The editor of the _Word of Truth_ sat in his office correcting a proof. The proof looked insurmountably difficult of correction, because it was printed in Bengali; but Tarachand Mookerjee’s eye ran over it nimbly, and was accompanied by a smile, ever expanding and contracting, of pleased, almost childish appreciation. The day was hot, unusually so for February; and as the European editors up-town worked in their shirt-sleeves, so Tarachand Mookerjee worked in his _dhoty_, which left him bare from his waist up—bare and brown and polished, like a figure carved in mahogany, for his ribs were very visible. He wore nothing else, except patent leather shoes and a pair of white cotton stockings, originally designed for a more muscular limb, if for a weaker sex. These draperies were confined below the knee by pieces of the red tape with which a considerate Government tied up the reports and resolutions it sent the editor of the _Word of Truth_ for review. Above Tarachand’s three-cornered face his crisp black hair stood in clumps of oily and admired disorder; he had early acquired the literary habit of running his fingers through it. He had gentle, velvety eyes, and delicate features, and a straggling beard. He had lost two front teeth, and his attenuated throat was well sunk between his narrow shoulders. This gave him the look of a poor nervous creature; and, indeed, there was not a black-and-white terrier in Calcutta that could not have frightened him horribly. Yet he was not in the least afraid of a watch-dog belonging to Government—an official translator who weekly rendered up a confidential report of the emanations of the _Word of Truth_ in English—because he knew that this animal’s teeth were drawn by the good friends of Indian progress in the English Parliament.