“Oh, I say, Cobden--have you seen a ghost?” It was Langoyer, one of the young English officers, who spoke. He was leaning upon his cane, to flick a cigarette stub off the court with his boot. Langoyer paid no attention to the flogging. The men attended to that, you know. One had to stand by--as one would wait for his horse to drink. Dicky was now being lashed to the quick himself. He had seen clearly--but a sort of hideous night had settled upon him again. He had to watch his temper. “How many does this man get, Langoyer?” he managed to ask. “Thirty.” “What for?” “He knows more of the sedition of Kitchlew and Satyapal than he’ll tell.” The figure had gone limp on the triangle. “Fainted,” gasped Richard Cobden. The whipping stopped. A tin bucket of water was brought and dashed upon Nagar’s face and shoulders. A moan came from him because he was not quite conscious. Then the knees drew up and his feet felt for the ground. The lieutenant stepped forward taking Nagar’s ear in his right hand and calling aloud: “Will you tell the truth now of Kitchlew’s plot against Government?” Nagar looked at him without hatred. He tried to speak twice before the words came: “I have already told the truth----” “How many stripes have been given?” Langoyer asked. “Twenty-six.” “Finish the thirty, then take him to _kotwali_. A few days more will make him tell all right.” The American remained. One--two--three--four. The hands were unstrapped. The robe was cast about the shoulders. Nagar could stand. Dicky left the officers and followed his friend and the native policemen to the station, feeling like a pariah’s whelp. LII THE OLD FACE DICKY reflected that there were two ways of looking at a person or a thing, a fact proven several times in his experience. There had been a moment in the presence of Gandhi, after many minutes of talk, when the face, that had been dull and unattractive as a camel driver’s, had suddenly appeared to him with memorable, essential significance. It had been so with Miss Claes: also the moment when he had really seen Pidge, as they stood together on the Palisades of Santa Monica. Recently he had caught an immortal something in the look from Nagar on the rack. He did not see Nagar again in Amritsar, but up to mid-May the students reported that his friend was still imprisoned. The sound of those falling strokes was slow to die out of the corridors of Dicky’s memory. They awoke him in the night. It was far easier, however, to recall the splendor of gameness in the way Nagar had taken his beating. This satisfied every American instinct; and even above this, was the mystery of compassion for the English, in Nagar’s face. Here was a man on a tennis court in a remote Punjabi town, hardly heard-of in this war-racked world, plainly putting over the thing he had marveled at, as a small boy in Sunday school: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”