It was a piteous sight. Here was a fine young fellow in the prime of life, who was a favourite with all the Europeans, and with most of his own countrymen, brutally murdered, without any apparent cause. And what made everyone sorrow the more was the fact that he had been recently married to a Persian lady, whom, after a devoted court and worship of more than two years, he had at last succeeded in winning, and had brought home and located beyond the Moplah bounds in a stronghold situated in the hill country, but at no great distance, his holding being within the Manantoddy district. It was evident that the division of the chief parts of the trunk had been effected by some sharp and powerful cutting instrument, most probably by one of those sharp toddy knives or bill-hooks which all jungle-men in India carry. The murder, it was supposed, had been perpetrated at the instigation of the rich Moplah named Saul Jan, whose lands were situated at no great distance from those of the murdered man, Lutchmon Sing. These two headmen, it was well known, had been at feud for a long time, ostensibly on account of some adjacent lands lying between their respective estates; but it was whispered that the murdered man's shoes had on one occasion (some two and a half years since) been found outside Saul Jan's door, and that he (Saul Jan), from circumstances to be hereafter explained, had not been able to return the visit. Be this as it may, the visitor's body was, after this occurrence, at the distance of time specified, found in the condition described. A Hercules of a fellow, named Kulmuck, with a most villainous expression of countenance, who was an outdoor or field servant to Saul Jan, was with some others brought up before the Zillah Judge on suspicion of being the actual murderer, or at least of being a principal concerned in it. Some parts of this man's cloth were stained with blood, as was the handle and broad blade of his toddy-knife; his right hand was also stained with blood, and the palmar surface of the index and second finger of the right hand were slightly torn. It would appear that, even before he had washed the blood stains from his hand, or knife, or cloth, he had gone to the hut of a fellow-servant, a constant companion, and had there indulged himself so largely in drinking arrack that when the peons found him he was almost insensible, unable to speak, or stand; and lucky for them that he was in this state, as otherwise his toddy-knife would probably have been so used as to have saved some of them all further worldly care. Even without a weapon of any kind, manacled and pinioned, the peons shrank from him, and actually seemed afraid to touch him, so well were his strength and ferocity known.