An angry tone generally reduced his native visitors to submission, but the Lâlâ was evidently in no mood for silence. He had taken up a small contract that morning, the earnest-money of which lay for the time in Colonel Stuart's safe. Since then he had heard casually that a long-expected source of profit over which he had often talked with the Colonel, and for which he had even made preparations, had slipped through his fingers. In other words, that all the mule-transport was to be bought by a special officer. "I've come, _sahib_," he blurted out, sitting down unasked, "to know if it is true that Mardsen _sahib_ has the purchase of mules." "And if he has, what the devil is it to you, or to me?" The man's arrogance was becoming unbearable, and Colonel Stuart was a great stickler for etiquette. "Only this; that if you are not going to deal fairly by me, you mustn't count on my silence; that's all!" "Go and tell the whole bazaar I owe you money, you black scoundrel," cried his hearer, annoyed beyond endurance by the man's assumption of equality. "I'll pay you every penny, if I sell my soul for it, curse you!" "Eighty thousand rupees is a tall price, _sahib_," sneered the Lâlâ. "And how about the contracts, and the commission, and the general partnership? Am I to tell that also?" The Colonel stared at him in blank surprise. God knows in his queer conglomerate of morality it was hard to tell what elementary rock of principle might be found; yet to a certain extent honour remained as it were in pebbles, worn and frayed by contact with the stream of life. "General partnership! you black devil, what do you mean?" "Mean!" echoed the Lâlâ shrilly. "Why, the money I've lent you, _paid_ you for each contract; the commission I've given your clerks; the grain your horses have eaten; the--" The Colonel's right hand was raised above his head; the first coarse rage of his face had settled into a stern wrath that turned it white. "If you stop here another instant, by God I'll kill you!" The words came like a steel-thrust, and the Lâlâ without a word turned and fled before the Berserk rage of the Northman; it is always terrible to the Oriental, and the Lâlâ was a heaven-sent coward. "Stop!" cried the Colonel as the wretched creature reached the door. He obeyed and came back trembling. "Take your money for the contract with you; it's cancelled. I won't have it in the house. Take it back and give me the receipt I gave you; give it me, I say." The Colonel, fumbling at the lock of the safe, stuttered and shook with excitement. "Take 'em back," he continued, flourishing a roll of notes. "The receipt!--quick! out with it!--the receipt for the three thousand five hundred I gave you this morning!" "_Huzoor! Huzoor!_ I am looking for it; be patient one moment!" The Lâlâ's quivering fingers blundered among the papers in his pocket-book. "Give it me, or, by heaven, I'll break every bone in your body!" His hand came down with an ominous thud on the table.