ree sets of doolie-bearers came to the
bungalow late last night when I was sleeping outside, and said that it was
their custom to rest in the rooms set apart for the English people! What
honor has the _khansamah_? They tried to enter, but I told them to go. No
wonder, if these _Oorias_ have been here, that the Presence is sorely
spotted. It is shame, and the work of a dirty man!"

Kadir Baksh did not say that he had taken from each gang two annas for
rent in advance, and then, beyond my earshot, had beaten them with the big
green umbrella whose use I could never before divine. But Kadir Baksh has
no notions of morality.

There was an interview with the _khansamah_, but as he promptly lost his
head, wrath gave place to pity, and pity led to a long conversation, in
the course of which he put the fat Engineer-Sahib's tragic death in three
separate stations--two of them fifty miles away. The third shift was to
Calcutta, and there the Sahib died while driving a dog-cart.

If I had encouraged him the _khansamah_ would have wandered all through
Bengal with his corpse.

I did not go away as soon as I intended. I stayed for the night, while the
wind and the rat and the sash and the window-bolt played a ding-dong
"hundred and fifty up." Then the wind ran out and the billiards stopped,
and I felt that I had ruined my one genuine, hall-marked ghost story.

Had I only stopped at the proper time, I could have made _anything_ out of
it.

That was the bitterest thought of all!

_The Sending of Dana Da_

When the Devil rides on your chest, remember the _chamar_.
_--Native Proverb._

Once upon a time some people in India made a new heaven and a new earth
out of broken teacups, a missing brooch or two, and a hair brush. These
were hidden under bushes, or stuffed into holes in the hillside, and an
entire civil service of subordinate gods used to find or mend them again;
and everyone said: "There are more things in heaven and earth than are
dreamed of in our philosophy." Several other things happened also, but the
religion never seemed to get much beyond its first manifestations; though
it added an air-line postal _dak_, and orchestral effects in order to keep
abreast of the times, and stall off competition.

This religion was too elastic for ordinary use. It stretched itself and
embraced pieces of everything that medicine men of all ages have
manufactured. It approved and stole from Freemason