e protection of Allah be upon you," rippled down
the line. Then the horsemen wheeled with their faces to the north.
Jemla swept a hand to his forehead and from his deep throat welled a
farewell, "Salaam, bhai! (brother)."

CHAPTER XXVIII

The Jamadar's tribute from man to man, one encased in a dark skin and
one in a white, was akin to the tribulation that would not be driven
from Barlow's mind over the Gulab, that in their case made the matter
of a skin colourisation the bar sinister. He rode in a brooding
silence. And now the way was one of ascent toward the pass through the
Vindhya mountains; a red gravelly undulating formation had given place
to basaltic rocks. They passed from groups of _mhowa_ trees and left
behind a wide shallow stream, its bed dotted with pools fringed by
great _kowa_ trees, and its banks lined by a thick green cover of
_jamun_ and _karonda_. Thorny _babul_ thrust their spiked branches out
over the roadway, white with tufts of cotton torn by its thorns from
bales, loose pressed, on their way to market in buffalo carts; "Babul
the thief," the natives called this acacia. Higher up a torch-wood
tree gleamed as if sprayed with gold, its limbs, lean and bare of
foliage, holding at their extremities in wisp-like fingers bright,
yellow, solitary blooms. From a _tendu_ tree a pair of droll little
brown monkeys chattered and grimaced at the clattering cart.

A spotted owlet, disturbed by the driver's encouraging, "Pop-pop!
Dih-dih-dih! Ho-ho-ho! children of jungle swine; brothers to buffalo!"
addressed to the horses lagging in the climb, fluttered away with his
silly little cackle.

These incidents of travel were almost unnoticed of Barlow. All up the
climb the retrospect was with him, claiming his thoughts. Just
that--all that was in evidence, a pigment in the skin, _caste_; and yet
reacting away back to God's mandate against the union of the white and
black. And verily a sin to be visited even unto the third and fourth
generation, for the bar sinister would be upon his children; they would
be half-castes with all of the opprobrium the name carried. Even the
son of a king, the offspring of such a union would be spoken of in mess
and drawing-room as a half-caste: the indelible sign would be upon him,
the blue tint to the white moons in his finger nails. Barlow
shuddered. Why contemplate the matter at all--it was impossible. Nana
Sahib had named the barrier when he had spoken of _