Page:The Aristocracy of Southern India.djvu/18

 The Aeistocbacy of Southern India.

that the Minister saw him in, and recognised him at once. Hearing this almost romantic story, Saiyid Asad Ali Khan sent one of them to fetch Thaher Ali, which was soon done. The coarse dress was removed and a rich dress suitable to his birth was at once put on. The respect due to a Minister's son was cheerfully accorded to him, while he himself showed that he fully deserved such esteem by his courtly manners, his witty conversation, his abundance of thought and his great eloquence. The Minister was delighted at his having found such a noble companion, and very desirous of cementing the connection more closely, allowed the friendship to rise to kinship by giving his daughter in marriage to Thaher Ali. Sometime after, Saiyid Asad Ali Khan died, and the ruler of Bijapur had to appoint a suitable successor. The former had sons, but his son-in-law, Thaher Ali, had had frequent occasions to impress the King with his nobility of behaviour, his uprightness and administrative capacity. The King naturally wished to confer the vacant ministership on Thaher Ali. This roused the malice and hatred of the sons of the deceased, and in their envy, they coolly shed the blood of their brother-in-law, attacking him in the night in a most cowardly manner. The Hindustani chronicler here characteristically adds that the heavens wore a gloomy countenance for sometime as if in keeping ^v'ith the dark motives of the atrocious murderers, or as if in harmony with the darkness of the deed that was perpetrated on one, who, in life, slied light around him by his cheerful courtesy and kindliness of address. Poor Thaher Ali's wife, mad with grief at the murder of her husband, and exasperated by the cruel insults which her own brothers had heaped upon her, left the place at once with her two sons, Saiy-'d Asad Ali Khan and Saiyid Mahomed