Huzoor!" said Bisrâm, submissively.
It was a very dark night; so dark that the rushlight in Sonny's room seemed almost brilliant from the verandah. Looking thence you could see the child's cot, one of its side rails removed, and in its place, as it were, the protection of Bisrâm's crouching figure. He did not touch the cot; he crouched beside it with clasped hands hanging over his knees, and dark eyes staring hard into the darkness as if waiting and listening.
So he sate, his clasped hands loosening, his eyes growing softer as the hours passed, bringing nothing but half-conscious sleep, half-conscious wakening to the child. Until suddenly, irrelevantly, just on the border-land of night and day, the fretful wail rose upon the silence loudly, insistently--
"Where is the Noose, Bisra? I want it. O Bisrâm, bearer, bring the Noose, and strangle something."
The slackness, the dreaminess left the man's hands and eyes. He stood up blindly, desperately to face these last words; the words for which he had been listening. Yet there was still the same pathetic self-control as he stretched his hands out over the sleeping child.
"Lo! Kâli ma," he muttered, "have I not served thee as ever, despite the child. Have I set him before thee? Nay! thou knowest I have risked life itself to have thy tale of offering complete when I was hindered. Thou didst not suffer. Wilt not wait for once? Wilt not wait one little while?"
His voice, sinking in its entreaty, ended in silence. But only for a second. Then the fretful wail began again.
"The Noose, Bisra! Be not unkind. Remember I am ill. O Bisra! I want you to strangle something for me--"
Bisra gave a faint sob; then joined his outstretched hands.