"Gladly," assented the tax-collector. "The story of this noble Rajput has brought to memory an incident in my own life many years ago, likewise serving to show that the gods prepare long years ahead for the working out of each particular man's destiny. Listen:
"As a youth I was a keeper of accounts in the service of a rich zemindar, whose estate lay in the Country of the Five Rivers. He was a usurer as well as a landowner, as had been his fathers before him for many generations. So in his castle was an accumulation of great stores of wealth—gold and silver and precious stones, cloth of gold, silks, brocades, and muslins, ivory and amber, camphor, spices, dye stuffs, and other merchandise of divers kinds."
The Afghan general stirred, and the scabbard of his sword rattled on the floor as, raising himself from his elbow that rested on a cushion, he sat up and assumed an attitude of keen attention.
"Where is this place?" he asked, a wolfish gleam in his eyes, and his lips curved to a smile that revealed, under the black, curled moustache, the white gleam of sharp-pointed teeth.
The story-teller also smiled, knowingly, and raised a deprecatory hand.
"Nay, friend, this zemindar, my first master, was not fated to be relieved of his treasure, as my story will tell, even though a skilful plot had been laid for his spoliation. Which is the very point of my tale, although I may seem to come to it by a roundabout way of telling."
The Afghan sank back on his cushion, but his gaze remained riveted on his narrator's face.
"One day I was seated in my home, casting up my books of account, for I had only that morning completed the taking of taxes from the crops of the rayats, the tenants of my lord. All of a sudden a white-robed figure entered the doorway and threw himself prostrate before me. When at last the face was raised I recognized the dhobi of the village that nestled under the hill on which was perched the castle of the zemindar.
"'O thou washer of clothes,' I asked, 'what is thy plaint?'