'The best in the fair! Safety for females! Victoria Queen's mercifulness! Freedom from tyrannies for one farthing!'
These more elaborate cries came from farther down the serried band of humanity of which Chris was a unit, and so beyond his reach; but, after a while, the steady, glacier-like movement of the whole brought him opposite to what was evidently the home of the amulet; for such the something seemed to be. Here, behind the rows of lamps, thousands of these cotton hanks lay in tangled heaps. Behind them again sat the sellers, raking in money. Every one seemed to buy, even those who did not know what they were buying.
'What is't for?' answered one of the sellers--whom Chris fancied he had seen in some rather different position--to an old man who had bought a whole penny's worth. 'For the plague, of course! Wear it, and none dare come nigh thee. It gives the right to peace.'
'Dost pretend----?' began Chris hotly, when the seller, looking up, interrupted him audaciously--
'I pretend naught, baboo-jee,' he replied. 'I sell amulets for what they are worth, a farthing. The rest is God's will. Yet, have not all a right to peace, my masters? Have we not all the right to live as we have lived? Ay! and to quarrel with those who interfere; above all with those who make promises and break them? Who'll buy? Who'll buy the promise of peace, the freedom from tyranny, the female ruler's mercifulness to females?'
The hands were stretching out on all sides still, as the onward sweep of that human glacier carried Chris beyond the power of argument or denial.
He found the opportunity of both, however, when he joined a group beyond the crush in which he recognised several of his Shark Lane acquaintances. He had not meant to show himself in his present dress to them, but he was eager for sympathy. 'The police ought not to allow that sort of thing,' he said decisively; 'it might lead to-to--trouble.'
'I fail to see your point, sir,' replied a keen-faced lawyer. 'It appears to me to lead to the soothing of groundless terrors. Then the sale of amulets is not prohibited by law. Nor is there fraudulent statement over and above a general appeal to superstition and ignorance, which, alas! are but too common.
'I join issue with you, sir,' put in another keen face; 'nor, to my mind, is there even suggestio falsi. Is not our beloved Queen merciful to females, and has not the Government graciously asserted that there shall be no interference with the liberty of the subject?'
Some one behind laughed loudly, a trifle uncontrollably, and a voice, which Chris instantly recognised as Govind the editor's, said jeeringly in Hindustani, 'Alâ! lâlâ-jee! there is no lack of gracious words! But as I have said ever, as I mean to prove when I choose, there is more than the words in the Lord-sahib's office-box!'