"What were they doing, Major Dermot?" asked Noreen. "They looked as if they were praying to your elephant. Hadn't they ever seen one before?" He explained the reason of the reverence paid to Badshah. Daleham, returning, renewed his thanks as his sister went into the bungalow to see about breakfast. When she returned to tell them that it was ready, Dermot hardly recognised in the dainty girl, clad in a cool muslin dress, the terrified and dishevelled damsel whom he had first seen standing in the midst of the elephants. During the meal she questioned him eagerly about the jungle and the ways of the wild animals that inhabit it, and she and her brother listened with interest to his vivid descriptions. A chance remark of Daleham's on the difficulty of obtaining labour for the tea-gardens in the Terai interested Dermot and set him trying to extract information from his host. "I suppose you know, sir, that as these districts are so sparsely populated and the Bhuttias on the hills won't take the work, we have to import the thousands of coolies needed from Chota Nagpur and other places hundreds of miles away," said Daleham. "Lately, however, we have begun to get men from Bengal." "What? Bengalis?" asked Dermot. "Yes. Very good men. Quite decent class. Some educated men among them. Why, I discovered by chance that one is a B.A. of Calcutta University." "Do you mean for your clerical work, as _babus_ and writers?" "No. These chaps are content to do the regular coolie work. Of course we make them heads of gangs. I believe they're what are called Brahmins." "Impossible! Brahmins as tea-garden coolies?" exclaimed Dermot in surprise. "Yes. I'm told that they are Brahmins, though I don't know much about natives yet," replied his host. Dermot was silent for a while. He could hardly believe that the boy was right. Brahmins who, being of the priestly caste, claim to be semi-divine rather than mere men, will take up professions or clerical work, but with all his experience of India he had never heard of any of them engaging in such manual labour. "How do you get them?" he asked. "Oh, they come here to ask for employment themselves," replied Daleham. "Do they get them on many gardens in the district?" asked Dermot, in whose mind a vague suspicion was arising. "There are one or two on most of them. The older planters are surprised." "I don't wonder," commented Dermot grimly. "It's something very unusual." "We have got most, though," added his host. "I daresay it's because our engineer is a Hindu. His name is Chunerbutty." "Sounds as if he were a Bengali Brahmin himself," said Dermot. "He is. His father holds an appointment in the service of the Rajah of Lalpuri, a native State in Eastern Bengal not far from here. The son is an old friend of ours. I met him first in London." "In fact, it was through Mr. Chunerbutty that we came here," said Noreen. "He gave Fred an introduction to this company."