"I come on your account," was the reply; "if you be, as I suppose, Bandhu, he whom my sovereign saved from destruction, he for whose welfare the king has so tenderly cared." "My name is Bandhu, and I know that there is a king," said he of the janeo, "but as for his saving or caring for me, of that I know nothing at all. I am an attendant of the great Farebwala, and what I require he provides." An expression first of indignation, then of deep sadness, passed over the face of Prem Chand. He could not speak quite so freely as he would otherwise have done, because of Bandhu's companions, who continued to throng around, some from curiosity, some to find some theme for mocking. "My lord the king hath sent me to call you to himself," said the messenger gently; "he offers to his adopted son a welcome and a home." Farebwala had so poisoned the mind of the wretched Bandhu, that he regarded his royal benefactor with some fear, but nothing like love. The lad had not the slightest wish to appear before the king, and with some impatience, he exclaimed, "Even were your message true, which I do not believe, I could not possibly go to the court now, as I start on a pilgrimage to a holy place to-morrow." "Yes," cried his companions together, "Bandhu is going on holy pilgrimage." "About as holy as the songs which you were singing just now," observed Prem Chand. "What! See you no merit in pilgrimage!" exclaimed Bandhu, with mingled surprise and displeasure. "You will next say that there is no merit in bathing in holy rivers, or in the austerities of the Jogi." * Prem Chand replied in the words of the sage Kabir— "If by wandering about naked union † be obtained, Then every deer of the forest will become emancipated. If by shaving the head perfection is obtained, The sheep is emancipated, no one is lost. Who perform ablution in the evening, and at dawn They become like frogs in the water." * Men who, to acquire fancied merit, put themselves to various tortures; some holding up an arm till it withers, or clenching a hand till its nails grow into the flesh. † Union—that is absorption into the Divine nature, which leaves no individual sense of existence. "When by thousands of meritorious acts through a great many successive births, a man becomes perfectly holy, he becomes one with the Supreme Being, just as a drop becomes one with the ocean by falling into it."—Rev. Ishuree Dás's "Domestic Manners and Customs."