“This is a devil’s place you have come to, Sahib. No grass for the horses, and the people don’t understand anything, and their dirty pice are no good in Nasirabad. Look here!” And Ram Baksh wrathfully exhibited a handful of lumps of copper. The nuisance of taking a native out of his own beat is that he forthwith regards you not only as the author of his being, but of all his misfortunes as well. He is as hampering as a frightened child and as irritating as a man. “_Padre Martum Sahib_ never came here,” said Ram Baksh, with the air of one who had been led against his will into bad company. A story about a rat that found a piece of turmeric and set up a bunnia’s shop had sent the one-eyed munshi away, but a company of lesser munshis, runners and the like, were in attendance, and they said that money might be changed at the Treasury, which was in the Palace. It was quite impossible to change it anywhere else--there was no _hookum_. From the Sukh Mahal to the Palace the road ran through the heart of the city, and by reason of the continual shouting of the munshis, not more than ten thousand of the fifty thousand people of Boondi knew for what purpose the Sahib was journeying through their midst. Cataract was the most prevalent affliction, cataract in its worst forms, and it was, therefore, necessary that men should come very close to look at the stranger. They were in no sense rude, but they stared devoutly. “He has not come for _shikar_, and he will not take petitions. He has come to see the place, and God knows what he is.” The description was quite correct, as far as it went; but, somehow or another, when shouted out at four cross-ways in the midst of a very pleasant little gathering it did not seem to add to dignity or command respect.