But at last, because there is an end even to the motion of a camel, in this world of example instances, about two hours after nightfall the caravan halted in the shadow of great trees beside a stone house with a wall about it.  Her camel knelt with a motion like a landslide, and Tess fell off forward on the ground and fainted, only snatched away by strong hands in the nick of time to save her from the camel’s teeth.  Uncertain, unforgiving brutes are camels—­ungrateful for the toil men put them to.  For an hour after that she was only dimly conscious of being laid on something soft, and of supple, tireless women’s hands that kneaded her, and kneaded her, taking the weary muscles one by one and coaxing them back to painlessness.

So she did not see the dog arrive—­Trotters, the Rampore-Great Dane, cousin to half the mongrel stock of Hindustan, slobbering on a package that his set jaws hardly could release; Yasmini, scornful of the laws of caste and ever responsive to a true friend, pried it loose with strong fingers.  It was she, too, who saw to the dog’s needs—­fed him and gave him drink—­removed a thorn from his forefoot and made much of him.  She even gave Bimbu food, with her own hands, and saw that his driver and camel had a place to rest in, before she undid the string that bound the leather jacket of the package.

Bimbu on the camel had led the dog by the short route and, having nothing to be robbed of, had had small trouble with policemen on the way.

The first thing Tess was really conscious of when she regained her senses was a great dog that slumbered restlessly beside her own finger-marked, disheveled, dusty, fifty-dollar hat on the floor near by, awaking at intervals to sniff her hand and reassure himself—­then returning to the hat to sleep, and gallop in his sleep; a rangy, gray, enormous beast with cavernous jaws that she presently recognized as Trotters.

Then came the maids again, afraid for their very lives of the dog, but still more mindful of Yasmini’s orders.  They resumed their kneading of stiff muscles, rubbing in oil that smelt of jasmine, singing incantations while they worked.  They lifted the bed away from the wall, and one of the women danced around and around it rhythmically, surrounding Tess with what the West translates as “influence”—­the spell that all the East knows keeps away evil interference.

Last of all by candlelight, Yasmini came, scented and fresh and smiling as the flower from which she has her name, dressed now in the soft-hued silken garments of a lady of the land.

“Where did you get them?” Tess asked her.

“These clothes?  Oh, I have friends here.  Have no fear now—­there are friends on every side of us.”

She showed Tess a letter, pierced in four places by a dog’s eye-teeth.

“This is from Samson sahib.  Do you remember how I prayed that Jinendra’s priest might think to play me false?  I think he has.  Some one has been to Samson sahib.  Hear this: