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Srikanta After great efforts I separated the two, and then the sight of Indra's condition made me burst into tears of dismay. In the deepening dusk I had not at first noticed that all his clothes were terribly blood-stained. 'He hit me with that lance with which he kills snakes,' Indra gasped, 'confounded ruffian that he is. See!' and pulling up his sleeves he showed me a wound in his arm, two or three inches wide, bleeding profusely.

'Don't cry,' he said to me. 'Tie this part as hard as you can.' And then to Shahji, 'Take care, you! Sit there just as you are! If you get up I'll put my foot on your neck and tear out your tongue, you dastardly swine! Now, Srikanta, tie up this part, quick!' and he tore up a part of the dhoti he was wearing. I began dressing the wound with trembling hands, while Shahji looked on in silence with the glare of a venomous snake about to meet its death.

'No, I can't trust you,' said Indra. 'You might commit murder: I'll tie up your hands.' And with Shahji's ochre-coloured turban-cloth he tied his hands together. Shahji did not protest, resist, or speak a word.

Indra put aside the stick with which Shahji had knocked Didi senseless and said, 'What an ungrateful wretch this villain is! How much of Father's money have I not stolen for him and how much more would I not have stolen, had not Didi forbidden me. Yet how readily he flung that lance at me to-day! Srikanta, keep your eye on him: see that he doesn't get up. I'll dash some water on Didi's face.'

After he had thrown some water on her face he said, as he fanned her, 'From the day she told me, "We would have taken it had it been your money, but it would he a