“Karrah know nothing,” returned the Hindoo. “Karrah good fellow. He has enemies—they happen die, that’s all. Karrah no set a tiger on Sahib. Karrah no friend tigers. Sahib have more sherbet?”
“No, nothing more. You may go, Karrah.”
The Hindoo glided away around the angle of the veranda.
“I believe I’ll have to let the fellow go,” muttered the major, uneasily. “His looks and words give me a strangely unpleasant sensation. I shall take care not to offend him, or he may season my sherbet with a snake’s venom. How he glared in that one unguarded moment when he said he hated Sir Harold! There was murder in his look. I declare I had a hundred little shivers down my spine. If Sir Harold had not been killed so unmistakably by a tiger, and if Doctor Graham and I had not seen the fresh tracks and the marks of the struggle, and if the tiger had not been afterward killed, I should think—I should be sure—”
An anxious look gathered on his face, and he ended his sentence by a heavy sigh.
“Strange!” he said presently, giving utterance to his secret thoughts; “my wife never liked this fellow, although I could see no difference between him and the rest. She insists that he is treacherous and cruel. [I’ll] dismiss him, and tell her that I do so out of deference to her judgment. But the truth is, since I’ve seen the fellow’s soul glaring out of his eyes, I sha’n’t dare to sleep nights for fear I may have offended his High Mightiness. I think it better for me that he should travel out of this.”
He had just announced to himself this decision, when raising his eyes carelessly and looking out from the cool shadows of the pleasant veranda, he beheld a horseman approaching his bungalow, riding at great speed.
“It may be Doctor Graham coming up for a month, as I invited him,” thought the major, too indolent to feel more than a trivial curiosity at the sight of a coming stranger. “But the doctor’s too sensible to ride like that. It is either a green Englishman, with orders from headquarters for me, or it’s some reckless native. In either case the fellow’s preparing for a first-class sunstroke or fever, or something of that nature. But that’s his look-out. I’ve troubles enough of my own without worrying about him. It might be as well to finish my sherbet before losing my appetite under an order to return to my post. Oh, bother the army!”
He sipped his sherbet leisurely, not even looking again at the horseman, who came on swiftly, urging his horse to a last burst of speed. That the horse was jaded, his jerking, convulsive mode of going plainly showed. He was wet with sweat, and his head hung low, and he frequently stumbled. The horseman urged him on with spur and whip, now and then looking behind him as if he feared pursuit.
The major did not look up until the horseman drew rein before the bungalow, and alighted at a huge stone which served as a horse-block. The stranger came slowly and falteringly toward the veranda, and then the Sybaritic major set down his empty cup and glanced at him.