One was the Hindoo banker. He was slight in figure, with diminutive hands and feet; like all his vast race, he was of a dark-brown colour, with straight black hair, that seemed almost blue when the light struck it, hanging straight and lankly behind his large ears--an undoubted worshipper of Brama, of the monkey god, and of all those unnumbered idols that for forty centuries have been the objects of adoration to millions upon millions--even before the Temple of Juggernaut was built. He sat cross-legged on a _nummud_, or carpet of red frieze, above which was spread a yellow calico covering. A cushion supported his back. He had cast off his headdress, slippers, and tunic--the day had been warm--and all save his loose dhottee, or what passed for unmentionables. He had the eye of Siva painted in the centre of his forehead (the eye that, by winking once, involved the world in darkness for a thousand years), thereby adding to the diabolical grotesquerie of his visage; and he was occupied from time to time by indulgence in the "eighth sensual delight" of the Hindoos--chewing betel-nut, a hot and aromatic stimulant. The other interesting native of India who sat beside him, smoking hempseed and bhang in a handsome hubble-bubble, which had snake-like coils covered with red and gold-coloured thread rising from a stem of silver, shaped like a trumpet, was Ferishta Lodi, the Khond, whose attire consisted of little more than the amount indulged in by his Hindoo friend; but, unlike the puny latter, he was a man of powerful and muscular frame, great in stature, and terribly hideous in face and figure. He was rather pale-complexioned, for a Khond; but his visage bars description, for ugliness of contour and expression,--it was that of a tiger, but a tiger pitted with small-pox, the few wiry bristles of his moustache that stuck fiercely out from his long, upper lip, the fiery carbuncular red of his eyes, with two long and sharp side tusks, completing the illusion or resemblance. Looking wonderfully handsome by contrast to those two men, Zohrab lounged between them, propped against the wall by a soft cushion; his bright steel cap, his beautiful Persian sabre, and gilded pistols lay near him; he had a long cherry-pipe stick in his mouth, and close by was a flask of Cabul wine, in which, natheless the wise precepts of Him of Mecca, he was indulging, greatly to Mabel's apprehension, somewhat freely. "And so, Ferishta," said he, "the infernal Kuzzilbashes are in search of me too, you say?" "Yes--aga; three rissallahs, at least." "From where?" "Shireen's fort." "And led by whom?" "The Khan Shireen in person." "But how know you that they are after me?"