CHAPTER VI.

WILD DREAMS.

BANDHU had spent the morning in gambling with his idle companions; as the day grew hot, they separated to smoke the hookah, or doze away the languid hours in some shady place. In a garden-house lay Bandhu stretched on the ground alone, lazily watching the movements of a lizard on the wall. So still was the sultry air, that not even a leaf quivered on the branches of the peepul tree.

Presently some object came between Bandhu and the daylight. Turning his head a little, Bandhu saw Prem Chand, who courteously greeted the lad.

"Are you now at leisure, O brother!" the king's messenger said. "To hear the story of a sick boy rescued from the fangs of a tiger? The story cannot fail to interest you, as it concerns yourself."

"I have no dislike to hearing stories," replied Bandhu, carelessly; "if it be a good one, it will amuse me, if dull, it will lull me to sleep."

Prem Chand sat down on the ground beside Bandhu, and in simple touching words gave the story of the poor boy deserted in the jungle, telling of his preservation by the king, and the monarch's generous adoption of the child whom he had saved.

It may have been from coldness of heart, or from the effect of the drug given by Farebwala, but whatever the cause may be, Bandhu listened to the tale with little concern. He seemed to be more interested in watching whether the lizard would catch a fly, or in noticing any trifling peculiarity in the dress of the stranger, than in hearing of the deadly struggle on the result of which his own life had hung.

Prem Chand again and again felt inclined to stop in his story, for it pained him to have such a careless listener. Was ever hearer so dull? Yes, reader, I have witnessed such dulness when the story told was of far deeper interest than the tale of the rescued child!

When the tale was concluded, seeing that Bandhu had latterly been listening with a little more attention, Prem Chand thus spake:

"Did not the rescued boy owe a deep debt of love and gratitude to the king?"

A nod was the only reply.

"And now, O Bandhu, have you paid it? Do you not know that you yourself are the helpless sick child, saved from the jaws of the tiger?"

"I don't believe your story, not a word of it!" cried Bandhu. "I never lay in a jungle covered with sores. I am a Chhatri, a twice-born; I was never in danger from any wild beast."

"Farebwala, for his own purposes, has concealed the truth from you," answered Prem Chand; "but you have a simple way of finding out whether he or I have spoken falsehood. Where is the truth-telling mirror, where the precious bracelet given to you by the king?"

Bandhu answered by a stupid stare. He did not at first even understand what was meant by the stranger.

"I mean the mirror which reflects with perfect accuracy, and on whose golden frame words appear which, in every varying case, every difficulty, every danger, show us what we should do."

"I never saw such a mirror," said Bandhu.

"And have you never worn the bracelet that, by pressure on the wrist, gives warning when anything approaches to harm?"

"I never wore it," replied the lad.

"I see a black bag hung round your neck, what may it contain?" asked Prem Chand.

"It is a charm; I know not what is in the bag," was Bandhu's reply.

"Search and see!" cried Prem Chand, whose quick eye, through the covering of ignorance, detected the shape of the mirror, and even, though dimly, its brightness.

"I will never open the bag," said Bandhu, with petulance; "why should you come and trouble me thus, why meddle with things which do not concern you?"

"Because I am bound to obey the command of the king," replied the faithful messenger; "besides, I am moved with pity for a youth whom I see to be wronged and deceived. Had the king's plans been carried out, and the money sent by him been applied to its proper use, you would never have been dressed in such coarse, soiled garments as those which you wear. You would have received the education fit for the adopted son of a king, instead of wasting your time in idleness or something worse. You must feel, O Bandhu, that you are not prepared to stand in the presence of our great king."

"I am in no haste to go to him," said Bandhu.

"What! Not to make one of the honoured band who, in goodly raiment, surround his throne, and find their delight in his service! If you but knew the glories of his court—"

Bandhu would not let Prem Chand finish his sentence.

"I know all, I have heard everything a thousand times from Farebwala!" cried Bandhu. "I can tell you many a story of the princes and princesses who dwell at the court."

"I have told you my story," said Prem Chand, "and now am ready to hear yours."

He half repented of his words, however, when he heard the stream of disgusting nonsense which flowed from the mouth of the half-besotted Bandhu. I will give but a small portion of what he, with evident relish, repeated to his shocked listener.

"There is one prince, worthy of all reverence, who is perpetually drunk. He has been known to wander about in cemeteries and places for burning the dead, smearing his body with ashes, and wearing a necklace of skulls. He has five faces and three eyes; him ever contemplate with veneration."

"Alas!" sighed Prem Chand to himself. "This unhappy youth must be mad!"

"Then there is a princess, Kali is her name, worthy of all reverence. With a sword in her hand she killed many giants, and danced in ecstacy over dead bodies, till she found that she was dancing on the breast of her husband. Then seeing her mistake, she put out her tongue, and—"

"Stop! Stop!" cried Prem Chand, in amazement and disgust. "Monsters such as these never existed in the court of our king!"

"My favourite princess," continued Bandhu, "she in whose service I should always desire to be, is she who delights in the offering of a human head, and sacrifice of little children. There is another—"

"I can hear no more!" exclaimed Prem Chand, rising. "With what wild dreams, like those caused by opium, has your brain been filled! Most earnestly do I assure you that in all these horrible fables there is not one atom of truth. If such fearful criminals as you have described have been ever found in the court of a virtuous king, they would assuredly have been handed over to the executioner. Crimes not to be tolerated in mean men, would not go without punishment in those of loftier ranks. Count you such beings worthy of reverence? Did such exist, they would be only worthy of detestation! O Bandhu! You must have eaten of the drug Superstition, and it is gradually destroying your mind, for it is as mould on the garment, or rust on the steel. Once more I earnestly entreat you to open the bag in which your treasures are doubtless concealed. Find from your bracelet whether to indulge such wild fancies be not sin, and from your mirror into what endless misery and ruin such sin must lead! Have mercy on yourself, O Bandhu! And let not the warning of a true friend be heard in vain!"

"Leave me! I am weary of your unasked-for counsels!" exclaimed the weak-witted Bandhu. "If I choose to believe in a prince with an elephant's head or a hundred arms, what is it to you? If I choose to do puja to a monkey or snake, why should it trouble your peace? I believe but what millions believe; I do but what multitudes do."

"And if multitudes, on a dark night, not seeing a precipice before them, fall over into the depths and miserably perish, shall I, who have light, calmly look on and not utter a word of warning?" cried Prem Chand.

But he spake as to the deaf adder. Bandhu, even when the king's messenger was uttering his earnest appeal, closed his eyes in weariness, and in a few momenta dropped asleep.

Prem Chand, breathing a deep sigh, a second time turned from the place.