ng to learn
the result, he rushed blindly to the brink of a deep ravine, and threw
himself headlong to death. But the injury to Cedric was only a trifling
one after all. The bullet seemed merely to have grazed him in passing,
and, beyond a ragged gash in the fleshy part of the thigh, he was not
harmed at all. That I myself dressed and bandaged, and in a couple of
weeks it was quite healed. But it taught me a lesson, that night of
horror, and I never let my baby out of my sight for one instant from
that time until the rising was entirely quelled.

"As suddenly as it had started, the trouble subsided. Native priests
came under a flag of truce to Lord Chepstow, and confessed their error,
acknowledged that they had never any right to suspect the British of any
design upon their gods, for the loot of the temple had actually taken
place in the midst of the rising, and they knew that it could not have
come from the hands of the soldiers, for they had had them under
surveillance all the time, and not one person of the race had ventured
within a mile of the temple.

"Yet the tooth of Buddha had been taken, the sacred tooth which is more
holy to Buddhists than the statue of Gautama Buddha itself. Their
remorse was very real, and after that, to the day of his death from
fever, eighteen months afterward, they could never show enough honour to
Lord Chepstow. And even then their favour continued. They transferred
to the little son the homage they had done the father, but in a far, far
greater degree. If he had been a king's son they could have shown him no
greater honour. Native princes showered him with rich gifts; if he
walked out, his path was strewn with flowers by bowing maidens; if he
went into the market-place, the people prostrated themselves before him.

"When I questioned Buddhist women of this amazing homage to Cedric, they
gave me a full explanation. My son was sacred, they said. Buddha had
withdrawn his favour from his people because of the evil they had done
in suspecting the father and of the innocent life--Ferralt's--which had
been sacrificed, and they had been commanded of the priests to do homage
to the child and thereby appease the offended god, who, doubtless, had
himself spirited away the holy tooth, and would not restore it until
full recompense was made to the sacred son of the sacred dead.

"When it became known that I had decided to return to England with my
boy, native princes offered me fabulous sums to