or a bird--of following further. He was a sweeper-intimate acquaintance
of creeper ladders, trap-doors, gutters drains, and byways; she realized
at once that there would be no wisdom in attempting to find within an
hour what he had not discovered in a lifetime.

So Joanna, her beady eyes glittering between the wrinkled folds of skin,
slunk deeper in a shadow and began to think. She, the looker-on, had
seen the whole play from its first beginning and could judge at least
that part of it which had its bearing on her missionary masters. First,
she knew what Jaimihr's ambition was--every man in Howrah knew how he
planned to seize Miss McClean when the moment should be propitious--and
her Eastern wisdom warned her that Jaimihr, foiled, would stop at
nothing to contrive vengeance. If he could not seize Miss McClean, he
would be likely to use every means within his power to bring about her
death and prevent another from making off with his prize. Jaimihr, then,
was the most pressing danger.

Second, as a Hindoo, she knew well how fiendishly the priests loathed
the Christian missionaries; and it was common knowledge that the
Maharajah was cross-hobbled by the priests. The Maharajah was a fearful
man, and, unless the priests and Jaimihr threatened him with a show
of combination, there was a slight chance that he might dread British
vengeance too much to dare permit violence to the McCleans. Possibly he
might hold out against the priests alone; but before an open alliance
between Jaimihr and the priests he would surrender for his own throne's
sake.

So far Joanna could reason readily enough, for there was a vast fund of
wisdom stored beneath her wrinkled ugliness. But her Eastern limitation
stopped her there. She could not hold loyalty to more than one cause,
or to more than one offshoot of that cause, in the same shrewd head at
once. She decided that at all costs Jaimihr must be out of the way so
that the Maharaja might be left to argue with the priests alone. For the
moment no other thought occurred to her.

The means seemed ready to her hand. A peculiarity of the East, which is
democratic in most ways under the veneer of swaggering autocracy, that
servants of the very lowest caste may speak, and argue on occasion, with
men who would shudder at the prospect of defilement from their touch.
There was nothing in the least outrageous in the proposition that the
sweeper, waiting in a corner for the procession to emerge again so