"Now, Brian," said his aunt, "you have scarcely opened your lips—do amuse us! What are you looking so glum about? If you are thinking of the usurers, I will allow you to take a short canter on your hobby."
"It's nothing to joke about, Aunt Liz," rejoined Salwey, suddenly rousing himself. "You know old Hirzat Sing—they have sold him up at last!"
"Oh, no! Poor old fellow—he has been in difficulties for years!"
"Yes," assented her husband; "he borrowed money for his son's wedding, and it was his ruin. His son is dead, and he has been getting deeper and deeper into debt every year. A slave to the soil and the money-lender—working from dawn to dark to keep himself and his wife alive—and feed the daughter of the horse-leech."
"One would suppose he could throw off the yoke, and the strangling hundred per cent., and go elsewhere," said Mrs. Lepell.
"He is too old," replied Salwey, "and he would say, 'Kahn jaga?'—whither shall I go? He clings to his ancestral acres with the extraordinary love of home, which is a passion in a Hindoo. There is a saying, 'The rent is heavy, the debts are many, but still he loves his field.' Now that Hirzat Sing is getting infirm and stiff, and his wife is blind, he is of no further use to the soucar, who has thrust him from his home, after making hundreds, aye, thousands of rupees out of him. The original debt was but two hundred and fifty; now he will end his days as a bazaar mendicant, after slaving for sixty years."
"This is very bad, Brian; can you do nothing?"
"I'm afraid not, Aunt Liz; poor old Hirzat Sing is in the grip of Saloo—a notable money-lender known only to us by name; I believe he lives in Poona, but his meshes are all over the district, and he does his business secretly; he is the most fierce and rapacious of the whole lot. Once or twice I've thought I had him. I believe from what I hear that the wretch has no less than five hundred victims on his books—in his web, I should say."
"Poor old Hirzat Sing!" said Mrs. Lepell. "I shall look him up to-morrow. We could get him some job about the place, eh, Tom?"
"Yes, my dear; but already we are fairly well supplied with your protégés."