"We are only driving him crazy," said the Doctor aside, "and I doubt if it is much good. I saw the wheel pass right over the chest. Let him be----"
"But it seems so cruel, so unchristian," protested the Parson.
The Doctor smiled oddly.
"That doesn't alter the fact. You're no good here; no more am I. Here, you chuprassie! Run like the devil to the dispensary, and tell Faiz Khân he's wanted. If he is out, one of the Mahomedan dressers--a Mahomedan, mind you--and he is to report to me. Come along, Parson. The kindest thing we can do is to go away. It's humiliating, but true."
Apparently it was so, for a sort of passive resignation came to the straining arms as the dark faces crowded round once more with plain, unhesitating, unvarnished comments.
"Lo! he is dead for sure. Well, it is the Lord's will, and he hath found freedom. See you, he wanted his flower, the foolish one."
"'Twas the horses did it," said another. "They are evil-begotten beasts. Rujjub hath said so often."
"Ai! burri'bât! All things are ill-begotten to one ill-begot, and Rujjub's beasts know he stints their stomachs-full," put in a third. "When I drove them in Tytler sahib's stable they were true born (i.e. gentle) as the sahib was himself. Then he took pension and went home to Wilâyet, and I have a new master who only keeps a phitton (phaeton). It is undignified; but, there, 'tis fate, nought else."
But Deen Mahomed, sitting with the dead child in his arms, was not thinking of Rujjub or his horses, of phittons or barouches, not even of chariots of fire--in a way not even of Rahmut himself--but simply of a tract and a child's tears--those last tears which were to be a last memory for ever and ever. Yet even this thought brought no definite emotion, only a dull wonder why such things should be. A wonder so vague, so dull that when Faiz Deen arrived to give the verdict of death, the old man, yielding readily to the inevitable, echoed the truism that it was God's will.
What else, indeed, could it be to the fierce old fanatic with his creed of kismet?