'Ay! Nawâb-_jee_. Crores and crores of rupees lent in the old days, and the interest spent now in gardens for the _mems_ to play games in, and statues to their own Queen! But it is no new thing, I tell you. I am no ignoramus--I am _middle fail_.[4] I have read their histories, and I know. They took all the religious endowments in their own land, and'--he added louder, as an ash-smeared naked figure which had been passing along the alley with the beggar's cry of '_Alâkh Alâkh_' paused to listen--'would have killed the religious also but for those among them like Gladstone and Caine-_sahib_ who say, as we do, that the others are tyrants and have no right to India.' The hotch-potch of history was interrupted by Dilarâm's yawn. '_Hai! Hai!_ brother!' she said, 'keep that dreary stuff for Burkut or the barber--they can spread it over folk's hot imaginings like butter on a hearth cake! Or give it to _jogi-jee_ yonder,' she swept her fingers to the weird figure at the door; a figure whose right hand and arm, withered in the ceaseless task of appealing to high heaven for righteousness, showed like a dry stick pointing upwards, 'though he and his like are never at a loss for lies. Hast a new one to-day, Gopi? Or is it still the old wonder of the golden paper which fell from the sky into one of Mother Kali's many embraces!' 'Jest not of Her, sister,' said the _jogi_ in a theatrically hollow voice, as he thrust his left arm--lean as a lath, yet round in comparison with that raised claim to virtue--towards her in menace. 'Thou art Hers, even in thy denial of Her. Woman as She, spreading disease and death. Mother of Pain, embracing the world, biding thy time to slay.' Despite the palpable striving for effect, something in the words thrilled the woman beneath the courtesan; and though she flicked all her supple fingers in derision, there was a note of triumph in her voice. 'Talk not to me, saint, as to thy Hindoo widows who believe in golden papers and gods. Yet 'tis true! We of the bazaar lead the world by the nose! Govind may blacken what he likes with ink. Burkut's craft may spend itself in spider's webs. The plague may come. Yea! even the sniffing out of other folk's smells--ay! and the payment for silence!--may be taken from the _Mimbrâns_-committee, and yet the world will wag peaceful. But touch _us_ and it is different. Let none meddle with the men's women or with our will, or they meddle to their cost!' She tucked the creased shawl closer around her, and squatted down once more in the sunshine; the heavy sunshine in which those others sate also with a sudden fierce approval in their hearts. It was highest noon, and the sky was a blaze of molten light; so that the shadow from a wheeling kite overhead, as it sought with keen eyes amid the refuse of the city for some prize, circled in sharp outline about the squalid courtyard, falling on one figure, flitting to another, linking them together, as it were, by its hungry restless desire.