ere he retires, for of course it would be beneath his dignity to come
to his servant?"

"No, indeed," declared Hunsa quickly, thinking of the graves that were
even then being dug; "he is a man of a haughty temper, and when he is
in the society of the beautiful dancing girl who is with him, he cares
not to be disturbed. Even now he is about to escort her in the cart
down the road to where there is a shrine that women of that caste make
offering to."

It had been arranged that Ajeet would escort Bootea, with two Bagrees
as attendants, to the grove of trees half a mile down the road. He had
insisted on this in the way of a negative support to the murder. As
there would be no fighting this did not reflect on his courage as a
leader. And as to complicity, Hunsa knew that as the leader of the
party, Ajeet would be held the chief culprit. It was always the leader
of a gang of decoits who was beheaded when captured, the others perhaps
escaping with years of jail. And Hunsa himself, even Sookdee, would be
safe, for they were in league with the Dewan.

There was an hour of social talk; many times Hunsa fingered the
_roomal_ that was about his waist; the yellow-and-white strangling
cloth with which Bhowanee had commanded her disciples, the thugs, to
kill their victims. In one corner of it was tied a silver rupee for
luck. The natural ferocity of his mind threw him into an eager
anticipation: he took pride in his proficiency as a strangler; his
coarse heavy hands, like those of a Punjabi wrestler, were suited to
the task. Grasping the cloth at the base of a victim's skull, tight to
the throat, a side-twist inward and the trick was done, the spine
snapped like a pipe-stem. And he had been somewhat out of practice--he