Before him in the mud-plastered square, as he sat immovable, was the mud fireplace on which his wheaten dough-cake was cooking; beside him was a leaf-platter of curds, a brass vessel of milk; a sight to be seen a hundred times a day in India; one which should never be forgotten.
The noon was almost shadowless; yet, even so, as he led the way, Captain Dering, from sheer habit, swerved to step further from the sacred square. Doing so his foot slipped an instant on the lower step. He gave an impatient exclamation and passed on. A minute later the door of the fort clanged behind the little party, cutting short an English laugh.
Then, not till then, the man in that square of purity showed signs of life. He rose quietly, almost unconcernedly, took the half-baked cake from the embers, the leaf-platter of curds, the vessel of milk, and going down to the river's edge, flung his dinner into it, to feed the fishes.
In that stumble, the plume-like fringe of Vincent Dering's high peaked turban had sent a shadow to overtop the two-inch barrier between one man and his fellows.
[CHAPTER II]
"HE SHALL FEED HIS FLOCK LIKE A SHEPHERD"
The garden of the old palace at Eshwara had been rightly described by Roshan Khân as a pleasant place. Longer than it was broad, its shady walks and orange groves clung to the river, raised above it by a balconied wall against which the current ran dimpling. On two of the remaining sides, a twenty-feet high barrier of sheer masonry, buttressed and bastioned, blocked out all curious eyes. On the third, separating it from the courtyard where the big gun stood, rose the palace. Seen thus intimately from within, the latter had changed its character. No longer severe, stern, giving a blank stare at the world from the narrow slits of infrequent windows, it had grown fanciful, almost fantastic, full of canopied turrets and inconsequent little latticed retreats.
At least in the two upper storeys; for the lower one was more solid, its chief feature being a wide, aisled passage leading right through it to a door which gave on the courtyard. Being exactly opposite the one in the corner of the Fort bastion on the other side, this door opened, as the latter did, on one of the slantwise limbs of the quaint union-jack of raised paths which centred in the cannon.
It was not necessary, however, to go round by this in crossing from one door to the other, as by keeping to the river steps, you could do so on the same level.
In old times the guardians of the frail beauties for whose delectation the garden had been made, had lived in the crypt-like vaulted rooms which opened out from this aisled passage; so keeping the gate against illegal wanderings. Since the only other exit from the garden, save by boat, was through the second storey of the women's apartments, and as this was by a door leading directly into the royal rooms (which were on the other side of the tunnel that gave access to the courtyard, and also divided the palace into two portions--male, and female), the butterfly prisoners had had no chance of fluttering to strange honey. In those days, therefore, the door had always been bolted and barred.