He had no name. The village folk, it is true, called him Baba; but so they called all such as he. Nor did he ever show that he identified the word as anything more personal than the rest of the strange sounds to which he listened serenely as if he had no part or lot in them. Perhaps he was deaf, perhaps he was dumb. Perhaps he was neither. Nobody knew, nor for the matter of that cared. He was one of Shah Sujah's mice; no more, no less. In that lay the difference between him and other men. A small difference in some ways; in others illimitable. To the level of the brows he was as fine a young fellow as you could meet; of middle height, with clean, straight limbs. Above that nothing--nothing but a skull narrowed to the contours of a new-born babe's, conical, repulsive, like a rat's. Whence the name Shah Sujah's mouse.

The learned among us call such poor creatures microcephalous, and talk glibly of joined sutures and osseous formation. The natives of upper India have a different theory. These mouselike ones belong to Shah Sujah's shrine, because they are the firstlings of barren women made fruitful by the saints' intercession. Therefore, from their birth they bear the token of the mother's vow, dedicating them to his service. The seal is set on them from the beginning in mute witness to the truth.

Whatever that truth may be; whether, as some say, the new-born babes brought to be reared, like Samuel in the temple, are born as other babies, and the typical distortion produced by slow pressure--as in lesser degree the coveted bomblike foreheads of the Sindhi women are produced--or whether, as others hold, a tradition favourable to the wealth of the shrine is kept up, and additional gain assured by the secret exchange, through agents all over India, of the normal babies for that percentage of microcephalous infants which Nature makes--this much is certain: all children dedicated to Shah Sujah are his mice. There are hundreds of them; growing up at the shrine, dying there, and during the cold months spreading over the length and breadth of India begging with unvarying success of all women, fruitful and unfruitful; living meanwhile on the broken food given them, but hoarding the money with an odd unconsciousness of all save that in some mysterious way it belongs to the saint; then, as the heat returns, wandering back like a homing pigeon to the insignificant little shrine at GujrÂt, which means so much to so many.

Most of the mice are repulsive; some are more or less deformed, more or less idiotic, making idiotic noises as they dawdle through the village alleys carrying their hollow gourds in their outstretched hands. He was not repulsive, and he made no sound of any kind; whether from inability, or from some lingering consciousness that his sounds would not be as those he heard, no one knew. In fact, no one knew anything about him, save that he was a mouse; too naked to be dirty in that country of canals and tanks, and seemingly quite content with a beggar's staff and gourd as his only tie to this world. Here to-day, gone to-morrow, secure of a meal, and of a sand blanket to sleep in if the nights were cold.

Perhaps he had more sense than others of his kind. Perhaps the theory of deliberate distortion was true, and his fine physique had struggled against it more successfully than some. But all such things were idle speculations, and there was nothing to be learned even from the big, luminous eyes, somewhat over-prominent, which looked at everything so serenely. At the children running out to him with their mother's dole, at the lean dogs following him in hopes of a scrap, at the birds and squirrels watching for the crumbs he might leave behind. Down by some water-cut, his feet buried in the warm sand, his naked body covered with the fairy garments made of sunbeams, the very minnows and sticklebacks gathered round him in radiating stars, expectant of bread cast on the water beneath the arching plumes of the date-palm thickets--plumes almost touching the surface, and sending lanceolate shadows, like the fishes themselves, through the sliding water as the breeze stirred the leaflets.

It sounds idyllic viewed from our standpoint. From his, with that osseous formation of the learned closing in like an egg-shell round the embryon, God knows what it was. Until one day something happened.

Sonny baba went amissing. Fuzli, the ayah, prone on her stomach, beating her palms in the dust, called God to witness that he had never been out of her sight except for one single minute when she took a pull at the gardener's pipe. This was down in the Taleri Bagh, where the English roses blossomed madly beneath the mango-trees, and the well-wheel under the big peepul-tree had the oddest habit of creaking the first two bars of "Home, Sweet Home" as the slow zebus circled round and round--

"'Mid pleasures and palaces."

