On the Face of the Waters

BOOK II
CHAPTER II

IN THE CITY.

The song came in little insistent trills and quaverings, and quaint recurring cadences, which matched the insistency of the rhymes. The singer was a young man of about three-and-twenty, and as he sang, seated on a Persian rug on the top of a roof, he played an elaborate symphony of trills and cadences to match upon a tinkling saringi. He was small, slight, with a bright, vivacious face, smooth shaven, save for a thin mustache trimmed into a faint fine fringe. His costume marked him as a dandy of the first water, and he smelled horribly of musk.

The roof on which he sat was a secluded roof, protected from view, even from other roofs, by high latticed walls; its only connection with the world below it being by a dizzy brick ladder of a stair climbing down fearlessly from one corner. Across the further end stretched a sort of veranda, inclosed by lattice and screens. But the middle arch being open showed a blue and white striped carpet, and a low reed stool. Nothing more. But a sweet voice came from its unseen corner.

"Art not ashamed, Abool, to come to my discreet house among godly folk and sing lewd songs? Will they not think ill of me? And if thou comest drunken horribly with wine, as thou didst last week, claiming audience of me, thine aunt, not all that title will save me from aspersion. And if I lose this calm retreat, whither shall poor Newâsi go?"

"Nay, kind one!" cried Prince Abool-Bukr, "that shall never be." So saying, he cast away the tinkling saringi and from the litter of musical instruments around him laid impulsive hands on a long-necked fiddle with a 'cello tone in it. "I would sing psalms to please mine aunt," he went on in reckless gayety, "but that I know none. Will pious Saadi suit your sober neighbors, since lovelorn Hafiz shocks them? But no! I can never stomach his sentimental sanctity, so back we go to the wisest of all poets."

The high, thin tenor ran on without a break into a minor key, and a stanza of the Great Tentmakers. And as it quivered and quavered over the illusion of life, a woman's figure came to lean against the central arch, and look down on the singer with kindly eyes.

They were the most beautiful eyes in the world. Such is the consensus of opinion among all who ever saw them. Judged, indeed, by this standard, the Princess Farkhoonda Zamâni, alias Newâsi Begum, the widow of one of the King's younger sons, must have had that mysterious charm which is beyond beauty. But she was beautiful also, though smallpox had left its marks upon her. Chiefly, however, by a thickening of the skin, which brought an opaque pallor, giving her oval face a look of carved ivory. In truth, this memento of the past tragedy, which at the age of thirteen had brought her, the half-wedded bride, to death's door, and sent her fifteen-year-old bridegroom from the festival to the grave, enhanced, rather than detracted from her beauty. Her lips were reddened after the fashion of court women, her short-sighted hazel eyes were heavily blackened with antimony; but she wore no jewels, and her graceful, sweeping Delhi dress was of deadest, purest white, embroidered in finest needlework round hems and seams, and relieved only by the lighter folds of her white, lace-like veil. For she had forsworn colors when she fled from court-life and its many intrigues for an alliance with the charming widow; and, on the plea of a call to a religious and celibate life, had taken up her abode in the Mufti's Alley. This was a secluded little lane off the bazaar, which lies to the south of the Jumma Mosque, where a score or two of the Mohammedan families connected with the late chief magistrate of the city lived, decently, respectably, respectedly. To do this, having sometimes to close the gate at the entrance of the alley, and so shut out the wicked world around them. But that whole quarter of the city held many such learned, well-born, well-doing folk. Hussan Askari's house lay within a stone's throw of the Mufti's Alley; Ahsan-Oolah's not far off, and, all about, rose tall, windowless buildings, standing sentinel blindly over the naughtiness around them; but they had eyes within, and ears also. So the hands belonging to them were held up in horror over the doings of the survival, and—despite race and religion—an inevitably reluctant, yet inevitably firm adherence was given to civilization. Even the womenfolk on the high roofs knew something of the mysterious woman across the sea, who reigned over the Huzoors and made them pitiful to women. And Farkhoonda Zamâni read the London news, with great interest, in the newspaper which Abool-Bukr used to bring her regularly. Hers was the highest roof of all, save one at the back Of her veranda room; so close to it indeed that the same neem tree touched both.

