not its beauty, but its vitality. 'Is that a disease?' he added, almost sharply.

She gave the native cluck of emphatic denial. 'No! Huzoor. The child dies because it does not drink milk properly; yet is it the potter's thumb in the beginning. Lo! many are born so in this place. The doctor-sahib who put the tikka on the arms for smallpox said Hodinuggur was too old for birth--that it was a graveyard. I know not. Only this is true; many are born with this; many die of it.'

'Die of the potter's thumb--what potter?'

Her broad face broadened still more into a smile. 'The Huzoor doth not understand! Lo! when the potter works on the clay, his hand slips sometimes in the moulding. It leaves a furrow, so,'--her brown finger, set with tarnished silver rings, traced a girdle round the baby's naked breast--'then in the firing the pot cracks. Cracks like these,'--here the finger pointed to the sherds among which she sate,--'so when children are born as this one, we say 'tis the potter's thumb. Sometimes there is a mark,'--again the finger softly followed the line it had traced before--'this one had it clear when he came; sometimes none can see it, but 'tis there all the same, all the same. The potter's thumb has slipped; the pot will crack in the firing.'

Her voice took a cadence as if accustomed to the words.

'What is she saying?' interrupted George Keene impatiently. He was a middle-sized lad of twenty or thereabouts, powerfully made, with grey eyes and white teeth gleaming in an aquiline, sunburnt face.

'Something ghastly,' replied Dan. 'It always is so, you'll find, my dear boy, when you dip below the indifferent calm of these people. It's like deciphering a tombstone. But come on. We are due already at the World, the Flesh, and the Devil's.' Then he paused, gave a short laugh, and flung out his hands in an impulsive gesture. 'By the Powers!' he went on, his face seeming to kindle with the fuel of his own fancy, 'it's gruesome entirely. This heap of dust they call Hodinuggur, as they call thousands of such human ant-hills all over India; for wherever when you dig, the bricks grow bigger and bigger till, hocus pocus! they vanish in the dust from which God made man--that is Hodinuggur; the old city, it means. What city? who knows! Then in the corner of this particular one a survival'--his eager hand pointed to the pile of buildings before them--'not of those old days, for no Moghul in India dates beyond Timoor, and these people are Moghuls; but of that Mohammedan civilisation which overwhelmed the older one, just as we in our turn are overwhelming the Moghul--who in the meantime bullies the people by virtue of an Englishman's signature on a piece of parchment----'

'But I suppose we found the Diwân in possession when we annexed----' began George stolidly.

Dan scorned the interruption and the common-sense. 'Oh, 'tis queer, looked at any way. A mound of sherds and dust higher than the gateway of the palace. I'll go bail that reed hut yonder on the top is higher than old Zubr-ul-Zamân's tower. He lives up there winter and summer, does the old Diwân, looking out over his world and the strength of it--that's what his name means, you know. His son, Khush-hâl Beg, lives in the next storey. A Jack Falstaff of a man--that's why I call him the Flesh. Then Dalel, the Devil, roams about seeking whom he may devour.'

'A charming trio; and what part have I to play in the drama?' asked George with a laugh.

'St. George, of course.'

The lad laughed louder. 'So I am in baptism. George for short. Born on the saint's day--father a parson--fire away, old chap--don't let me pull Pegasus.'

'Sure! my dear boy, and aren't you sent to fight them all? Sent into this wilderness of a place to be tempted----'

'Oh, don't talk rot, Fitzgerald! I suppose you mean about the sluice-gate; but it's sheer folly.'

'Is it? My two last subordinates didn't find it so. Perhaps the potter's thumb had slipped over their honesty. So the authorities gave me you--a real white man--and said it was my last chance. Think of that now, my boy, and be careful.'

George Keene frowned perceptibly.

'That's a fine old gateway,' he said, to change the subject. As they approached it a flock of iridescent pigeons rocketed from the dark niches to circle and flash against the sky. It was a great square block of a building cut through by one high arch of shadow, and showing the length of the tunnel in the smallness of the sunlit arch beyond. On the worn brick causeway, as they entered, half in the sunshine, half in shade, lay the scattered petals of a pomegranate blossom which some passer-by had flung aside.

'By Jove, what a colour!' said Fitzgerald: 'like drops of blood.'

George Keene frowned again. 'If I had your diseased imagination I'd engage lodgings in Bedlam. Seriously, I mean it. Fellows like you are get rid of it in words--all froth and fuss; but if that sort of thing ever got a real grip on me--Hullo! what's that?' He flushed through his tan in sheer vexation at his own start. From the deep recesses, which on either side of the causeway lost themselves in shadow, came a clash as of silver bells, and something through the arches showed white yet shadowy; something of exceeding grace, salaaming to the sahib-logue; something sending the scent of jasmine flowers into the hot air.

'That is Chândni,' said Dan, passing on regardless of the salutation, 'she generally sits here.'

George, imitating his companion, felt the thrill still in his veins. 'Chândni!' he echoed, 'that means silvery, doesn't it?'

'Moonshine also. They call her Chândni-rât or Moonlit-night as a rule. If tales be true, there is a good deal of the night about her. She and Dalel--but here he comes, innocently, from a side door. The Devil loves moonshiny nights.'

The figure approaching them was not outwardly of diabolic mould, being altogether too insignificant. The oval face was barely shadowed by a thin beard curling in an oiled tuft on either side of the retreating chin, and the only Mephistophelian feature was the narrow line of moustache waxed upwards towards the eyes. The dress was nondescript to absurdity. A biretta-shaped Moghul cap, heavy with church embroidery, sate jauntily on the long greasy hair; a blue velvet shooting-coat, cut in Western fashion, was worn over baggy, white cotton drawers, and these again were tucked away into sportsmanlike leather gaiters, ending in striped socks and patent leather highlows. Such was Mirza Dalel Beg, the Diwân's grandson. Behind him came lesser bloods of the same type: one with a falcon on his wrist; all with curious eyes for George Keene, the new-comer.

'Hullo, Dalel sahib!' cried Dan in English. 'Keene, let me introduce you in form to his Highness.'

The Mirza thrust out a small, cold, clammy hand; but thereinafter relapsed into such absolute inaction, that George found no little difficulty in finishing the ceremony.

'Ana, I see!' said his Highness jerkily, in a voice many tones too low for his chest measurement. 'Glad to see you, Keene. You shoot, I lend you gun or rifle. You hawk, we go hawk together. You hunt, you use my crocks. Come, see my stable.'

Dan's eyebrows went up expressively. 'Don't tempt him to-day, Mirza sahib,' he interrupted gravely. 'We are already due at the State audience with your grandfather. Aren't you to be there as heir-presumptive?'

Dalel crackled with a high-toned laugh which did not match his voice. 'Bosh! My gov'nor is there in swagger dress. He likes. I am different. Good-bye, Keene. You must come often, and we will go shoot, hunt, polo,