"Ayah dear! I am prepared."
"He has the power to control all wild animals. So great is his power that not long ago, when he and his so-fortunate friend Cadman Sahib had both fallen into a tiger pit-trap and a mighty young tiger in his full strength had come after them, falling bodily down upon them and being full of fright and fury, had turned upon them to destroy them, beholding his master's face, the beast had become subject to him in the instant and had sat quietly before him the whole night, without moving to hurt them. What man will require more than this?"
"For Heaven's sake! What a tale. But Ayah, what sort of man is he?"
"Who will be able to know what sort of man? Is it not enough?"
"We require much more than that."
"Lady, I—who am not as you are—I have not bathed since dawn. Surely calamity will fall on me, if I set my tongue to the nature of such an one."
"If he is holy, then he will be willing to help."
"The knowledge of him among men is that he is that."
"Then, Ayah, I will take the danger of calamity away from you, for I have need. Speak."
"It is known that he resembles the most high masters themselves, in that he is always kind. And yet there was a strange saying, that he permitted his friend Cadman Sahib to destroy the head of a mighty serpent who had feasted upon the creatures and children of a Grass Jungle village. Now these things could not both be true at the same time, unless he had taken a vow to protect the children of men. In that case his presence in the land was a benediction beyond the benediction of twenty years of full rains. He might even be one of the high gods, incarnated to serve Vishnu the Great Preserver, if what they said was true, that he had been recognised by Neela Deo, the Blue god—king of all the elephants—in his own place."