It was not a quarter, therefore, in which the leader of the fastest set in the palace might have been expected to be a constant visitor. But he was. And the decorous alley put up with his songs patiently. Partly, no doubt, for his aunt's sake; more for his own charm of manner, which always gained him a consideration better men might have lacked. Being the late heir-apparent's eldest son, he was certain of succeeding to the throne if he outlived all his uncles; for the claims of the elder generation are, by Moghul law, paramount over those of the younger. Now, the inevitable harking back to the eldest branch, after years of power enjoyed by the junior ones, which this plan necessitates, being responsible for half the wars and murders which mark an Indian succession, some of these learned progressive folk admitted tentatively that the Western plan was better; and that if Prince Abool-Bukr were only other than he was, he might as well succeed now as later on.

The idea roused a like ambition in the young idler, now and again, but as a rule he was content to be the best musician in Delhi, the boldest gambler, the fastest liver. Yet through all, he kept his hold on one kind woman's hand; and those who knew the prince and princess have never a word to say against the friendship which led to that singing of Omar Khayyam upon the latticed roof.

"Life could be better than that for thee, nephew, didst thou but choose," said her soft voice, interrupting the cynicism, while her delicate fingers, touching the singer's shoulder as if in reproof, lingered there tenderly. He bent his smooth cheek impulsively to caress the hand so close to it, with a frank, boyish action. The next moment, however, he had started to his feet; the minor tone changed to a dance measure, then ended in a wild discord, and a wilder laugh. Her use of the word nephew was apt to rouse his recklessness, for she was but a month or two older than he.

"Thou canst not make me other than I was born——" he began; but she interrupted him quickly.

"Thou wast born of good parts enough, God knows."

"But my father deemed me fool, therefore I was brought up in a stable, mine aunt; and sang in brothels ere I knew what the word meant. So 'tis sheer waste time to interview my scandalized relations as thou dost, and beg them to take me serious. By all the courtesans in the Thunbi Bazaar, Newâsi, I take not myself so. Nor am I worse than the holy, pious aunt: I take paradise now, and leave hell to the last. They choose the other way. And make a better bargain for pleasure than I, seeing that the astrologers give me a short life, a bloody death."

Newâsi caught her hand back to another resting place above her heart. "A—a bloody death!" she echoed; "who—who told the lie?"

Prince Abool-Bukr shook his head with a kindly smile. "Oh! heed it not, kind lady. Such is the fashion with soothsayers nowadays. The heavens are black with portents. Someone's cow hath three calves, someone's child hath ten noses and a tail. Fire hath come from heaven—thou thyself didst tell me some such wind-sucker's tale—or from hell more likely——"

"Nay! but it is true," she interrupted eagerly; "I had it from the milkwoman, who comes from the village where the suttee——"

"The mouse began to gnaw the rope. The rope began to bend the ox. The ox began——" hummed the prince irreverently.

Newâsi stamped her foot. "But it is true, scoffer! There is a festival of it to-day in some idol temple—may it be defiled! The widow would have burned, after sinful custom, but was prevented by the Huzoors. And rightly. Yet, God knows—seeing the poor soul had to burn sometime through being an idolater—they might have let her burn with her love——"

Abool laughed softly. "And yet thou wilt have naught of Hafiz—Hafiz the love-lorn! Verily, Newâsi, thou art true woman."

She ignored the interruption. "So being hindered she went to Benares, and there this fire fell on her through prayer, and burned hands and feet——"

"But not her face," cried Prince Abool, thrumming the muted strings and making them sound like a tom-tom. "I'll wager my best pigeon, not her face, if she be a good-looking wench! And since fire follows on other things besides prayer, she was a fool not to get it, like me, through pleasure instead. To burn a virgin! What a dreary tale! Look not so shocked, Newâsi! a man must enjoy these presents, when folk around him waste half the time in dreaming of a future—of something better to come—as thou dost——" He paused, and a soft eager ring came to his voice. "If thou couldst only forget all that—forget who I might be in the years to come—forget what thou wouldst have been had my respected uncle not preferred peace to pleasure—for it never came to pass, remember, it never came to pass—then we two, you and I——" He paused again, perhaps at the sudden shrinking in her eyes, and gave a restless laugh. "As 'tis, the present must suffice," he added lightly, "and even so thou dost mourn for what I might be if the grace of God took me unawares. Thou hast caught the dreaming trick, mayhap, from the Prince of Dreamers yonder."

He moved over to the outer parapet and waved his hand toward Hussan Askuri's house. Then his vagrant attention turned swiftly to something which he could see in a peep of bazaar visible from this new point of view.

