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.