'Bury him? who?' asked Lesley; but Jack Raymond had grasped the child's meaning, and was passing to the other side of the plinth to see for himself. Then he looked up from the figure of a man which lay on its back, its head supported on the first step of the plinth, asked a question of Budlu the caretaker in Hindustani, and finally turned reassuringly to Lesley. 'It is only an idle sweep of a loafer, Miss Drummond, who has rather a queer story. Stay! I'll wake him--Budlu reports him sober--and he will tell the story himself, I've no doubt.' As he spoke, a vigorous shake roused the sleeper to an oath, then to a stare, finally to a bland smile as he rose. 'Bin overtook by slumber, sir,' said a rich, mellow voice as (possibly in evasion of more salient faults in his personality) the owner of it began to brush away the dust and dry twigs which clung to his dirty drill-clothing. 'The w'ich we all of us shall be w'en our time comes to lie within the silent toomb--b.' He prolonged the final syllable into a reminiscent humming of a funeral hymn until his task was done. Then he looked up, and showed in the moonlight the face of a man about forty, smooth shaven, of the bulldog type, with the mobile lips of a born comedian. 'I done my level best with the job you giv' me down country, sir,' he continued affably, yet with a furtive apology lurking beneath his assurance, 'but it done no sort of dooty by me. I gone down two stone in a six weeks with them pestilential chills, so w'ot with plague follerin' famine like the prayer-book, sir, I made bold to cut back to Nushapore. I 'adn't a grave bespoke there, sir, as I 'ave here; an' so I didn't want no "Death's bright Angel speakin' in a chord a-ga-ain."' Once more that prolongation of the final syllable was followed by an appropriate tune. 'If you don't mend your ways, my man,' said Jack Raymond severely, 'you'll have no grave bespoke here either. The authorities won't allow----' 'Can't 'elp 'emselves, sir,' interrupted the loafer, touching the battered billycock hat which he had resumed after a careful dusting. 'It's the Queen's regulations, sir, that them as went through the siege may wait for the las' trump in an 'ero's grave beside _'is_, if they choose. An', Lord love you! I do choose, for they chris'en me in token I shouldn't fear the very day _'e_ died.' He laid his hand on the slab. 'That was why they called you John Ellison, wasn't it?' asked Jack Raymond, with a side-look at Lesley, which the loafer appraised, for he replied coolly--