listen for a while!"

"War! Hear him, brothers! Talk is talk, but there will be no war
until India grows too fat to breathe--unless the past be remembered
and we make one for ourselves!"

* * * * *

There was silence for a while, if a change of sounds is silence. The
Delhi mud sticks as tight as any, and the kneading of it from out of
horsehair taxes most of a trooper's energy and full attention. Then,
the East being the East in all things, a solitary; trooper picked up
the scent and gave tongue, as a true hound guides the pack.

"Who is _she_?" he wondered, loud enough for fifty men to hear.

From out of a cloud of horse-dust, where a stable helper on
probation combed a tangled tail, came one word of swift enlightenment.

"Yasmini!"

"Ah-h-h-h!" In a second the whole squadron was by the ears, and the
stable-helper was the center of an interest he had not bargained for.

"Nay, sahibs, I but followed him, and how should I know? Nay, then I
did not follow him! It so happened. I took that road, and he stepped
out of a _tikka-gharri_ at her door. Am I blind? Do I not know
her door? Does not everybody know it? Who am I that I should know why
he goes again? But--does a moth fly only once to the lamp-flame? Does
a drunkard drink but once? By the Guru, nay! May my tongue parch in