“What’s the matter with your big friend that he was so terribly in earnest?” asked Pagett, when he had left.
“Nothing much. He wants the blood of the people in the next village, who have had smallpox and cattle plague pretty badly, and by the help of a wizard, a currier, and several pigs have passed it on to his own village. ‘Wants to know if they can’t be run in for this awful crime. It seems they made a dreadful charivari at the village boundary, threw a quantity of spell-bearing objects over the border, a buffalo’s skull and other things; then branded a chamur—what you would call a currier—on his hinder parts and drove him and a number of pigs over into Jelbo’s village. Jelbo says he can bring evidence to prove that the wizard directing these proceedings, who is a Sansi, has been guilty of theft, arson, cattle-killing, perjury and murder, but would prefer to have him punished for bewitching them and inflicting small-pox.”
“And how on earth did you answer such a lunatic?”
“Lunatic I the old fellow is as sane as you or I; and he has some ground of complaint against those Sansis. I asked if he would like a native superintendent of police with some men to make inquiries, but he objected on the grounds the police were rather worse than smallpox and criminal tribes put together.”
“Criminal tribes—er—I don’t quite understand,” said Paget.
“We have in India many tribes of people who in the slack anti-British days became robbers, in various kind, and preyed on the people. They are being restrained and reclaimed little by little, and in time will become useful citizens, but they still cherish hereditary traditions of crime, and are a difficult lot to deal with. By the way what; about the political rights of these folk under your schemes? The country people call them vermin, but I sup-pose they would be electors with the rest.”
“Nonsense—special provision would be made for them in a well-considered electoral scheme, and they would doubtless be treated with fitting severity,” said Pagett, with a magisterial air.
“Severity, yes—but whether it would be fitting is doubtful. Even those poor devils have rights, and, after all, they only practice what they have been taught.”
“But criminals, Orde!”
“Yes, criminals with codes and rituals of crime, gods and godlings of crime, and a hundred songs and sayings in praise of it. Puzzling, isn’t it?”