The Outcaste. F. E. Penny

by some strange unknown danger, he continued: "But this is not all. After much thought and deliberation I have also adopted the religion of England."

      A dead silence greeted this announcement. Its full meaning did not immediately strike the listeners. Bopaul glanced from one to the other. The expression on the face of his own father held his attention. It was a curious mixture of astonishment, dismay, and incredulity. The jaw dropped; the eyes opened to their widest extent, and the brows were like two rainbows, so arched had they become. Bopaul had that insane desire to laugh which seizes men and women at a crisis fraught with possible disaster; he turned his back on the company to hide his trembling lips. An inarticulate sound made him look round. It came from his own parent, who struggled in vain to frame a question.

      Bopaul divined its import. Was he, too, a renegade, a 'vert? He controlled his lips and strangled his ill-timed mirth. A sign in the negative set his father's mind at rest on that point, and enabled the older man to give his undivided attention to what was passing between Pantulu and his son.