ttering wick of the only oil-lamp was nearly burnt through,
and Fateh Muhammad was fain to sleep. Wherefore we thanked him for
permitting us this glance behind the curtain of his daily life, then
crawled through the trap, slid down the reeking staircase and gained the
street. One last glance, as my eyes reached the floor-level of the trap,
showed me that the room was untenanted, save by the prostrate form of the
visionary, above whom the eyes of the peacock still glinted with something
of mockery in their blue depths.

As we passed homewards down the street we heard the woman in the upper
chamber still singing her prayer, but with a note of hope in its cadence:--

"O dilruba tu gam na kho, khuda hamen baham kare"
"Janejahan bhulo nahi, karim sada karam kare."
"Grieve not, heart of my heart, for God will
order our meeting! Soul of the world,
forget not; and may the peace of God be
on us twain."

Perchance she also, like Fateh Muhammad's guests, had caught a message of
good hap from out the darkness.

And so back to the light and the noise of the City's greatest artery.

XX.

THE TILAK RIOTS.

A REMINISCENCE.

(_Written August_. 1908)

Affairs in the City may now be regarded as having resumed their normal
course, and the chance of further disorder seems for the present to have
been obviated. One of the most curious features of the disturbances was the
difference of feeling exhibited by the two classes of mill-operatives,
namely the Ghatis and the Malwanis. Of the whole mill-population one would
have assumed that the Kunbis from the Deccan, where Tilak is stated to have
so great a following, would have shown a greater disposition to riot in
consequence of his arrest and conviction than the men from Ratnagiri. And
yet so far as I could judge the Ghatis were far less interested in the
trial and were much less disposed to express their resentment than the
latter class, which comprises one or two extremely hot-headed and
uncompromising individuals. The Ghatis of Sewri indeed at the very height
of the riots, informed an Englishman with whom they are familiar, that they
would sooner die for him than do him any harm, and their words carried home
the conviction that they felt no personal sorrow at Tilak's well-deserved
fate and that they would be ready in an emergency, as they have often been
in past history, to stand staunchly by the side of any individual whom they
know and who has bee