"It is only a chance that you may be so," said Mohun Lall; "and my request is, that you keep a look out for him during your journey, and should you meet him, that you will arrest him instantly, and send him to me under an escort of your people, to whom I promise a handsome reward for their delay and trouble. One thing I must tell you, that on many occasions he has assumed the name of Kumal Khan,--the name I believe of a relative of his who adopted him, and perhaps he may have taken this name in travelling." "I will not forget it," said I, "and you may depend upon my doing my utmost to secure him, should I fall in with him; and could you give me a paper relating his delinquencies, under your own seal, to serve me as a kind of authority for arresting him?" "Certainly," said Mohun Lall; "your thought is a good one: I will forthwith write one myself." So saying he drew up the document, and handed it to me. "I am an indifferent scholar," said I, "but I dare say I can make it out;" and taking the paper I read what he had written, which was in substance what he had told me. "And now I pray you to give me my dismissal, for I have business among my people, and the day is nigh closed." "I will not detain you," said Mohun Lall; "and if there is anything you or your people want which my poor village can afford, you have only to send for it. I shall write too to my friend to tell him of the arrangement I have made, and the confidence I have in you." "I thank you for your kindness," said I, "and should I want anything more I will not scruple to send for it. Salam, Sahib!" "Salam!" he returned; "I wish you a safe journey and a successful one." "Thanks again to you, good Aumil, for your last words," said I to myself as I went away: "Inshalla! it will be as successful as it has hitherto been. Well indeed Mahomed Ali has met his deserts; and it is better perhaps for him that he lies cold and dead as he is, than that he should have lived to be haunted by an evil conscience, and to fall into the hands of those he has cheated and deceived, who would have tortured him to death, if they had not immured him in a miserable prison to pine out the remainder of his days. "Verily a good deal has been done, and my old father will laugh heartily when he hears how I have behaved, and how I have baffled suspicion by the commission I have brought with me, of which these papers are good proof. I have got his true name too, and it is hard if with this clue I do not get hold of the money for the bills of exchange which my sagacious parent would have destroyed. Shabash! Ameer Ali, do thou go on in this way, and whose dog is he who shall compete with thee, either in cunning or in daring!"