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Pagett’s attention, however, was diverted to the gate, where a group of cultivators stood in apparent hesitation.

“Here are the twelve Apostles, hy Jove -come straight out of Raffaele’s cartoons,” said the M.P., with the fresh appreciation of a newcomer.

Orde, loth to be interrupted, turned impatiently toward the villagers, and their leader, handing his long staff to one of his companions, advanced to the house.

“It is old Jelbo, the Lumherdar, or head-man of Pind Sharkot, and a very’ intelligent man for a villager.”

The Jat farmer had removed his shoes and stood smiling on the edge of the veranda. His strongly marked features glowed with russet bronze, and his bright eyes gleamed under deeply set brows, contracted by lifelong exposure to sunshine. His beard and moustache streaked with grey swept from bold cliffs of brow and cheek in the large sweeps one sees drawn by Michael Angelo, and strands of long black hair mingled with the irregularly piled wreaths and folds of his turban. The drapery of stout blue cotton cloth thrown over his broad shoulders and girt round his narrow loins, hung from his tall form in broadly sculptured folds, and he would have made a superb model for an artist in search of a patriarch.

Orde greeted him cordially, and after a polite pause the countryman started off with a long story told with impressive earnestness. Orde listened and smiled, interrupting the speaker at ‘times to argue and reason with him in a tone which Pagett could hear was kindly, and finally checking the flux of words was about to dismiss him, when Pagett suggested that he should be asked about the National Congress.

But Jelloc had never heard of it. He was a poor man and such things, by the favor of his Honor, did not concern him.

“What’s the matter with your big friend that he was so terribly in earnest?” asked Pagett, when he had left.

“Nothing much. He wants the blood of the people in the next village, who have had smallpox and cattle plague pretty badly, and by the help of a wizard, a currier, and several pigs have passed it on to his own village. ‘Wants to know if they can’t be run in for this awful crime. It seems they made a dreadful charivari at the village boundary, threw a quantity of spell-bearing objects over the border, a buffalo’s skull and other things; then branded a chamur-what you would call a currier-on his hinder parts and drove him and a number of pigs over into JelIno’s village. Jelbo says he can bring evidence to prove that the wizard directing these proceedings, who is a Sansi, has been guilty of theft, arson, rattle-killing, perjury and murder, but would prefer to have him punished for bewitching them and inflicting small-pox.”

“And how on earth did you answer such a lunatic?”

“Lunatic I the old fellow is as sane as you or I; and he has some ground of complaint against those Sansis. I asked if he would likc a native superintendent of police with some men to make inquiries, but he objected on the grounds the police were rather worse than smallpox and criminal tribes put together.”

“Criminal tribes-er-I don’t quite understand,” said Paget~

“We have in India many tribes of people who in the slack anti-British days became robbers, in various kind. and preye~ on the people. They are being restrained and reclaimed little by little, and in time will become useful; citizens, but they still cherish hereditary traditions of crime, and are a difficult lot to deal with. By the way what; about the political rights of these folk under your schemes? The country people call them vermin, but I sup-pose they would be electors with the rest.”

“Nonsense-special provision would be made for them in a well-considered electoral scheme, and they would doubtless be treated with fitting severity,” said Pagett, with a magisterial air.