Then a silence, save for the twitterings of birds and the soft thud of a peepul fig falling, rifled, to the ground, until the bullocks were back to the old spot. Then it began again--

"'Mid pleasures and palaces."

If there was no place like home, Sonny baba evidently did not think so. Anyhow, he had left it. Had disappeared utterly in that luxuriant little world down by the big canal, which was a maze of sunlight and shadow, of thickets of sweet lime and groves of date-palms interspersed with patches of tomatoes and gourds, and plantations of pomegranates laden with leaf and flower and fruit--such ugly, ill-humoured fruit, after all that beauty of blossom!

Yes, he was gone, and the solitary bungalow a mile up the road, nearer the city, where the assistant commissioner in charge of the subdivision lived, was in a lethargy of despair; for a child means much when it has been waited for during long years. Every one, from the highest to the lowest, was away searching; save only for the mother walking up and down the pretty drawing-room clasping her hands tighter and tighter as the hours went by, and the ayah, numb with grief and remorse, in the dust outside. It was growing late. The sun sent its picture of the shisham-trees to decorate the blank side wall of the house; the wilderness of wild petunia, usurping the place of the fast-yielding English annuals, began to send out a faint perfume. And Sonny had been out all day alone, under the hot sun, among the treacherous canal-cuts and the lurking snakes--Sonny, who since his birth, three years ago, had never known what it was to be alone.

"Thath way, manth."

It was a sweet little voice full of liquid labials. The ayah gave an inarticulate skirl of joy as she sprang from the dust.

"Leave me l'alone, l'ayah--I'th all light. Puth me down now, pleath, man."

A cry came from within, a woman's figure came flying to the veranda, a child bubbling over with glee went flying to meet it and bury a little mop of golden curls in mother's dress.

"O Mummie, Mummie, he'th got 'quilth!'"

Then, after a time, with dignity: "Don'th, pleath; them kitheth hurth. And, Mummie, don'th l'oo hear?--he'th got 'quilth.' Oh! l'ever tho many 'quilth.'--Hathn't l'oo, man?"

The man was Shah Sujah's mouse. He stood as he had set the child down, obedient to Heaven knows what understanding of the little voice. Now he seemed to hear nothing as he looked serenely, almost brightly, at those three out of his large soft eyes.

"Ayah!" cried the mother, clasping her darling tighter as by instinct. "Who--what is he? Ask him--ask him about it all."

Not only the ayah, but many others, asked him, fruitlessly--people running in from the court-house close by, hearing the news of Sonny's safe return; wanderers coming in disheartened from the search. Finally, Sonny's father, with an odd catch in his voice. But there was no answer, and the child's tongue went no further than "Loths and loths to eat, an' loths an' loths of quilth."

"Loh!" said the ayah, indignantly. "He is nothing but a mouse--a janowar.^[8] Give him a rupee, Mem sahiba, and let him go; if the Huzoor, indeed, will not hang him for stealing my king of kings."

"Don'th, l'ayah--them kitheth hurth.--O Mummie, don'th l'oo know he'th goth 'quilth,' l'ever tho many 'quilth?'"

"Can't you make out anything, dear?" asked Mummie, almost aggrievedly; it was dreadful to lose a whole long day of Sonny's life.

"No, dearest," replied her husband, meekly aware of the offence. "No more than you can make out what 'quilth' means. Except, of course, that the tahsildar tells me that he--the man or the mouse, as you please--has been begging right away to the river's meet and is now, no doubt, on his way back to the shrine. Possibly he will meet an agent at Mooltan; they are seldom later than this in calling in their itinerants. He must have been in the gardens, and either met the child after he had lost himself, or--or stole him. That is all, unless Sonny remembers something when he is less excited. At any rate, he brought him back, unharmed, and--and--I should like to reward him."