"Three, four, five trays of sweetstuffs! and one of milk and butter," he cried eagerly, "and by my corn-merchant's bill—which I must pay soon or starve—the carriers are palace folk! Is there, by chance, a marriage in the clan? Why didst not tell me before, Newâsi? then I could have gone as musician and earned a few rupees."

He gave a flourish of his bow, so drawing forth a lugubrious wail from the long-necked fiddle.

"No marriage that I wot of," she replied, smiling fondly over his heedless gayety. "The trays will be going to the Pir-sahib's house. They have gone every Thursday these few weeks past, ever since the Queen took ill on hearing the answer about the heirship. She vowed it then every week, so that the holy man's prayer might bring success to our cousin of Persia in this war. God save the very dust of it from the winds of misfortune so long as dust and wind exist," she added piously.

Prince Abool-Bukr turned round on her sharply with anxiety in his face.

"So! Thou too canst quote the proclamation like other fools—a fool's message to other fools. Where didst thou see it?"

Newâsi looked at him disdainfully. "Can I not read, nephew, and are there many in Delhi as heedless as thou? Why, even the Mufti's people discuss such things."

He shrugged his shoulders. "Ay! they will talk. Gossip hath a double tongue and wings too, nowadays. In old time the first tellers of a tale had half forgot it, ere the last hearer heard it; now the whole world is agog in half an hour. But it means naught. Even his heirship. Who cares in Delhi? None!—out of the palace, none! Not even I. Yet mischief may come of it; so have naught to do with dreamings, Newâsi, if only for my sake. Remember the old saw, 'Weevils are ground with the corn.'"

"Thou canst scarce call thyself that, Abool, and thou so near the throne," she said, still more coldly.

"Have me what pleaseth thee, kind one," he replied, a trifle impatiently; "but remember also that 'the body is slapped in the killing of mosquitoes.'" Then, suddenly, an odd change came to his mobile face. It grew strained, haggard; his voice had a growing tremor in it. "Lo! I tell thee, Newâsi, that Sheeah woman, Zeenut Maihl, in her plots for that young fool, her son, will hang the lot of us. I swear I feel a rope around my neck each time I think of her. I who only want to be let live as I like—not to die before my time—die and lose all the love and the laughter; die mayhap in the sunlight; die when there is no need; I seem to see it—the sunlight—and I helpless—helpless!"

He hid his face in his shuddering hands as if to shut out some sight before his very eyes.

"Abool! Abool! What is't, dear? Look not so strange," she cried, stretching out her hand toward him, yet standing aloof as if in vague alarm. Her voice seemed to bring him back to realities; he looked up with a reckless laugh.

"'Tis the wine does it," he said. "If I lived sober—with thee, mine aunt—these terrors would not come. Nay! be not frightened. Hanging is a bloodless death, and that would confound the soothsayer; so it cuts both ways. And now, since I must have more wine or weep, I will leave thee, Newâsi."

"For the bazaar?" she asked reproachfully.

"For life and laughter. Lo! Newâsi, thou thyself wouldst laugh at those new-come Bunjârah folk I told thee of, who imitate the sahibs so well. But for their eyes," here he nodded gayly to someone below, "they should get one of Mufti's folk to play," he added, his attention as usual following the first lead. "Saw you ever such blue ones as the boy has yonder?"

Newâsi, drawing her veil tighter, stepped close to his side and peered gingerly.

"His sister's are as blue, his cousin's also. It runs in the blood, they say. I cannot like them. Dost thou not prefer the dark also?"

She raised hers to his innocently enough, then shrank back from the sudden passion of admiration she saw blazing in them. Shrank so that her arm touched his no longer. The action checked him, made him savage.

"I like black ones best," he said insolently; "big, black, staring eyes such as my mother swears my betrothed has to perfection. Thou hast not seen her yet, Newâsi; so thou canst keep me company in imagining them languishing with love. They will not have to languish long for—hast thou heard it? The King hath fixed the wedding." He paused, then added in a low, cruel voice, "Art glad, Newâsi?"

But her temper could be roused too, and her heart had beat in answer to his look in a way which ended calm. "Ay! It will stop this farce of coming thither for study and learning—as to-day—without a line scanned."

"Thou dost study enough for both, as thou art virtuous enough for both," he retorted. "I am but flesh and blood, and my small brain will hold no more than it can gather from bazaar tongues."

"Of lies, doubtless."

"Lies if thou wilt. But they fill the mind as easily as truth, and fit facts better. As the lie the courtesans tell of my coming hither fits fact better than thy reason. Dost know it? Shall I tell it thee?"

