Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-01-16

out ugly words in their boards as they roll
ed in the dust.
| So Loda went her way back and forth as
| she would. and her eyes were cool and her
| pulses quiet. for all the adulation. Perha ps
| she knew too much of men to be easily af-
fected; 50 many came with tangled lives in
their hands for her long, plant fingers to
/ unravel. Lordly Rajputs waited on her
gifts, and old, decrepit fakirs with barely
a rag that would hold them In deeency.
Borahs. Parsees. Hindus. Moguls, aye, and
wild men from the hills, brought their tan
giles. And some she touched with Sleep.
and some with Laughter, and again some
with Fear; and whom she chose to draw
she drew. and whom she chose to bind she
bound. But of her own life. her own fate,
she was all unconscious. When she tried
| to delve for herself she was hedged on the
| hither side and the far by cloudy dreams,
elusive and battling, as seems indeed the
case with all seers who serve the world
with truth faithfully. but who. when they
would press it to their personal service, are
Knocked by vain Illusions.
In the suburbs of Bombay we'll on to-
ward Dadur. there's a little bungalow in a
very big compound. and the place is still
known as Mahommed's Rest. 1t is well
named with its cool wide verandas shaded
by dates and palms. and shut in from the
outer world by deep thickets where the
bubul sings.
The grounds are almost large enough to be
a small-sized park. and the house small
enough to be nearly lost in it. Besides this
! the whole place is surrounded by a high
wall an ornamental iron gate giving en-
trance when the owner so desired, and eff
| fectually preventing it when he did not
Both the gate and the wall were certainly
necessary for the least sembance of pri-
vacy. for in the shadow of the wall on the
outside continually, day and night. sat and
lay and crouched a motley crew of beggars,
fakirs. wandering priests and the like:
some, big sturdy animals whose faces gave
the lie direct to their peaceful avocations:
others. groveling monstrosties more apt
/! to inspire disgust than pity; palsied Grip
pies, blind and lame: pariah dogs mixing
surlily with parah men; whining prayers
twisting in with nasty, obscene curses; and,
now and anon, fight. in which men and
dogs were tangled UP in a savage tusSle
and all but lost in the cloud of dust they
raised and from which first one and then
another would emerge limping and cursing
or weeping, as the case might be, and tying
up their rags and bruises. while the dog
implicated usually sat afar off and licked
! his wounds Sulkily till chance offered
for another fray.
These were the pensioners of Mahommed' S
bounty. Once a day Abdallah. the khansa-
nah, opened the iron gate and. followed by
two servants, gave out rice and ghee and
great cakes of unleavened bread. He stood
with a bamboo pole tipped with an iron
hook. which. together with a fluent tongue,
he used freely while supervising the fair
distribution of his ma ter's bounty While
Ma hommed dwelt within these never left
of the sun as their inclination led, for some
times the master himself came forth and
then they fairly rolled in the dust at his
feet and while he cursed them heartily in
return for their fulsome laudations he al
ways ended by scattering a few annas or
pice for them to fight over; and while they
were snarling. biting and tearing in their
scutfie for the coins he would ride away on
his business.
One early April day he sat out in the
garden under the rustling shade of the date
trees, and near him in a low wicker chair
d woman was reclining-Loda. She was
slight of figure and young of face-a child
but for the deep. somber eyes that drew
one curiously toward speculation on what
lay behind their velvet depths. Many men.
| it was said, free and strong. had gazed
i their fill into those eyes only to find, when
just within touch of what they sought that
they had lost themselves; and all they could
ever recall of their wanderings were vague,
troubled dreams and memory of the soft
ness and dark splendor of the eyes that
had shorn them of some of their freedom
and much of their strength, for no living
man had ever come back from the dreams
this child-woman sent quite his own man.
This doubtless why the dwarf. Ben
Alif, a wild savage from the hills. the