Shouting and laughing, men and women ran back to the house, which in one hour they had stripped bare.
Just before the dawn a great flame shot skywards, an orange ribbon across the purple robe of dying Night.
* * * * * *
Requiem
"There was an awful row in the Bazaar last night," said Mr. Ephraim Perkins to his spouse facing him across the breakfast table. "They killed a woman and burned her house down."
"Really, dear?" said Mrs. Ephraim Perkins, rasping butter on a piece of toast. "These natives want a firm hand over them. Poor thing! They usually stab each other in the East, don't they?"
"Yes; I think so. But they threw this one into a lions' den."
"Now, that's exaggeration, Ephraim." The knife never stopped its rasping. "They would not be allowed to keep wild beasts in a populated quarter."
"Stranger things happen in the native quarter, Maria," misquoted Mr.
Perkins, "than are dreamt of by the Government official."
True words!