"I am glad," said Imam Din, loosening his belt. "Those who drink our blood become of our own blood, and I have seen, in these thirty years, that the sons of the Sahibs, once being born here, return when they are men. Yes, they return after they have been to Belait [Europe]." "And what do they do in Belait?" asked the recruit, respectfully. "Get instruction - which thou hast not," returned the Naik. "Also they drink of belaitee-panee [soda-water], enough to give them that devil's restlessness which endures for all their lives. Whence we of Hind have trouble." "My father's uncle," said Imam Din, slowly, with importance, "was Ressaldar of the Longcoat Horse; and the Empress called him to Belait in the year that she had accomplished fifty years of rule. He said (and there were also other witnesses) that the Sahibs there drink common water, even as do we; and that the belaitee-panee does not run in all the rivers. "He said also that there was a Shish Mahal - half a glass palace - half a koss in length and that the rail-gbarri ran under the roads, and that there are boats bigger than a village. He is a great talker." The Naik spoke scornfully. He had no well-born uncles. "He is a man of good birth," said Imam Din, with the least possible emphasis on the first word, and the Naik was silent. "Ho! ho!" Imam Din reached out to his pipe, chuckling until his fat sides shook again. "Strickland Sahib's foster-mother was the wife of an Arain in the Ferozepur district. I was a young man then, ploughing while the English fought. This child will also be suckled here, and he will have double wisdom, and when he is a Police officer it will be very bad for the thieves in this illakha." "There will be no English in the land then. They are asking permission of clerks and low-caste men to continue their rule even now," said the Naik. "All but foolish men - such as those clerks are - would know that this asking is but an excuse for making trouble, and thus holding the country more strictly. Now, in an investigation, is it not our custom to permit the villagers to talk loosely and give us abuse for a little time? Then do we not grow hot, and walk them to the thana two by two - as these clerks will be walked? Thus do I read the new talk." "So do not I," said the Naik, who borrowed the native newspapers.