sure-pack. There was longing in them
that was pain. The face of Deenah was the face of one struck and
crippled with his own needs, which point helped the Kabuli to decision.

The terms of the agreement were made straight and fixed. Deenah went
back to his house where he made the monster's plan known to the servants.
In the afternoon, when the house was empty, the monster Kabuli called and
opened a small pack in the quiet shade of the compound, before the eyes
of six men and one woman, as much Deenah as himself. . . . When the time
in the story came that Deenah was to use his influence upon the mind of
his mistress, there seemed a slowness of understanding among the other
servants; so that the Kabuli had to speak again and very clearly.

Just now the head of Deenah bent low over the open pack, the movement of
his hand instantly drawing and filling the eye of the trader from Kabul;
and then it was that the Sahiba's _syce_, who was a huge man,
materialised a _lakri_ from under his long cotton tunic--the _lakri_
being a stick of olive-wood from High Himalaya and very hard. This he
brought down with great force upon the hugest and ugliest head in all
Central Provinces at that time.

Merely a beginning. Six other _lakris_ were drawn from five other
tunics--the extra one for Deenah.

The great body was dragged farther back toward the servants' quarters.
Here Deenah officiated. With each blow he enunciated in caressing tones,
some term of the agreement . . . until he heard the protest of the mother
of his little son:

"Shall you, Deenah, who are only her man-servant, have all the privilege
of defending the Sahiba--to whom I, Shanti, am as her own child?"

And Deenah, not missing a count, cried:

"Come and defend!"

So Deenah's wife and the other women came, bringing the smooth hand
stones with which they ground the spices into curry powder. . . . And
when the beating was over, they carefully tied up the pack of the Kabuli
and sealed it without a single article missing. Then they carried the
body out of the compound, across the main highway, beyond the parallel
bridle-road, and let it slide softly down into the little _khud_ beyond,
deeper and deeper each year from erosion.

A little afterward, that same afternoon, Margaret Annesley and Carlin
Deal were walking along the bridle-path. Hearing a moan they looked over
into the khud, where the monster Kabuli was coming to. He managed to
raise one hand, but the