The English reader will hardly understand the utter disgust with which the high-caste Hindu looks down on the mihtar. Forced to make use of his services—for the mihtar is the scavenger of the house—he is deemed unclean like the vulture. Food touched by the mihtar would be thrown away; some Brahmins would rather die than eat it. Kripá Dé had not yet lost all the prejudices of his caste; like some native Christians even of some standing in the Church, he shrank with repulsion from any contact with one of the mihtar class. Footnote 8: It was believed that a convert who _disappeared_ had been quietly starved to death in his home. “But is it Christ-like to despise any human being whom God has made?” reflected Kripá Dé when left alone. “Did not the Sahib tell me that Peter was forbidden to call any one common or unclean? Is it not true that the Lord died for mihtars as well as for Brahmins? It cannot really pollute me to take water from a mitráni when I am dying of thirst. I will drink it, and thank God for the draught.” It seemed to poor Kripá Dé that the longed-for water never would come, he had to wait so long, whilst eating and drinking were going on above; and now and then women and girls looked down on the prisoner, and laughingly asked him if he were ready for food. The sun had by this time set, and one faint little star after another appeared in the sky. Then a low-caste woman, as Chand Kor had threatened, holding in one dirty hand a chapattie (unleavened cake), and in the other an earthen vessel, came down the outer steps, and without speaking put down what she had brought, then instantly quitted the spot. The mitráni was never suffered to sleep in the town, far less in the fort; but Thákar Dás having shut up the only door of communication with the lower stair, the sweeper had been thus accidentally detained a kind of prisoner in a place where she would not be allowed to cook her food, far less to eat it. “I could not touch that chapattie—I am too miserable to be hungry,” thought Kripá Dé; “but, oh, the water! the water!” The thirsty captive eagerly caught up the earthen vessel, and was about to drain it, when he caught sight of a face, pale with terror, the eyes dilated with fear, on the terrace above him, and heard a voice, the voice of Premi, exclaiming in a loud warning tone, “Do not drink! the water is poisoned!”