Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/345

 so deeply into the coarse flesh of the buffalo, would have penetrated into the tender body of her child; and every time she put fresh dressings on the wound, she caressed the buffalo, and spoke kindly to him, that the good faithful animal might know how grateful a mother is.

Afterwards she hoped that the buffalo understood her, for then he must have understood why she wept when, he was taken away to be slaughtered, and he would have known that it was not the mother of Saïdjah who caused him to be slaughtered. Some days afterwards Saïdjah’s father fled out of the country; for he was much afraid of being punished for not paying his land-taxes, and he had not another heirloom to sell, that he might buy a new buffalo, because his parents had always lived in Parang-Koodjang, and had therefore left him but few things. The parents of his wife too lived in the same district. However, he went on for some years after the loss of his last buffalo, by working with hired animals for ploughing; but that is a very ungrateful labour, and moreover, sad for a person who has had buffaloes of his own.

Saïdjah’s mother died of grief, and then it was that his father, in a moment of dejection, fled from Bantam, in order to endeavour to get labour in the Buitenzorg districts.

But he was punished with stripes, because he had left Lebak without a passport, and was brought back by the police to Badoer. There he was put in prison, because