I have known many sahibs since then, and doubt if they would have let such a man off so easily. Most of them, in their wrath, would have thrashed him with a horse whip, or others would have sent him to jail. Though Mr. Percy had his riding whip in his hand, he did not even raise it, and he would no more have struck the man than he would have struck me. He abhorred that brutal custom of flogging the natives, or throwing boots, or anything convenient, at their heads, so frequent among the high born sahib log. He always made allowances for the circumstances of the natives. Once, referring to the ignorance, poverty and low wages of the people, he said: “If I was so hard pressed as they are, I am afraid I might do a little stealing myself.” He was very kind to the poor, and they all knew him as their friend. Early on each Sunday morning, there would be a crowd of the lame, blind, diseased, old, decrepit women and mothers with sickly, starved children, in our compound. As soon as we had taken our tea, which was very early, he would say: “Now, Charles, let us go to our religious service. We will not say, ‘Let us sing, or let us pray,’ but we will worship God in giving something to His poor.” So we would go out, he, with his bag of rupees, anas and pice, which he had ready, and each of the Lord’s poor would come up to get their share. He never trusted this to the servants. This was his personal service unto God, and he performed it devoutly as if he felt God himself was there seeing it all, and I have no doubt He was. CHAPTER VIII. I have in my life attended many religious services, but never one that impressed me of so much good as those to the poor in our compound. This service was not restricted to Sunday, as is too often the case in religious matters, as if God was shut up in the churches and He only did business one day in the week. Scarcely a day passed but some came to him for assistance of some kind, and very few went away without a token of his kindness. He was cautious in giving, yet he very often gave when he was not quite satisfied, saying: “I would rather take the chance of giving to twenty undeserving, than to fail once in doing right to any one. The deceivers hurt themselves more than any loss to me. I will do the best I can, and the settlement at last will be all right.” Then he added, “Charles, my boy, always remember this, a man who does a mean act always hurts himself more than anybody else. It may not seem so at the time, but sooner or later in this life, or the life to come, every wrong act will rebound upon the doer like a boomerang, and this will make an eternal punishment. This is one of God’s beneficent and inexorable laws, and I do not believe that He will or that He can change it. Whatever a man sows that shall he reap, is true, not because it is in the Bible, but because it is in harmony with the universal law of cause and effect, in nature, and also in morals.”