“And while we hold the merchant in amusement,” Hunsa added, “men will dig the pits here, two of them, each within a tent so that they will not be seen at work.”

“Yes, Ajeet,” Sookdee said with a suspicion of a sneer, “we will give the merchant the consideration of a decent burial, and not leave him to be eaten by jackals and hyenas as were the two soldiers you finished with your sword when we robbed the camel transport that carried the British gold in Oudh.”

“If it is to be, cease to chatter like jays,” Ajeet answered crossly.

In keeping with their assumed characters, the evening meal was ushered in with a peace-shattering clamour from the drums and a raucous blare from conch-shell horns.  Then the devout murderers offered up prayers of fervency to the great god, beseeching their more immediate branch of the deity, Bhowanee, to protect them.

And at the same time, just within the mud walls of Sarorra, its people were placing flowers and cocoanuts and sweetmeats upon the shrine of the god of their village.

Just without the village gate the elephant-nosed Ganesh sat looking in whimsical good nature across his huge paunch toward the place of crime, the deep shadow that lay beneath the green-leafed mango trees.

In the hearts of the Bagrees there was unholy joy, an eager anticipation, a gladsome feeling toward Bhowanee who had certainly guided this rapacious merchant with his iron box full of jewels to their camp.

Indeed they would sacrifice a buffalo at her temple of Kajuria, for that was the habit of their clan when the booty was great.  The taking of life was but an incident.  In Hindustan humans came up like flies, returning over and over to again encumber the crowded earth.  In the vicissitudes of life before long the merchant would pass for a reincorporation of his soul, and probably, because of his sins as an oppressor of the poor, come back as a turtle or a jackass; certainly not as a revered cow—­he was too unholy.  In the gradation of humans he was but a merchant of the caste of the third dimension in the great quartette of castes.  It would not be like killing a Brahmin, a sin in the sight of the great god.

This philosophy was as subtle as the perfume of a rose, unspoken, even at the moment a floaty thought.  Like their small hands and their erect air of free-men, the Rajput atmosphere, it had grown into their created being, like the hunting instinct of a Rampore hound.

The merchant, smoking his hookah, having eaten, observed with keen satisfaction the evening devotions of the supposed mendicants.  As it grew dark their guru was offering up a prayer to the Holy Cow, for she was to be worshipped at night.  The merchant’s appreciation was largely a worldly one, a business sense of insurance—­safety for his jewels and nothing to pay for security—­men so devout would have the gods in their mind and not robbery.  When the jamadars, and some of the Bagrees who were good story tellers, and one a singer, did him the honour of coming to sit at his camp-fire he was pleased.