"Nearly a year and a half. I think he must have gone mad. But hear
me swear Protector of the Poor! Won't Your Honor hear me swear
that I never touched an article that belonged to him? What is Your
Worship going to do?"

I had taken Gunga Dass by the waist and had hauled him on to the
platform opposite the deserted burrow. As I did so I thought of my
wretched fellow-prisoner's unspeakable misery among all these
horrors for eighteen months, and the final agony of dying like a rat
in a hole, with a bullet-wound in the stomach. Gunga Dass
fancied I was going to kill him and howled pitifully. The rest of
the population, in the plethora that follows a full flesh meal,
watched us without stirring.

"Go inside, Gunga Dass," said I, "and fetch it out."

I was feeling sick and faint with horror now. Gunga Dass nearly
rolled off the platform and howled aloud.

"But I am Brahmin, Sahib--a high-caste Brahmin. By your soul, by
your father's soul, do not make me do this thing!"

"Brahmin or no Brahmin, by my soul and my father's soul, in you
go!" I said, and, seizing him by the shoulders, I crammed his head
into the mouth of the burrow, kicked the rest of him in, and, sitting
down, covered my face with my hands.

At the end of a few minutes I heard a rustle and a creak; then
Gunga Dass in a sobbing, choking whisper speaking to himself;
then a soft thud--and I uncovered my eyes.