"To put us off the scent. Whatever you may say, Maharaja, he must be an old hand at the game. He mounts guard during his watch, right enough, but I feel sure he has a finger in all the dacoities going on in the neighbourhood." With this the Inspector proceeded to recount the various methods by which it was possible to be concerned in a dacoity twenty or thirty miles away, and yet be back in time for duty. "Have you brought Kasim here?" I asked. "No," was the reply, "he is in the lock-up. The Magistrate is due for the investigation." "I want to see him," I said. When I went to his cell he fell at my feet, weeping. "In God's name," he said, "I swear I did not do this thing." "I do not doubt you, Kasim," I assured him. "Fear nothing. They can do nothing to you, if you are innocent." Kasim, however, was unable to give a coherent account of the incident. He was obviously exaggerating. Four or five hundred men, big guns, numberless swords, figured in his narrative. It must have been either his disturbed state of mind or a desire to account for his easy defeat. He would have it that this was Harish Kundu's doing; he was even sure he had heard the voice of Ekram, the head retainer of the Kundus. "Look here, Kasim," I had to warn him, "don't you be dragging other people in with your stories. You are not called upon to make out a case against Harish Kundu, or anybody else." XIV On returning home I asked my master to come over. He shook his head gravely. "I see no good in this," said he--"this setting aside of conscience and putting the country in its place. All the sins of the country will now break out, hideous and unashamed." "Who do you think could have ..." "Don't ask me. But sin is rampant. Send them all away, right away from here." "I have given them one more day. They will be leaving the day after tomorrow." "And another thing. Take Bimala away to Calcutta. She is getting too narrow a view of the outside world from here, she cannot see men and things in their true proportions. Let her see the world--men and their work--give her abroad vision." "That is exactly what I was thinking." "Well, don't make any delay about it. I tell you, Nikhil, man's history has to be built by the united effort of all the races in the world, and therefore this selling of conscience for political reasons--this making a fetish of one's country, won't do. I know that Europe does not at heart admit this, but there she has not the right to pose as our teacher. Men who die for the truth become immortal: and, if a whole people can die for the truth, it will also achieve immortality in the history of humanity. Here, in this land of India, amid the mocking laughter of Satan piercing the sky, may the feeling for this truth become real! What a terrible epidemic of sin has been brought into our country from foreign lands..."