CHAPTER I.

THE sun had set; the red glow had just died away in the sky, but the moon had risen. A railway official, named Karim, stood on the platform of the small station of Banda, watching for an expected train. A zamindar (peasant) * named Matrá, came up to him, and asked him respectfully when the train from Calcutta would arrive.

* In parts of India, a farmer.

"I expect it in ten minutes," answered Karim.

The zamindar sat down on the ground, like one who is very weary. As Karim looked at him, pity arose in the official's heart. Matrá was quite young, scarcely eighteen years of age, but lines of care were already on his features. His blanket was little better than a rag. His limbs, naturally strong and graceful, were thin as if from lack of food. As he sat on the ground, a deep sigh came from the poor zamindar.

"You seem tired," observed Karim kindly.

"I was up before the sun, and have been driving the plough all the day," said Matrá; "and now I have just walked seven miles to this station."

"Are you going a long journey?" asked Karim, who noticed that the zamindar had no bundle with him, not even a hookah or brass lota.

"I am not going on any journey," replied the zamindar. "I have come to meet the train, because I hope that it may bring my father."

"You must be very anxious to see him that you come so far after a long day's work," observed Karim, seating himself beside the zamindar on an empty box which chanced to be on the platform.

It was pleasant to the zamindar to have some one to converse with, some one who spoke in a friendly tone, and who was willing to listen. Matrá was soon telling his simple story.

"My father is a sepoy," he said, "and it is ten or twelve years since he left our village to march away with his regiment. I can remember that day very well; how grand I thought it to see the sepoys marching, and hear the music playing. But we have never had anything but trouble since that unlucky day. First came my marriage."

"Was that a trouble?" asked Karim, smiling.

"It did not seem so at the time. We had fine clothes, and feasting, and drum-beating, and fireworks let off in our village. It was a grand 'tamasha!' The girl's family were Chhatries, so, of course, my grandfather would have all done in good style, and many rupees were given both to the father of the bride and the Brahmins, and there were jewels to buy besides. Then first my grandfather fell into debt, and in debt we have been ever since. It is easier to get into a bog than out of it."

Karim nodded his head in assent.

[Illustration: "You must be very anxious to see him that you come so far after a long day's work," observed Karim.]

"Before the girl came to live with us," continued the young zamindar, "as she was playing with her little companions on the top of the house, she fell over, broke her neck, and was taken up dead!"

Matrá could not be expected to mourn much for a child-wife whom he had hardly seen. Karim rightly guessed that the zamindar's evident regret was chiefly on account of the debt incurred by the expense of such a profitless marriage. "And what were your other troubles?" he asked.

"My grandfather fell sick not long after this, and sick he continued for years. He had no son but my father, and my father was far away with the army. Mere boy as I was, I did what I could, looked after the buffaloes, and worked in the fields, but I could not do the work of a man. And there was always the debt a-growing, like the gourds in the rains."

"Did your father do nothing to help you?" inquired Karim.

"He sent several times five-rupee notes," said the zamindar, "but it was like throwing stones into a bog, which swallows them up and you see no more of them. The money-lenders could never have enough. My mother fretted and went on pilgrimage, and bathed at holy ghauts, and did pujá at many shrines. But she took the smallpox and died, though she had made many offerings to the goddess of smallpox." Matrá sighed very deeply; the loss of his mother lay much more heavily on his heart than that of his little wife.

"You have indeed had troubles," observed Karim.

"You have not heard the end of them," said the poor young zamindar. "My grandfather died at last. I paid all the respect I could to his body. I feasted for days a hundred neighbours who came to its burning, gave a cow and many rupees to the Máhá-Brahmin, and myself carried the ashes to the Ganges, though it was just the season when the corn was ripe for reaping. If I had been in the bog of debt before, I was now up to my eyes! It's heartless work watering one's fields in the dry season, and seeing the corn springing up so green, when one knows that the money-lender may sweep down any day like the locusts, and eat up all the fruit of one's toil!"

"Is not running into debt at all the cause of the mischief?" observed Karim.

"What is to be done?" said the zamindar sadly. "Wedding and funeral ceremonies are the ruin of the poor, and bad seasons which come now and then, when there's drought, and the heat dries up all the crop."

"Have you no relations to help you?" asked Karim.

"Not one on earth but my poor old grandmother, who is now scarcely able even to spin or card cotton; and my father, who has been so long away. But he is coming back at last!" said the zamindar, and a look of joy beamed on his careworn face. "I had a letter from him some weeks ago (I've learned to read a little in a village school), and I made out that he would be here before the rabi * harvest is ripe; the corn is green enough yet, but I thought that after work, I would come over here to meet him. Maybe my father will arrive sooner than he said; any-ways, I would not miss my chance of the first sight of him, if I had to walk twenty miles."

* The spring harvest. Let it be borne in mind that there are two annual harvests at least in some parts of India, so that the zamindar may often be seen ploughing in one field, while a rich crop covers the next one.

"Would you remember the face of the father whom you have not seen since you were a child?" asked Karim.

"I know that he was tall—taller than any other peasant in our village—and that he used to seat me on his shoulder, and then I could pluck mangoes from the high boughs," replied Matrá, brightening at the recollection of the happy time which he had had with his father. "I can't just bring his face to my mind—I wish that I could—but surely I should know him if he arrived. How long the train is of coming!" he said suddenly, looking down the long, dark line of railway.

"The whistle has not yet sounded," said the official; "we shall have notice when the train is drawing near."