façade. It was a great concession, for Azmutoollah was not the only Hâdji[6] in Jehâdpore. The place was a perfect hot-bed of fighting Mohammedanism, which only needed opposition to grow into fanaticism.

 Yet, when Mool Raj added a new story to the Hindu temple, nobody said him nay. They were good friends with the wizened, monkey-like usurer.

"Bismillah! Khan Sahib," laughed one of the group of sowars round Azmutoollah's wooden bed. "He saith it is to save his soul from sin. God knows he needs it, for he hath charged me rascally interest on my last debt. If we must needs have a Hindu in the place, seeing God and his Prophet forbid the true believer to soil his hands with usury, then, by the Imâms, let us have a pious one!"

Even when he put a gilt spike on the top they spoke of it in contemptuous kindness. "Whether he buries our gold or sets it on high is all one, so long as he hath enough to lend us when we seek it. And 'tis thank-offering, he says, for his son Hunumân passing as B.A. God knows what that may be, but the boy hath thin legs and a narrow chest."

Azmutoollah Khan, C.I.E., looked distastefully at the extreme tip of a gilt spike which from the farthermost corner of the court-yard showed just over the façade.

"So far well," said the old martinet. "A Hindu may have repentance, and he is like to ourselves in affection for his family--though, Allah be praised, none of mine carry themselves like a 'lumpa ta heen.'[7] But that is an end of repentance and affection. I will have no idolatrous spike under my eyes, and so I will tell Mool Raj. Let Hunumân build himself a temple in Lahore out of his scholarships and pleader's fees. We want none of his kind in Jehâdpore."

The usurer came back from his interview with his patron quite resigned. To tell the truth, he himself was not much set on these pious additions which cost a heap of hard-won money. Their initiator was Hunumân's mother, who, ever since her pilgrimage to Shah Sultan had been rewarded by the long-prayed-for son, had looked on him as doubly dependent on the favour of the gods--his very name, Hunumân, having been bestowed on him because she had seen a monkey when she first regained consciousness after the curious hysterical crisis which seizes on most women at that most famous shrine. The inference being, of course, that the monkey god was responsible for the baby--a presumption not in the least weakened by the fact that Shah Sultan was a Mohammedan saint to whom monkeys and gods were an abomination.

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