“Nay,” said the butler behind his chair hastily. “What should I know? Nothing at all does the Servant of the Presence know.”
“Accha [good],” said Adam, and sucked on. “Only it is known.”
“Speak, then,” said Strickland to him. “What dost thou know? Remember my groom was beaten insensible.”
“That was in the bad-water shop where I played when we came up here. The boy who would not sell me the parrot for six annas told me that a one-eyed man had come there and drunk the bad waters and gone mad. He broke bedsteads. They hit him with a bamboo till he was senseless, and fearing he was dead, they nursed him on milk—like a little baba. When I was playing first with the cow’s child, I asked Beshakl if he were that man, and he said no. But I knew, because many woodcutters in Dalhousie asked him whether his head were whole now.”
“But why,” I interrupted, “did Beshakl tell lies?”
“Oh! He is a low-caste man, and desired to get consideration. Now he is a witness in a great law-case, and men will go to the jail on his account. It was to give trouble and obtain notice that he did it.”
“Was it all lies?” said Strickland.
“Ask him,” said Adam, through the mango-pulp.
Strickland passed through the door. There was a howl of despair in the servants’ quarters up the hill, and he returned with the one-eyed groom.
“Now,” said Strickland, “it is known. Declare!”