"Tell them, Gunga Ram, that I had need of them; but, nevertheless, for the kindness the men of Nyagong did to little Biroo last year, send them, on his behalf, two rupees' worth of gur and parched gram;" and Ram Deen laid the money in the sweetmeat vender's palm.
To the impromptu feast round the fire that evening Ram Deen contributed also a chatty of palm-toddy that Goor Dutt had brought for him from Moradabad. By the time the circling hookah had crowned the feast beards were wagging freely round the fire; and even Tulsi Ram, the village pundit, most modest and unassuming of men, was moved to unusual speech. Once more Ram Deen had told the story of the avenging of Nandha; and the Thanadar, whose utterances were always sententious, owing to the responsibility and dignity of his office, said, "Verily, the young and not the old Faringi is the true subduer of Hindoostan."
"Thou sayest it, Thanadar ji," assented Tulsi Ram. "I knew such a young sahib as he who slew the lame tiger of Huldwani when I worked as munshi at Hurdwar for certain Faringis who had business there. He I speak of feared not even the Gods."
When all eyes were turned upon the pundit, and he found himself in the trying position of one who was expected to give proof of his opinion, his natural modesty overcame him and he was suddenly silent. It was not till he had swallowed a generous draught of the toddy that his courage revived to the point of telling the following narrative, for which his audience waited patiently:
"Brothers," he began, "some three years after the great Mutiny there came to Hurdwar two Faringis, by name Scott Sahib and Wilson Sahib, of whom the latter was a great shikari, as all Hindoostan is aware, and who was further known amongst the Faringis as 'Pahari Wilson.'
"They hired me to cut down sâl timber on the upper waters of the Gunga and float it down to Hurdwar, where they established a post, over which they set in charge a young Faringi named Clements Sahib, whose munshi I was, and whose duty it was to stamp the timber with the seal of his employers and make it into rafts that were then floated on to Allahabad.
"Clements Sahib had been found by Pahari Wilson Sahib in one of the villages of the Rajah of Tiri, whither he had fled from Cawnpore, where his father and mother had been killed by the people of the plains during the season of the Mutiny.
"He was a man grown when he came to Hurdwar, speaking Nagari and Padhani, and knowing well the ways of our people. And wherever he went men's eyes followed him, for he walked amongst them with the air of a master. His face was scarred with small-pox; his nose was curved like a hawk's, and his nostrils were terrible to behold when he was angered, which was often, for he lacked patience with men of our race, because of the slaying, and worse, of his mother, which he had witnessed; and his words did not often go before his blows, which were weighty by reason of his great strength. He limped, for that his right leg had been broken by a bear whilst he lived amongst the hill men.
"But, great and terrible as he was on land, the wonder of him when he swam in the Gunga, as he did daily, man never saw before.
"He feared nothing, brothers,—neither man nor beast, nor even Gannesha, upon whom he put an affront one day, when he beat his priests in the temple and in the presence of the God.