price, and her twin sisters gleaming in the morning light like the triple
prongs of some giant Trident set there by Nature in honour of the great
apostle of Humanity.




XIX.

FATEH MUHAMMAD.


We had wandered off the main thoroughfare, where the trams, hurtling past
the Irani's tea shop, drown from time to time the chatter of Khoda Behram's
clientele; and skirting a group of Mahomedans who nightly sit in solemn
conclave, some on the 'otlas,' others on charpoys or chairs placed well in
the fairway of traffic, we reached at length a sombre and narrow 'gali,'
seemingly untenanted save by the shadows. Here a sheeted form lay prone on
the roadside; there a flickering lamp disclosed through the half-open door
a mother crooning to her child, while her master smoked the hubble-bubble
with the clay bowl and ruminated over the events of the day,--the villainy
of the landlord who contemplated the raising of the rent and the still
greater rascality of the landlord's 'bhaya' who insisted upon his own
'dasturi' as well. Here a famished cat crouched over a pile of garbage hard
by the sweeper's 'gali'; there on the opposite side of the road a Marwadi
with the features of Mephistopheles dozed over his account book; and a
little further away a naked child was dipping her toes in a pool of sullage
water that had dripped from the broken pipe athwart the house wall.
Darkness reigned on the upper floors. At intervals a faint glimmer might be
discerned behind the sodden 'chicks' which shrouded the windows; and once