"Yea! tell it me," she answered swiftly, her whole face ablaze with anger, pride, resentment. His matched it, but with a vast affection and admiration added which increased his excitement. "The lie, did I say?" he echoed, "nay, the truth. For why do I come? Why dost let me come? Answer me in truth?" There was an instant's silence, then he went on recklessly: "What need to ask? We both know. And why, in God's name, having come—come to see thy soft eyes, hear thy soft voice, know thy soft heart, do I go away again like a fool? I who take pleasure elsewhere as I choose. I will be a fool no longer. Nay! do not struggle. I will but force thee to the truth. I will not even kiss thee—God knows there are women and to spare for that—there is but one woman whom Abool-Bukr cares to——" he broke off, flung the hands he had seized away from him with a muttered curse, and stepped back from her, calming himself with an effort. "That comes of making Abool-Bukr in earnest for once. Did I not warn thee it was not wise?" he said, looking at her almost reproachfully, as she stood trying to be calm also, trying to hide the beating of her heart.

"'Tis not wise, for sure, to speak foolishness," she murmured, attempting unconsciousness. "Yet do I not understand——"

He shook his delicate hand in derisive denial. "Why, the Princess Farkhoonda refuses to marry! Nay, Newâsi, we are two fools for our pains. That is God's truth between us. So now for lies in the bazaar."

"Peace go with thee." There was a sudden regret, almost a wistful entreaty in the farewell she sent after him. There was none in his reply, given with a backward look as his gay figure went downward dizzily. "Nay! Peace stays ever with thee."

It was true. Those other women of whom he had spoken gave him kisses galore, but this one? It was a refinement of sensuality, in a way, to go as he had come. But Newâsi went back to her books with a sigh, telling herself that her despondency was due to Abool's hopeless lack of ambition. If he would only show his natural parts, only let these new rulers see that he had the makings of a king in him! As for the other foolishness, if the old King would give his consent—if it were made clear that she was not really—— She pulled herself up with a start, said a prayer or two, and went on with The Mirror of Good Behavior, through which she was wading diligently. The writer of it had not been a beautiful woman, widowed before she was a wife, but his ideals were high.

Abool-Bukr meanwhile was already in a house with a wooden balcony. There were many such in the Thunbi Bazaar, giving it an airiness, a cleanliness, a neatness it would otherwise have lacked. But Gul-anâri's was the biggest, the most patronized; not only for the tired heads which looked out unblushingly from it, but for the news and gossip always to be had there. The lounging crowds looked up and asked for it, as they drifted backward and forward aimlessly, indifferently, among the fighting quails in their hooded cages, the dogs snarling in the filth of the gutters, while a mingled scent of musk, and drains, and humanity steamed through the hot sunshine. Sometimes a corpse lay in the very roadway awaiting burial, but it provoked no more notice than a passing remark that Nargeeza or Yasmeena had been a good one while she lasted. For there was a hideous, horrible lack of humanity about the Thunbi Bazaar; even in the very women themselves, with their foreheads narrowed by plastered hair to a mere wedge above a bar of continuous eyebrow, their lips crimsoned in unnatural curves, their teeth reddened with pân or studded with gold wire, their figures stiffened to artificial prominence. It was as if humanity, tired of its own beauty, sought the lack of it as a stimulant to jaded sensuality.

"Allâh! the old stale stories," yawned Gul-anâri from the broad sheet of native newspaper whence, between the intervals of some of Prince Abool-Bukr's worst songs, she had been reading extracts to her illiterate clients; that being a recognized attraction in her trade. "Persia! Persia! nothing but Persia! Who cares for it? I dare swear none. Not even the woman Zeenut herself, for all her pretense of sympathy with Sheeahs, who——"

"Have a care, mistress!" interrupted an arrogant looking man, who showed the peaked Afghan cap below a regimental turban. He was a sergeant in a Pathan company of the native troops cantoned outside Delhi on the Ridge, and had been bickering all the afternoon with a Rajpoot of the 38th N. I., who had ousted him in his hostess' easy affections, being therefore in an evil temper, ready to take offense at a word. "I am of the north—a Sheeah myself, and care not to hear them miscalled. And I have those who would back me," he continued, glaring at the Rajpoot, who sat in the place of honor beside the stout siren; "for yonder in the corner is another hill-tiger." He pointed to a man who had just thanked one of the girls in Pushtoo for a glass of sherbet she handed him.

