CHAPTER III.

THE SNAKE APPEARS.


The European child who grows up in India, if only to the age of six or
seven years, grows under a severe moral, physical, and mental
handicap.

However wise, devoted, and conscientious its parents may be, the evil
is great, and remains one of the many heavy costs (or punishments) of
Empire.

When the child has no mother and an indifferent father, life's
handicap is even more severe.

By his sixth birthday (the regiment being still in Bimariabad owing to
the prevalence of drought, famine, and cholera elsewhere) Damocles de
Warrenne, knowing the Urdu language and _argot_ perfectly, knew, in
theory also, more of evil, in some directions, than did his own
father.

If the child who grows up absolutely straight-forward, honest,
above-board and pure in thought, word, and deed, in England, deserves
commendation, what does the child deserve who does so in India?

Understanding every word they spoke to one another, the training he
got from native servants was one of undiluted evil and a series of
object-lessons in deceit, petty villainy, chicanery, oppression,