oo bold himself.
"It remains only to give orders. They said they will obey if thou wilt
only stand between them and the Government."

"That I know," said Chinn, strolling slowly to the table-land. A few of
the elder men stood in an irregular semicircle in an open glade; but the
ruck of people--women and children were hidden in the thicket. They had
no desire to face the first anger of Jan Chinn the First.

Seating himself on a fragment of split rock, he smoked his cheroot to
the butt, hearing men breathe hard all about him. Then he cried, so
suddenly that they jumped:

"Bring the man that was bound!"

A scuffle and a cry were followed by the appearance of a Hindoo
vaccinator, quaking with fear, bound hand and foot, as the Bhils of old
were accustomed to bind their human sacrifices. He was pushed cautiously
before the presence; but young Chinn did not look at him.

"I said--the man that was bound. Is it a jest to bring me one tied like
a buffalo? Since when could the Bhil bind folk at his pleasure? Cut!"

Half a dozen hasty knives cut away the thongs, and the man crawled
to Chinn, who pocketed his case of lancets and tubes of lymph. Then,
sweeping the semicircle with one comprehensive forefinger, and in the
voice of compliment, he said, clearly and distinctly: "Pigs!

"Ai!" whispered Bukta. "Now he speaks. Woe to foolish people!"

"I have come on foot from my house" (the assembly shuddered) "to make
clear a matter which any other Satpura Bhil would have seen with both
eyes from a distance. Ye know the Smallpox who pits and scars your
children so that they look like wasp-combs. It is an order of the
Government that whoso is scratched on the arm with these little knives
which I hold up is charmed against her. All Sahibs are thus charmed, and
very many Hindoos. This is the mark of the charm. Look!"

He rolled back his sleeve to the armpit and showed the white scars of
the vaccination-mark on his white skin. "Come, all, and look."

A few daring spirits came up, and nodded their heads wisely. There was
certainly a mark, and they knew well what other dread marks were hidden
by the shirt. Merciful was Jan Chinn, that then and there proclaimed his
godhead!

"Now all these things the man whom ye bound told you."

"I did--a hundred times; but they answered with blows," groaned the
operator, chafing his wrists and ankles.

"But, being pigs, ye did not believe; and so came I here to save you,
first from Smallpox, next