uation on himself. There were seven native policemen in Tibasu, and
four crazy smooth-bore muskets among them. All the men were gray with
fear, but not beyond leading. Michele dropped the key of the telegraph
instrument, and went out, at the head of his army, to meet the mob. As
the shouting crew came round a corner of the road, he dropped and fired;
the men behind him loosing instinctively at the same time.

The whole crowd--curs to the backbone--yelled and ran; leaving one man
dead, and another dying in the road. Michele was sweating with fear, but
he kept his weakness under, and went down into the town, past the house
where the Sub-Judge had barricaded himself. The streets were empty.
Tibasu was more frightened than Michele, for the mob had been taken at
the right time.

Michele returned to the Telegraph-Office, and sent a message to
Chicacola asking for help. Before an answer came, he received a
deputation of the elders of Tibasu, telling him that the Sub-Judge said
his actions generally were "unconstitional," and trying to bully him.
But the heart of Michele D'Cruze was big and white in his breast,
because of his love for Miss Vezzis, the nurse-girl, and because he had
tasted for the first time Responsibility and Success. Those two make
an intoxicating drink, and have ruined more men than ever has Whiskey.
Michele answered that the Sub-Judge might say what he pleased, but,
until the Assistant Collector came, the Telegraph Signaller was the
Government of India in Tibasu, and the elders of the town would be held
accountable for further rioting. Then they bowed their heads and said:
"Show mercy!" or words to that effect, and went back in great fear; each
accusing the other of having begun the rioting.

Early in the dawn, after a night's patrol with his seven policemen,
Michele went down the road, musket in hand, to meet the Assistant
Collector, who had ridden in to quell Tibasu. But, in the presence of
this young Englishman, Michele felt himself slipping back more and more
into the native, and the tale of the Tibasu Riots ended, with the strain
on the teller, in an hysterical outburst of tears, bred by sorrow that
he had killed a man, shame that he could not feel as uplifted as he had
felt through the night, and childish anger that his tongue could not
do justice to his great deeds. It was the White drop in Michele's veins
dying out, though he did not know it.

But the Englishman understood; and, after he had schoo