be merciful and ask no more, and when the child has gone away, I will serve thee all the years--yea! every day of all the years."

There was no pa.s.sion, no excitement in his face or voice; only that pathetic appeal which pa.s.sed into a murmured lullaby as the restless little sleeper turned on his pillow with a sigh of greater content.

"Better again this morning," was the doctor's verdict, with the rider that Bisram himself stood in need of a little rest. The man smiled faintly when his mistress replied that it would be her turn that night; though, to say sooth, Harry certainly did seem to improve when she slept.

"Perhaps Bisram works charms," remarked the doctor, thoughtlessly; whereat she frowned.

Charms or no charms, the boy was certainly worse next morning, and that despite the fact that Bisram, who had steadily refused to go further than the verandah, had spent the night huddled up outside the threshold, within which his mistress refused to allow him to come. He needed rest, she said, and though she could not compel him to take it, he should at least not work.

"You had better let him have his own way to-night," said the doctor at his evening visit. "The child gets on better, and you are fresher for the day's nursing. Those thin, delicate-looking natives are very wiry, and if the man won't rest, he won't, and that's an end of it."

He spoke cheerfully; but as he was getting into his dogcart he saw Bisram at his elbow. "The doctor-_sahib_ thinks the little master very ill to-night?" he asked quietly.

"So ill that you must do your very best for him to-night. If any one can pull him through, you can, remember that."

"_Huzoor!_" said Bisram, submissively.

It was a very dark night; so dark that the rushlight in Sonny's room seemed almost brilliant from the verandah. Looking thence you could see the child's cot, one of its side rails removed, and in its place, as it were, the protection of Bisram's crouching figure. He did not touch the cot; he crouched beside it with clasped hands hanging over his knees, and dark eyes staring hard into the darkness as if waiting and listening.

So he sate, his clasped hands loosening, his eyes growing softer as the hours pa.s.sed, bringing nothing but half-conscious sleep, half-conscious wakening to the child. Until suddenly, irrelevantly, just on the border-land of night and day, the fretful wail rose upon the silence loudly, insistently--

"Where is the Noose, Bisra? I want it. O Bisram, bearer, bring the Noose, and strangle something."

The slackness, the dreaminess left the man's hands and eyes. He stood up blindly, desperately to face these last words; the words for which he had been listening. Yet there was still the same pathetic self-control as he stretched his hands out over the sleeping child.

"Lo! Kali ma," he muttered, "have I not served thee as ever, despite the child. Have I set him before thee? Nay! thou knowest I have risked life itself to have thy tale of offering complete when I was hindered.

Thou didst not suffer. Wilt not wait for once? Wilt not wait one little while?"

His voice, sinking in its entreaty, ended in silence. But only for a second. Then the fretful wail began again.

"The Noose, Bisra! Be not unkind. Remember I am ill. O Bisra! I want you to strangle something for me--"

Bisra gave a faint sob; then joined his outstretched hands.

"_Huzoor!_ so be it! the Noose shall find a victim. Yea, Shelter of the World, Bisra will strangle something. Sleep in peace!"

There was no sound in the room after that save the little contented sigh in which restlessness finds rest.

Outside, the shiver of the cicalas seemed to count the seconds, but inside the hours seemed to pa.s.s unnoticed as Bisra sate beside the cot, his hands listless, his eyes dreamy. There was nothing to wait for now, nothing to fear. That which had to come had come.

So with the first glint of light, a stealthy step glided in, and an anxious voice whispered--

"How is it with the child, Bisra?"

"It is well!" he whispered back, rising rather stiffly. "He hath slept since the darkest hour. He will sleep on."

The mother, peering carefully for a glimpse of the child's face, smiled at what she saw.

"He sleeps, indeed. Thou hast done well, Bisra!"

He made no answer. But ere he left the room, his night-watch being over, he paused to touch the foot-rail of the cot with both hands and so _salaam_, as those do who leave the presence.

Sonny was still sleeping when his father, entering his study with a lighter heart, found a stranger, as he thought, awaiting him there. It was a man, naked save for a waistcloth, lean, sinewy, lithe; the head was clean-shaven, save for the Brahminical tuft, and the face was disfigured by the weird caste marks of extreme fanaticism.

"Who--?" he began, shrinking involuntarily from one who might well be dangerous.

"It is Bisra, _Huzoor_" said a familiar voice, gently. "Bisra, the child-bearer. Bisra, the servant of Kali also. Lo! here is Her Noose."

As he spoke he held out the crimson-scarlet handkerchief twisted to a rope, and coiled in his curved palms like a snake. "The master, being learned, will know the Noose and its meaning. It hath brought Her many a blood-offering, _Huzoor_. Many and many every year without fail. And it will not fail this year either. It will bring Her the blood of Her servant, the blood of Bisram the Strangler."

