th this disease; they must all
sit at home clothed in sackcloth and ashes. He was told that he had
better defer his journey to Benares till the child should recover;
but he could neither sleep nor eat, so great was his terror, lest
some dreadful calamity should befall the whole family before he could
expiate his crime, or take the advice of his high priest as to the
best means of doing it: and he resolved to leave the decision of the
question to God Himself. He took two pieces of paper, and having
caused Benares to be written upon one, and Jubbulpore upon the other,
he put them both into a brass vessel. After shaking the vessel well,
he drew forth that on which Benares had been written. 'It is the will
of God,' said Ram Kishan. All the family, who were interested in the
preservation of the poor boy, implored him not to set out, lest Devi,
who presides over small-pox, should become angry. It was all in vain.
He would set out with his household god; and, unable to carry it
himself, he put it into a small litter upon a pole, and hired a
bearer to carry it at one end, while he supported it at the other.
His brother, Khushhal Chand, sent his second wife at the same time
with offerings for Devi, to ward off the effects of his brother's
rashness from his child. By the time the brother had got with his god
to Adhartal, three miles from Jubbulpore, on the road to Benares, he
heard of the death of his nephew; but he seemed not to feel this
slight blow in his terror of the dreadful but undefined calamity
which he felt to be impending over him and the whole family, and he
trotted on his road. Soon after, an infant son of their uncle died of
the same disease; and the whole town became at once divided into two
parties--those who held that the children had been killed by Devi as
a punishment for Ram Kishan's presuming to leave Jubbulpore before
they recovered; and those who held that they were killed by the god
Vishnu himself, for having been so rudely deprived of one of his
arms. Khushhal Chand's wife sickened on the road, and died on
reaching Mirzapore, of fever; and, as Devi was supposed to have
nothing to do with fevers, this event greatly augmented the advocates
of Vishnu. It is a rule with the Hindoos to bury, and not to burn,
the bodies of those who die of the small-pox; 'for', say they, 'the
small-pox is not only caused by the goddess Devi, but is, in fact,
_Devi herself_', and to burn the body of the person affected with
this