"To bring her harm, even as Stoll Sahib came by it?"
But Radha parried this talk of cause leading to effect by speech relating to Djalma. "It might be that the matter of Stoll Sahib's hand was but an accident—I know not; but of evil omens, as twisted in the hair of a horse, we horsemen of repute all know. The grey stallion carries three marks of ill favour. Beneath the saddle he has the shadow maker, and that means gloom for his owner; at the knee is a curl, with the tail of the curl running down to the fetlock—that means the withdrawal of the peg. That is to say, sahib, that his owner's rope pegs will have to be knocked out for lack of horses to tie to them."
"He seems a bad lot, Radha," Swinton remarked as the attendant stopped to pick a thorn from his foot.
"Worst of all," the little man added dolefully, "is the wall eye."
"Has the grey stallion that?"
A smile of satisfaction wreathed the puckered lips of Radha. "The sahib knows, and does the sahib remember the proverb?"
"That not one will be left alive in your house if you possess a horse with one white eye?" the captain said.
They now slipped from the hill road to the plain, and the Arab broke into a swinging canter.
The captain's breakfast was waiting, so was Gilfain and also—which caused him to swear as he slipped from the saddle—was Baboo Lall Mohun Dass.
In the genial morning sun the baboo looked more heroic in his spotless muslin and embroidered velvet cap sitting jauntily atop his heavy, black, well-oiled hair.