"Well, it turned out, of course, to be a case of wanton cruelty. It always is. For hopeless inability to be considerate commend me to a native jack-in-office. There were fifty other fowls in the neighbouring village, but nothing would serve the underling whose duty it was to collect supplies, but that this wretched child's pet should serve for the _Huzoor's_ dinner. The old man's joy when it was released was purely pitiable. He would have reared another for his grandson, he asserted garrulously; ay! even to the hatching of an egg from the very beginning, with toil by day and night. But only the Great God knew if the child's heart would have gone out to the chick as it had to the cock, for the heart was capricious. It was not to be counted upon, since the Great God made some men, yea! even some _Huzoors_, different from others. He looked from Graham to me as he spoke, and somehow I felt small. So as Graham was evidently master of the situation, I slunk back to my work.
"There were sounds of woe thereinafter from the cook-room tent, and Graham himself supervised the dinner that night, in order, he explained somewhat apologetically, that I might not suffer from his conceptions of duty.
"It was two days after this, and we had shifted camp fifteen miles, when, having occasion to go into Graham's tent after dark, I stumbled over some one sitting among the corner tent-pegs. It was the grandpapa of the white cock, and he explained to me in his lingo--for he was one of the jungle people--that he had come in exchange for that precious bird. One life or another mattered little. Grim-_sahib_ had spared the child's heart's joy, which was now living with him in the maternal mansion. There being, therefore, no necessity for the occupation of hatching eggs, he, Bunder--yea! of a surety, it was the same name as that of the monkey people--had come to do service to the _Huzoors_ instead of the white cock.
"That was absolutely all I could get out of him. So for days and weeks he followed us. He was useful in his way, especially to Graham, who had a passion not only for sport, but for all sorts of odd knowledge."
I remember interrupting here that that was half the pleasure of new surroundings, to which my fellow-traveller replied drily that he had expected I would say so, as I really reminded him very much of Graham.
