"You had better let him have his own way to-night," said the doctor at his evening visit. "The child gets on better, and you are fresher for the day's nursing. Those thin, delicate-looking natives are very wiry, and if the man won't rest, he won't, and that's an end of it." He spoke cheerfully; but as he was getting into his dogcart he saw Bisrâm at his elbow. "The doctor-_sahib_ thinks the little master very ill to-night?" he asked quietly. "So ill that you must do your very best for him to-night. If any one can pull him through, you can, remember that." "_Huzoor!_" said Bisrâm, submissively. It was a very dark night; so dark that the rushlight in Sonny's room seemed almost brilliant from the verandah. Looking thence you could see the child's cot, one of its side rails removed, and in its place, as it were, the protection of Bisrâm's crouching figure. He did not touch the cot; he crouched beside it with clasped hands hanging over his knees, and dark eyes staring hard into the darkness as if waiting and listening. So he sate, his clasped hands loosening, his eyes growing softer as the hours passed, bringing nothing but half-conscious sleep, half-conscious wakening to the child. Until suddenly, irrelevantly, just on the border-land of night and day, the fretful wail rose upon the silence loudly, insistently-- "Where is the Noose, Bisra? I want it. O Bisrâm, bearer, bring the Noose, and strangle something." The slackness, the dreaminess left the man's hands and eyes. He stood up blindly, desperately to face these last words; the words for which he had been listening. Yet there was still the same pathetic self-control as he stretched his hands out over the sleeping child. "Lo! Kâli ma," he muttered, "have I not served thee as ever, despite the child. Have I set him before thee? Nay! thou knowest I have risked life itself to have thy tale of offering complete when I was hindered. Thou didst not suffer. Wilt not wait for once? Wilt not wait one little while?" His voice, sinking in its entreaty, ended in silence. But only for a second. Then the fretful wail began again. "The Noose, Bisra! Be not unkind. Remember I am ill. O Bisra! I want you to strangle something for me--" Bisra gave a faint sob; then joined his outstretched hands. "_Huzoor!_ so be it! the Noose shall find a victim. Yea, Shelter of the World, Bisra will strangle something. Sleep in peace!" There was no sound in the room after that save the little contented sigh in which restlessness finds rest. Outside, the shiver of the cicalas seemed to count the seconds, but inside the hours seemed to pass unnoticed as Bisra sate beside the cot, his hands listless, his eyes dreamy. There was nothing to wait for now, nothing to fear. That which had to come had come. So with the first glint of light, a stealthy step glided in, and an anxious voice whispered-- "How is it with the child, Bisra?"