So every day Basant Kor went with her father into the big man's room, and before he pricked her he always asked after her health and sometimes he made a joke to her. She rather liked the big man, although her father told her that he was very great and held in his hands the power of life and death. And it was very interesting and amusing sitting out in the sun with all the people who were awaiting their turn to go into the pricking-room; they used to tell each other of how the summons of the dragon had reached them, of how much money they earned every month, of the prices of things in their respective neighbourhoods. Some of them talked strange languages, too, of which Basant Kor could not understand a word, and she liked to listen to the funny way in which these talked.

The Memsahibs perhaps caused her the most astonishment, for they wore strange and wonderful garments and went in at the waist in the most curious way; once one spoke to her, but she could

But all good things come to an end, and the day came when Basant Kor was pricked for the last time, and her father and she, leaving the quarters provided for them near the House of Healing, made their way down the hill, took again the wonderful train, and so went home. Her father was glad, for it was near the time of harvest, and necessary for him to go home, but Basant Kor was sorry. Being a true woman, she loved the world.

And she really thought nothing about the daily prick and the little glass bowl of yellow fluid; they were not connected in her mind with all the wonderful things she had seen.

But it is not every one who regards the yellow fluid with the same detachment as did Basant Kor; for instance, Kalan looked upon it with the eye of fear. When Kalan received the dragon's warning he would have preferred to disregard it and to take his chance of evil consequences, and it was only the positive commands of his employer which made him come to the House of Healing. Kalan is a sweeper, and he fears pain only more than he fears work or trouble of any kind; Kalan is base-born, wherein he differs from Basant Kor, who comes of good stock; his face is very black and his liver is very white, and what is but a prick

to the small girl is something very like a stab to the grown man. Curiously enough, he and Basant Kor are always summoned together, and the contrast of their demeanour is curious. The girl holds her father's hand and takes the syringe with a smile; the man, who is something of a swashbuckler while out on the tenniscourt, slinks in as though he is going to be flogged, he is seized and held by the messenger while his base hide is being perforated-for he who winces must be pricked again,—and then adjusting his raiment with trembling fingers he he sidles out with all alacrity. Kalan's attitude in the room is not edifying; he evidently hates Jordan and longs for the warm shallows of Abana and Pharpar.

Basant Kor and Kalan furnish a contrast in demeanour, but the soldier and the Sadhu who follow them are at the very poles to one another, not only in demeanour but in everything else; each perhaps is a type of the country that begot him-the Tommy long and thin, with pink cheeks, careless smile, and hurrying steps; the "devotee," the selfstyled holy man, with his most unholy face smeared with ash to a horrid whiteness, his surly expression, his half bare and wholly plump brown body, his tapping staff and very deliberate pace. Surely there was never such a contrast as is presented by these two who enter the room in succession, the cheerful worker who earns his own bread and the sullen

drone (who has perhaps a sting) who eats at the expense of others.

as

The soldier goes in smiling, clattering over the stone floor in his hobnailed high-lows; he is still smiling when he emerges, and he seems to regard the pricking-room part of a great medical joke. He joins his friends outside with a jest, and his place is taken by the holy man, who shuffles barefoot over the ground, his staff tapping on the stone floor; he casts back his soiled yellow garment as he enters, making his body still more nude than before, he receives the needle with holy stoicism, and he emerges with his head bowed on his hairy chest as he examines with interest the new little puncture that adorns his well-nourished stomach. Then he stalks off through the crowd with his air of sanctified sulkiness. It is difficult to love the Sadhu, or to feel that he is in any way a brother. Were he on his side to feel fraternal, one cannot help believing that his sentiments would be as those of Cain towards Abel.

The odd thing is that he is here at all. His sort are really the relics of an older time, and they are not usually associated with anything so clean, so scientific, and so up-to-date as the House of Healing. However, his presence is but a proof of one thing, namely, that East or West, wild or tame, washed or unwashed, holy Brahmin or very baseborn sweeper, we all have one common bond-the fear of the

dragon that has sent us to the House of Healing.

