"One day it befell that I had gone on a hunting trip with a party of my friends. In the early dawn we had descended from the fort on the hill top which is my home and the rallying-place for my clan--a small clan, numbering but a few thousands, but nobly born as any tribe in Rajputana, brave and of honour unsullied, men who have never yet given a daughter to the harem of a Moslem."
The features of the Rajput flashed with pride. His brother-at-arms, the Afghan, met the defiant look, and said, with a quiet smile:
"There are many Rajput women wed to Moslem lords."
"Yes, but not Rajput women of Jhalnagor. They would have died first--many of them did so prefer to die when the Moslem host first swept over our land. In the hour of defeat, against overwhelming numbers, within the citadel of Jhalnagor the women of my race, refusing to accept dishonour, bared their bosoms to the spears of those they loved, husbands, brothers, and fathers, and so they died."
With hands outstretched and eyes upraised in rapt pride and reverence for the deeds of his ancestors, again the Rajput fell into momentary silence.
"The story of the little maid." It was the voice of the physician recalling the narrator to his task.
"Yes, the story of the little maid," resumed the Rajput. "As I have said, we had gone to the hunt one morning--a party of twelve, riding on three elephants. For we were in pursuit of a tiger, a destroyer of men, which the villagers had marked down in a patch of jungle by the river side. Of the hunt I need say nothing; we killed the tiger, and, with the huge, striped body slung across the neck of my elephant, we were returning home. It was toward evening, for we had rested in the forest during the heat of the day.
"We were just entering the narrow gorge that leads to the fort on the hill, when, right on the pathway before me, I saw the prone figure of a child. Almost my elephant's feet were upon it before the sage brute himself stopped and trumpeted a warning to us in the howdah, for, the tiger's body occupying the place where the mahout was wont to ride, the latter was walking, and he, too, had not noticed the tiny bundle of bright yellow clothing lying on the road.
"Glancing down, I beheld a little girl with her forehead touching the dust. At my calling she arose, and spread her hands across her breast.