a young Bengali law
student, called Grish Chunder, whose father had sent him to England to
become civilized. The old man was a retired native official, and on an
income of five pounds a month contrived to allow his son two hundred
pounds a year, and the run of his teeth in a city where he could pretend
to be the cadet of a royal house, and tell stories of the brutal Indian
bureaucrats who ground the faces of the poor.

Grish Chunder was a young, fat, full-bodied Bengali dressed with
scrupulous care in frock coat, tall hat, light trousers and tan gloves.
But I had known him in the days when the brutal Indian Government paid
for his university education, and he contributed cheap sedition to
_Sachi Durpan_, and intrigued with the wives of his schoolmates.

"That is very funny and very foolish," he said, nodding at the poster.
"I am going down to the Northbrook Club. Will you come too?"

I walked with him for some time. "You are not well," he said. "What is
there in your mind? You do not talk."

"Grish Chunder, you've been too well educated to believe in a God,
haven't you?"

"Oah, yes, _here_! But when I go home I must conciliate popular
superstition, and make ceremonies of purification, and my women will
anoint idols."

"And bang up _tulsi_ and feast the _purohit_, and take you back into
caste again and make a good _khuttrj_ of you again, you advanced social
Free-thinker. And you'll eat _desi_ food, and like it all, from the
smell in the courtyard to the mustard oil over you."

"I shall very much like it," said Grish Chunder, unguardedly. "Once a
Hindu--always a Hindu. But I like to know what the English think they
know."

"I'll tell you something that one Englishman knows. It's an old tale to
you."

I began to tell the story of Charlie in English, but Grish Chunder put
a question in the vernacular, and the history went forward naturally in
the tongue best suited for its telling. After all it could never have
been told in English. Grish Chunder heard me, nodding from time to time,
and then came up to my rooms where I finished the tale.

"_Beshak_," he said, philosophically. "_Lekin darwaza band hai._
(Without doubt, but the door is shut.) I have heard of this remembering
of previous existences among my people. It is of course an old tale with
us, but, to happen to an Englishman--a cow-fed _Malechk_--an outcast. By
Jove, that is _most_ peculiar!"

"Outcast yourself, Grish Chunder! You eat cow-beef every day.