“Look here, you fellows.  I can’t answer you all at once,” he expostulated.  “It’s a long story.  But please remember that Miss Daleham has had a tiring day and must be worn out.”

“Oh, no, I’m not,” exclaimed the girl.  “Not now.  I was fatigued, but I’m too excited to rest yet.”

“Come into the bungalow everyone and we’ll have the whole story there,” said her brother.  “The servants will get supper ready for us.  We must celebrate tonight.”

“Indeed, yes.  Look you, it shall be very wet tonight in Malpura, whateffer,” cried Parry, who was already half drunk.  “Here, boy!  Boy!  Where is that damned black beastie of mine?  Boy!”

His khitmagar disengaged himself from the group of servants and approached apprehensively, keeping out of reach of his master’s fist.

“Go to the house,” said Parry to him in Bengali.  “Bring liquor here.  All the liquor I have.  Hurry, you dog!”

He aimed a blow at him, which the khitmagar dodged with the ease of long practice and ran to execute his master’s bidding.

Daleham gave directions to his butler and cook to prepare supper, and led the way into the house with his arm round his sister, who, woman-like, escaped to change her dress and make herself presentable, as she put it.  She had already forgotten the fatigues of the day in the hearty welcome and the joy of her safe home-coming.

But before Dermot entered the bungalow he had water brought and washed from Badshah’s head and legs the evidences of the terrible vengeance that he had taken upon their assailants.  And from the verandah the planters looked at animal and master and commented in low tones on the strange tales told of both, for the reputation of mysterious power that they enjoyed with natives had reached every white man of the district.

The crowd of coolies drifted away to their village on the tea-garden, and there throughout the hot night hours the groups sat on the ground outside the thatched bamboo huts and talked of the animal and the man.

“It is not well to cross this sahib who is not as other sahibs,” said a coolie, shaking his head solemnly.

“Sahib, say you?  Is he only a sahib?” asked an old man.  “Is he truly of the gora logue (white folk)?”

“Why, what else is he?  Is not his skin white?” said a youth, presumptuously thrusting himself into the conclave of the elders.

“Peace!  Since when was it meet for children to prattle in the presence of their grandsires?” demanded a grey-haired coolie contemptuously.  “Know, boy, that Shri Krishn’s skin was of the same colour when he moved among us on earth.”

Krishna, the Second Person of the Hindu Trinity, the best-loved god of all their mythological heaven, is represented in the cheap coloured oleographs sold in the bazaars in India as being of fair complexion.

“Is he Krishna himself?” asked a female coolie eagerly, the glass bangles on her arm rattling as she raised her hand to draw her sari over her face when she thus addressed men.  “Is he Krishna, think you?  He is handsome enough to be the Holy One.”