alings that he had won the esteem of all the gentlemen
of the station, who used to assist him in procuring passports for
his goods on their way from Bombay; and yet he had, as he has since
himself shown, been carrying on his trade of murder up to the very
day of his arrest with gangs of Hindustan and the Deccan on all the
roads around and close to the cantonments of Hingoli; and leading
out his band of assassins while he pretended to be on his way to
Bombay for a supply of fresh linen and broad-cloth." Another case is
quoted by Mr. Oman from Taylor's _Thirty-eight Years in India_. [691]
"Dr. Cheek had a child's bearer who had charge of his children. The
man was a special favourite, remarkable for his kind and tender ways
with his little charges, gentle in manner and unexceptionable in all
his conduct. Every year he obtained leave from his master and mistress,
as he said, for the filial purpose of visiting his aged mother for one
month; and returning after the expiry of that time, with the utmost
punctuality, resumed with the accustomed affection and tenderness
the charge of his little darlings. This mild and exemplary being was
the missing Thug; kind, gentle, conscientious and regular at his post
for eleven months in the year he devoted the twelfth to strangulation."

8. Secrecy of their operations

Again, as regards the secrecy with which murders were perpetrated and
all traces of them hidden, Sir W. Sleeman writes: [692] "While I was
in civil charge of the District of Narsinghpur, in the valley of the
Nerbudda, in the years 1822-1824, no ordinary robbery or theft could
be committed without my becoming aware of it, nor was there a robber
or thief of the ordinary kind in the District with whose character I
had not become acquainted in the discharge of my duties as magistrate;
and if any man had then told me that a gang of assassins by profession
resided in the village of Kandeli, [693] not four hundred yards from
my court, and that the extensive groves of the village of Mundesur,
only one stage from me on the road to Saugor and Bhopal, were one
of the greatest _beles_ or places of murder in all India, and that
large gangs from Hindustan and the Deccan used to _rendezvous_ in
these groves, remain in them for many days every year, and carry
on their dreadful trade along all the lines of road that pass by
and branch off from them, with the knowledge and connivance of the
two landholders by whose ancestors these grov