"But we agreed to make a strike at the College and to drop a useless Browning pistol where it would be found, and in various other ways to be unrestful. And one of us, whom the Principal would not certify to sit for his F.E. and was very stony hard-up, joined the Emissary and went away with him to be a Servant and perhaps an Instrument later on (if he could not get a girl with a good dowry or a service of thirty rupees a mensem), he was so hungry and having nothing for belly. "Yes, as Mr. Ganeshram Joshibhai used to say, that is what the British Government does for you--educates you to be passed B.A. and educated gent., and then grudges to give you thirty rupees a mensem and expects you to go searching for employment and food to put in belly! Can B.A. work with hands like _maistri_? "Then there came the best of all my friends, a science-knowing gentleman who gave all his great talents to bomb. And the cream of all the milky joke was that he had learnt all his science free, from Government, at school and college, and he not only used his knowledge to be first-class superior anarchist but he got chemicals from Government own laboratory. "His brother was in Government Engineering College and between them they did much--for one could make the bomb and the other could fill it. "But they are both to be hanged at the same time that I am, and I do not grudge that I am to be innocently hanged for their plot and the blowing up of the _bhangi_ by mistake for the Collector, for I have long aspired to be holy martyr in Freedom's sacred cause and have photo in newspapers and be talked about. "Besides, as I have said, I am not being done brown, as I murdered Mr. Spensonly, the Engineer. "How I hated him! "Why should he be big and strong while I am skinny and feeble--owing to night-and-day burning midnight candle at both ends and unable to make them meet? "Besides did he not bring unmerited dishonour on grey hairs of poor old progenitor by finding him out in bribe-taking? Did he not bring my honoured father's aforesaying grey hairs in sorrow to reduced pension? "Did he not upbraid and rebuke, nay, reproach me when I made grievous little errors and backslippers? "A thousand times Yea. "But I should never have murdered him had I not caught the Plague, so out of evil cometh good once more. "The Plague came to Gungapur in its millions and we knew not what to do but stood like drowning man splitting at a straw. "Superstitious Natives said it was the revenge of Goddess Kali for not sacrificing, and superstitious Europeans said it was a microbe created by their God to punish unhygienic way of living. "Knowing there are no gods of any sort I am in a position to state that it was just written on our foreheads.