s feet--cried, "Let us
play hanging the Nawab! and I will be the Nawab; and Kama, here, shall
be Kurreim Khan, the sowar; and Joota shall be Metcalfe Sahib, the
magistrate; and the rest of you shall be the sahibs, and the sepoys, and
the priests."

_Acha, acha!_--"Good, good!" they all cried. "Let us play the Nawab's
kismut! let us hang the Nawab! And Mungloo--he that is more clever than
all of us--he that is cunning as a Thug--Mungloo shall be the Nawab!"

So they began with the murder of the Commissioner; and he who personated
Kurreim Khan, the assassin, played so naturally, that he sent the
Commissioner screaming to his mother, with an arrow sticking in his
arm. Then they arrested Kurreim Khan, and his accomplice, Unnia, a
_mehwatti_, who turned king's evidence, and betrayed the sowar; and
having tried and condemned Kurreim Khan, they would have hung him on the
spot; but, being but a little fellow, he became alarmed at the serious
turn the sport was taking, although he had himself set so sharp an
example; so he took nimbly to his heels, and followed his young friend,
the Commissioner.

Then Unnia told how the Nawab had paid Kurreim Khan blood-money, because
Shumsh-ud-deen did so hate Fraser Sahib. Whereupon Metcalfe Sahib, a
little naked fellow, just the color of an old mahogany table, sent his
sepoys and had the Nawab dragged, in all his ragged breech-cloth glory,
to the bar of Sahib justice. In about three minutes, the Nawab was
condemned to die,--condemned to be hung by an outcast sweeper. But, in
consideration of his exalted rank, they consented that he should wear
his slippers, and ride to the place of execution, smoking his hookah;
and Mungloo acknowledged the Sahib's magnanimity by proudly inclining
his head, like a true Nawab, with a dignified "_Acha!"_ Then two members
of the court-martial, who lived nearest at hand, ran home, and quickly
returned, one with his father's slippers, the other with his mother's
hubble-bubble; and having tied the slippers, that were a world too big,
on Mungloo's little feet, and lighted the hubble-bubble, that he
might smoke, they mounted him on a buffalo, captured from the village
_hurkaru_, who happened, just in the nick of time, to come riding by, on
his way to Delhi, with the mail. And they led out the prisoner, smoking
his hubble-bubble,--and looking, as Metcalfe Sahib said of the real
Nawab, "as if he had been accustomed to be hanged every day of his
life,"--to the place