Then dropping the thing of torture he extended his slim small hand to Sookdee for inspection.

Hunsa’s villainy had worked out.  A white rime, like a hoar frost, fretting the deep red of the scorched skin, that was as delicate as that on a woman’s palm.

Sookdee muttered a pitying cry, and Hunsa declared boastfully:  “When men have evil in their hearts it is known to Bhowanee; behold her sign!”

But Ajeet laughed, saying:  “Let Hunsa have the iron; he, too, will know of its heat.”

“Put it again in the fire,” declared Sookdee, “for it is an ordeal in which only the guilty is punished; but the ball must be of the same heat.”

And once more the shot was returned to the charcoal.

Gulab Begum pushed her way rapidly to where the jamadars stood; but Sookdee objected, saying:  “When men appeal to Bhowanee it is not proper that women should be of the ceremony; it will indeed anger our mother goddess.”

“Thou art a fool, Sookdee,” Bootea declared.  “The hand of your chief is in pain though he shows it not in his face.  Shall a brave man suffer because you are without feeling!”

She turned to the Chief.  “Here I have cocoanut oil and a bandage of soft muslin.  Hold to me your hand, Ajeet.”

“It is not needed, Gulab, star-flower,” the Chief declared proudly.

The Gulab had poured from a ram’s horn cool soothing cocoanut oil upon the burns, and then she wrapped about the hand a bandage of shimmering muslin, bound in a wide strip of silk-like plantain leaf, saying:  “This will keep the oil cool to your wound, Chief; it will not let it dry out to increase the heat.”

There was another band of muslin passed around the leaf, and as the Gulab turned away, she said:  “Think you, Sookdee, that Bhowanee will be offended because of mercy.  Some day, Jamadar, fire will be put upon your face, when the head has been lopped from your body, to hide the features of a decoit that it may not bear witness against the tribe.”

“You have delayed the ordeal,” Sookdee answered surlily, “and because of that Bhowanee will have anger.”

The blacksmith, though pumping with both hands at his pair of bellows, had felt the impress of the two silver coins in his loin cloth, and, true to the bribe from Hunsa, had adroitly doctored his fire by dusting sand here and there so that the shot had lost, instead of gained heat.  Now he cried out:  “This kabob of the cannon is cooked, and my arms are tired whilst you have talked.”

Rising he seized his tongs asking, “Who now will have it placed upon his palm?”

“Put it here,” Sookdee said, as he laid a pipal leaf of twice the thickness he had given Ajeet upon the palm of Hunsa.

Then Hunsa, having repeated the appeal to Bhowanee, strode toward the goal, and reaching it, cast the iron shot to the ground, holding up his hand in triumph.  His was the hand of a gorilla, thick skinned, rough and hard like that of a workman, and now it showed no sign of a burning.