are cunning, these Feringhi, my brothers. They steal the wisest
from among us while yet they are children, and bear them away to their
own land, and give them over to their own teachers. Thus come back your
own, with power and authority to scourge you. Your sons, your brothers
come back to you, learned, praised greatly, having striven against the
Feringhi in their own schools, and won what they desired.
Collector-sahib, Judge-sahib, yea, even padre-sahib, come they back to
you--not to lift you to honor and happiness beside them, but to side
with those that oppress you, to grind taxes from you who starve, to
imprison you who would be free. Sons of unspeakable shame! They drink
your blood, they fatten on your misery, and they have their reward. _We_
curse, them, brothers! The Feringhis smile upon them, they eat bread and
salt in their company, but they spit when they have passed by!"

Something in the scornful voice rang familiarly on the Judge's ears, and
incautiously he changed his position and tried to get a clearer view of
the treasonmonger. Instantly the man's bare brown arm shot out, and
pointed him to public notice.

"Here is one," pealed out the trumpet-voice, "has he come as our
brother? Or comes he as the slave of our masters, to spy upon our
meetings, and to deal out punishment to those who dare to be free? O
brother, do you walk to Calcutta, where the High Courts be, over our
bodies, and the bodies of our children? Will you go to the
Collector-sahib with tales of a native rising, and call up our brothers
of the police to kill and maim us? Or come you to offer us a great
heart?"

The Judge stood there, a motionless figure, flaring against the dark
jungle in his spotless, white linen evening dress. There was a broad
silk cummerband about his lean waist, and a gold signet-ring gleamed on
his left hand. Half a dozen Englishmen, thread for thread in similar
garb, still lounged in the Collector's drawing-room. He appeared the
very symbol of Anglicized India. The brown, half-naked mob surged and
struggled to look at him. The brown, half-naked orator still pointed at
him, and waited for reply. Meanwhile, he had been recognized.

"Iswar Chandra--by Jove," muttered the Judge.

The last time they had met was in a London drawing-room. Iswar Chandra,
the brilliant young barrister-at-law had discoursed to a philanthropic
peeress upon the social future of his native land, whilst an admiring
circle of auditors hung upon