FAIR ODDS

The pendulum of India is a heavy one; it soon returns to its normal arc; and so, after a very few days, nothing remained to show that any force had sent it beyond its usual swing in Nushapore except the charred ruins of two bungalows; and they, being in Shark Lane, were not so much en evidence as they would have been elsewhere.

So far, even, as personal disturbance to the owners was concerned, the sum-total of effect was small; for Chris Davenant had not returned to hear of his loss, and Mrs. Chris, after the terrors of that night, when she had become part of the old half-crazy khÂnsÂman's memory of the past, seemed glad to be rid of any tie to India. Indeed, as the faces around her became graver when no tidings came of her husband, and the impression grew that he and JÂn-Ali-shÂn had, in some mysterious way, been mixed up in the attempt to wreck the train, and the fall of the bastion, she seemed almost relieved. Her one desire was to escape from a place where such terror was possible; to return to London, to its ways and works. To the red Hammersmith 'bus that runs to Kew on Sundays; to the baker, the butcher, and the little greengrocer round the corner. And when she wept, it was chiefly because--having no worldly goods beyond a torn and tattered pink tarlatan--she could not engage her passage home, until a sufficient subscription was raised to pay for it. And she had not many friends.

So far as the one bungalow, therefore, was concerned, there were few regrets. On the other hand, Mr. Lucanaster's were distinctly above the average. He had not only been burned out of house and home, but of other more valuable things; since, almost before he had had time to consider how best to ensure their safety, an inrush of voices and steps in the verandah had made him think of that most valuable of all possessions--his life--and leave the rest--even the woman in the next room!

And as if this was not bad enough, something else had occurred which had reduced him to helpless impotent cursing and swearing against Fate, JehÂn Aziz, Mrs. Chris Davenant, and everything that had conspired to bring about such incredible ill-luck.

And yet it was a very simple thing, almost ludicrously so.

The very day after the rioting, when all Nushapore was being searched for evidence, the police with great pride had brought him back the casket which had been left open on the table with the pink dewdrops beside it, when Mrs. Chris fled with the khÂnsÂman of Rickett-sahib bahadur (who was killed). It was now closed, and had been discovered, they said, in the house of one Govind, who had been arrested on suspicion. And he, to screen himself doubtless from worse accusations, had stated that he had found it flung away on the road not far from the blazing bungalow. Therefore, since it was evidently a jewel casket, it was most likely part of the Huzoor's lost property; and if so, he could detail its contents and open the spring-lock with his key, in order that the description might be duly verified and the necessary forms filled up.

For one brief second Mr. Lucanaster had returned thanks to such gods as he possessed for this small mercy. Here was something saved from the general dÉbÂcle; to begin with, a very valuable ruby--and----

And then had come the horrid recollection of a certain string of pearls which could not be claimed.

It had nearly killed him to deny the ownership of the casket; but he had denied it. There was literally nothing else to be done, with that spring-lock and the key in his possession.

So when the police took it away in order to find the rightful owner, he had gone into his room at the hotel--it was next the one to which Mrs. Chris had been taken--and shaken his fist at her through the wall, and sworn horribly not only at his own loss, but at the gain of others, which, with his experience in jewel-jobbing, he knew would follow.

And it did; for no sooner was the casket filed open by the police and its contents made known by a list, than owners began to crop up--crowds of them.

But it was when an assistant police-officer at the club, thinking to rouse him from his general despondency by putting him on the track of a good thing, mentioned that there had been a ruby in the casket which he really ought to get hold of; a ruby that had been claimed, on irrefragable evidence, as an heirloom by a peculiarly impecunious member of the Royal Family, from whom he could no doubt get it cheap without much trouble--it was then that Mr. Lucanaster had fled from his fellows, and actually wept to think that after three years' hard scheming he had bought that ruby at something like its real value.

That had been the worst blow; but there had been similar ones, and quite a large number of the pensioners invested in new cocks and quails and went about with cheerful countenances.

