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 dogcart.

If I had encouraged him the _khansamah_ would have wandered all
through Bengal with his corpse.

I did not go away as soon as I intended. I stayed for the night,
while the wind and the rat and the sash and the window-bolt
played a ding-dong "hundred and fifty up." Then the wind ran out
and the billiards stopped, and I felt that I had ruined my one