All this gave me employment for several years, and I was quite happy. My new house was the best in the station, and was better furnished, with ample grounds, ornamented with every kind of shrubbery and flowers. It became the envy of the station. The Commissioner of the Division wrote, asking if he could rent it; then the Barra Sahib wanted it, and the officers wished it for a Mess Koti. My refusal to all created quite a feeling against me. Some one told somebody else, who told me, that the “higher classes” considered the house too good for an Eurasian. I wonder if they should accidentally get to heaven and find some of the lower classes—Eurasians—there, whether they would blow up St. Peter for letting us in? I had numerous brushes with the magistrate; for he seemed determined to annoy me because I had not let him have my house. My hedges were too high or too broad. I should trim my trees, or should not trim those by the roadside, which I myself had planted. When I had one of my houses partly constructed he forbade the work to go any further, as I had not obtained his permission to build, and besides it would obstruct the view from his house, though it was five hundred yards away. I felt that all this was petty, spiteful tyranny, and resisted as well as I could, but of what avail? I might as well have quarreled with the man in the moon. The magistrate had almost absolute power over affairs in the station, and could be a despot if he chose. He was the Great Sahib, and he let everybody know it, especially those he styled the lower classes. If he could not carry out his plans in an open, manly way, he resorted to petty tyranny that goaded one to madness. I had never met him, and all his orders to me were made not in person or by letter, but through his servants, which made it more annoying. I was soon to make his personal acquaintance. One night, after dining with a friend, I was walking homeward when I heard the screams of a woman, or rather of a girl. I ran, and found two native policemen, one holding each of her hands and dragging her along the road. They stopped at once, and she begged me to have her released. They said they had orders to bring good looking girls into cantonments, and they found her on the road. I ordered them to let her go at once. They said they could not do so. I insisted, and they replied that I should have to answer to the magistrate for obstructing them. I took the girl to a friend’s house, and told them to keep her concealed at my expense. The next morning a servant came, ordering me to appear at the magistrate’s bungalow. I went. As I entered, this worthy was sitting at his writing table.