CHAPTER II.
'Twixt loot and law--'tween creed and caste-- Through slough this people wallows, To where we choose our road at last.
I choose the RIGHT! Who follows?
HEMMED in amid the stifling stench and babel of the caravansary, secluded by the very denseness of the many-minded swarm, five other Rajputs and Mahommed Gunga--all six, according to their turbans, followers of Islam--discussed matters that appeared to bring them little satisfaction.
They sat together in a dark, low-ceilinged room; its open door--it was far too hot to close anything that admitted air--gave straight onto the street, and the one big window opened on a courtyard, where a pair of game-cocks fought in and out between the restless legs of horses, while a yelling horde betted on them.

On a heap of grass fodder in a corner of the yard an all-but-naked expert in inharmony thumped a skin tom-tom with his knuckles, while at his feet the own-blood brother to the screech-owls wailed of hell's torments on a wind instrument.
Din--glamour--stink--incessant movement--interblended poverty and riches rubbing shoulders--noisy self-interest side by side with introspective revery, where stray priests nodded in among the traders,--many-peopled India surged in miniature between the four hot walls and through the passage to the overflowing street; changeable and unexplainable, in ever-moving flux, but more conservative in spite of it than the very rocks she rests on--India who is sister to Aholibah and mother of all fascination.
In that room with the long window, low-growled, the one thin thread of clear-sighted unselfishness was reeling out to very slight approval.
Mahommed Gunga paced the floor and kicked his toes against the walls, as he turned at either end, until his spurs jingled, and looked with blazing dark-brown eyes from one man to the other.
"What good ever came of listening to priests ?" he asked.

"All priests are alike--ours, and theirs, and padre-sahibs! They all preach peace and goad the lust that breeds war and massacre! Does a priest serve any but himself?
Since when?
There will come this rising that the priests speak of--yes! Of a truth, there will, for the priests will see to it! There is a padre-sahib here in Howrah now for the Hindoo priests to whet their hate on.

You saw the woman ride past here a half-hour gone?
There is a pile of tinder ready here, and any fool of a priest can make a spark! There will be a rising, and a big one!" "There will! Of a truth, there will!" Alwa, his cousin, crossed one leg above the other with a clink of spurs and scabbard.

He had no objection to betraying interest, but declined for the present to betray his hand.
"There will be a blood-letting that will do no harm to us Rajputs!" said another man, whose eyes gleamed from the darkest corner; he, too, clanked his scabbard as though the sound were an obbligato to his thoughts.