"All the same," said the big man with an air of decision. "Our Collector is a great symbol of authority in countless villages through which he drives or rides leisurely, smoking his eternal cheroot, halting to dispense justice with unrivalled sagacity and kindliness. I'm often with him, so I know. The people worship him, and he has a wonderful bird's-eye view of the whole region, I assure you"; and the jailer glanced admiringly at the man he was defending as he strolled along the lawn, his arm linked in the little Judge's. "'A bird's-eye view'! Yes, I grant you he may possess that, but he has a terribly cavalier way of dealing with caste prejudices, for instance. And you know, Samptor, what a standing grievance that omsque is." "Ay, well, that perhaps was a pity," said the big man, looking down at his boots. "But everybody makes a mistake at times," he added, glancing at the doctor's face, on which a cloud rested. "The Collector should have known that trouble was bound to come when he granted a site for that mosque so near the Hindu burning ground. And now, though the Mussulmans are the intruders, they, forsooth, are petitioning to have the burning ground removed to another spot. Infamous plotting, I call it!" "Yes, there seems to be a good deal of bad feeling between the Hindus and the Mahomedans just now, I notice," said the engineer. "Fanned by Zynool and his crew," returned the doctor, with an impatient gesture. "Can't think how the Collector favours that Mussulman so much. They have his ear somehow, some say through that clever butler of his. As for the disturbance the Hindus make with their processions during the hours of prayer in the mosque, anyone who has listened to a Mahomedan yelling with a cracked voice. 'Allah eh-eh-eh,' must admit that his outward forms of worship are quite as disturbing as a tom-tom and the blowing of the conch." "Well, doctor, if you had stood at the door of the Mosque as I've done on duty, and heard the Hindu population out with their goddess Mariyamina and listened to the howling and tom-toming fit to break the drum of your ear, and that when the place was filled with Mussulmans at their prayers during the sacred feast of Ramazan, you would have felt that they had good reason to complain. Why, though their lips were moving in prayer, they were itching to be at the throats of the Hindus! If it had not been for the Collector's courage that day in standing at the Mosque door all the time the procession was passing, there must have been bloodshed, and he did that in the interest of the Hindus even more than for the other side. I can tell you, Campbell, there's many a Hindu in Puranapore remembers that day and knows what the Collector saved them from. It would have made a picture to see him as he stood there," ended the jailer, with a look of admiring recollection in his eyes; and Mark Cheveril felt as if he, too, had seen that picture.