As he was talking, I was conscious of a peculiar, slightly musky odour pervading the tent, and I was wondering what it could be, when the man returned with two or three burning splints of some aromatic wood, which gave forth a great deal of smoke, and he walked about the tent, waving the pieces and holding them low down near the carpet where the serpent had lain, and also along a track leading past the lamp to the side of the tent where I had seen the shadowy form of the second serpent. He busied himself in this way till the matches were pretty well burned down, and then placed the ends in a little brass vessel, which he stood on the carpet not far from my couch. Then approaching me, he said humbly, and with a low reverence-- "Will my lord grant his servant's prayer?" "What do you mean?" I said, rather testily, for his excessive humility worried me. I hated to be worshipped like that. "Not tell the rajah about the snakes?" "If my master the rajah knows, thy servant may be slain." "What! for that?" I said. "Yes, my lord. His highness bade me take as great care of your life as I would of my own. Thy servant has tried to do his duty, and serve my lord. He has done everything the great physician, the rajah's own doctor, bade him do, and cared for my lord as if he had been thy servant's own son. It would be hard to die because a serpent of the forest came in after seeing the light." "Hard? Yes," I said quietly. "There, mind no more of the brutes get in. I shall not say a word to the rajah or any one else." "Ah," he cried joyfully. And before I could remove it, he had gone down on his knees and kissed my hand. "Thy servant goes back with joy in his heart. He did not love to serve him, for the white sahibs are cruel to their servants, and are hated; but they are not all so, and thy servant seeth now why his master the rajah loveth my lord, and careth for him as one who is very dear." "How I do hate for any one to fawn upon me like that!" I said to myself as soon as I was alone and I lay thinking about all my troubles, and being a prisoner, wondering how long it would be before I was strong again and able to escape; for I meant to do that. It was very pleasant to find that Ny Deen liked me, and recalled my civility to him sufficiently to make him wish to save my life; but all the same, I felt that I did not like him, for there was the treachery of a man who had come under false pretences to our cantonments, waiting, with others in his secret, for the time when they could throw off the British yoke. And as I lay thinking, though I felt ready to acquit him of the atrocities that had been committed, I felt that he had opened the awful door and let loose the tide of miscreants who had raged through the cities, murdering every one whose skin was white.