“That shameless one was begging a morsel of food,” the toymaker explained conversationally.  “Doubtless her stomach is empty. Wah!  Wah! But she has no pice.  And a man’s food is his own....”

As he spoke a milk-white bull ambled by, plundering at will; his privileged nose adventuring near and nearer to the savoury smell.  Promptly, with reverential eagerness, the man proffered half a fresh chupatti to the sacred intruder.

At that the starving girl-mother lunged forward with the yell of a hunted beast; lunged right across the path of a dapper young man in an English suit, green turban, and patent-leather shoes.

“Peace, she-devil!  Make way,” he cried; and catching her wrist—­that looked as if it would snap at a touch—­he flung her aside so roughly that she staggered and fell, the child beneath her emitting a feeble wail....

Since the days of his imprisonment, cruelty witnessed had a startling effect on Roy.  Between the moment when he sprang from the saddle, in a blaze of fury, to the moment when he stood confronting the suave, Anglicised Indian—­riding-crop in one hand, the other supporting the girl and her babe—­his mind was a blank.  The thing was done almost before the impulse reached his brain.  He wondered if he had struck the fellow, whom he was now arraigning furiously in fluent Hindustani, and whose sullen, shifty face was reminding him of some one—­somewhere....

“Have you no respect for suffering—­or for women other than your own?” he demanded, scorn undisguised in his look and tone.

The man’s answering shrug was frankly contemptuous.  “All you English are mad,” he said in the vernacular.  “If she die not to-day, she will die to-morrow.  And already there are too many to feed—­”

“She will not die to-day or to-morrow,” Roy retorted with Olympian assurance.  “Courage, little mother,”—­he addressed the girl—­“you shall have food, you and the sonling.”

As she raised herself, clutching at his arm, he became uncomfortably aware that her rags of clothing were probably verminous; that his chivalrous pity was tinged with repulsion.  But pity prevailed.  Supporting her to a neighbouring stall, he bought fruit, which she devoured like a wild thing.  He begged a little milk in a lotah and gave her money for more.  Half dazed, she dropped the money, emptied the small jar almost at a gulp, and flung herself at his feet, pressing her forehead on his dusty boot; covering him with confusion.  Imperatively he bade her get up.  No result.  So he stooped to enforce his command....

She had fainted.

“Help, mother—­quick!” he appealed to an elder woman who hovered near the stall, and responded, instinctively, to the note of command.

As she stooped over the girl he said in low rapid tones:  “Listen!  It is an order.  Give warm food to her and the child.  Take her to the Burra Sahib’s compound.  There she will be cared for.  I will give word.”