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154 Addition, and Moslim though I am and Mahratta though he was, we became friends, even if we could not break bread together.

Then one evening, when spring was white and pink, and the night air heavy with the musk of remembrance and homesickness, he told me his story:

"I am Dajee, the Mahratta. I am a high-caste. The peacock is sacred to my clan. We cannot kill that bird, and we worship its feathers.

"To-day I serve a beef-eating Englishman, a cannibal of the holy cow, though the coral necklace that I wear was handed down in our family from the time of my great-great-great-grandfather's great-great-great-grand father.

"But who can avoid what is written by Brahma on the forehead? Rajahs and ryots are alike subject to the sports of Fate.

"To-day I am in a cold land sodden with rain, and once I lived in a golden land pregnant with the beam of the warm sun. To-day I softly obey the voice of the foreigner, though my ancestors were warriors who gave the sword when it was red and a land hissing with blood.

"We are all the brittle toys of Destiny, even I, who am Dajee, a Mahratta, a high-caste.