Another result was that Grace Arbuthnot, as she stood one day re-threading the four pearls which Sobrai Begum had brought to Miss Leezie's house on to the string that had been found in the casket, declared that it was just like the last chapter in a novel. Everything was clearing itself up--her face certainly warranted the remark--and rounding itself off neatly for the end. She thought, as she spoke, of the lost letter, the recovery of which, as Jerry's 'Secret Despatches,' had seemed so mysterious, until the child had told her quite simply that he had found the envelope in a bush in the garden--flung away most likely by the thief as valueless--and had kept it to play with, because some one 'must have hidden it, you know, an' didn't want people to wead it, so it was secwet.'

But she did not speak of this; she only said that she had never expected to see her pearls again, yet here they were, with only one a-missing--her dear old pearls! She held them up to her white throat and smiled, thinking of the many happy hours she had spent with their touch upon her.

If any one had told her that that was the first time they had touched a slender white throat, and that the last time a woman had worn them, they had been snatched from a slender brown one and flung in the dust from scorn of the hours they had brought to a bride, she would not have believed it.

Not her pearls! Whose else could they be? Had not even Mr. Lucanaster given his opinion on them as an expert? for even that agony had not been spared to the unfortunate man.

'Yes,' answered Sir George, who had stopped his writing to admire his wife and think how happy and handsome she looked, and how glad he was for her sake that the strain and anxiety was over, as it seemed to be, 'it is rather curious how everything is falling into line. It is always the "first step" in India, of course, and so it was only to be expected that things would settle into march time after a bit. But JehÂn Aziz's death and this finding of the pearls has disposed of that story, for Burkut Ali, the doctors say, isn't likely to live, and the girl is certainly a thief, whatever else she may be. And it disposes of the pestilent fellow who wrote that threatening letter also.' He paused. 'Then Kenyon was only telling me this morning what an extraordinary quieting effect that incident in Mai KÂli's temple has had. Of course, we haven't got to the bottom of it quite. No one will give evidence, because of the miracle; but the fact remains that the prophecy was fulfilled.'

'Then there is the bridge business,' said Grace thoughtfully. 'Has anything new cropped up?'

Sir George shook his head, then frowned. 'Not about that, beyond the fact that the engine-driver is quite certain he heard singing, and that of course points to the loafer Ellison; and as he was Davenant's foreman of works, the two were likely to be together. But--but,' he frowned again, and let his hand busy itself impatiently with a pile of papers, 'there is something else. You know, we wondered how the troops got here so soon. Well, there is something odd about the telegram. Times don't tally, and it seems another telegram was sent direct to the station to detain the up-mail, pending orders. It came in--"urgent"--just as the train was in, and the station-master--he is a native--got flurried and sent up, with the telegram we know about--at least I suppose so--to cantonments for further orders, when, of course, the commandant jumped at the chance. And now the station-master can't find the wire, isn't sure if it ever was written out, as he was in the telegraph-office at the time waiting for the up-signals. And there is no trace of it this end. Nothing but the telegraph--form I gave Kenyon to fill in, and which he sent to the railway-office. But there, again, the time doesn't tally with Kenyon's recollections, and though the order is identical the wording is slightly different, for he put in something about stopping the night-mail, which isn't in the wire the commandant received. That part seems to have been made into a separate order and construed into the up-mail. But that may be due to the baboos; a couple of greater fools never were. They seem to know nothing; especially the one here. Kenyon says the clocks may have been wrong; but I can't help wondering. Davenant seems to have known something, and he was seen at his works after dusk; if he had been another sort of fellow--but it is impossible! There isn't one Englishman in a thousand, let alone a native, who would take such a responsibility. I wouldn't, and I don't know any one who would; at any rate who would, and then keep quiet when it was successful--for it was! It made all the difference: as I've told Kenyon, he has the entire credit; but for him we should have had a row.'