"Hill-cat, rather!" giggled Gul-anâri. "He brought me this one, but yesterday, from a caravan new-come to the serai,"—she stroked the long fur of a Persian kitten on her lap,—"and when I asked for news could not give them. He scarce knew enough Urdu for the settling of prices."

A coarse joke from the Rajpoot, suggesting that he had found few difficulties of that sort in the Thunbi Bazaar, made the sergeant scowl still more and swear that he would get Mistress Gul-anâri the news for mere love. Whereat he called over, in Pushtoo, to the man in the corner, who, however, took no notice.

"He is as deaf as a lizard!" giggled Gul-anâri, enjoying the rejected one's discomfiture. "Get my friend the corporal here to yell at him for thee, sergeant. His voice goes further than thine!"

The favored Rajpoot squeezed the fat hand nearest to him. "Go up and pluck him by the beard," he suggested vaingloriously, "then we might see a Pathan fight for once."

"Thou wouldst see a fair one, which is more than thou canst among thine own people."

"Peace! Peace!" cried the courtesan, smiling to see both men look round for a weapon. "I'll have no bloodshed here. Keep that for the future." She dwelt on the last word meaningly, and it seemed to have a soothing effect, for the sepoys contented themselves with scowls again.

"The future?" echoed a graybeard who had been drinking cinnamon tea calmly. "God knows there will be wars enough in it. Didst hear, Meean sahib? I have it on authority—that Jarn Larnce is to give Peshawur to Dost Mohammed and take Rajpootana instead. Take it as Oude was taken and Sambalpore, and Jhansi, and all the others."

"Even so," assented a quiet looking man in spectacles. "When the last Lât-sahib went, he got much praise for having taken five kingdoms and given them to the Queen. The new one was told he must give more. This begins it."

"Let us see what we Rajpoots say first," cried the corporal fiercely. "'Tis we have fought the Sirkar's battles, and we are not sheep to be driven against our own."

Gul-anâri leered admiringly at her new lover. "Nay! the Rajpoots are men! and 'twas his regiment, my masters, who refused to fight over the sea, saying it was not in the bond. Ay! and gained their point."

"That drop has gone over the sea itself," sneered a third soldier. "The bond is altered now. Go we must, or be dismissed. The Thakoor-jee would not be so bold now, I warrant."

The Rajpoot twirled his mustache to his very eyes and cocked his turban awry.

"Ay, would I! and more, if they dare touch our privilege."

Gul-anâri leered again, rousing the Pathan sergeant to mutter curses, and—as if to change the subject—cross over to the man in the corner, lay insolent hands on his shoulder, and shout a question in his ear. The man turned, met the arrogant eyes bent on him calmly, and with both hands salaamed profusely but slowly with a sort of measured rhythm. Apparently he had not caught the words and was deprecating impatience. His hands were fine hands, slender, well-shaped, and he wore a metal ring on the seal-finger. It caught the light as he salaamed.

"Louder, man, louder!" gibed the corporal. But the sergeant did not repeat the question; he stood looking at the upturned face awaiting an answer.

"Maybe he is Belooch, his speech not mine," he said suddenly, yet with a strange lack of curiosity in his tone. There was a faint quiver, as if some strain were over in the face below, and the silence was broken by a rapid sentence.

"Yea! Belooch!" he went on in a still more satisfied tone, "I know it by the twang. So there is small use in bursting my lungs."

Here Prince Abool-Bukr, who had been dozing tipsily, his head against his fiddle, woke, and caught the last words. "Ay, burst! burst like the royal kettle-drums of mine ancestors. Yet will I do my poor best to amuse the company and—and instruct them in virtue." Whereupon, with much maudlin emotion, he thrummed and thrilled through a lament on the fallen fortunes of the Moghuls written by that King of Poets his Grandpapa. Being diffuse and didactic, it was met with acclamations, and Abool, being beyond the stage of discrimination, was going on to give an encore of a very different nature, when a wild clashing of cymbals and hooting of conches in the bazaar below sent everyone to the balcony. Everyone save Abool, who, deprived of his audience, dozed off against his fiddle again, and the man from the corner who, as he took advantage of the diversion to escape, looked down at the handsome drunken face as he passed it and muttered, "Poor devil! He rode honest enough always." Then the Rajpoot's arrogant voice rising from the crush on the balcony, he paused a second in order to listen—that being his trade.

"'Tis the holy Hindu widow to whom God sent fire on her way to the festival. A saint indeed! I know her brother, one Soma, a Yadubansi Rajpoot in the 11th, new-come to Meerut."

