r and cook to prepare supper, and led
the way into the house with his arm round his sister, who, woman-like,
escaped to change her dress and make herself presentable, as she put it.
She had already forgotten the fatigues of the day in the hearty welcome and
the joy of her safe home-coming.

But before Dermot entered the bungalow he had water brought and washed from
Badshah's head and legs the evidences of the terrible vengeance that he had
taken upon their assailants. And from the verandah the planters looked at
animal and master and commented in low tones on the strange tales told of
both, for the reputation of mysterious power that they enjoyed with natives
had reached every white man of the district.

The crowd of coolies drifted away to their village on the tea-garden, and
there throughout the hot night hours the groups sat on the ground outside
the thatched bamboo huts and talked of the animal and the man.

"It is not well to cross this sahib who is not as other sahibs," said a
coolie, shaking his head solemnly.

"Sahib, say you? Is he only a sahib?" asked an old man. "Is he truly of the
_gora logue_ (white folk)?"

"Why, what else is he? Is not his skin white?" said a youth,
presumptuously thrusting himself into the conclave of the elders.

"Peace! Since when was it meet for children to prattle in the presence of
their grandsires?" demanded a grey-haired coolie contemptuously. "Know,
boy, that Shri Krishn's skin was of the same colour when he moved among us
on earth."

Krishna, the Second Person of the Hindu Trinity, the best-loved god of all
their mythological heaven, is represented in the cheap coloured oleographs
sold in the bazaars in India as being of fair complexion.

"Is he Krishna himself?" asked a female coolie eagerly, the glass bangles
on her arm rattling as she raised her hand to draw her _sari_ over her face
when she thus addressed men. "Is he Krishna, think you? He is handsome
enough to be the Holy One."

"Who knows, daughter? It may be. Shri Krishn has many incarnations," said
the old man solemnly.

"Nay, I do not think that he is Krishna," remarked an elderly coolie. "It
may be that he is another of the Holy Ones."

"Perhaps he is _Gunesh_," ventured a younger man.

"No; he bestrides _Gunesh_. I think he must be Krishna," chimed in another.
"What lesser god would dare to use Gunesh as his steed?"

"He is _Gunesh_ himself," asserted a grey-beard. "Does he not range the
jungle and the