'But if you hadn't given him the telegram----'

Sir George shook his head in honest obstinacy. 'I never meant it to be used; I didn't believe in the danger. As I told Mr. Raymond, he was right, and I was wrong; so that is an end of it, my dear.'

He seemed quite satisfied, especially when his wife stooped suddenly, and kissed the top of his head; though he wondered, as she left the room, if he was really getting a little bald! not so much because her lips had thrilled him, but because he was observant enough to have noticed that a partially bald head is provocative of wifely kissing. Still, even that evil had to be faced in the cause of empire, and so the honest gentleman took up his pen and continued the report of recent affairs which he was writing, and in which the credit of saving the situation was given unstintingly not to himself, but to others; for Sir George was a gentleman.

Grace, however, though she was a lady, and despite that kiss of approval, felt a trifle annoyed. It was very nice of George to minimise his part in the business; yet when all was said and done, he had consented to give the order--consented almost in defiance of the official programme. The more she thought of it, the more aggrieved she felt for him; and so, when she found Lesley alone in the school-room, she sought her sympathy, explained the whole position at great length, and wound up by the appeal--

'Now, do you see what right Mr. Kenyon has to all the credit?'

Lesley had so far managed to keep a calm sough without much difficulty; at the present moment, however, something seemed wrong with her work, for she was very busy with it at the window.

'No!' she said at last, 'I don't!' and then she repeated the remark with palpable resentment: 'Certainly not! He had nothing to do with it--nothing at all.'

Grace looked in her direction with dubious curiosity.

'You don't mean, do you,' she asked, 'that you think any one else----'

'I don't think anything at all,' interrupted the girl hurriedly. 'I only say that Mr. Kenyon didn't--I mean that he isn't the right person to praise.'

But Lady Arbuthnot was not to be put off. 'Because that really is quite absurd, as I told George. And he admitted that he did not know of any one--not a single man who would have taken such a grave responsibility. Now do you? Tell the truth, Lesley! do you know any one?'

'Perhaps there was more than a single man,' suggested Lesley evasively, the knot in her thread becoming extremely troublesome.

Grace, from her chair, gave an irritated glance towards the window. 'My dear Lesley! you are not often so--so precise! As if it mattered to my argument if there were one or two! I wish you would leave off threading your needle, or whatever it is, and come here and be a little sympathetic. It means so much to me, you know--so, if you wish it, we will say two! Do you know of any two people who could and would do such a thing?'

Lesley folded up her work with great method, but remained where she was.

'Why should we complicate matters by saying two?' she asked pugnaciously. 'And after all, it wasn't--I mean it would not be such a very big thing. There must be lots of people in the world who could do it. Just think! even among the men one knows.'

'People who could, and would!' echoed Grace in the same tone. 'No! I don't know any one!' She paused, and added a trifle bitterly: 'I know one, who could; but then he wouldn't!--Mr. Raymond.'

'Mr. Raymond! Why should you say he wouldn't?' asked the girl swiftly. 'Why----?'

'You needn't be so fierce, Lesley!' interrupted Grace, with a little hard laugh, 'though you don't think him half bad. For many reasons! No--he wouldn't help--us--in a thing like that--not he!'

'That isn't fair,' cried Lesley in a flame. 'If you knew----' She paused, but was too late.

'If I knew what?' asked Lady Arbuthnot, rising and coming to the window; then standing before the girl, to say, after a pause: 'You will have to tell me, you know, Lesley; you have started me, and I'm not a fool. And of course I know--Jerry told me--that Mr. Raymond had come to cycle with you that evening--that that was why you were so late; but I said nothing, because I thought it was only----'

'I don't care what you thought,' interrupted Lesley angrily; 'and I won't tell you anything unless you promise not to speak----'

'I will promise not to tell any one who ought not to know that I know,' put in Grace Arbuthnot proudly. 'I won't promise more----'

'And who wants more?' cried the girl hotly. 'Of course, if people ought to know, they must know. That is the only reason why I'm telling you. I didn't mean to, but if you can be so--so unjust, it is only right that you should know the truth.'

