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It was that which galled him. One could only pass on; mentally brushing them aside like Bishun Singh. Spectres vanished, however, once he and Suráj were absorbed into the human kaleidoscope of the vast main street, paved with wide strips of hewn stone; one half of it sun-flooded; one half in shadow.
Whether or no it really was his first look, he might possibly find out when he got there. His train-basket provided him with a hurried cup of tea, biscuits and a providential hard-boiled egg. He had no qualms about rousing Bishun Singh to saddle Suráj, or disturbing the soldiery quartered at the gates.
And from that human dust-heap came a quavering wail, "Maharáj! Maharáj!" "What is it, Bishun Singh?" he asked sharply of the sais, trotting at his stirrup. "Only the famine, Hazúr. Not a big trouble this year, they say. But from the villages these come crawling to the city, believing the Maharáj has plenty, and will give." "Does he give?"
Across the road Bishun Singh tolerant of his Sahib's vagaries was still chatting with the potter; a blare of discord in a minor key announced an approaching procession; and there, in talk with the bangle-seller, stood the cause of these strange doings; keeping a curious eye on the mad Englishman, but otherwise frankly unconcerned.
At sight of them Roy instinctively drew rein; and there, in the midst of the shifting, drifting crowd, he sat motionless, letting the vision sink deep into his mind, while Terry investigated a promising smell, and Bishun Singh, wholly incurious, gossiped with a potter, from whose wheel emerged an endless succession of chirághs primitive clay lamps, with a lip for the cotton wick.
Half an hour later, he was in the saddle trotting along the empty road; Terry, a scurrying shadow in his wake; Bishun Singh left to finish his night's rest.
Bishun Singh's gesture seemed to deprecate undue curiosity. "The Maharáj is great, but the people are like flies. If their Karma is good, they find a few handfuls; if evil they die." Roy said no more. That simple statement was conclusive as a dropped stone. But, on reaching the gateway, he scattered a handful of loose corns. Instantly a cry went up: "He gives money for food! Jai déa Maharáj!"
His neighbour, with equal zest, was creating very ill-shapen clay animals, birds and fishes. "Look, Hazúr for the Dewáli," Bishun Singh thrust upon Roy's attention the one matter of real moment, just then, to all right-minded Hindus. "Only two more weeks. So they are making lamps, without number, for houses and shops and the palace of the Maharája. Very big tamasha, Hazúr."
Not merely arms, but entire skeletons emerged, seething, scrambling, with hands wasted to mere claws. A few of the boldest caught at Roy's stirrup; whereat Bishun Singh brushed them off, as if they were flies indeed. Unresisting, they tottered and fell one against another, like ninepins: and Roy, hating the man, turned sharply away. But rebuke was futile. One could do nothing.
Roy, left standing alone in the leisurely crowd of men and animals at once so alien and so familiar returned to Bishun Singh and Suráj in a vaguely troubled frame of mind. "Which way to the house of Sir Lakshman Singh?" he asked the maker of chirághs, his foot in the stirrup.
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