“The Residency holds out at present, but men say that it must soon fall.” “And what do you say?” “I say nothing,” the man said; “we cannot use our art in matters which concern ourselves.” “And Delhi?” “There is a little force of whites in front of Delhi; there are tens of thousands of Sepoys in the town, but as yet the whites have maintained themselves. The chiefs of the Punjaub have proved faithless to their country, and there the British rule is maintained.” “Thank God for that!” Bathurst exclaimed; “as long as the Punjaub holds out the tables may be turned. And the other Presidencies?” “Nothing as yet,” Rujub said, in a tone of discontent. “Then you are against us, Rujub?” The man stopped. “Sahib, I know not what I wish now. I have been brought up to hate the whites. Two of my father’s brothers were hung as Thugs, and my father taught me to hate the men who did it. For years I have worked quietly against you, as have most of those of my craft. We have reason to hate you. In the old times we were honored in the land--honored and feared; for even the great ones knew that we had powers such as no other men have. But the whites treat us as if we were mere buffoons, who play for their amusement; they make no distinction between the wandering conjurer, with his tricks of dexterity, and the masters, who have powers that have been handed down from father to son for thousands of years, who can communicate with each other though separated by the length of India; who can, as you have seen, make men invisible; who can read the past and the future. They see these things, and though they cannot explain them, they persist in treating us all as if we were mere jugglers. “They prefer to deny the evidence of their own senses rather than admit that we have powers such as they have not; and so, even in the eyes of our own countrymen, we have lost our old standing and position, while the whites would bribe us with money to divulge the secrets in which they profess to disbelieve. No wonder that we hate you, and that we long for the return of the old days, when even princes were glad to ask favors at our hands. It is seldom that we show our powers now. Those who aid us, and whose servants we are, are not to be insulted by the powers they bestow upon us being used for the amusement of men who believe in nothing.