pt in penmanship, which skill he had devoted to forgery.

"Why did you violently commit this dastardish deed, and assault the
harmless peaceful Brahmin?" asked the Superintendent, a worthy and
voluble babu, and then translated the question into debased Hindustani.

"He called me _Hubshi_, and I will kill him," replied Moussa.

"Oho! and you kill everyone who calls you _Hubshi_, do you, Master
African?"

"I do. I wish to go to Aden Jail for attempting murder. It will be
murder if I am kept here where none knows a man from a dog."

"Oho! And you would kill even _me_, I suppose, if I called you
_Hubshi_."

"Of course! I will kill you in any case if I am not sent to Aden Jail."

The babu decided that it was high time for some other institution to
shelter this touchy and truculent person, and that he would lay the case
before the next weekly Visitor and ask for it to be submitted to the
Committee at their ensuing monthly meeting.

The Visitor of the week happened to be the Educational Inspector. "Wants
to leave India, does he?" said the Inspector, looking Moussa over as he
heard the statement of the Superintendent. "I admire his taste. India is
a magnificent country to leave."

The Educational Inspector, a very keen, thoughtful and competent
educationist, was a disappointed man, like so many of his Service. He
felt that he had, for quarter of a century, strenuously woven ropes of
sand. When his liver was particularly sluggish he felt that for quarter
of a century he had worked industriously, not at a useless thing, but at
an evil thing--a terrible belief.

Moreover, after quarter of a century of faithful labour and strict
economy, he found himself with a load of debt, broken health, and a
cheaply educated family of boys and girls to whom he was a complete
stranger--merely the man who found the money and sent it Home, visiting
them from time to time at intervals of four or five years. India had
killed his wife, and broken him.

He had had what seemed to him to be bitter experience also. An
individual, notoriously slack and incompetent, ten years his junior, had
been promoted over his head, because he was somebody's cousin and the
kind of fatuous ass that only labours industriously in drawing-rooms and
at functions, recuperating by slacking idly in offices and at duties--a
paltry but paying game much practised by a very small class in India.

Another individual, by reason of his having come to India two boats
ear