The clashings and brayings were luckily loud enough to hide an irrepressible exclamation from the man behind. The next instant he was halfway down the dark stairs, tearing off cap, turban, beard, and pausing at the darkest corner to roll his baggy northern drawers out of sight, and turn his woolen green shawl inside out, thus disclosing a cotton lining of ascetic ochre tint. It was the work of a second, for Jim Douglas had been an apt pupil. So, with a smear of ashes from one pocket, a dab of turmeric and vermilion from another—put on as he finished the stairs—he emerged into the street disguised as a mendicant; the refuge of fools, as Tiddu had called it. The easiest, however, to assume at an instant's notice; and in this case the best for the procession Jim Douglas meant to join. Careless and hurried though his get-up was, he set the very thought of detection from him as he edged his way among the streaming crowd. For in that, so he told himself, lay the Mysterious Gift. To be, even in your inmost thoughts, the personality you assumed was the secret. Somehow or another it impressed those around you, and even if a challenge came there was no danger if the challenger could be isolated—brought close, as it were, to your own certainty. To this, so it seemed to him—the many-faced one vehemently protesting—came all Tiddu's mysterious instructions, which nevertheless he followed religiously. For, be they what they might, they had never failed him during the six months, save once, when, watching a horse-race, he had lost or rather recovered himself in the keen interest it awakened. Then his neighbors had edged from him and stared, and he had been forced into slipping away and changing his personality; for it was one of Tiddu's maxims that you should always carry that with you which made such change possible. To be many-faced, he said, made all faces more secure by taking from any the right of permanence. Jim Douglas therefore joined the procession and forced his way to the very front of it, where the red-splashed figure of Durga Devi was being carried shoulders high. It was garlanded with flowers and censed by swinging censers, and behind it with widespread arms to show her sacred scars walked Tara. She was naked to the waist, and the scanty ochre-tinted cloth folded about her middle was raised so as to show the scars upon her lower limbs. The sunlight gleaming on the magnificent bronze curves showed a seam or two upon her breast also. No more. As Abool-Bukr had prophesied, her face, full of wild spiritual exaltation, was unmarred and, with the shaven head, stood out bold and clear as a cameo.

Jai! Jai! Durga mai ke jai (Victory to Mother Durga).

The cry came incessantly from her lips, and was echoed not only by the procession, but by the spectators. So from many a fierce throat besides the corporal's, who from Gul-anâri's balcony shouted it frantically, that appeal to the Great Death Mother—implacable, athirst for blood—came to light the sordid life of the bazaar with a savage fire for something unknown—horribly unknown, that lay beyond life. Even the Mohammedans, though they spat in the gutter at the idol, felt their hearts stir; felt that if miracles were indeed abroad their God, the only true One, would not shorten His Hand either.

Jai! Jai! Durga mai ke jai.

The cry met with a sudden increase of volume as, the procession passing into the wider space before the big mosque, it was joined by a band of widows, who in rapturous adoration flung themselves before Tara's feet so that she might walk over them if need be, yet somehow touch them.

"Pigs of idolators!" muttered one of a group standing on the mosque steps; a group of men unmistakable in their flowing robes and beards.

"Peace, Kazi-sahib!" came a mellow voice. "Let God judge when the work is done. 'The clay is base, and the potter mean, yet the pot helps man to wash and be clean.'"

The speaker, a tall, gaunt man, rose a full head above the others, and Jim Douglas' keen eyes, taking in everything as they passed, recognized him instantly. It was the Moulvie of Fyzabad. It was partly to hear what he had to say when he was preaching, partly to find out how the people viewed the question of the heirship, which had brought Jim Douglas to Delhi, so he was not surprised.

And now the procession, reaching the Dareeba, that narrowest of lanes hedged by high houses, received a momentary check. For down it, preceded by grooms with waving yak tails, came the Resident's buggy. He was taking a lady to see the picturesque sights of the city. This was one, with a vengeance, as the red-splashed figure of the Death-Goddess jammed itself in the gutter to let the aliens pass, so getting mixed up with a Mohammedan sign-board. And the crowd following it,—an ignorant crowd agape for wonders,—stood for a minute, hemmed in, as it were, between the buggy in front and the mosque behind, with that group of Moulvies on its steps.

quoted he of Fyzabad under his breath, and the others nodded. They knew the prophecy of Shah N'amut-Oolah well. It was being bandied from mouth to mouth in those days; for the Mohammedan crowd was also agape for wonders.

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