Affairs were not going quite as smoothly as hitherto with Zālim Sing. The prices had risen in everything, save in his own particular commodity, linseed. There was the prospect of an unusually hot, scarce season, and his pony was sick. He vented all his ill humour on the two oppressed children “within his gates”--a most excellent, comprehensive, and Eastern expression--meaning within the mud or stone enclosure, where the master is supreme, where he can shut out all the world save his household, his oxen, and servants--shut it out by merely closing to the street an iron-knobbed wooden door. Within Zālim’s gates his nephew became a slave; he was made to tend the furnace in the wall, at the other side of which boiled an enormous receptacle of linseed oil. This duty was murderous in the glaring, breathless month of April; it was worse than a fireman’s work in June in the Red Sea--and the fireman is relieved at his post; no one ever relieved Girunda--the name signified “thick bread;” but of any bread his share was small--and then he fell sick. For two days he lay in his shed, burning with fever, his uncle beat him repeatedly with a thick stick for his laziness--beat him savagely too--but the boy made no moan, only his little sister screamed, and the screams attracted the neighbours. “He is a lazy, idle, good-for-nothing pig!” explained the uncle to an eager inquirer; “he will not work aught save his teeth. And she is half-witted.” “True,” said the listener; “and it is only a charitable man like thyself, O Zālim Sing, who would keep the beggar’s brats, and with a dearth in the land, too; and wheat rising every week.” Then she went back to her spinning of coarse country cloth; Girunda lay and buried his head in his hands, and Gyannia sobbed in a corner; but his tormentor went into the house, to confer with his wife. “If the boy would not work, neither should he eat. Was _he_ himself to mind the furnace?” he demanded angrily. “The boy is sickening,” said the woman. “I have seen it coming--it is something bad--maybe the cholera, maybe the smallpox. It is surely some heavy sickness.” “And he may die?” “Yea, having given it to us and ours. What shall we do?” “Behold, to-night, when the village is quiet, I will take the two of them, and set them on the high-road. Thou canst bake some chupattis, and I will give them four annas, and tell them to begone, to return here no more, for if they do, of a surety I will kill them.” “They will believe thee!” said his wife with a laugh. “Yea. Why should they not beg, as others do? And soon the boy can work, and earn an anna a day.” “Yea, he will soon be able to work,” agreed this treacherous woman. The children were surprised to be left in peace till sunset, and then to receive some fried beans and a chupatti--most sumptuous fare for them! But when it was dark, save for a dying moon, Zālim Sing entered their hut, staff in hand, and awoke them roughly.