Mr. Das began by requesting him to hear the petitions of three or four widows who stood lamenting outside the door because their husbands had died of starvation. Entrenched behind his legs, the official refused to comply, stating that he had already heard their cases, and had proved to his own satisfaction that the men had not died of starvation, but of something else. Mr. Das then went through a number of other cases, in most of which the official said he thought he had made examination, but could not be sure. Anyhow, all charges of neglect or harshness against the officials were absolutely false, and he was not there to be cross-examined. With prickly insistence, Mr. Das continued his interrogations upon the complaints of the villagers, till at last the Deputy Magistrate, irritated past human endurance, refused to say any more, and waving good-night to his boots we left the room. On our return journey, a day or two later, we discovered that he had sent out orders by the _chaukidars_ or village police to all the villages round, commanding the people not to come out to meet us under threats of unknown penalties. So great is the terror inspired by officials and police under a bureaucracy, that very few came of the hundreds who had before thronged our path in hopes of winning some assistance, or merely of seeing the elephant and their national favourite. The few who did come told us the truth with fear, and perhaps we should never have got at the real facts if we had not found a chaukidar in one village actually going round from house to house with the order. Yet Mr. Das was a man whose assistance in such a crisis any one but an official would have been delighted to secure; for the people trusted him absolutely, in spite of his foreign religion, and no one living understood them better. It was only that he was the kind of man who perturbs tabulated columns. Most administrators would find it much easier to appreciate a Rajah or Tributary Chief who lived about twenty miles from Cuttack, and expended, as I was told, £335 on a breakfast which he expected to offer the Lieutenant-Governor with the usual trimmings of dancing-girls, fireworks, and other delights. At such a breakfast cases of starvation could hardly occur, and nothing would interrupt the cheers, loyalty, and goodwill, such as Simla and the Anglo-Indian papers were expecting from the proposed Advisory Councils of Notables. Yet £335 did seem a largish sum to consume at one meal in the midst of a starving people. Perhaps the Lieutenant-Governor thought so too, for I believe he continued his progress without accepting the entertainment. One would like to know how that meal was ever consumed. Perhaps the elephants were called in to help. FOOTNOTES: [35] “The Great Famine,” by Mr. Vaughan Nash (Longmans, 1900). CHAPTER VIII “LORD OF THE WORLD”