parchment skin that shone where a coffin or a tomb had touched it. He
seemed to have forgotten what the bungalow was for, or that a sahib
needed things to eat, until the ex-risaldar enlightened him, and then he
complained wheezily.

The stables--rather the patch-and-hole-covered desolation that once had
been stables--were altogether too snake-defiled and smelly to be worth
repairing; the string of horses was quartered cleanly and snugly under
tents, and Mahommed Gunga went to enormous trouble in arranging a ring
of watch-fires at even distances.

"Are there thieves here, then?" asked Cunningham, and the Rajput nodded
but said nothing. He seemed satisfied, though, that the man he had
brought safely thus far at so much trouble would be well enough housed
in the creaky wreck of the bungalow, and he took no precautions of any
kind as to guarding its approaches.

Cunningham watched the preparations for his supper with ill-concealed
disgust--saw the customary chase of a rubber-muscled chicken, heard its
death gurgles, saw the guts removed, to make sure that the kansamah did
not cook it with that part of its anatomy intact, as he surely would do
unless watched--and then strolled ahead a little way along the road.

The fakir was squatting in the distance, on a big white stone, and in
the quiet of the gloaming Cunningham could hear his coarse, lewd voice
tossing crumbs of abuse and mockery to the seven or eight villagers
who squatted near him--half-amused, half-frightened, and altogether
credulous.

Even as he drew nearer Cunningham could not understand a word of what
the fakir said, but the pantomime was obvious. His was the voice and
the manner of the professional beggar who has no more need to whine
but still would ingratiate. It was the bullying, brazen swagger and
the voice that traffics in filth and impudence instead of wit; and, in
payment for his evening bellyful he was pouring out abuse of Cunningham
that grew viler and yet viler as Cunningham came nearer and the fakir
realized that his subject could not understand a word of it.

The villagers looked leery and eyed Cunningham sideways at each fresh
sally. The fakir grew bolder, until one of his listeners smothered
an open laugh in both hands and rolled over sideways. Cunningham came
closer yet, half-enamoured of the weird scene, half-curious to discover
what the stone could be on which the fakir sat.

The fakir grew nervous. Perhaps, after all, this was one of