h their assumed characters, the evening meal was ushered
in with a peace-shattering clamour from the drums and a raucous blare
from conch-shell horns. Then the devout murderers offered up prayers
of fervency to the great god, beseeching their more immediate branch of
the deity, Bhowanee, to protect them.

And at the same time, just within the mud walls of Sarorra, its people
were placing flowers and cocoanuts and sweetmeats upon the shrine of
the god of their village.

Just without the village gate the elephant-nosed Ganesh sat looking in
whimsical good nature across his huge paunch toward the place of crime,
the deep shadow that lay beneath the green-leafed mango trees.

In the hearts of the Bagrees there was unholy joy, an eager
anticipation, a gladsome feeling toward Bhowanee who had certainly
guided this rapacious merchant with his iron box full of jewels to
their camp.

Indeed they would sacrifice a buffalo at her temple of Kajuria, for
that was the habit of their clan when the booty was great. The taking
of life was but an incident. In Hindustan humans came up like flies,
returning over and over to again encumber the crowded earth. In the
vicissitudes of life before long the merchant would pass for a
reincorporation of his soul, and probably, because of his sins as an
oppressor of the poor, come back as a turtle or a jackass; certainly
not as a revered cow--he was too unholy. In the gradation of humans he
was but a merchant of the caste of the third dimension in the great
quartette of castes. It would not be like killing a Brahmin, a sin in
the sight of the great god.

This philosophy was as subtle as the perfume of a rose, unspoken, even
at the moment a floaty thought. Like their small hands and their erect
air of free-men, the Rajput atmosphere, it had grown into their created
being, like the hunting instinct of a Rampore hound.

The merchant, smoking his _hookah_, having eaten, observed with keen
satisfaction the evening devotions of the supposed mendicants. As it
grew dark their guru was offering up a prayer to the Holy Cow, for she
was to be worshipped at night. The merchant's appreciation was largely
a worldly one, a business sense of insurance--safety for his jewels and
nothing to pay for security--men so devout would have the gods in their
mind and not robbery. When the jamadars, and some of the Bagrees who
were good story tellers, and one a singer, did him the honour of coming
to sit at h