blanket in the corner, and Azizun was
trying to guide the pipe-stem to his foolish old mouth.

* * * * *

Now the case stands thus. Unthinkingly, I have laid myself open to the
charge of aiding and abetting the seal cutter in obtaining money under
false pretenses, which is forbidden by Section 420 of the Indian Penal
Code. I am helpless in the matter for these reasons, I cannot inform the
police. What witnesses would support my statements? Janoo refuses flatly,
and Azizun is a veiled woman somewhere near Bareilly--lost in this big
India of ours. I dare not again take the law into my own hands, and speak
to the seal cutter; for certain am I that, not only would Suddhoo
disbelieve me, but this step would end in the poisoning of Janoo, who is
bound hand and foot by her debt to the _bunnia_. Suddhoo is an old dotard;
and whenever we meet mumbles my idiotic joke that the _Sirkar_ rather
patronizes the Black Art than otherwise. His son is well now; but Suddhoo
is completely under the influence of the seal cutter, by whose advice he
regulates the affairs of his life. Janoo watches daily the money that she
hoped to wheedle out of Suddhoo taken by the seal cutter, and becomes
daily more furious and sullen.

She will never tell, because she dare not; but, unless something happens
to prevent her, I am afraid that the seal cutter will die of cholera--the
white arsenic kind--about the middle of May. And thus I shall have to be
privy to a murder in the house of Suddhoo.

_His Wedded Wife_

Cry "Murder!" in the market-place, and each
Will turn upon his neighbor anxious eyes
That ask:--"Art thou the man?" We hunted Cain
Some centuries ago, across the world,
That bred the fear our own misdeeds maintain
To-day.

_--Vibart's Moralities._

Shakespeare says something about worms, or it may be giants or beetles,
turning if you tread on them too severely. The safest plan is never to
tread on a worm--not even on the last new subaltern from Home, with his
buttons hardly out of their tissue paper, and the red of sappy English
beef in his cheeks. This is the story of the worm that turned. For the
sake of brevity, we will call Henry Augustus Ramsay Faizanne, "The Worm,"
although he really was an exceedingly pretty boy, without a hair on his
face, and with a waist like a girl's, when he came out to the Second
"Shikarris" and was made unhappy in several ways.