'I can judge of that for myself when you have told me, so you needn't waste time,' retorted Grace.

A sudden antagonism had sprung up between the two women of which they were both aware, of which they were both vaguely ashamed, but which they could not ignore.

'Thank you!' said Grace, with chill dignity when the recital was over. 'You were right to tell me. I will apologise to Mr. Raymond.'

'To Mr. Raymond!' echoed Lesley, carried beyond her resentment by eagerness. 'No! Lady Arbuthnot--not to him. He is not one of the people who ought to know that you know!'

'May I ask why?'

For an instant it seemed as if Lesley would have matched Grace in resentment, and then suddenly she held out her hands in swift appeal.

'Oh! don't be angry, please! but surely after what happened between you--I cant help knowing that, can I?--you owe Mr. Raymond something--you ought to let him have this--this revenge to himself--just to take the sting away.'

'To himself!' echoed Grace scornfully. 'I presume you mean to himself and you----'

'Oh! you may be as nasty as you like about that,' interrupted Lesley hotly, 'but I know I am right. It would only be a fresh tie between you--a new sentiment.'

Lady Arbuthnot flushed up to the eyes. 'Really, Lesley! you pass bounds! You speak as if I wanted to--to clutch at Mr. Raymond, when I should only be too glad if---- However, as you say, my apology is a triviality. Sir George shall----'

'Sir George!' echoed Lesley in her turn, shaking her head. 'No! he is not one of those who ought to know that you know, either. He may have to know, perhaps, but it should not be through you. Look! how he will give the credit to Mr. Kenyon; and if he knew it was Mr. Raymond, he would insist still more on giving it to him. You know he would, Lady Arbuthnot--there would be a fuss, and every one would talk, and he would hate it--almost worse than Mr. Raymond. Why not leave it alone--if we can--what harm does it do?'

'You have grown very wise, Lesley,' said the elder woman after a pause. 'Love, they say, has eyes----'

'Love!' Lesley flashed round on her like a whirlwind. 'Ah! I wish there was no such thing in the world. Then we women would have a chance of being sensible. Love! No, Lady Arbuthnot, love has nothing to do with it---nothing.'

They stood facing each other, those two, and then a smile--distinctly a pleased smile--came to the older face. 'But, my dear child, you don't mean to tell me that you are not in love with Mr. Raymond!'

The flush up to the eyes was Lesley's now; but she stood her ground bravely. 'It does not matter if I am or not; I am not going to talk of it. And I promised him----'

Grace broke in with a little peal of laughter, tender, amused, pathetic, yet acquiescent laughter. 'Has it got so far as that? Ah! Lesley dear! I'm so glad.'

The girl looked at her with a faint wonder, a great admiration, then shook her head.

'I believe you are made different from me,' she said soberly. 'I can only understand one thing about it all--how it was that he never forgot--well, never quite forgot. For there is nothing to be glad of, I can assure you--nothing at all.'

She did not, in truth, look as if there was; but Grace, as she took Sir George his tea, as she always did, had her eyes full of that mysterious gladness which any sentiment, even sorrow, brings to some women's faces. It suited hers, and so her husband's had quite a lover-like diffidence in it as he watched her fingering the thin gold chain with pink topazes hanging from it, which he took from a drawer.

'It was in that casket the police found,' he explained, 'and I told them, if no owner turned up for it, to send it for you to see, and then if you liked it----'

She looked up, smiling. 'It is too young for me. Yes! it is true, George, I am getting old--ever so old! But I'll tell you what we will do! If we can buy it, we will give it to Lesley as a wedding-present when she marries Mr. Raymond.'

Sir George sat back in his chair--perhaps she had meant that he should.

'My dear girl!' he said feebly, 'this is the first I have heard of it. Mr. Raymond! And I thought----'

'Never mind what you thought,' she put in decidedly: 'it isn't quite settled yet; but it is going to be. Oh yes! it is going to be!'