"Reward him! Why, of course we must reward him. Think--only think what might----" She paused, able to think, not to speak of it.

"Just so. But how? The tahsildar says he will put any money into his bag and never touch it. And--and it does seem mean to reward a man for saving your son's life with broken victuals."

There was no help for it, however; though, just for the sake of appearances and proprieties, they gave him five whole rupees for the bag. He slipped them into it as if they had been pice, took up his gourd and went away, his beggar's staff making little round holes in the dust as he walked down the petunia-edged path, serenely, as if nothing unusual had happened.

So that was an end of Sonny's adventure for the time, since ere he woke, like a young bird at dawn next day, the child seemed to have forgotten all about Shah Sujah's mouse; but only for a time.

At first they thought it nothing but a touch of sun fever from being out all day which made the darling of their hearts so languid. He was down in the heat a little later, too, than was perhaps quite wise, but those holidays at the end of the month, which would give father the chance of settling mother and son in the wee house among the Himalayan pines, and of getting a whiff of fresh air himself, had been so tempting.

But a week after, the doctor, summoned from headquarters, looked into their scared faces and said "Typhoid," ere, loath to leave them to this knowledge, he had to ride back, promising to arrange his work so as to be there as often as possible. He stood talking in undertones to the native doctor in the veranda before mounting, and the sound of their voices made the mother shiver. It was soon after this that the little voice began:

"O Mummie, he had 'quilth'--lovely, lovely 'quilth.' Whereth he gone--the 'quilth'--man? I wanth to thee the 'quilth' again.--Dada, will l'oo shend for the 'quilth'--man?"

"Can't you send for him--somehow?" She had Sonny in her arms, and the heat of him struck through to her own breast. Yet she shivered again.

Two days after, when the cot was set out in the veranda for the sake of the cool evening air, she bent over the child, who lay more languid than suffering among the toys he liked to see even while he did not care to play with them.

"Sonny, the 'quilth'-man has come. Dada has brought him."

Whence, is no matter. The fiat had gone forth, as fiats do go forth. The order had been given to find and, if possible, to bring back one of Shah Sujah's mice, who had wandered on northward through the villages. They had found him, and he had returned with them peaceably, contentedly, serenely.

"Thath's jolly," sighed Sonny. "Now, Mummie, l'oo'l thee the 'quilth,' too."

He wanted to be carried out in those brown arms as before, and stretched his hands to Shah Sujah's mouse, who stood just as he had stood before, silent, uncomprehending, incomprehensible--except, perhaps, to Sonny; but they took him, cot and all, as he lay, across the petunias, and set him down under one of the great shisham-trees, backed by palms and a wide-spreading banyan. The air was dry and balmy; he was as well there as elsewhere until the dew should begin to fall.

"Spec'ths l'oo'l flighten them, Mummie; 'quilths' is flightful fings. 'Posing l'oo an' Dada an' l'ayah thits light away--light away."

So they sat right away, over the petunias once more, upon the veranda steps, and two pairs of strained, anxious eyes looked at the group under the trees. The third pair looked also, doubtfully. It was an odd sight, certainly. The child's soft curls on the pillow, his flushed cheek seen sidewise, his little hot hands clasped round the bars of the cot. Beside him, on the grass, like a bronze statue, Shah Sujah's mouse.

"Now, manth! if l'oo pleath," murmured Sonny. And, as before, he seemed obedient to the liquid voice. A strange sound indeed! Not a cry, not a whistle. More like the croon of wind through tall tiger-grass. Scarcely audible, and yet a hush fell on the trees, as if they stopped to listen. Jack, the fox-terrier, cocked his ears. A horse neighed from the stables. Then came a rustle, as of leaves.

"I know," whispered Mummie, touching Dada on the arm. "He means squirrels. How stupid of me! Look!"

