"We be poor men, coach-wan ji," said the little driver, deprecatingly, "and thy honorable kinswoman is deserving, doubtless, of thy exalted consideration."
"She is deserving of the consideration due to a woman who was greatly wronged by the villain who was slain, and by the madman, his slayer. She was lured, brothers, into the sahib's tent by the sweeper's wife, Bhamaraya,—who is a lame she-wolf!—for the purpose of pleading for her man, Bijoo, who was accused of theft; and then she was robbed of her senses by the sahib's strong waters, and hath done no wrong; let no man in the Terai gainsay it!"
Ram Deen paused awhile to "drink tobacco," but nobody made comment on a matter in which he was so greatly interested.
"Bijoo's life is forfeit," he resumed; "and the rope that shall hang him is already made, for the sircar never fails to find whom it seeks. But Bijoo, alive or dead, is worth a thousand rupees to the man who shall take him. 'Twere pity that the money should go to some jackal of a man, for it belongs, of a right, to Chandni, whom he hath wrongfully mutilated; but he is a man, and will, doubtless, make the only reparation in his power, and yield himself up, for her sake, to some one who will bestow the blood money upon her."
The shadow rose from the tall grass and speedily disappeared in the darkness. Soon after, those who sat round the fire heard the dreadful lamenting of a strong man who walks between Remorse and Despair.
"Brothers," said Ram Deen, as he rose to go to his hut, "alive or dead, Bijoo will be here to-morrow night."
At the fire, next evening, no one spoke; they were waiting for the fulfilment of Ram Deen's prediction, and the bugle-call of the fateful man had just been heard in the direction of the Bore bridge.
"Bijoo hath come, Thanadar ji," said Ram Deen, as he dismounted from the mail-cart.
He then proceeded, with the help of his hostler, to lift a heavy burden covered with a cloth from the back seat of the mail-cart. The limp hands trailing on the ground as they carried it showed their burden to be a corpse. They laid it in the firelight; and Ram Deen, drawing the covering from its face, disclosed the dreadful features of a man who had been hanged; part of the rope that had strangled him still encircled his throat.