hiselled nostrils spread and through them the palpitating
breath rasped a whistling note of suppressed passion.

"Sirdar," he said, "never call me Nana Sahib again. The English call
me that, but I wait--must wait; I smile and suffer. I am Dandhu Panth,
a Brahmin. The English so loved me that they tried to make an
Englishman of me, but, by Brahm! they taught me hate, which is their
lot till the sea swallows the last of the accursed breed and
Mahrattaland is free!"

Nana Sahib was panting with the intensity of his passion. He paced the
floor flicking at his brown boots with his whip, and presently whirled
to say with a sneering smile on his thin lips:

"The English can teach a man just one thing--to die for his ideals."

"Yes, Prince, of a certainty the Englishman knows how to die for his
country," Baptiste agreed in a soldier's tribute to courage.

"And for another nation's country," Nana Sahib rasped. "He is a born
pirate, a bred pirate--we in India know that; and that, General, is why
I am a Brahmin, because they alone will free Mahrattaland--faith,
ideals. Forms! the gods to me are not more than show-pieces. That
Kali spreads the cholera is one with the idea that the little
red-daubed stone Linga gets the woman a male child, false; these things
are in ourselves, and in Brahm. The priests sacrifice to Shiva, but I
will sacrifice to Mahrattaland, which to me is the supreme God."

Jean Baptiste looked out of his wise grey eyes into the handsome face
and felt a thrill, an awakening, the terrible sincerity of the speaker.
At times the ferocity in the eyes when he had spoken of sacrifice
caused the free-lance soldier to shiver. A blur of red floated before
his eyes--something of a fateful forecasting that some day the awful
storm that was brewing would break, and the fanatical Brahmin in front
of him would call for English blood to glut his hate. It was the more
appalling that Nana Sahib was so young. Closing his eyes Baptiste
heard the voice of an English Oxonian that perhaps should be chortling
of polo and cricket and racing; and yet the more danger--the
youthfulness of the agent of destruction; like a Napoleon--a corporal
as a boy. "_C'est la guerre_!" the French officer murmured.

Then, as a storm passing is often followed by smiling sunshine, so the
mood of Nana Sahib changed. He had the volatile temperament of a
Latin, and now he turned to the Minister, his face having undergone a
complete metamorp