Page:Mashi and Other Stories.djvu/127

Rh piece of cloth worn to shreds covered him. "This my brother!" Bipin shuddered at the thought.

The Deputy Magistrate and Bipin were friends, and the case ended in a fiasco. In a few days Asimuddin was restored to his former condition. Why all this happened, he could not understand. The village people were greatly surprised also.

However, the news of Krishna Gopal's arrival just before the trial soon got abroad. People began to exchange meaning glances. The pleaders in their shrewdness guessed the whole affair. One of them, Ram Taran Babu, was beholden to Krishna Gopal for his education and his start in life. Somehow or other he had always suspected that the virtue and piety of his benefactor were shams. Now he was fully convinced that, if a searching inquiry were made, all "pious" men might be found out. "Let them tell their beads as much as they like," he thought with glee, "everybody in this world is just as bad as myself. The only difference between a good and a bad man is that the good practise dissimulation while the bad don't." The revelation that Krishna Gopal's far-famed piety, benevolence, and magnanimity were nothing but a cloak of hypocrisy, settled a difficulty that had oppressed