CHAPTER IX.

GANESH THE MILKMAN.

ISA DÁS started on his travels, but not before he had had the joy of seeing poor Gopal admitted by baptism into the Christian Church. The two parted, not indeed without sorrow, yet cheered by the hope of meeting again in a world where sickness and death are unknown.

Mr. Madden's duty was to travel through districts visited by famine, to start relief works, and see what else could be done for the suffering people. It was said that he carried in his camel trunks lakhs and lakhs of rupees of Government money. As around the jar of honey swarm innumerable flies, so around the Sahib came numbers, not only of the poor, but sellers of grain, sellers of rice, contractors, and all those people who pay court to the powerful and rich.

Isa Dás was Mr. Madden's confidential servant, and every one looked upon him as a door by which they could gain entrance into a treasury of favour. His recommendation could procure an audience with his master; a word from him, it was supposed, would cause extortion to be winked at, and raise the unworthy to a lucrative post. Never had Isa Dás, even before becoming a Christian, received so much honour as he did now; never had he heard so many flattering words. Instead of titles of contempt, he was now called huzur (your highness), Maharaja, and provider for the poor.

And not only low salams and compliments were offered, but rupees and many other gifts by which men try to bribe the favour of those who can aid them to make unlawful gains. Great was the amazement of greedy bunniah and cheating contractor to find that the native Christian would not so much as touch a bribe. Isa Dás steadily refused to receive any present. As he had before given up his profitable occupation of writing charms as being an acted lie, quite unworthy of a Christian, so he now prayerfully resolved never to be persuaded to accept any species of bribe.

Isa Dás was regarded as a fool by those who could not understand his motives, and by no one more so than by Fath Shah, the Sahib's Mahomedan bearer.

"It is only the blind man who tramples on the coin that lies in his path, as if it were not worth the picking up," said the bearer, who had always a sharp eye for his own interest. "Your salary is but ten rupees; if you were clever, you could make it fifty at least." *

* I had written thirty; but my more experienced native critic induced me to alter the number to fifty.

"There are some gains that prove losses in the end," said Isa Dás, "and some cleverness that turns out to be worse than folly. I do not care to follow the example of Ganesh, the seller of milk."

"What was done by Ganesh?" asked the bearer, who, as he sat smoking his hookah, was glad to listen to a story.

"Ganesh was the possessor of a rare cow, of which the milk was so rich and good that he was ordered to bring some twice every day to the palace for the special use of the Rajah's little daughter. Ganesh was well paid, yet was he not satisfied with his honest gains. He said to himself one morning, as he was carrying the milk in a brazen vessel on his head, 'I have two seers of milk on my head now; my cow gives less than she gave last week, and my profits will be less. But how easily by adding a little water I could make my two seers into three.'"

"He was the son of an owl not to have thought of that before," said Fath Shah. "Is there any seller of milk in all Hindustan so foolish as not to mix it with water?"

Isa Dás, without replying, went on with his story. "So Ganesh went on to a little stream that was flowing from a fountain near and filled up his brazen vessel with water; then, with a satisfied mind, carried his three seers' weight to the palace."

"Yours is not much of a story," said Fath Shah. "Such things happen everywhere, and on every day of the year."

"You have not yet heard the end," said the Christian. "After spending some hours in gossip, and making purchases in the bazaars with the money paid for the milk, Ganesh was returning to his home, when he was suddenly seized by the officers of justice on a charge of murder. The little princess and two of her attendants had been taken violently ill after partaking of the milk. The attendants suffered greatly; the poor little princess died."

"How could it have happened!" exclaimed the bearer.

"The wretched Ganesh was put to the torture, and in his agonies confessed that he had mixed the milk with water taken from a certain spring. The spring was examined, and a few feet higher up than the place where Ganesh had filled up his vessel was found the bloated body of a dead serpent, whose venom had mixed with and poisoned the water. The Rajah, full of anger and grief at the loss of a favourite child, put the wretched Ganesh to death."

"I do not see what your story has to do with taking dasturi, or fingering bribes," said the bearer.

"The connection is this," said the Christian. "All unrighteous gains have in them the venom of sin, and though for a while unseen, like the poison in the milk, for every ill-gotten pice we shall have one day to give an account. He whom we Christians own as our Lord once asked the solemn question, 'What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' (Mark viii. 36-37). I value mine at far more than fifty rupees a month, nor would risk it for a crore (ten millions) of rupees."

"Your silly scruples will bring you to poverty," said the bearer.

"No fear of that," said the Christian; "it may indeed make me seem poor as regards rupees, but in reality I shall be no loser, for it is written, 'The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it'" (Proverbs x. 22).

[Illustration]