'He thinks the Englishman killed his son. But look you, send Sunni
to me. HE saved mine. And I tell you,' said the Maharajah,
looking at Surji Rao fiercely with his sunken black eyes, 'not so
much of his blood shall be shed as would stain a moth's wing.'
But Maun Rao struck, and the people being told that the missionary
was dead, went home hoping that Krishna had nothing more against
them; they had done what they could.
As to Sunni he told his grief to Tooni because it comforted him,
and went into mourning for nine days in defiance of public opinion,
because he owed it to the memory of a countryman. He began, too,
to take long restless rambles beyond the gates, and once he asked
Tooni if she knew the road to Calcutta.
'It is fifty thousand miles,' said Tooni, who had an imagination;
'and the woods are full of tigers.'
CHAPTER VIII
The gates of Lalpore were shut, and all about her walls the yellow
sandy plains stretched silent and empty. There did not seem to be
so much as a pariah dog outside. Some pipal-trees looked over the
walls, and a couple of very antiquated cannon looked through them,
but nothing stirred. It made a splendid picture at broad noon, the
blue sky and the old red-stone city on her little hill, holding up
her minarets and the white marble bubbles of her temples, and then
the yellow sand drifting up; but one could not look at it long.
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