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Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936

"From Mine Own People"

--
My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears,
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!
As the song stopped, Trejago stepped up under the grating and whispered:--"I
am here."
Bisesa was good to look upon.
That night was the beginning of many strange things, and of a double life so
wild that Trejago today sometimes wonders if it were not all a dream. Bisesa
or her old handmaiden who had thrown the object-letter had detached the heavy
grating from the brick-work of the wall; so that the window slid inside,
leaving only a square of raw masonry, into which an active man might climb.
In the day-time, Trejago drove through his routine of office-work, or put on
his calling-clothes and called on the ladies of the Station; wondering how
long they would know him if they knew of poor little Bisesa. At night, when
all the City was still, came the walk under the evil-smelling boorka, the
patrol through Jitha Megji's bustee, the quick turn into Amir Nath's Gully
between the sleeping cattle and the dead walls, and then, last of all, Bisesa,
and the deep, even breathing of the old woman who slept outside the door of
the bare little room that Durga Charan allotted to his sister's daughter. Who
or what Durga Charan was, Trejago never inquired; and why in the world he was
not discovered and knifed never occurred to him till his madness was over, and
Bisesa .


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