tan _jaghirdar_, were next-door neighbours in
Ajmir territory. They hated each other thoroughly for many reasons, all
connected with land; and the _jaghirdar_ was the bigger man of the two.
In those days, it was the law that the victims of robbery or dacoity
should be reimbursed by the owner of the lands on which the affair had
taken place. The ordinance is now swept away as impracticable. There was
a highway robbery on the _bhumia's_ holding; and he vowed that it had
been "put up" by the Mahometan who, he said, was an Ahab. The reive-gelt
payable nearly ruined the Rajput, and he, labouring under a galling
grievance or a groundless suspicion, fired the _jaghirdar's_ crops, was
detected and brought up before the English Judge who gave him four
years' imprisonment. To the sentence was appended a recommendation that,
on release, the Rajput should be put on heavy securities for good
behaviour. "Otherwise," wrote the Judge, who seems to have known the
people he was dealing with, "he will certainly kill the _jaghirdar_."
Four years passed, and the _jaghirdar_ obtained wealth and
consideration, and was made, let us say, a Khan Bahadur, and an Honorary
Magistrate; but the _bhumia_ remained in gaol and thought over the
highway robbery. When the day of release came, a new Judge hunted up his
predecessor's finding and recommendation, and would have put the
_bhumia_ on security. "Sahib," said the _bhumia_, "I have no people. I
have been in gaol. What am I now? And who will find security for me? If
you will send me back to gaol again I can do nothing, and I have no
friends." So they released him, and he went away into an outlying
village and borrowed a sword from one house, and had it sharpened in
another, for love. Two days later fell the birthday of the Khan Bahadur
and the Honorary Magistrate, and his friends and servants and dependants
made a little levee and did him honour after the native custom. The
_bhumia_ also attended the levee, but no one knew him, and he was
stopped at the door of the courtyard by the servant. "Say that the
_bhumia_ of Jhaswara has come to pay his salaams," said he. They let him
in, and in the heart of Ajmir City, in broad daylight, and before all
the _jaghirdar's_ household, he smote off his enemy's head so that it
rolled upon the ground. Then he fled, and though they raised the
countryside against him he was never caught, and went into Bikanir.

Five years later, word came to Ajmir that Chimbo Singh, t