When these four had gone away laughing, my brother Ram Dass came out
of the crops and mourned over me as one dead. But I opened my eyes, and
prayed him to get me water. When I had drunk, he carried me on his
back, and by byways brought me into the town of Isser Jang. My heart was
turned to Ram Dass, my brother, in that hour, because of his kindness,
and I lost my enmity.
But a snake is a snake till it is dead; and a liar is a liar till the
Judgment of the Gods takes hold of his heel. I was wrong in that I
trusted my brother--the son of my mother.
When we had come to his house and I was a little restored, I told him my
tale, and he said: 'Without doubt it is me whom they would have beaten.
But the Law Courts are open, and there is the Justice of the Sirkar
above all; and to the Law Courts do thou go when this sickness is
overpast.'
Now when we two had left Pali in the old years, there fell a famine that
ran from Jeysulmir to Gurgaon and touched Gogunda in the south. At that
time the sister of my father came away and lived with us in Isser Jang;
for a man must above all see that his folk do not die of want. When the
quarrel between us twain came about, the sister of my father--a lean
she-dog without teeth--said that Ram Dass had the right, and went with
him. Into her hands--because she knew medicines and many cures--Ram
Dass, my brother, put me faint with the beating, and much bruised even
to the pouring of blood from the mouth. When I had two days' sickness
the fever came upon me; and I set aside the fever to the account written
in my mind against the landholder.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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