vain. The King watched over her
agonies till she was about to expire, when he fled in a frantic state
and took refuge in the apartments of the race-stand, about three
miles from the palace, till the funeral ceremonies were over. It is
said, that in her anxiety to give birth to an heir to the throne, she
got the husband, from whom she had been divorced, smuggled into her
apartments in the palace in a female dress more than once; and that
this was reported to the King, and became the real cause of the
dispute.

The Mogulanee attendant, who had accumulated twenty lacs of rupees,
was seized and commanded to disgorge. She offered five lacs to Court
favourites on condition that they saw her safely over the river
Ganges into British territory. The most grave of them were
commissioned to wait upon his Majesty, and entreat him most earnestly
to banish her forthwith from his territories, as she was known, in
the first place, to be one of the most _potent sorceresses_ in India;
and, in the next, to have been exceedingly attached to her late
mistress: that they had strong grounds to believe that it was her
intention to send his Majesty's spirit after hers, that they might be
united in the next world us they had been in this. The King got
angry, and said, that he had no dread of sorceresses, and would make
the old lady disgorge her twenty lacs. That very night, however, in
his sleep, he saw the Kuduseea Begum enter his room, approach his
bed, look upon him with a countenance still more kind and bright than
in life, and then return slowly with her face still towards him, and
beckoning him with her hand to follow! As soon as he awoke he became
greatly agitated and alarmed, and ordered the old sorceress to be
sent forthwith across the Ganges to Cawnpoor. She paid her five lacs,
and took off about fifteen; but what became of her afterwards I have
not heard.

One of the first cases that I had to decide, after taking charge of
my office, was that of a claim to five Government notes of twenty
thousand rupees each, left by Sultan Mahal, one of the late King,
Amjud Allee Shah's, widows. The claimants were the reigning King, and
the mother, brother, and sister of the deceased widow. She was the
daughter of a greengrocer, and, in February 1846, at the age of
sixteen, she went to the palace with vegetables. The King saw and
fell in love with her; and she forthwith became one of his wives,
under the name of "Sultan Mahal." In November, 1846,