Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/481

parade-ground, where he had sat of evenings with his nurse, and at the ten-by-fourteen church where the officers went to service if a chaplain of any official creed happened to come along. It seemed very small as compared with the gigantic buildings he used to look up at, but it was the same place.

From time to time he passed a knot of silent soldiers, who saluted, and they might have been the very men who had carried him on their backs when he was in his first knickerbockers. A faint light burned in his room, and as he entered, hands clasped his feet, and a voice marmured from the floor.

"Who is it?" said young Chinn, not knowing he spoke in the Bhil tongue.

"I bore you in my arms, Sahib, when I was a strong man and you were a small one—crying, crying, crying! I am your servant, as I was your father's before you. We are all your servants."

Young Chinn could not trust himself to reply, and the voice went on:

"I have taken your keys from that fat foreigner, and sent him away; and the studs are in the shirt for mess. Who should know, if I do not know? And so the baby has become a man, and forgets his nurse, but my nephew shall make a good servant, or I will beat him twice a day."

Then there rose up, with a rattle, as straight as a Bhil arrow, a little white-haired wizened ape of a man, with chain and medals and orders on his tunic, stammering, saluting, and trembling. Behind him, a young and wiry Bhil, in uniform, was taking the trees out of Chinn's mess-boots.

Chinn's eyes were full of tears. The old man held out his keys.

"Foreigners are bad people. He will never come back again. We are all servants of your father's son. Has the Sahib forgotten who took him to see the trapped tiger in the village across the river when his mother was so frightened and he was so brave?"

"Marked on the forehead with blood from the veins of the Bhil."