There was no lack of confidence now between these two, and if he asked many questions, she was quite ready to answer them faithfully, according to her lights. In this one, however, she failed to give a just impression, for the simple reason that she herself had no conception of the extent of the usurer's malice. In fact, his impotent rage on discovering that Philip's return had apparently made no difference to the Rabys would have been incredible to an educated Englishwoman, had she been aware of it, which she was not. The man, coming down to Saudaghur expectant of consternation, had found nothing but a stir of fresh enterprise which his keen business eye told him meant money. He wandered about from village to village, noting the golden seed being sown by his adversary, until the thought of the harvest in which he would have no share positively worried him into spleen and ague. And as he lay among the simple village folk a fresh idea for revenge came to console him. It is never hard to change the stolid opposition of the Indian peasant into stolid obstruction. No overt injustice is required; nothing but a disregard of custom. And so Shunker, taking advantage of the short period during which he had been associated in partnership with John Raby, began cautiously to call in debts in the name of the firm. Now in an Indian village a debt to the ancestral usurer is a debt; that is to say no nighty ephemeral liability which may crop up at any time claiming payment, but a good, solid inheritance going back sometimes a generation or two; a patent almost of solvency, a claim certainly for consideration at the hands of your banker; since a bumper crop might any day give you the upper-hand, or a bad one make it still more unwise for the creditor to present his bill. Thus, when Shunker disregarded time-worn prejudices to the extent of asking one Peru, an old-established customer, to make a settlement, the latter looked as if the foundations of the round world had been moved. "Pay," he said slowly, his broad nostrils inflated like those of a horse shying at novelty, "I am always paying, _buniak-ji_, year by year, one harvest or another. God knows how much, but 'tis the old way, and old ways are good." "They are good," sighed the usurer, piously. "I like them myself, Peru; but new masters have new ways." "New masters do not make new land," retorted the peasant shrewdly enough. "That remains the same. It must be sown; yet when I ask the seed-grain, as my fathers have done, the answer is '_Pay!_' Pay! of course I will pay when the crops ripen. Does not harvest mean payment to the peasant?" "Your crops won't ripen long on those fields, I'm afraid, my poor Peru! The _sahib_ wants land, here, everywhere, for this new factory of his. The men who will not pay will see what befalls. A little will go this year, a little more next. If I were alone 'twould be a different matter, for I was ever faithful to my friends."