Vincent Dering laughed. "I don't choke--I tingle; and it is rather jolly. Yes, sir; there is a lot of electricity in the air, and I shouldn't wonder if we had a regular black snorter. Glad it didn't come in the middle of the miracle '_biz_', for, as a general smasher-up of ordinary experiences, commend me to a real electrical dust-storm! It seems to attract the earth, earthy, in everything. In fact, if there is such a thing as the Devil, and he ever gets the upper hand, it is then--" Father Ninian turned to him quickly, and then to the crowd,-through which they were still cleaving that curiously acquiescent way which white faces still cleave through dark ones--"Then I trust, my son," he said gently, "that for your sake and _theirs_ the storm may not come." "Or that there isn't a Satanic majesty!" retorted Captain Dering, cynically. "That, sir, is the easiest way out of the difficulty." Lance had looked round on the crowd also. "Well! if there is," he said, "and I had to paint him, I'd take that man's face as my model for Lucifer." He pointed to a _gosain_ who was forming the centre of a group of gossipers round a syrup-seller's shop, and added--for he knew his Milton as well as his Shakespeare--"_The superior fiend who gives not Heav'n for lost!_" "Looks a bad lot, I admit," remarked Vincent, carelessly. "Have an idea I've seen him before; in gaol, I believe. Yes! I'm sure of it. He is the fellow Dillon told me was going to get his ticket-of-leave for good conduct. He looks scoundrel enough for that! But really, sir--" he turned to Father Ninian again--"I think we may count on their behaviour now." He indicated the crowd. "If there was going to be a row it would have come off before this; now they will settle down, you'll see, and go on to the next camping-ground to-morrow morning as if nothing had gone wrong. They are such creatures of habit; you could see that from their sticking on in expectation of that footling old miracle all day!" Father Ninian, in that curiously irrelevant way he had, put on the gold _pince-nez_ which always dangled over his black soutane, and looked round him again. "They will settle down," he said quietly, "if nothing new crops up to give them a lead into new ways. That is always the danger; and a very small thing does it, sometimes, in India." They had reached the courtyard which lay between the palace and the Fort, and with a wave of his hand in farewell, he passed along the wall to the former, while the others, striking across the raised union-jack of paths, made for the latter. The yard was crammed with pilgrims on their way to bathe on the river steps.