Then I told Mr. Percy the story of our lives, beginning with the first conscious knowing that I was in the world, the clinking sound of those rupees, the sahib, my mother’s tears and cries, her death, our destitution and wanderings up to that serai where he found us. He had got to his feet by this time, and was walking back and forth in the room, with his head down, listening intently. When I had finished he asked, “Did you ever see or hear of that sahib again, or learn his name?” “Never,” I answered. “The brute!” he exclaimed, with such energy that I think if he had a ruler in his hand he would have broken it into a number of pieces, and it was well for the sahib not to have been within hitting reach just then. He was silent some minutes, when he said: “Charles! I would rather a thousand times be you than such a man. You can become a true man; he never can. He has lost his manhood and God himself cannot restore it; and he never can make atonement for the wrongs he inflicted on your mother, on you, and on your sister. He committed an infamous crime; worse than murder. But we must find the sister.” I then told him of my visit with the munshi to the girls’ orphanage: that the sister had been taken away, and I mentioned the name of the lady and gentleman who took her. He wrote letters addressed to the gentleman, but they were returned, uncalled for. He wrote to friends, but they knew nothing, and it seemed that the little sister was forever lost to me. On each Sunday morning Mr. Percy held his religious service. The crowd had greatly increased, but each received the usual share. There was a great scarcity of food in the district, on account of the slight rainfall, and Mr. Percy, foreseeing this, had purchased a large quantity of grain, and this he called the “Widow’s Fund.” On other days he held what he called his morning service, when the widows came, most of them with children. He had a careful list made out, so as to be sure that they were really widows in need. To some of them he sold the grain at the price he paid for it, and at half the bazar prices. To those who had no means of purchasing he gave, so that all were supplied. The low price at which he sold the grain greatly offended the bunyas in the bazar, as they had a large supply on hand, which they had taken from the poor cultivators in return for the seed and money advanced at an enormous profit to themselves. One morning Mr. Percy called these bunyas to his bungalow and gave them such a scoring about their rapacity and robbery of the poor that they all agreed to lower their prices. It was through fear of him only that they did this, as one might as well expect pity from a tiger toward an animal he has caught, as leniency from a bunya to the poor whom he has in his power.