er the cot on
which one of the women slept, in order, as they thought, to be quite
secure against thieves. In spite of this precaution they woke up one
morning to find their treasure gone. Thieves had dug under the walls
of the house and had made an opening large enough to creep through.
How they were able to do this without waking the inmates, and how they
took the boxes from under the bed and got away with them unobserved, a
light having been kept burning in the room, is one of the mysteries of
Indian crime. The boxes were found, broken open and empty, a few
fields off, but the thieves were never detected. I myself saw the
burrow through which they got in.

Babaji had built his new bungalow immediately behind two dilapidated
cottages, in which he had sometimes lodged during brief visits to the
country. Everyone took for granted that he would pull down these
cottages when the new house was ready. They abutted on to the front
verandah, and occupied the ground which would naturally form the
approach to the house. But when Babaji, with pardonable pride, was
showing me round the completed house, he told me that he had decided
to retain the two cottages; they would be useful as cookroom and
storeroom; besides, they had been built by his father, and so out of
respect to his memory he would wait till they fell down of themselves.
I represented to him what a barbaric arrangement it was, but without
effect, and next day he was busy making a passage-way from the new
bungalow into one of the old cottages.

His next exploit was to try and acquire a strip of land by removing
his neighbour's landmark. Babaji wanted to build stables and other
out-buildings. In digging his foundations he purposely encroached
about four feet over his boundary line. When the owner remonstrated he
endeavoured by bluster to carry the thing through. He pointed to a
bogus boundary stone of his own planting, and called in the village
clerk to certify that there was an error in the village map, and that
the real boundary line was as Babaji represented it to be; the average
Hindu village clerk being ready to certify anything you like, if you
make it worth his while to do so. The owner of the land seated himself
on the disputed plot and defied the workmen to continue their
operations. The dispute continued for some days, waxing more and more
furious, until the owner and the contractor at last came to blows--a
form of demonstration which in India is impressive