The East and the West, in the persons of the soldier and the Sadhu, have really proved the poet to be wrong, for the twain have met at that admirable institution. And what is more, they have met on terms of perfect equality, for, as was said before, the House of Healing is democratic. Its doors are open to all, and if an Honourable Member of Council desires its aid, he has only to arrive at 10.30 A.M., and he will receive with Basant Kor and Kalan, with the soldier, the Sadhu, and the rest of us, the magic cure which is effected by the tawny fluid.

It would have been interesting to ascertain the different circumstances in which all the applicants to the House of Healing had received their injuries : some had a leg bandaged, others an arm, others a hand, and one came with the middle part of his face swathed in a white cloth, above which his eyes peered out full of wonder and astonishment at what they beheld. This man was a wild-looking person, of whose raiment the white cloth on his face formed at least a half—or would have done so but for the blanket with which the House of Healing had provided him, and without which he would have been almost naked and quite unashamed, and probably very cold upon those breezy heights.

He was a man of the jungles, and he hailed from somewhere in Central India. One night

he was lying on his string bed outside his squalid mud hut, which lay upon the outskirts of his squalid mud village; it was parlous hot, and one might have thought that the heat emanated from the brilliant white moon which, riding high in a clear starry sky, drew inky shadows from every clearcut tree and bush. A deep hush and stillness lay upon the world; not the least whisper of a breeze, not a cry from the jackals, not a sound from any night bird, broke the dead silence of the hot weather night.

Presently the sleeper stirred uneasily, and awaking, rose to drink water from the earthenware "chattie" which stood close against the wall of the hut, and then, lying down again upon the bed, fell once more into uneasy slumber.

But fate and the dragon were upon him; a beast came trotting steadily from the deep shadows of the jungle, ran swiftly across a brilliant patch of moonlit ground, half-vanished in the murky shade cast by a bush, emerged again into the light, and made straight for the sleeper. Exactly what happened, a watcher, had there been one, could not have seen, for the man was lying in the dark shadow of his hut; but as the trotting beast passed away the sleeper rose with a cry, his hands pressed to his face, which was streaming with blood.

Anon fear came upon him; followed a journey to a certain near city, where he interviewed the civil surgeon at the civil

hospital. That officer applied the white bandage, and, sending an urgent telegram to the House of Healing, despatched the man of the jungles to the distant hills which he had never seen. Travelling in a continual state of surprise, which far eclipsed his fears, he showed his "chits" to important officials, such as ticketcollectors and guards, who passed him from train to train, putting him in and ordering him out of railway carriages, till, half-dazed with the sudden strangeness of his transition from village life to the busy bustling world, he at length reached the House of Healing -where he received what he stood most in need of in the shape of food and apparel, as well as of treatment.

There was a time when the House of Healing was not. One does not like to think of that time, when it did not exist in this land of the dragon; for he, whom we all fear, straddleth, like Apollyon, across every way. Even now the House perhaps touches but the fringe of his victims, but the fringe is a wide one, and it numbers very many hundreds in a single

year; and so great is the fame of the House and of its achievements that a second House has already sprung into existence, and a third is being created, in other parts of the land.

The House is maintained by those who wish it well, and its chiefest supporters are the great Government of the land and the lesser Governments of the provinces; district boards and municipalities lend their aid, and even railway systems, which are not usually connected with works of benevolence, transport free of cost those needy ones who demand the protection of the House.

Therefore it would seem that the Governments, greater and less, are still in some respects our Ma-Bap, our Father and our Mother.

As I was wending my way down the hilly road towards those hazy plains which had already swallowed up Basant Kor, I met a large party of patients who were being conveyed to the House of Healing. They were to be the sacrifice that the House demands, and they were to bear the ills of the people.

They were rabbits.