Din—­glamour—­stink—­incessant movement—­interblended poverty and riches rubbing shoulders—­noisy self-interest side by side with introspective revery, where stray priests nodded in among the traders, —­many-peopled India surged in miniature between the four hot walls and through the passage to the overflowing street; changeable and unexplainable, in ever-moving flux, but more conservative in spite of it than the very rocks she rests on—­India who is sister to Aholibah and mother of all fascination.

In that room with the long window, low-growled, the one thin thread of clear-sighted unselfishness was reeling out to very slight approval.  Mahommed Gunga paced the floor and kicked his toes against the walls, as he turned at either end, until his spurs jingled, and looked with blazing dark-brown eyes from one man to the other.

“What good ever came of listening to priests?” he asked.  “All priests are alike—­ours, and theirs, and padre-sahibs!  They all preach peace and goad the lust that breeds war and massacre!  Does a priest serve any but himself?  Since when?  There will come this rising that the priests speak of—­yes!  Of a truth, there will, for the priests will see to it!  There is a padre-sahib here in Howrah now for the Hindoo priests to whet their hate on.  You saw the woman ride past here a half-hour gone?  There is a pile of tinder ready here, and any fool of a priest can make a spark!  There will be a rising, and a big one!”

“There will!  Of a truth, there will!” Alwa, his cousin, crossed one leg above the other with a clink of spurs and scabbard.  He had no objection to betraying interest, but declined for the present to betray his hand.

“There will be a blood-letting that will do no harm to us Rajputs!” said another man, whose eyes gleamed from the darkest corner; he, too, clanked his scabbard as though the sound were an obbligato to his thoughts.  “Sit still and say nothing is my advice; we will be all ready to help ourselves when the hour comes!”

“It is this way,” said Mahommed Gunga, standing straddle-legged to face all five of them, with his back to the window.  He stroked his black beard upward with one hand and fingered with the other at his sabre-hilt.  “Without aid when the hour does come, the English will be smashed—­worn down—­starved out—­surrounded—­stamped out—­ annihilated—­so!” He stamped with his heel descriptively on the hard earth floor.  “And then, what?”

“Then, the plunder!” said Alwa, showing a double row of wonderful white teeth.  The other four grinned like his reflections.  “Ay, there will be plunder—­for the priests!  And we Rajputs will have new masters over us!  Now, as things are, we have honorable men.  They are fools, for any man is a fool who will not see and understand the signs.  But they are honest.  They ride straight!  They look us straight between the eyes, and speak truth, and fear nobody!  Will the Hindoo priests, who will rule India afterward, be thus?  Nay!  Here is one sword for the British when the hour comes!”