"Fool!" cavilled Kunder, all unwitting of the revolver in Hirabul's belt, "thou art not safe with things that kill, so 'tis well thou hast none. See! he beckons to us. Let us go to him. The rain hath washed evil from us all!"
They helped the Colonel, who could scarce believe his senses, to hobble across, while Viljeon stood guarding the door with a still, stern look on his face.
"You will find the Child lying in the manger," he said; "bring your offerings--I have brought mine."
But only three wise men went down to cantonments that Christmas morning, bringing the child with them; for Kunder, wiser perhaps, or less wise, felt that his new virtue was better away from the proximity of the jewels he had left tied up ready in a bundle; so, seizing his opportunity, he slipped like a water-snake into the tangle of floods and was seen no more.
"And after all," said Boy's mother, softly, "Christmas _did_ take care of itself!"
"Yes!" answered the Colonel, quietly. "We all brought our offerings--gold and frankincense and myrrh."
She was only a cow, but she was all things, wife and child, earth and heaven, to old Gopâl, the Brahmin who owned her.
And, apart from his estimation, she had value. Connoisseurs in the village, as they looked over the low mud wall which separated the slip of open courtyard, ten feet by six, where there was just room for a crazy four-legged string bed between Surâbhi's manger and the door, would nod and say she must have been a good cow when young; but when that was only God knew!
Whereupon Gopâl would raise his shaven head with its faint frosting of silver hair from Surâbhi's silver flank, as he squatted holding a brass _lotah_ in one hand, milking with the other, and smile scornfully.
"Old or young, she is the best milker in the village, and the best looking one, and the best bred," he would say. "And wherefore not? Is she not Surâbhi the Great Milk-Mother, whom even the gods worship? Since without her where would the little godlings be?" And then he would pop down the _lotah_ and cease milking for a moment, so that both hands might be free for a reverential _salaam_ to the old cow who, at the cessation, would turn her mild white face--the real Brahmini zebu face with its wide dewy black nostril, wide dewy black eyes, and long lopping ears--to see what had come to old Gopi; and as often as not, would give his round frosted black poll a lick round with her black frosted tongue, by way of encouragement to go on, as if he had been a calf!
