guided him into paths of peace and plenty—howbeit, when famine and drouth came, when disease spread its somber pinions over the land, Janki was always elsewhere. Truly Janki was a very holy man indeed!
There are Anglesi sahibs who will snort and declare that Janki was a charlatan—a fake and a fraud—instead of a very holy yogi. They will say that these very facts show that he was coldly calculating; that these very things prove their contentions conclusively instead of proving what every native believed about him regardless of his race or creed. I do not know. I refuse to be drawn into any controversy. Those same white sahibs will tell you that no man born of the fertile fruitful earth may peer into the future; they will discourse learnedly and long-windedly on coincidence when that subject happens to come up. Once more I refuse to be drawn into any argument.
But I shall tell you a tale of Janki and you may judge for yourself. The tale was told to me beside the leaping flames in the velvety darkness when the caravanserais and the bazars had been left far behind us, when the keen night winds of the high hills whistled sharply down the Pass and djinns and demons rode abroad on their wintry blasts. The shivering Plainsman who told it to me got it in the Serai that stands hard by the Motee Bazar, interposing its swarming colorful bulk between them and the great iron way that carries the sahibs on their foolish, furious, petty business trips across the great plains that have resounded to the footfalls of so many and so varied a horde of conquerors.
This Plainsman brought with him also a tale about another holy man—oh, such a salt, salt tale—but enough! The lowborn one told me many tales, tales that he swore by the beard of his father were all true talk and he was bound to me by many ties other than that of marriage; but, having heard him bargaining in the horse bazars for the sorry nag that I bestrode, my faith in his probity and virtue was not then so strong as it once was. The tale came to him in the devious, roundabout way that is the Orient, wherein a nautch, an Afridi and various and sundry others figured, so I myself can hardly vouch for it.
On that long steep hill that leads up to Mount Abu, lined with its sweetmeat stalls, horse-traders' camps, and those of vendors of this and that, Janki strode. The natives made a way for him through the press and accorded him far more respect than they did for the haughty hill rajah who had just preceded him.
As Janki stepped around a bend three horsemen spurred out of a narrow side road. White sahibs, all of them, they paid not a second glance at the natives who gave back on either hand. Not so, however, their horses; that of the youngest, a skittish sorrel, became unmanageable. Its rider sawed roughly on the bit as the animal wheeled and snorted, attempting vainly to control its sudden panic, yet unable to prevent it from bolting. In its sudden, furious rush the horse hurled Janki into the dust.
The yogi rose to his feet, his face a mask of diabolical anger. His eyes glared. He shook his fist after the swiftly receding form, mouthing curses after that devil and his demon steed.
Contemptuously the older of the two remaining sahibs tossed a few rupees at the holy man, who let them fall unheeded into the dusty way.
Moments passed. The two sahibs sat their mounts impassively as they awaited the return of their comrade. The holy man raged and rained vituperations and nameless obscenities after the absent
O. S.—7