Along the branches they came, circling shyly down the trunks, now with a swift patter, now hanging splayed against the bark, petrified by curious timidity. Odd little mortals these, with the mark of Great Ram's fingers on their shining coats, and barred tails a-bristle. Soft little mortals, not much bigger than a mouse, their round ears cocked, their bright eyes watchful. Nearer and nearer, by fits and starts, hopping from distant trees through the short grass as through a thicket, while the croon went on, and Sonny's eyes grew heavy with sheer satisfaction.

"Lovely, lovely 'quilth.'--Go on, pleath, manth."

Nearer and nearer; a dozen or more sitting up with the scattered crumbs in their odd little fingers. Dainty over the feast, nibbling a bit here and a bit there, and growing fearless, climbing on to the bronze limbs, looking into the dark, serene eyes.

Sonny's grew heavier and heavier.

"I think he is asleep," said Dada, indistinctly, through a lump in his throat. But Mummie could not speak at all.

"Dew fallin', mem sahiba" remarked the ayah, in a dissatisfied tone. "Time Sonny baba leave janowars alone."

It was a slow fever, as it often is with the little ones in India, and every day for many days Sonny would rouse himself when the sun left the air cooler and ask for his 'quilth.'

"It will not hurt him," said the doctor, who looked graver at each visit. "Our best chance is to keep him going somehow. If you were on the railway, I'd risk all and have him in the hills to-morrow; but that long dhooli journey--it is not to be thought of. We must keep him going--keep hold on life as best we can."

So they used to carry him out under the trees to the quilth and Shah Sujah's mouse. And some sort of a comprehension seemed to come to the janowars, as the ayah called them scornfully, of what was required of them, for day by day the crumbs were scattered nearer the cot, and day by day the timid courage grew into some new venture, rousing a languid smile from Sonny.

"Lovely, lovely 'quilth,'" he would say, as the bright eyes looked at him knowingly, and the patter, patter of the little feet came nearer. But the sheer content came quicker and he slept sooner and sooner, until one day when they were racing over the cot and playing gymnastics with the bars, he made up his mind that there could be nothing more to wake for, and fell asleep once and for all.

"Take her away at once," said the doctor, as in the early dawn they drove back without the little coffin on the back seat of the dog-cart, from the graveyard where Dada had read the service without a break in his voice. There was no lump in his throat now; nothing but an angry despair in his heart. "Take her away. I telegraphed for you to the commissioner last night; that will give you three days. Then furlough, privilege, urgent, private--anything. She must not come back till the baby is born. And leave the ayah behind--they will get talking of the child."

That evening, when the servants were being paid off, and certificates to character written, while the dhoolies waited in the shade where Sonny's cot had stood the day before, the ayah, whimpering but indignant, asked what was to be done about the janowar.

"I'll look after that," said the doctor, kindly, seeing Dada's look. "Five rupees, I suppose, and the tahsildar to have him escorted so far on his way north to the shrine. 'Tis time he were getting back."

Undoubtedly. Even the last few days had brought the heat. The roses down in the Taleri gardens had dried to pot-pourri as they grew, smelling almost sweeter than ever. The mangoes grew larger and larger, and the green parrots clung to them, eating the pulp as it ripened. That was when the gardeners were away turfing a grave in the little enclosure opening out of the garden, and planting red and white quamoclit to twine up a wooden cross. It did not take long, for the grave was small. So they came back to frighten the parrots, leaving it to take care of itself; for the rains came early that year, and after a time there was no need for watering.

So much rain, that three months after, when Dada, back from leave, walked through the garden at sunsetting, many of the mango-trees were ankle-deep in water, and a second crop of roses nodded at their own reflection in the still pools. But the graveyard stood purposely on higher ground, and its brick wall was backed by a perfect thicket of date-palms stretching away to the low sand-hills, save on the side marching with the garden. There oleanders and roses and elephant creeper massed themselves into a hedge, and clambered over the arched gateway where Dada paused. The doctor was there too, for fever comes with heavy rain, and the outlying hospitals needed constant inspection. As the gate swung open, they paused again, not at the sight within, but at a sound they seemed to recognize. It was a shady spot. To begin with, great branches swept over it from the garden, and then in the far corner a huge peepul stood quivering its silver-lined leaves. There lay the little grave, solitary in its square of grass, for the place was divided into four by two narrow gravel walks ending abruptly at the walls. Two other graves claimed other squares, the fourth lay vacant. It seemed as if, when that was occupied, the shady spot would refuse another tenant. Yet there were others even now.

