Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/43



E rumbled and jolted along all that hot afternoon over a monotonous, dry brown plain of parched fields and thorn hedges. There was uproar in the forward part of the train as it left Dindigal station, a hundred voices clamored and shrieked, and a hundred heads hung from the windows of the third-class cars. The train halted, men leaped from it and ran back, while all on the station platform ran up the track toward a small object beside the rails. The station-master came on toward the train, holding fast to a lean little black imp, who was struggling to release himself and fairly bursting with wrath. An excited woman, wailing and declaiming with uncovered face, leaned from a forward car window, talking to an excited group on the ground. At last, an oily babu came to tell us that the small boy had "had a dispute with his mother," and, not wishing to leave Dindigal, had jumped out of the window. "His fearful mother had thought him killed," said the babu, but at sight of the lost heir her fear gave way to fury. She raved and ranted like an Indian Bernhardt as she leaned from the window, unveiled, talk-