"Yea, yea, thou knowest! The charm, mother Suttu, the charm! I swear to be thy friend!"
The fakeerni looked contemptuously at her writhing lover. "Swear by thy son's head, fool! naught else will satisfy me!"
When the only oath a native will not break had been pronounced, Suttu stood up with a laugh.
"The charm is worked, Mir Sahib. Thou wilt not die of that bite." Then she checked herself, and with the same odd look on her face assumed a graver tone. "Lo, I will work the charm. As for thee--go home, swift as thou canst. Call the barber, let him bleed thee to faintness. Take kâla dâna[[11]] and sulphur to the full. Eat naught for two days, live righteous, and look not on the bite for a month. Then give a hundred rupees to the saint's shrine."
"'Tis all right, master," whispered one of the men. "There is no fear of the bargain when payment follows cure. Lo, thou art better already, and by this thou shouldst have been worse, had not the charm worked. Hurry, hurry, lest harm come from disobedience!"
When they were quite out of sight and hearing, Suttu took the lamp, went to the door of the hut and chirruped. From a hole in the wall a pair of bright eyes looked out.
"The Brahmans say true," she chuckled, "and Ram befriends those who befriend his favourite. Shâhbâsh would have had me tear the squirrel's nest down, but I love the chattering things."
She had little time, however, to spare for amusement at her own trick. The grave had to be completed, the treasure brought home by dawn. Her arms ached worse than ever from their short rest, and there was a grey glimmer in the east, before she judged that her work would pass muster. Then she removed all Shâhbâsh's belongings to the side of the grave, leaving him still in a drunken sleep upon the bare ground.
Finally, lifting the brass pot, which was carefully luted over with hard clay, she carried it to the hut, shut the door, and by the growing light through the chinks began to open up her treasure.
The pot was full of farthings--nothing but farthings. She sat and looked at them hopelessly. What did it mean? Why should any one take the trouble to bury farthings? The puzzle was beyond her, and when a gleam of real sun warned her that time was passing, she hid the pot under a pile of brushwood, and stepped out with a feeling of relief into the open air. The world was ablaze with the clear, uncompromising light of an Indian morning. The parrots were wheeling round the blue dome, and a squirrel sat on the top of the thatch chirping over a date stolen from the disputed crop.