Tara looked at him wonderingly. "There is no fear of that," she replied clearly, loudly, "none shall disturb Zora again. She hath found that freedom in the future. For the rest of us, God knows! The times are strange. So let her have her right of wailing, master. She will feel silent in the grave without the voices of her race."
He drew his hand away sharply; even in death a great gulf lay between him and the woman he had loved.
So the death wail rang out clamorously through the soft dark air.
[CHAPTER IV.]
TAPE AND SEALING-WAX.
"I can't think," said a good-looking middle-aged man as he petulantly pushed aside a pile of official papers, "where Dashe picks these things up. I never come across them. And it is not as if he were in a big station or--or in the swim in any way." He spoke fretfully, as one might who, having done his best, has failed. And he had grounds for this feeling, since the fact that the diffident district-officer named Dashe was not in the swim, must clearly have been due to his official superiors; the speaker being one of them.
Fortunately, however, for England, these diffident sons of hers cannot always hide their lights under bushels. As the biographies of many Indian statesmen show, some outsider notices a gleam of common sense amid the gloom, and steers his course by it. Now Mr. Dashe's intimate knowledge of a certain jungle tract in this district had resulted in a certain military magnate bagging three tigers. From this to a reliance on his political perceptions is not so great a jump as might appear; since a man acquainted with the haunt of every wild beast in his jurisdiction may be credited with knowledge of other dangerous inhabitants. So much so that the military magnate, being impressed by some casual remarks, had asked Mr. Dashe to put down his views on paper, and had passed them on to a great political light.
It was he who sat at the table looking at a broadsheet printed in the native character, as if it were a personal affront. The military magnate, who had come over to discuss the question, was lounging in an easy-chair with a cheroot. They were both excellent specimens of Englishmen. The civilian a trifle bald, the soldier a trifle gray; but one glance was sufficient to judge them neither knaves nor fools.
"That's the proclamation you're at now, isn't it?" asked the military magnate, looking up, "I'm afraid I could only make out a word here and there. That's the worst of Dashe. He's so deuced clever at the vernaculars himself that he imagines other people----"
The political, who had earned his first elevation from the common herd to the Secretariat by a nice taste in Persian couplets suitable for durbar speeches, smiled compassionately.