'Well!' said Sir George--recovering himself for the usual formula,--'he is a very lucky fellow! But it is--er--all the more likely to be so, because, curiously enough, I have been told to offer Mr. Raymond the trusteeship of the old Thakoor of Dhurmkote's affairs. In fact, the old man refused pointblank to have any one else, and as we want him to retrench and adopt an heir properly----'

'My dear George!' exclaimed Lady Arbuthnot, 'how perfectly delightful!--it--it will settle everything!'

'Yes; I--I suppose it will,' replied Sir George dubiously, and then his sober common sense came to the front--'not, my dear, that I exactly see what had to--to--er--be settled.'

'No! perhaps not,' said Grace thoughtfully, 'but it will, all the same.'

With which mysterious remark she went off to set springes for that Love with a big L, which was to settle all things.

She was an expert in the art, as women of her type always are, and yet the days passed without bringing her success. For something, of which she knew nothing, stood between those two.

Put briefly, it was a rÂm-rucki. And so when they met--which was inevitably often, under Lady Arbuthnot's skilful hands--they talked of everything under the sun--of their adventure together, of the extraordinary way in which Fate had favoured them, of Chris Davenant and JÂn-Ali-shÂn's mysterious disappearances, of the pearls, and the signet of royalty that was not to be found anywhere. They even talked of the Thakoor of Dhurmkote, and the almost endless interest and power of such a life as that now offered to Jack Raymond--they even quarrelled over his hesitancy in accepting it; but they never talked of what Lesley had asked him to forget--what she had stigmatised scornfully as the 'rest of it.'

Grace became almost tearful over the fact. It seemed to her at last as if, even here, hers was not to be the hand to wile Jack Raymond back either to duty or pleasure.

And it was not. That task was reserved for a simpler hand; a hand that had neither clutched nor refused, the hand of a woman to whom 'the rest of it' was neither to be despised nor overestimated, and who had neither scorned it nor sought for it.

It was Auntie KhÔjee's when, one day, Jack Raymond and Lesley found themselves deftly manoeuvred by Grace Arbuthnot into the tÊte-À-tÊte of a visit to the old lady; not in the least against their wills, for he was quite content with, and she vastly superior to, such palpable ruses; besides, she really wanted to see the originator of the rÂm-rucki, who was now decently established on the top of an offshoot of the city, which jutted out into that very pleasure-garden to which the old lady had come with her petition to the bracelet-brother.

So, one morning, Lesley drove down to the Garden. Jack Raymond met her, riding, at the gate, and together they strolled along that wide cross of water and marble and flowers, and climbed the dark stair which led to the little square of roof and the little slip of room that were only just large enough for Auntie KhÔjee and the helplessness for which she cared; for KhÔjee, helpless as she was, had always stood between some one still more helpless and the buffets of fate, and would have felt lost without the occupation.

And there was no reason why she should be without it, when Lateefa, paralysed from the waist beyond all hope of ever getting about again, lacked a caretaker.

And so he sat, busy as ever, with slips of bamboo and sheets of tissue-paper on the little square of roof, just as he had sat in the wide courtyard where the royal peacocks now spread their broken plaster tails over plague patients--those plague patients which the vast stability of the Oriental had by this time accepted as inevitable; which it had taken, as it were, into its immemorial custom.

Lateefa had been once more asking for paste, and KhÔjee had brought him some--without lumps!--in a leaf cup; for she laid it aside to receive Jack Raymond with a 'Bismillah!' of pleasure, and the strange Miss with a ceremonious salaam. Lateefa had the latter for both visitors, but there was a bold questioning in his black eyes for the Huzoor, who gave back the look with a valiant attempt at unconsciousness.

