Page:The Slave Girl of Agra.djvu/31

 crowded part of the town stood the stately Zemindari House, known as the Rajbari or Palace. Portions of it, built two or three hundred years before, were somewhat out of repair; other portions had been added from time to time; while the new audience-hall had been built by Noren's grandfather, and proudly looked out on the street and the bazaar. It was in this hall that the old Zemindar had received Raja Todar Mull, and it was here that Nobo Kumar had more recently received Raja Man Singh.

A spacious quadrangle in the outer house was surrounded on all sides by structures. Swarms of people from every part of the extensive estate crowded this quadrangle from morning to night, for seclusion and retirement were not the ideas of the olden times. The house of a Zemindar was like a public office, and a Feudal Lord loved to live among his people, and in constant touch with his people. All the public offices were located in the lower storey, round the quadrangle. Village officials came here to pay in the rents collected in villages, and to render their accounts. Headmen of villages came with petitions for abatement of rents on account of drought, for the construction of an irrigation tank, or for advances for the purchase of plough cattle or the rebuilding of huts. Disputes were settled, cases were adjudicated, and offenders were punished by officers appointed by the Zemindar. And sometimes the Zemindar himself presided over these proceedings, and groups of men poured into the quadrangle with no other object than to see the Chief who maintained peace in the land.

The upper storey, all round the quadrangle, was