Chand Kor, therefore, gave shrill disapproval to Azmutoollah's fiat. In her heart of hearts she nourished the ideal of a blue monkey god perched on the top of that golden spike; and when, two days afterwards, Hunumân Sing, B.A., came down for his vacation, she poured the tale of intolerance into his ear.

Now, Hunumân Sing, after the manner of his kind, did not care--well, what the Iron Duke said cost him twopence--for his godfather, nor, indeed, for most of the beliefs of his mother. How could he? Who could expect it of him? The cry which goes up now and again in India when some clever lad, educated at a mission-school, openly forsakes his religion, is beneath contempt. There is not one orthodox Hindu father, north or south, who, pushing his lad on for the sake of worldly success, does not do it with his eyes open to the inevitable gulf which must separate them in the future. This particular son was like many another son of the sort; a good lad, on the whole, if more interested in his own development than anything else in the world. This, again, was inevitable. When you have to cram the evolution of ages into two-and-twenty years, and grow from a baby named after the monkey god into a B.A., a strict attention to business is necessary. If he was pushing, was not that also inevitable? Jonah's gourd had to push "some," as the Americans say. For the rest, he was like hundreds of the amiable, clever young graduates whom one longs to have in the desert for forty days and nights opposite the Sphinx. One by one, of course; for if there were two of them they would form a sub-committee and vote the Sphinx to the chair. Then the millennium would come, of course, and that would be inconvenient for nous autres.

But, though Hunumân cared not at all for the blue monkey god, he worshipped liberty--especially his own; and he preferred it, if possible, with a flavour of law about it. What! deprive a citizen, a subject of the Queen Empress, from due exercise of religious right? Who was Azmutoollah Khan, to promulgate such a pernicious attempt at intimidation?--vide section so-and-so.

Little Mool Raj, who seemed to shrivel smaller as he grew older, listened to all this with great pride but steadfast inaction. He knew who Azmutoollah Khan was well enough. He knew the temper of the people who had enriched him all too well. Liberty was a fine thing, but money was better--peace and comfort best of all. This latter conviction, however, made him give way slightly before Chand Kor's tears; and the next evening, when the rissaldar--major was interviewing two new arrivals on leave, and bringing the wisdom of a lifetime to bear on 

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