the State. The
brazen bull was hung with flowers, and men were burning the evening
incense before Mahadeo; while those who had prayed their prayer beat
upon the bells hanging from the roof and passed out, secure in the
knowledge that the God had heard them. If there be much religion, there
is little reverence, as Westerns understand the term, at the services of
the Gods of the East. A tiny little maiden, child of a monstrously ugly,
wall-eyed priest, staggered across the marble pavement to the shrine and
threw, with a gust of childish laughter, the blossoms she was carrying
into the lap of the Great Mahadeo himself. Then she made as though she
would leap up to the bell and ran away, still laughing, into the shadow
of the cells behind the shrine, while her father explained that she was
but a baby and that Mahadeo would take no notice. The temple, he said,
was specially favoured by the Maharaja, and drew from lands an income of
twenty thousand rupees a year. Thakoors and great men also gave gifts
out of their benevolence; and there was nothing in the wide world to
prevent an Englishman from following their example.

By this time--for Amber and the Cotton-Press had filled the hours--night
was falling, and the priests unhooked the swinging jets and began to
light up the impassive face of Mahadeo with gas. They used Swedish
matches!

Full night brought the hotel and its curiously composed human menagerie.

There is, if a work-a-day world will believe, a society entirely
outside, and unconnected with, that of the Station--a planet within a
planet, where nobody knows anything about the Collector's wife, the
Colonel's dinner-party, or what was really the matter with the Engineer.
It is a curious, an insatiably curious, thing, and its literature is
Newman's _Bradshaw_. Wandering "old arms-sellers" and others live upon
it, and so do the garnetmen and the makers of ancient Rajput shields.
The world of the innocents abroad is a touching and unsophisticated
place, and its very atmosphere urges the Anglo-Indian unconsciously to
an extravagant mendacity. Can you wonder, then, that a guide of
long-standing should in time grow to be an accomplished liar?

Into this world sometimes breaks the Anglo-Indian returned from leave,
or a fugitive to the sea, and his presence is like that of a well-known
land-mark in the desert. The old arms-seller knows and avoids him, and
he is detested by the jobber of gharis who calls every one "my lord"