“Rememberest thou aught of thy father's speech?”
“It is long ago. But there was one word which he said often. Thus, ''Shun!' Then I and my brethren stood upon our feet, our hands to our sides, thus.”
“Even so. And what was thy mother?”
“A woman of the Hills. We be Lepchas of Darjiling, but me they call an outlander because my hair is as thou seest.”
The Thibetan woman, his wife, touched him on the arm gently. The long parley outside the fort had lasted far into the day. It was now close upon twilight—the hour of the Angelus. Very solemnly the red-headed brats rose from the floor and formed a semicircle. Namgay Doola laid his gun aside, lighted a little oil-lamp, and set it before a recess in the wall. Pulling back a wisp of dirty cloth, he revealed a worn brass crucifix leaning against the helmet badge of a long-forgotten East India Company's regiment. “Thus did my father,” he said, crossing himself clumsily. The wife and children followed suit. Then, all together, they struck up the wailing cham that I heard on the hillside:
“Dir bane mard-i-yemen dir To weeree ala gee.”
I was puzzled no longer. Again and again they sung, as if their hearts would break, their version of the chorus of “The Wearing of the Green”:
“They're hanging men and women, too,
For the wearing of the green,”
A diabolical inspiration came to me. One of the brats, a boy about eight years old—could he have been in the fields last night?—was watching me as he sung. I pulled out a rupee, held the coin between finger and thumb, and looked—only looked—at the gun leaning against the wall. A grin of brilliant and perfect comprehension overspread his porringer-like face. Never for an instant stopping the song, he held out his hand for the money, and then slid the gun to my hand. I might have shot Namgay Doola dead as he chanted, but I was satisfied. The inevitable blood-instinct held true. Namgay Doola drew the curtain across the recess. Angelus was over.
“Thus my father sung. There was much more, but I have forgotten, and I do not know the purport of even these words, but it may be that the god will understand. I am not of this people, and I will not pay revenue.”