flame at the heart of each perfect stone he held warmed him to the soul. At dawn his rapid whispering voice failed, and the cold hands which held his jewels before his darkening vision dropped heavily to his sides.
Very cold and still sat Gissing, as the last pale stars glimmered and vanished—unable any more to see the sun touch to life the dancing magic flames of the Wrath of Allah . . . for the shadow of the Black Camel was dark and heavy on his eyelids.
But the Wrath of Allah flashed and flashed again in the eye of the rising sun.
The Curse
By Captain Ed Smith
In India it is considered very dangerous to insult a Yogi, or holy man
Janki was a very holy man indeed. Though his coarse matted hair was indescribably filthy and swarmed with vermin, though he smeared mud and ashes on his emaciated, almost naked body, wandering aimlessly through the length and breadth of teeming India, yet his begging-bowl was always full, there was always a bare-legged, ragged lad to make the rounds of the charitable who might wish to acquire merit. If the bowl came back heaped full of curried ghee with a great dab of melting rancid butter atop, who was Janki to begrudge the lad his just share of the spoils from the foray among the bazar habitués, or from the scrawny squalid mothers who dwelt beyond them? If that lad brought back even better provender and a timid request for a love philtre or a charm to assure the speedy birth of a son and heir, who was Janki to refuse so reasonable and modest a return? Impartially he gave such slight tokens, impassively he ate whatever was set before him; then, with the empty bowl hanging in its accustomed place at his girdle, he sat oblivious to sun and shade in the Silence. Truly Janki was a very holy man indeed!
He had come into the Aravalli Hills from the burning plains of Rajputana where the hot earth and its crops turned sere and yellow, even as the jungle itself; where the parched ground baked to a stone-like hardness and opened in huge gaping cracks, where the peasant brats died like flies of the cholera, and the burning-ghats were ever smoking.
The Feringhee, the Anglesi, had sought refuge in the cooler hills; Mount Abu was crowded with them—and with Rajputana princelings come to play polo, to gamble or to royster in such Oriental viciousness as they could find or else bring with them. All who could had left the parched plains for the Aravellis, the long hill road to Mount Abu was dotted with every conceivable conveyance as whites and natives alike fled the murderous heat of the lowlands.
Thither, too, came Janki, impervious alike to heat or cold, sun or rain, impervious also to feast or famine—though I will be frank to say that famines came but rarely to Janki's way.
Perhaps the multitudinous gods of Hind watched over him; perhaps they
