For his sake, knowledge of the place where he was known and of those who looked upon his person, shall go down from generation to generation into the future and shall be continued forever, under the illumination of his name.
How he preserved the great judge and how he fought that mightiest of all battles, for the honour of his kind and for the preservation of his liege-son, must be told in order.
The fortune of the season, the features of the town, and the chief names must be established.
See that nothing shall be added. See that no part be left unspoken.
It is the law.
The great rains had passed on their way north; and they had been good to the Central Provinces country. The water-courses were even yet but a line below flood; the tanks were full, the wells abrim. The earth was clothed with new garmenture. Jungle creatures were all in their annual high-carnival. Life-forces were driving to full speed.
The town of Hurda, on the great triple Highway-of-all-India, clung to the side of her little river leaning against the massive buttressed walls of her old grey stone terraces, where—on their wide step-landings—at all seasons, she burned her human dead by the tide's margin.
The great Highway spanned the river on a broad low stone bridge and turned—just south of the burning ghats—with a majestic sweep northward, between its four lines of sacred, flowering, perfumed and shade trees. Remember, those trees were planted by the forgotten peoples of dead kings, for each within his own realm; they were all nourished under the unfailing rivalry that the highway of each king should be more excellent in beneficence and in beauty than the highway of his neighbour kings.
But from High Himalaya to the beaches of Madras, from sea to sea, the triple Highway-of-all-India was nowhere more august than here, where Neela Deo lived. The exalted splendours of those so ancient and imperial trees rendered distinction to the town, in passing through it, like a procession of the radiant gods.
Beyond the hill and well outside the town—which would be called a city if it were walled, which would be walled if a wall would not separate it from the great Highway—was the station Oval, where railway people lived in European bungalows of many colours, round about the gymkhana—a building made to contain music and strange games; but from the arches of all its verandahs the railway people saw.
On the other side from the Oval and toward Hurda, was the little old bungalow where Margaret Annesley—of the tender heart—out of her lonely garden, looked that day and saw.