There was a curious peace up there on the roof, Lesley felt, with only one or two of Lateefa's kites between you and the sky, and the even flow of Lateefa's Persian quotations in your ears; for Auntie KhÔjee--after disposing her guests on two rush stools--had hurried into the slip of a room for cardamoms, since they belong to congratulations as well as to consolations.

And, nowadays, what with her pension and Lateefa's earnings, there were always cardamoms, real cardamoms, on the roof, and many another comfort besides.

Lateefa, making polite conversation, admitted this openly, while Jack Raymond looked uneasily at Lesley, wondering--if her knowledge of the vernacular had not been mercifully limited--what she would have said to the pointed allusions to the benefit every man derived from associating himself with a truly virtuous woman, and the desirableness of settling down in time; not as he--Lateefa--had done, too late for hope of leaving aught behind him but the flimsy children of naught above him! A sorry legacy to the world; though in their day they had done strange things! But the Huzoor was wiser! He----

Here Aunt KhÔjee--who with the most innocent of vanities had spent part of her absence in putting on a very stiff new pink net veil, which during the rest of the visit refused to stop on her head, and to the old lady's intense discomfiture left her sparse grey hairs indecently exposed at crucial moments--reappeared with the cardamoms, to Jack Raymond's great relief; though he soon discovered that the real horror of the situation was only just beginning.

For, seated decorously apart, yet with her half-averted face alight with smiles and interest, she began on a series of questions which made his heart sink within him, since he knew Lesley of old.

And sure enough it was not long before the latter said, aggrievedly, 'You might translate what she is saying. After all, I did come to visit her, you know!'

He left the path of truth, then, desperately, with the result that Lesley commissioned him to make the proper reply to such Oriental periphrasis--something, he was to be sure, that would please the dear old thing.

Then he realised that he was hopelessly emmeshed, for, of course, Auntie KhÔjee wanted a reply to her question; and it was not what she had desired, at all.

'She doesn't look a bit pleased,' remarked Lesley, de haut en bas. 'Dear me! I wish I could speak. I know I could do better than that! And I hate being dependent.'

'I wish you could,' said Jack Raymond grimly. 'I don't want to be a go-between!'

His evident ill-temper mollified her. 'Well! at any rate, you might try again, and say something else.'

So he did; and he and Aunt KhÔjee had quite an animated passage, while Lateefa from his kites listened, and looked knowing.

'Well!' remarked Lesley at last, quite angrily. 'I don't see what was the use in my coming at all! You might at least give me a hint of what you are talking about! It is very rude.'

His temper went then altogether. 'If you want to know,' he said, still more grimly, 'she was asking when we are going to be married.'

Lesley gasped. 'Married!'--she echoed indignantly, yet conscious of a curious desire to smile and feel happy which must be squashed firmly--'well! if she does, Mr. Raymond, you can tell her--never!' Her dignity was tremendous.

'I have told her so three times,' replied Jack Raymond gravely, 'but she won't believe it; she says----'

'I don't care what she says,' retorted Lesley quickly. 'She must be made to believe it. Tell her--tell her about the rÂm-rucki, and all that. She will understand then.'

'She may,' assented Jack dubiously; 'but it is a little--ahem--mixed up----isn't it?'

A suspicion that the situation was beginning to amuse him made her say--

'Not at all! Of course she will understand. She gave you a rÂm-rucki, and why--why shouldn't I?'

'No reason at all. I'm awfully glad you did.'

He looked it, and Lesley felt once more that absurd desire to smile and feel happy as she sat listening, watching the withered old face, waiting for the answer.

It was not much when it came. It was only a pursing up of the lips that had never known a lover's kiss, a gentle raillery in the kind tear-dimmed eyes, and a brisk flirt of the fingers that had worn themselves to the bone to bring happiness to others.

'Trra!' said Auntie KhÔjee, with supreme unconcern for explanations. 'Trra!'

'I'm afraid it is no go, Miss Drummond,' said Jack decorously. 'I believe it--it would save trouble if we--for the time only, of course----'

Lesley blushed a fine blush. 'I daresay you are right,' she assented, supremely superior; 'it doesn't really matter--for the time,' she added significantly.

