Two women, however, returning with their waterpots from listening at the temple, agreed that if, as the priest said, _Mai_ Kâli had declared there must be blood on her altars ere the plague was stayed, what was the use of amulets? Besides, who could tell if the promise was not a trick; who, briefly, could tell anything except that it was an ill time for virtuous women, and that those were lucky who could stay at home? So with furtive glances, and keeping close together, they shuffled back to some dim alley, to retail what they had heard. CHAPTER XXI RED PAINT Over on the other side of the city, however, on the wide stretch of sandy waste behind an outlying dispensary which had been turned into a segregation camp, the advocates of certainty and uncertainty had changed places. Here, in the little grass-screened yard, six feet square, which Jack Raymond's kindliness had secured for the ordinary reed hut to which poor crushed old Auntie Khôjee had been brought, it was a scavenger who doubted, a woman who--even amid tears--had faith. 'Lo! brother,' said Khôjee in gentle reproof, as she sat on the string bed hiding her grief-blurred face discreetly from the tottering old man who had been sent in to sweep out the premises; an old man bowed, palsied, senile, yet still, as a male creature, claiming that calm perfunctory drawing of a veil an inch or two more over a withered cheek, 'thou shouldst not repeat such tales; they do harm. As I have told thee before, God knows what happened was not the fault of the _Huzoors_. It was Jehân's, and mine, and Lateef's; if indeed it was ought but God's will. And lies will not bring her back again! It was lies that killed her, Noormahal, Light of Palaces!'--a sob choked the quavering voice, but she struggled on truthfully--'and the _Huzoors_ were kind in concealing what they could. What use to drag the honour of the King's House in the dust? Even Jehân saw that and held his peace. It is ye--ye of the basket and broom--strangers--not of the house knowing the honour of the house as in old time--who have done ill in talking. And of the girl too. Lo! what thou sayest of her and the pearls may be true; but I know naught of it, and Jehân hath lied ever. Then for the bracelets! Have I not worn one and cried for death? But death has not come, as thou sayest it comes; though I have worn _this_ these two days.' She held out her thin arm as she spoke, in order to show the _râm rucki_ which Jack Raymond, in his efforts to reassure her, had fastened round her wrist.