the world as a fit habitation for man, India and Burma were made the
dust-bins. And as water finds its levels, so will dust, earthly and
human, the quick and the dead.

It was after five in the afternoon. The sun was sinking, hazily but
swiftly; ribbons of scarlet, ribbons of rose, ribbons of violet, lay
one upon the other. The sun possessed no definite circle; a great
blinding radiance like metal pouring from the mouth of a blast-furnace.
Along the road walked two men, phantom-like. One saw their heads dimly
and still more dimly their bodies to the knees; of legs, there was
nothing visible. Occasionally they stepped aside to permit some
bullock-cart to pass. One of them swore, not with any evidence of
temper, not viciously, but in a kind of mechanical protest, which, from
long usage, had become a habit. He directed these epithets never at
animate things, never at anything he could by mental or physical
contest overcome. He swore at the dust, at the heat, at the wind, at
the sun.

The other wayfarer, with the inherent patience of his blood, said
nothing and waited, setting down the heavy kit-bag and the
canvas-valise (his own). When the way was free again he would sling
the kit-bag and the valise over his shoulder and step back into the
road. His turban, once white, was brown with dust and sweat. His
khaki uniform was rent under the arm-pits, several buttons were gone;
his stockings were rusty black, mottled with patches of brown skin; and
the ragged canvas-shoes spurted little spirals of dust as he walked.
The British-Indian government had indulgently permitted him to proceed
about his duties as guide and carrier under the cognomen of James
Hooghly, in honor of a father whose surname need not be written here,
and in further honor of the river upon which, quite inconveniently one