"Paris," he said laconically, "one of the latest sort. What did I tell you, sir--anarchy isn't a thing of districts."
"Go on, Bisvâs!" replied Horace Alexander evasively.
"As I was saying, Huzoor, when the Huzoor left to do durshan last night, Jullunder Baba came to me and said, 'Bisvâs! get ready to go and do durshan likewise; my father said I might----'"
"And you did, daddy, didn't you?" broke in the little lad's voice confidently. His father hesitated, then remembering his uncomprehending words, nodded and held the child closer.
"So I, knowing that the word of Jullunder Baba is even as the word of a King, unbreakable, said, 'But whither, my lord?' And he said, 'That will I show thee! Do thou as thou art bid, slave!' Now the night, as the Huzoor knows, was dark, and I grow old. So I bethought me of help, lest evil should befall. Therefore I said, 'Lo! it is not meet to go without the Army.' So these came willingly. For, see you, Protector of the Poor, we are all old, and the durshan is even as the sight of a god--it heals sin. Therefore, in the darkness we set off, and I wrapped the chota sahib in blankets and took the trick lamp and a ternus of hot milk also----"
John Carruthers looked up.
"He means electric and thermos," said Horace Alexander, with an odd sort of cackle in his voice; something seemed to have risen in his throat and prevented his speaking clearly.
"We carried the chota sahib by turns, seeing there might have been serpents in the way," continued the old man, "and made for the railway, since that was all the direction Jullunder Baba would give. Then Imân, remembering the old tomb--the Huzoor will remember it also, since there was a case about it in his court----"
"And the Huzoor," broke in Imân, "decided virtuously, that being the tomb of a saint, it should stand, and the railway move----"
"Remembering it," went on old Bisvâs, "he said, 'It would give shelter to the child.' So thither we went, and there the chota sahib, having remembered he had not said his prayers as he had promised the Huzoor, said them. He knelt, Huzoor, on that slab, lest the floor should be damp----"