rate. And well it might, when a restless little rat was running to and fro
inside the dingy ceiling-cloth, and a piece of loose window-sash was
making fifty breaks off the window-bolt as it shook in the breeze!

Impossible to mistake the sound of billiard balls! Impossible to mistake
the whir of a ball over the slate! But I was to be excused. Even when I
shut my enlightened eyes the sound was marvelously like that of a fast
game.

Entered angrily the faithful partner of my sorrows, Kadir Baksh.

"This bungalow is very bad and low-caste! No wonder the Presence was
disturbed and is speckled. Three sets of doolie-bearers came to the
bungalow late last night when I was sleeping outside, and said that it was
their custom to rest in the rooms set apart for the English people! What
honor has the _khansamah_? They tried to enter, but I told them to go. No
wonder, if these _Oorias_ have been here, that the Presence is sorely
spotted. It is shame, and the work of a dirty man!"

Kadir Baksh did not say that he had taken from each gang two annas for
rent in advance, and then, beyond my earshot, had beaten them with the big
green umbrella whose use I could never before divine. But Kadir Baksh has
no notions of morality.

There was an interview with the _khansamah_, but as he promptly lost his
head, wrath gave place to pity, and pity led to a long conversation, in
the course of which he put the fat Engineer-Sahib's tragic death in three
separate stations--two of them fifty miles away. The third shift was to
Calcutta, and there the Sahib died while driving a dog-cart.