"Who's that?" cried the doctor, sharply.

It was Shah Sujah's mouse. He sate propped against the peepul-tree, and over the grass and the cross of quamoclits the squirrels were chasing each other and playing pranks with the crumbs they were scarcely hungry enough to eat, while the other janowar looked at them out of hollow serene eyes.

He shifted his gaze to the new-comers, but did not rise. He could not.

"Good God," muttered the doctor, kneeling down beside him, "the man is a skeleton, and burning with fever. How the mischief-- Well, the first thing is to get him moved to hospital."

When Dada came back with a string bed and four coolies impressed from the garden, he found the doctor looking suspiciously at the crumbs, at a piece of dough-cake and a bag of money. There were ten whole rupees in it, besides odd coins.

"The poor beggar seems starved, and yet he had this and--he was feeding the squirrels. There's something deuced odd about it all."

Odd, but simple, especially in the ayah's eyes. "Master, having given orders for the janowar to go, the police had naturally taken him away. He had come back again and begged--naturally, when the mem sahiba had given him sweet rice every day. But she had given nothing, nothing at all, except information to the police. Then they had taken him away again miles and miles, quite close to the highroad to the shrine, and had bidden him to go home. Even a janowar could have found his way had he chosen; but the obstinate animal had come back after the sweet rice. So then every one had been told not to give the disobedient one anything to eat. Indeed, it was past time for alms to Shah Sujah's mice; they should have been back at the shrine with their earnings. To linger was sacrilege, nothing less, especially when the Huzoor had said he was not wanted any longer. But instead of going, when he was starved out, as every one imagined, he must have hidden in the damp garden and got fever. As to what he was doing on the little king of kings' grave, that was mysterious. Perhaps now the master might believe that janowars were not safe round a sick--"

"Chuprao,^[9] you fool!" shouted Dada. As the ayah sidled away, still indignant, the two men sat and looked at each other.

"I'm afraid it's no use," said the doctor. "Starvation and fever are ill companions; but I'll stay over to-morrow and see what I can do. It is as much my fault as yours, if any one is to blame, but--"

The doctor, being orthodox, paused.

When they went down on the following evening to see the patient in hospital they found the native assistant volubly apologetic. He had seemed so content, not to say weak, that they had left him alone while busy over an accident. Half an hour ago they had missed him from his cot. "Doubtless delirium had supervened with acerbation of fever; but since peons were out in all directions, by the blessing of God--"

"Come on, doctor," said Dada, impatiently interrupting the flow of words.

He was there, face down on the grass, and the squirrels were playing over his dead body and searching for crumbs.

"No!" said Dada, when the coolies came with a string bed again. "Bring a spade or two. I'm going to bury him here."

The doctor, having religious views, looked doubtful. "I--I wonder if it is consecrated ground?"

"I hope to God it is!" said Dada, fervently.

As they lingered at the gate when the work was over, a squirrel hung head downward on the peepul-trunk, eying the new-turned earth suspiciously. Then another with bushy tail erect came hopping fearlessly over the grass--

"Cher ip--a pip--pip--pip!"

It was a challenge. The next moment they were chasing each other over the cross of quamoclits.

Dada closed the gate softly.

"Lovely, lovely 'quilth,'" he murmured to himself.

The lump had come back to his throat, and the doctor gave something between a laugh and a sob.

But they neither of them said anything about the other janowar. Perhaps because there was a difficulty in finding an epithet to suit Shah Sujah's mouse.