long?"

"About half an hour, after he received his wound. I call Vishnu to
witness," yelled the wretched man, "that I did everything for him.
Everything which was possible, that I did!"

He threw himself down on the ground and clasped my ankles. But I had
my doubts about Gunga Dass's benevolence, and kicked him off as he lay
protesting.

"I believe you robbed him of everything he had. But I can find out in a
minute or two. How long was the Sahib here?"

"Nearly a year and a half. I think he must have gone mad. But hear me
swear Protector of the Poor! Won't Your Honor hear me swear that I never
touched an article that belonged to him? What is Your Worship going to
do?"

I had taken Gunga Dass by the waist and had hauled him on to the
platform opposite the deserted burrow. As I did so I thought of my
wretched fellow-prisoner's unspeakable misery among all these horrors
for eighteen months, and the final agony of dying like a rat in a hole,
with a bullet-wound in the stomach. Gunga Dass fancied I was going
to kill him and howled pitifully. The rest of the population, in the
plethora that follows a full flesh meal, watched us without stirring.

"Go inside, Gunga Dass," said I, "and fetch it out."

I was feeling sick and faint with horror now. Gunga Dass nearly rolled
off the platform and howled aloud.

"But I am Brahmin, Sahib--a high-caste Brahmin. By your soul, by your
father's soul, do not make me do this thing!"

"Brahmin or no Brahmin, by my soul and my father's soul, in you go!"
I said, and, seizing him by the shoulders, I crammed his head into
the mouth of the burrow, kicked the rest of him in, and, sitting down,
covered my face with my hands.

At the end of a few minutes I heard a rustle and a creak; then Gunga
Dass in a sobbing, choking whisper speaking to himself; then a soft
thud--and I uncovered my eyes.

The dry sand had turned the corpse entrusted to its keeping into a
yellow-brown mummy. I told Gunga Dass to stand off while I examined it.
The body--clad in an olive-green hunting-suit much stained and worn,
with leather pads on the shoulders--was that of a man between thirty and
forty, above middle height, with light, sandy hair, long mustache, and a
rough unkempt beard. The left canine of the upper jaw was missing, and
a portion of the lobe of the right ear was gone. On the second finger of
the left hand was a ring--a shield-shaped bloodstone set in gold, with
a monogram that might have been eit