“What say you, Ajeet Singh?” Sookdee asked.

“As to the ordeal,” the Chief answered, “according to our faith Bhowanee has spoken.  But know you this, though the scar is in my palm, in my heart is no treachery.  As to Hunsa, the ordeal has cleared him in your minds, and perhaps it is true.  We will go forth to the decoity and what is to be will be.  We are but servants of Bhowanee, and if we make vow to sacrifice a buffalo at her temple perhaps she will keep us in her protection.”

Ajeet knew that he had been tricked somehow, but to dispute the ordeal, the judgment of the black goddess, would be like an apostacy—­it would turn every Bagree against him—­it would be a shatterment of their tenets.  So he said nothing but accepted mutely the decree.

But Bootea’s sharp eyes had been busy.  She had watched the blacksmith, to whom Ajeet had paid little attention.  In the faces of Hunsa and Sookdee she had caught flitting expressions of treachery.  She knew that Ajeet had been guiltless of treason to the others, for she had been close to him.  Besides she had, when roused, an imperious temper.  The Bagree women were allowed greater freedom than other women of Hindustan, even greater freedom than the Mahratta females who, though they appeared in public unveiled, in the homes were treated as children, almost as slaves.  The Bagree women at times even led gangs of decoits.  Her anger had been roused by Sookdee earlier, and now rising from where she sat, she strode imperiously forward till she faced the jamadars: 

“Your Chief is too proud to deny this trick that you, Sookdee and Hunsa, and that accursed labourer of another caste, the blacksmith, that shoer of Mahratta horses whom Hunsa has bribed, have put upon him in the name of Bhowanee.”

Sookdee stared in affrighted silence, and Hunsa’s bellow of rage was stilled by Ajeet, who whirling upon him, the jade-handled knife in his grip, commanded:  “Still your clamour!  The Gulab has but seen the truth.  I, also, know that, but a soldier may not speak as may one of his women-kind.”

There was a sudden hush.  A tremor of apprehension had vibrated from Bagree to Bagree; the jamadars felt it.  A spark, one lunge with a knife, and they would be at each other’s throats; the men of Alwar against the men of Karowlee; even caste against caste, for the Bagrees from Alwar were of the Solunkee caste, while the Karowlee men were of Kolee caste.

And there the slim girl form of Bootea stood outlined, a delicate bit of statuary, like something of marble that had come from the hand of Praxiteles, the white muslin sari in its gentle clinging folds showing against the now darkening wall of bamboo jungle.  There was something about the Gulab, magnetic, omnipotent, that subdued men, that enslaved them; an indescribable subtlety of gentle strength, like the bronze-blue temper in steel.  And her eyes—­no one can describe the compelling eyes of the world, the awful eyes that in their fierce magnetism act on a man like bhang on a Ghazi or, like the eyes of Christ, smother him in love and goodness.  The karait of India has a dull red eye without pupil, of which it is the belief that if a man gaze into it for a time he will go mad.  To say that Bootea’s eyes were beautiful was to say nothing, and to describe their compelling force was impossible.