"Pay before harvest! What are these fool's words? Of course I will pay in due time; hath not great Râm sent me rain to wash out the old writing?"
"But what of the new one, baba-ji?--the cash lent on permission to foreclose the mortgages?"
"If the harvest failed--if it failed," protested Jaimul quickly. "And I knew it could not fail. The stars said so, and great Râm would not have it so."
"That is old-world talk!" sneered Anunt. "We do not put that sort of thing in the bond. You sealed it, and I must sue."
"What good to sue ere harvest? What money have I? But I will pay good grain when it comes, and the paper can grow as before."
Anunt Râm sniggered.
"What good, O baba-ji? Why, the land will be mine, and I can take, not what you give me, but what I choose. For the labourer his hire, and the rest for me."
"Thou art mad!" cried Jaimul, but he went back to his fields with a great fear at his heart--a fear which sent him again to the usurer's ere many days were over.
"Here are my house's jewels," he said briefly, "and the mare thou hast coveted these two years. Take them, and write off my debt till harvest."
Anunt Râm smiled again.