d, and away he went. Arrived at the
shop of Beeka Mull, he went up and saluted him.

'Good-day, Lala-ji,' said he. But the Lala pretended not to see him.
So he repeated the salutation. 'What do you want?' snapped Beeka Mull;
'you've said your "good-day" twice, why don't you tell me your
business?'

'Don't you remember me?' asked the merchant.

'Remember you?' growled the other; 'no, why should I? I have plenty
to do to remember good customers without trying to remember every
beggar who comes whining for charity.'

When he heard this the merchant began to tremble.

'Lala-ji!' he cried, 'surely you remember me and the little box I gave
you to take care of? And you promised--yes, indeed, you promised very
kindly--that I might return to claim it, and----'

'You scoundrel,' roared Beeka Mull, 'get out of my shop! Be off with
you, you impudent scamp! Every one knows that I never keep treasures
for anyone; I have trouble enough to do to keep my own! Come, off with
you!' With that he began to push the merchant out of the shop; and,
when the poor man resisted, two of the bystanders came to Beeka Mull's
help, and flung the merchant out into the road, like a bale of goods
dropped from a camel. Slowly he picked himself up out of the dust,
bruised, battered, and bleeding, but feeling nothing of the pain in
his body, nothing but a dreadful numbing sensation that, after all, he
was ruined and lost! Slowly he dragged himself a little further from
where the fat and furious Beeka Mull still stood amongst his
disordered silks and carpets, and coming to a friendly wall he
crouched and leant against it, and putting his head into his hands
gave himself up to an agony of misery and despair.

There he sat motionless, like one turned to stone, whilst darkness
fell around him; and when, about eleven o'clock that night, a certain
gay young fellow named Kooshy Ram passed by with a friend, he saw the
merchant sitting hunched against the wall, and remarked: 'A thief, no
doubt.' 'You are wrong,' returned the other, 'thieves don't sit in
full view of people like that, even at night.' And so the two passed
on, and thought no more of him. About five o'clock next morning Kooshy
Ram was returning home again, when, to his astonishment, he saw the
miserable merchant still sitting as he had seen him sit hours before.
Surely something must be the matter with a man who sat all night in
the open street, and Kooshy Ram resolved to see what it was; so he