lake. Surely no one would come to reclaim him, across those weary, weary
miles of rock-strewn road.... "And this," said the _chowkidar_, raising
his voice to enforce attention, "is true talk. Everybody knows it, and
now the Sahib knows it. I am an old man." He fell asleep at once, with
his head on the clay pipe that was doing duty for a whole _huqa_ among
the company. He had been talking for nearly a quarter of an hour.

See how great a man is the true novelist! Six or seven thousand miles
away, Walter Besant of the Golden Pen had created Mr. Maliphant--the
ancient of figure-heads in the _All Sorts and Conditions of Men_, and
here, in Boondi, the Englishman had found Mr. Maliphant in the withered
flesh. So he drank Walter Besant's health in the water of the Burra
Talao. One of the sepoys turned himself round, with a clatter of
accoutrements, shifted his blanket under his elbow, and told a tale. It
had something to do with his _khet_, and a _gunna_ which certainly was
not sugar-cane. It was elusive. At times it seemed that it was a woman,
then changed to a right of way, and lastly appeared to be a tax; but the
more he attempted to get at its meaning through the curious patois in
which its doings or its merits were enveloped, the more dazed the
Englishman became. None the less the story was a fine one, embellished
with much dramatic gesture which told powerfully against the firelight.
Then the second sepoy, who had been enjoying the pipe all the time, told
a tale, the purport of which was that the dead in the tombs round the
lake were wont to get up of nights and go hunting. This was a fine and
ghostly story; and its dismal effect was much heightened by some clamour
of the night far up the lake beyond the floor of stars.

The third sepoy said nothing. He had eaten too much fish and was fast
asleep by the side of the _chowkidar_.

They were all Mahometans, and consequently all easy to deal with. A
Hindu is an excellent person, but ... but ... there is no knowing what
is in his heart, and he is hedged about with so many strange
observances.

This Hindu or Musalman bent, which each Englishman's mind must take
before he has been three years in the country, is, of course, influenced
by Province or Presidency. In Rajputana generally, the Political swears
by the Hindu, and holds that the Mahometan is untrustworthy. But a man
who will eat with you and take your tobacco, sinking the fiction that it
has been doctored with infi