"Bisram the Strangler!" echoed the magistrate, stupidly, as the even, monotonous voice ceased. Then he sate down helplessly in his chair. In truth he knew too much of the mystery of India to be quite incredulous.

Yet two hours after, when with the help of the police-officer he had been cross-questioning Bisra upon his confession, he told himself as helplessly that it was incredible--the man must be mad. He had been born to strangle, he said, and had strangled to keep Kali ma content.

That was necessary when you were born Her servant, especially when you had children. Perhaps he had let the little Shelter of the World creep too close to his heart, though he had striven to be just. At any rate Kali ma had become jealous. He had not known this, at first, or he would never have given the mistress that promise about the Noose, for if it had been in Harry-_sahib's_ hands Devi would never have sought his life. She always protected those with the Noose--they never came to harm--unless-- He had paused there, and then asked quickly if he had not said enough? Did they want him to tell any more! He could not give them the names of the victims, of course, not knowing them; but they were many--very many.

"There is nothing against him but his own story," said the magistrate, fighting against his growing conviction that the man spoke truth. "I can't commit him to the sessions on that."

"There is something more, I think," replied the police-officer, reluctantly. "Don't you remember that man who was found dead in a railway carriage about this time last year? He had an up-country ticket on him, and as this was out of the beat of Stranglers, no inquiry was made here. It was just about this time, and--and Bisram says he was in a hurry because the year was nearly up. He had been nursing the boy."

The boy's father, leaning with his head on his hand, groaned.

But Bisra was quite cheerful. He looked a little anxious, however, when two days after he was brought up formally to be committed for trial. There was still nothing definite against him save his own confession and the coincidence of the strangled man in the railway carriage. But opinion was dead against him amongst his countrymen. Of course he was one of Kali's Stranglers. Did he not look one? Was he not born one? So how could he help being one? The argument brought no consolation to Sonny's father. But Bisram again was cheerful. He stood patiently between two yellow-legged policemen and told his tale at length, as if anxious to incriminate himself as much as possible, anxious that there should be no mistake. And when all the mysterious intricacies of charges and papers were over, and the two policemen nudged him to make place for other criminals, with a friendly "Come along, brother," he paused a moment with handcuffed, pet.i.tioning hands to ask how soon he was to be hanged.

The magistrate, leaning his head on his hand, made no answer. He knew what the question meant, and could not. The thought of his little son came between him and the truth; namely, that Bisra's sacrifice must wait the law's pleasure.

The doctor, too, in charge of the gaol where Bisra awaited trial, had not the heart to tell the truth. Every day when on his rounds he looked into the cell, like a wild beast's cage, where Bisra, being a Strangler, and therefore dangerous to life, was confined alone, he answered the question which the tall, naked figure stood up at his entrance to ask in the same words. Harry-_sahib_ was better, and as for the hanging, that would come soon enough, never fear. Yet every day the pathetic, self-controlled eagerness on the man's face struck him with a sense of physical pain, and left him helpless before his own pity.

Until a day came--after not many days--when with a face sad from the sight of bitter grief that he _could_ understand, the sense of his absolute helplessness before the mystery of this man's nature made the doctor feel inclined to throw pity to the winds and fall back on sheer common sense. After all the man was a murderer; and if he had been fond of the child--what then? Such criminals were often men of strong affections.

Yet once again, the sight of the submissive, _salaaming_ figure, the sound of the wistful yet calm voice made him answer as usual. The child was better. The hanging would doubtless come ere long.

For once, however, Bisram did not accept the reply as final.

"The _Huzoor_ means that it will not come today?" he asked quietly.

The doctor raised his eyebrows. "To-day? What made you think of to-day? Certainly not. There's no chance of it."

But he was wrong. Two hours afterwards the gaol overseer sent for him in a hurry, because Bisram had completed his sacrifice by strangling himself in his cell with his waistcloth. What else could he do, seeing that it was the last day of the year during which the propitiation of a sacrifice kept Kali ma from revenge?

"Poor devil!" said the doctor, as he stood up after his useless examination. "I'm glad now I didn't tell him the child was dead."

THE HALL OF AUDIENCE

"This, gentlemen and respected sirs," said the blatant specimen of new India whom my friend Robbins had insisted on having as a guide to a ruined Rajput town, "is Hall of Common Audience, in more colloquial phrase, Court of Justice, built two, ought, six before Christ B.C. by Great Asoka, mighty monarch of then united Hindustan, full of Manu wisdoms, and sacred Veda occultations--"

Then I gave in. "For G.o.d's sake, Robbins," I said, "take away that fool or I shall kill him. A man who be-plasters even the Deity with university degrees is intolerable here."