ave been bitten, and his body ere now a nest
of serpents."

"To serve the good work," proceeded Faringhea, with a gloomy air, "one
must know how to brave death."

"And to inflict it," added the negro.

A stifled cry, followed by some inarticulate words, here drew the
attention of these two men, who hastily turned their heads in the
direction of the sleeper. This latter was thirty years old at most. His
beardless face, of a bright copper color, his robe of coarse stuff, his
turban striped brown and yellow, showed that he belonged to the pure
Hindoo race. His sleep appeared agitated by some painful vision; an
abundant sweat streamed over his countenance, contracted by terror; he
spoke in his dream, but his words were brief and broken, and accompanied
with convulsive starts.

"Again that dream!" said Faringhea to the negro. "Always the remembrance
of that man."

"What man?"

"Do you not remember, how, five years ago, that savage, Colonel Kennedy,
butcher of the Indians, came to the banks of the Ganges, to hunt the
tiger, with twenty horses, four elephants, and fifty servants?"

"Yes, yes," said the negro; "and we three, hunters of men, made a better
day's sport than he did. Kennedy, his horses, his elephants, and his
numerous servants did not get their tiger--but we got ours," he added,
with grim irony. "Yes; Kennedy, that tiger with a human face, fell into
our ambush, and the brothers of the good work offered up their fine prey
to our goddess Bowanee."

"If you remember, it was just at the moment when we gave the last tug to
the cord round Kennedy's neck, that we perceived on a sudden a traveller
close at hand. He had seen us, and it was necessary to make away with
him. Now, since that time," added Faringhea, "the remembrance of the
murder of that man pursues our brother in his dreams," and he pointed to
the sleeping Indian.

"And even when he is awake," said the negro, looking at Faringhea with a
significant air.

"Listen!" said the other, again pointing to the Indian, who, in the
agitation of his dream, recommenced talking in abrupt sentences; "listen!
he is repeating the answers of the traveller, when we told him he must
die, or serve with us on Thuggee. His mind is still impressed--deeply
impressed--with those words."

And, in fact, the Indian repeated aloud in his sleep, a sort of
mysterious dialogue, of which he himself supplied both questions and
answers.

"'Traveller,' said he, in a voice broken b