The young Assistant Superintendent of Police gave a sharp glance behind him. What he saw there was not reassuring. "Oh! do shut up! Tell them the meeting's over, or there'll be mischief."
"Corrupted, gangrened----"
"Constables," came the order keenly, "clear the room! For Heaven's sake, Gunpat, don't get yourself into trouble!"
They were the last words Tom Gordon spoke. His hand slipped from Gunpat-Rai's shoulder as he was struck full on the bare head from behind by an iron-bound staff which crashed into his skull.
Even then the tyranny of words held Gunpat-Rai, though the suddenness of the shock dislocated his sequence.
"Dyed ingrain, corrupted to the very core."
Then he stood staring at what lay before him, and a great silence--a golden silence from words--came to him at last.
He only broke it once, when he was on trial. The court was full of his friends, and on the dais sat Englishmen, so the conditions were nearly the same as they had been years ago when the hot sunshine had slanted from the Tipper windows at Ilmpur to lay broad squares on the cool whitewash.
"I learnt it at school," he said dully; and then he began: "But the crimes we charge against you----"
"Hush--h!" said the judge gravely. "We know what you learnt at school."