"Because I heard Shireen say, when he met Mohammed Saleh near Baber's tomb, that had he not been certain that the false plotter was Overhearing Zohrab, he might imagine that an evil spirit, like Sakkar, had assumed his shape and voice, to delude them both, and the Feringhee woman too. But that is all bosh; for who believes in such things now?" The dark eyes of Zohrab sparkled dangerously. He might have pardoned some such slighting speech in a devout Hindoo, even in a Christian; but in a Jew, or one professing the horrible tenets of a Khond, he could not let it pass without remark. "Dare you say that the evil spirit, Sakkar, did not once assume the shape of Solomon, on possessing himself of his magic signet, and alter all the laws of the world for forty days and nights?" "I dare say nothing about it," replied the other, sulkily: "I am a Khond." "And, as such, accursed of God!" muttered Zohrah, under his teeth; for at that precise juncture of his affairs he could afford to quarrel with none--his present hosts least of all. The banker looked uneasy, and crammed into his mouth an extra allowance of the eighth delight, ever the solace of the Hindoo race, and held in such estimation that Ferishta, the Moslem historian, writing in 1609, when describing the magnitude of the Indian city of Canaye, says that it contained thirty thousand shops for the sale of betel-nut alone. Zohrab, though he sometimes broke the laws of the Koran, just as many an excellent Christian, or one who perfectly believes himself to be such, may transgress the laws of his Bible, loathed the unbelieving Khond, as he should have loathed a Jew or a fire-worshipping Gueber; but, circumstanced as he was, he felt himself compelled to listen to a speech like the following; for the Khonds are a low race of idolaters, and glory in announcing themselves as such, and in decrying the gentler creeds of others. "The faith of your prophet would never have suited us, Aga Zohrab, though we cannot say, like the Bedouins, we have no water in the desert, and therefore cannot perform ablutions, as we have wells, and to spare, in our sacred groves; but like those Bedouins, our people, who dwell in rocks and on the mountains, have no money, therefore we cannot give alms; while the forty days' fast of Hamad an must prove useless to poor people who fast all the year round; and if the presence of God be everywhere, why go all the way to seek Him in a black stone at Mecca? Besides, your prophet, like that of the Feringhees, teaches, I am told, repentance--a perilous institute, for may not a man say, 'I may commit a thousand crimes, and, if I repent me, I may be forgiven; and as it will thus be no worse for me, I may as well continue to sin and enjoy myself even unto the end!' Is it not so, aga?"