"
I spun round quickly and faced the speaker.
Gunga Dass, (I have, of course, no hesitation in mentioning the man's real
name) I had known four years before as a Deccanee Brahmin loaned by the Punjab
Government to one of the Khalsia States. He was in charge of a branch
telegraph-office there, and when I had last met him was a jovial, full-
stomached, portly Government servant with a marvelous capacity for making had
puns in English--a peculiarity which made me remember him long after I had
forgotten his services to me in his official capacity. It is seldom that a
Hindu makes English puns.
Now, however, the man was changed beyond all recognition. Caste-mark, stomach,
slate-colored continuations, and unctuous speech were all gone. I looked at a
withered skeleton, turban-less and almost naked, with long matted hair and
deep-set codfish-eyes.
But for a crescent-shaped scar on the left cheek--the result of an accident
for which I was responsible I should never have known him. But it was
indubitably Gunga Dass, and--for this I was thankful--an English-speaking
native who might at least tell me the meaning of all that I had gone through
that day.
The crowd retreated to some distance as I turned toward the miserable figure,
and ordered him to show me some method of escaping from the crate.
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