each of these, when lifted, disclosed a swarm of scorpions that had to
be exterminated before a man dared move his possessions in. The once
white calico ceilings moved suggestively where rats and snakes chased
one another, or else hunted some third species of vermin; and there
was a smell and a many-voiced weird whispering that hinted at
corruption and war to the death behind skirting boards and underneath
the floor.

It had evidently not been occupied for many years; the kansamah looked
like a gray-bearded skeleton compressed within a tightened shroud of
parchment skin that shone where a coffin or a tomb had touched it. He
seemed to have forgotten what the bungalow was for, or that a sahib
needed things to eat, until the ex-risaldar enlightened him, and then
he complained wheezily.

The stables--rather the patch-and-hole-covered desolation that once
had been stables--were altogether too snake-defiled and smelly to be
worth repairing; the string of horses was quartered cleanly and snugly
under tents, and Mahommed Gunga went to enormous trouble in arranging a
ring of watch-fires at even distances.

"Are there thieves here, then?" asked Cunningham, and the Rajput nodded
but said nothing. He seemed satisfied, though, that the man he had
brought safely thus far at so much trouble would be well enough housed
in the creaky wreck of the bungalow, and he took no precautions of any
kind as to guarding its approaches.

Cunningham watched the preparations for his supper with ill-concealed
disgust--saw the customary chase of a rubber-muscled chicken, heard
its death gurgles, saw the guts removed, to make sure that the kansamah