Peaceful, even to sleepiness, as the district appears, serene and immovable as the grand outline of its lofty white horizon, nevertheless this remote corner of the world has been the scene of a renowned trial--a trial which outrivalled many a notorious case in far-away Europe for exciting violent disputes, disturbances, and bloodshed--a trial which convulsed Kumaon, Kali Kumaon, and Gurwalh--whose effects, as it were the ripples from a stone cast into still waters, are experienced to the present hour in the shape of curses, collisions, and feuds. At the root of the trouble was, as usual, a woman. Durali (which signifies ‘darling’) was the grandchild and only surviving relative of Ahmed Dutt, a thriftless, shrivelled old hill-man, who smoked serrus (or Indian hemp) until he brought himself into a condition of imbecility, and suffered his worldly affairs to go to ruin; his hungry cattle and goats strayed over his neighbours’ lands, he cared not for crops, nor yet for wor-hos (boundary marks), he cared for nought but his huka, and his warm padded quilt, and abandoned the beautiful Durali, like the cattle, to her own devices. Now, according to Durali, these devices were supremely innocent: she spun wool, kept fowl, laboured somewhat fitfully in the fields, and tended the jungle of dahlias and marigolds which threatened to swallow up the little slab-roofed dwelling--that was all. So said Ahmed Dutt’s granddaughter, but public opinion held a different view; it lifted up its voice (in a shrill treble), and declared that Durali, being by general consent the most beautiful woman in Kumaon, had wrung the hearts of half the young--ay, and old--men in the province; that of a truth her suitors were legion; but that she turned her back on all of them--as she would have fools to believe--no!