And after that an almost reckless happiness was added to the peace of the roof.

Lateefa quoted HÂfiz by the yard. Auntie KhÔjee got hold of Lesley's hand and held it fast with one of hers, while the other slid up and down the girl's arm with the little caressing pats and pinches with which she had tried to wile away Noormahal's weariness, and Jack Raymond sat and looked on with----

With what? Lesley did not quite realise what the expression was till they were alone together on their way back through the garden once more. Then she recollected it; for his face was all soft and kind, all lit up with a delicate raillery, a forgetfulness of the workaday world, just as it had been that evening--that evening, when another woman had been his companion--that evening when she had felt so lonely--when the cinnamon dove----

'Do-you-love-too? do-yon-love-too?' came the question from the rose-bush once more; but the bird did not fly from its shelter now. There was no thorn in the path now to make those two pause and startle it. So the question followed them. 'Do-you-love-too? do-you-love-too?' as they walked side by side, leaving the Sanctuary behind them, nearing the gilded summer-house before them.

'There's no hurry, is there?' said the man suddenly when they reached it. 'Let us sit down a bit and talk--about ourselves.'

The girl sat down, but shook her head. 'It was only for the time, Mr. Raymond,' she said, not pretending to misunderstand his meaning.

'Why should it only be for the time?'

'Why?' she echoed, looking out into the Pleasure-garden of Kings. 'For a great many reasons, I think.'

And then she began on them, one by one, dispassionately, rationally; and sometimes he agreed with her despondently as to his character and interests, and sometimes he gave in to her greater knowledge regarding her own.

And the dove cooed on its question, and the jewelled parrots--winged creatures as they were--flew from one screen of flowering trees to the other, unable to escape the thraldom of the high wall hidden by leaf and blossom--unable to escape from that prisonment of pleasure.

'And so you see, Mr. Raymond,' came the girl's voice, 'the odds are----'

'The odds!' he echoed quickly, almost mischievously. 'Ah! if it is a question of odds, it's my innings--I'll take twenty to one on Bonnie Lesley!' He held out his hand.

She essayed a frown, she essayed a smile, and then she said, 'Really, you are too foolish----Jack!'

* * * * *

And so in the years to come, the old Thakoor of Dhurmkote will no doubt rescind his reproof, and, having forgotten Jerry, will call another little laddie 'a son of heroes.' And he may be; but Jack Raymond himself will keep that name for a boy who, by that time, will be at Eton or Harrow. And that boy will think of the graves in the Hollow of Heroes, and wonder if JÂn-Ali-shÂn ever came back to claim his.

He has not yet, and so the two hundred and odd thousand people in the city of Nushapore, and the fifty thousand people in cantonments, still expect him to be there some day, when he is wanted.

And he will, no doubt; for it is only the Spirit of Slaves that dies; the Spirit of Kings lives for ever.

FOOTNOTES

Footnote 1: Barrister.

Footnote 2: Members of Municipal Committee.

Footnote 3: The Mohammedan Easter.

Footnote 4: Failed for middle school examination; a very general claim to culture in India.

Footnote 5: In India, members can buy provisions or wines imported by their club.

Footnote 6: Measure.

Footnote 7: Nigar bani, lit. looking at, favouritism.

Footnote 8: Straight, fair.

Footnote 9: Lit. earth, a corpse.

Footnote 10: Lit. outcast.

Footnote 11: Worshipper of Shiva.

Footnote 12: The king of death; his emblem is a crocodile, i.e. death will be busy.

Footnote 13: Hansi-ki-bat, lit. smiling word.

Footnote 14: The true faith.

Footnote 15: Ikbal, lit. power, prestige.

Footnote 16: Post-office.

Footnote 17: Doctors.

Footnote 18: Models of the tombs of Hussan and Hussein.

Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press