s great chiefs in
their own land, and whose cities were centres of a civilisation,
barbaric, perhaps, but whose products we were only too glad to welcome
in England.

"Nigger" still seemed to ring in my ears, as I gazed still as if
fascinated in the handsome pale-brown eastern face, and I said feebly,
just about in the tone of voice in which some contemptible young
found-out sneak of a schoolboy, who was trying to hide a fault with a
miserable lie, might say, "Please, sir, it wasn't me--"

"I never insulted you, or called you so."

His face changed like magic, and he bent low over my pillow, as he cried
excitedly, and with a passionate fervour in his voice, which almost
startled me--

"Never! never, sahib."

He paused, frowned, and then his face lit up again, and he uttered a
merry laugh.

"You see," he cried, "I am one of the conquered race. You have been our
masters so long that it comes natural to say _sahib_. But that is at an
end now; we are the masters, and the reign of the great Koompanni is at
an end."

A pang of misery ran through me at these words, which were uttered with
so much conviction that I felt they must be true.

After a few moments, and from a desire to say something less weak than
my last poor feeble utterance, I said--

"Was it not you who saved my life when that sowar was going to cut me
down?"

"Yes," he cried excitedly. "If he had killed you, he should not have
lived another hour."

"Why?" I said, with a smile. "I was his enemy fighting against him."

"But you were my friend," he said, in a soft low voice, full of emotion;
"almost the only one who treated me as if I were something more than a
pariah dog. Yes, always my friend, who softened those bitter hours of
misery and despair when I was suffering for my people, that some day we
might cast off the heel which held us crushed down into the earth. My
friend, whom I would have died to save."

"Ny Deen!" I cried, for his words moved me, and I stretched out my hand
to him.

"Hah!" he cried, seizing it tightly between his own. "I could not ask
you to give me the hand of friendship, but it has come from you."

"And yet how can I shake hands with you, rajah?" I said sadly; "we are
enemies."

His eyes flashed with pride as I called him rajah, and he retained my
hand firmly.

"Enemies?" he said. "Yes, in the field, when face to face; but you are
wounded, and there is a truce between you and me. We can be friends,
and