left to him the
reverence of his own people. He looked sharply up and down the road
before he dived into the moist heat beneath the trees. He knew all that
he was risking for a mere escapade. He had never trodden that path
before, excepting when he had gone on a shooting expedition with the
Collector. There were strange noises in the darkness, stealthy
rustlings, small, unfamiliar cries. He heard nothing but Capper's
comment on his carefully reasoned prediction that the day must come when
India would govern herself.

"Oh! you think so?"

Stupid, unmeaning, absurd, but--successful.

Then, immediately Capper was talking to Miss Malcolm about tennis, and
she was listening, smiling and intent. The Judge was a crack tennis
player. He loathed the game, but he had made himself proficient in it,
because it is one of the things that people expect of a man. He was
impelled to challenge Capper, and the answer was a drawled excuse.

The Judge was well down the hill now, descending the last precipitous
slope, and the countless odors of the Indian village rose to his
nostrils. There was a dull murmurous commotion afar off, such as bees
make when they are hiving. He listened, without curiosity, as he pressed
forward. Suddenly he halted. The murmur boomed out into a long,
thunderous roar. Then silence, and out of the silence a single voice,
deep and ringing.

"An infernal protest meeting," the Judge's British training informed
him.

He went forward again, moving noiselessly, and reached the outskirts of
the crowd, sheltering himself between the bushes that fringed the
jungle. Torches flared, and smoked, and shed a ruddy, uncertain light on
hundreds of rapt, upturned faces. The orator stood tall and straight
above them, fully revealed by purposely clustered lights. He volleyed
reproach and insult upon his listeners, he gave them taunts instead of
persuasion. They stood enthralled by the passionate voice, and bitter
words found their mark, and rankled poisonously.

"These _soors_ of Feringhi, whom you call your masters, beat you, and
they use your brothers to be their sticks. But for your brothers, who
wear the uniform of the Feringhi, and carry their guns, these worthless
masters would be trodden into the dust beneath your feet. The men who
hedge them in with steel must turn that steel against them."

The roar of voices thundered among the trees, and died away suddenly, so
that no word from the speaker might be lost.

"They