To Barlow it was like a grotesque pantomime with no directing head.
Nautch girls tripped along laughing and chatting, bracelets jingling,
and tiny bells at their ankles tinkling musically. It depressed him;
it was such a terrible juxtaposition of frivolity and the gloomed
shadow of idol worship that lay just the bridge's span of the sullen
Narbudda: the gloomy, broken scraps of the long since deserted forts
that cut with jagged lines the moonlit sky; and beyond them again the
many temples with their scowling Brahmin priests, and the shrine
wherein the god of destruction, Omkar, sat athirst for sacrifice. He
shivered as though the white mist that veiled the river crept into his
marrow.

The Gulab seemed at home amongst these gathered ones. Two or three
times she had bade the driver stop his creeping pace, and looking out
from beneath the curtain had questioned a man or woman. At last, as
they were stopped by a wall of people watching the antics of some
strolling players upon a platform, Bootea spoke to a stout woman who
was pressed against the opening into the cart by the mob.

"_Lucker khan Bhaina, Bowree_," the Gulab said in a low voice, and the
woman's eyes took on a startled look for it was a decoit password, and
the Bowrees were a clan of decoits akin to the Bagrees. From the woman
Bootea learned where she could find a good resting place with the
family of a shop-keeper. There was no doubt about it, the Bowree woman
assured her, for the _tonga_ would impress him, and he was one who
profited from the loot of decoits.

The Gulab was given a place to sleep in the shopkeeper's house that
extended back from his little shop. The driver was ordered to return