LITMIR.BIZ

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who was bald, and the Amir, hearing both sides of the case, bade her pour curds over the bare scalp, and lick them off, that the hair might grown again, and she be contented. Here the Court laughed, and the woman withdrew, cursing her king under her breath.

      But when twilight was falling, and the order of the Court was a little relaxed, there came before the king, in custody, a trembling haggard wretch, sore with much buffeting, but of stout enough build, who had stolen three rupees – of such small matters does His Highness take cognisance.

      ‘Why did you steal?’ said he; and when the king asks questions they do themselves service who answer directly.

      ‘I was poor, and no one gave. Hungry, and there was no food.’

      ‘Why did you not work?’

      ‘I could find no work, Protector of the Poor, and I was starving.’

      ‘You lie. You stole for drink, for lust, for idleness, for anything but hunger, since any man who will may find work and daily bread.’

      The prisoner dropped his eyes. He had attended the Court before, and he knew the ring of the death-tone.

      ‘Any man may get work. Who knows this so well as I do? for I too have been hungered – not like you, bastard scum, but as any honest man may be, by the turn of Fate and the will of God.’

      Growing warm, the Amir turned to his nobles all arow and thrust the hilt of his sabre aside with his elbow.

      ‘You have heard this Son of Lies? Hear me tell a true tale. I also was once starved, and tightened my belt on the sharp belly-pinch. Nor was I alone, for with me was another, who did not fail me in my evil days, when I was hunted, before ever I came to this throne. And wandering like a houseless dog by Kandahar, my money melted, melted, melted till – ’ He flung out a bare palm before the audience. ‘And day upon day, faint and sick, I went back to that one who waited, and God knows how we lived, till on a day I took our best lihaf – silk it was, fine work of Iran, such as no needle now works, warm, and a coverlet for two, and all that we had. I brought it to a money-lender in a bylane, and I asked for three rupees upon it. He said to me, who am now the King, “You are a thief. This is worth three hundred.” “I am no thief,” I answered, “but a prince of good blood, and I am hungry.” – “Prince of wandering beggars,” said that money-lender, “I have no money with me, but go to my house with my clerk and he will give you two rupees eight annas, for that is all I will lend.” So I went with the clerk to the house, and we talked on the way, and he gave me the money. We lived on it till it was spent, and we fared hard. And then that clerk said, being a young man of a good heart, “Surely the money-lender will lend yet more on that lihaf,” and he offered me two rupees. These I refused, saying, “Nay; but get me some work.” And he got me work, and I, even I, Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, wrought day by day as a coolie, bearing burdens, and labouring of my hands, receiving four annas wage a day for my sweat and backache. But he, this bastard son of naught, must steal! For a year and four months I worked, and none dare say that I lie, for I have a witness, even that clerk who is now my friend.’

      Then there rose in his place among the Sirdars and the nobles one clad in silk, who folded his hands and said, ‘This is the truth of God, for I, who, by the favour of God and the Amir, am such as you know, was once clerk to that money-lender.’

      There was a pause, and the Amir cried hoarsely to the prisoner, throwing scorn upon him, till he ended with the dread ‘Dar arid,’ which clinches justice.

      So they led the thief away, and the whole of him was seen no more together; and the Court rustled out of its silence, whispering, ‘Before God and the Prophet, but this is a man!’

      JEWS IN SHUSHAN

      My newly purchased house furniture was, at the least, insecure; the legs parted from the chairs, and the tops from the tables, on the slightest provocation. But such as it was, it was to be paid for, and Ephraim, agent and collector for the local auctioneer, waited in the verandah with the receipt. He was announced by the Mahomedan servant as ‘Ephraim, Yahudi’ – Ephraim the Jew. He who believes in the Brotherhood of Man should hear my Elahi Bukhsh grinding the second word through his white teeth with all the scorn he dare show before his master. Ephraim was, personally, meek in manner – so meek indeed that one could not understand how he had fallen into the profession of bill-collecting. He resembled an over-fed sheep, and his voice suited his figure. There was a fixed, unvarying mask of childish wonder upon his face. If you paid him, he was as one marvelling at your wealth; if you sent him away, he seemed puzzled at your hard-heartedness. Never was Jew more unlike his dread breed. Ephraim wore list slippers and coats of duster-cloth, so preposterously patterned that the most brazen of British subalterns would have shied from them in fear. Very slow and deliberate was his speech, and carefully guarded to give offence to no one. After many weeks, Ephraim was induced to speak to me of his friends.

      ‘There be eight of us in Shushan, and we are waiting till there are ten. Then we shall apply for a synagogue, and get leave from Calcutta. To-day we have no synagogue; and I, only I, am Priest and Butcher to our people. I am of the tribe of Judah – I think, but I am not sure. My father was of the tribe of Judah, and we wish much to get our synagogue. I shall be a priest of that synagogue.’

      Shushan is a big city in the North of India, counting its dwellers by the ten thousand; and these eight of the Chosen People were shut up in its midst, waiting till time or chance sent them their full congregation.

      Miriam the wife of Ephraim, two little children, an orphan boy of their people, Epraim’s uncle Jackrael Israel, a white-haired old man, his wife Hester, a Jew from Cutch, one Hyem Benjamin, and Ephraim, Priest and Butcher, made up the list of the Jews in Shushan. They lived in one house, on the outskirts of the great city, amid heaps of saltpetre, rotten bricks, herds of kine, and a fixed pillar of dust caused by the incessant passing of the beasts to the river to drink. In the evening the children of the City came to the waste place to fly their kites, and Ephraim’s sons held aloof, watching the sport from the roof, but never descending to take part in them. At the back of the house stood a small brick enclosure, in which Ephraim prepared the daily meat for his people after the custom of the Jews. Once the rude door of the square was suddenly smashed open by a struggle from inside, and showed the meek bill-collector at his work, nostrils dilated, lips drawn back over his teeth, and his hands upon a half-maddened sheep. He was attired in strange raiment, having no relation whatever to duster coats or list slippers, and a knife was in his mouth. As he struggled with the animal between the walls, the breath came from him in thick sobs, and the nature of the man seemed changed. When the ordained slaughter was ended, he saw that the door was open and shut it hastily, his hand leaving a red mark on the timber, while his children from the neighbouring house-top looked down awe-stricken and open-eyed. A glimpse of Ephraim busied in one of his religious capacities was no thing to be desired twice.

      Summer came upon Shushan, turning the trodden waste-ground to iron, and bringing sickness to the city.

      ‘It will not touch us,’ said Ephraim confidently. ‘Before the winter we shall have our synagogue. My brother and his wife and children are coming up from Calcutta, and THEN I shall be the priest of the synagogue.’

      Jackrael Israel, the old man, would crawl out in the stifling evenings to sit on the rubbish-heap and watch the corpses being borne down to the river.

      ‘It will not come near us,’ said Jackrael Israel feebly, ‘for we are the People of God, and my nephew will be priest of our synagogue. Let them die.’ He crept back to his house again and barred the door to shut himself off from the world of the Gentile.

      But Miriam, the wife of Ephraim, looked out of the window at the dead as the biers passed and said that she was afraid. Ephraim comforted her with hopes of the synagogue to be, and collected bills as was his custom.

      In one night, the two children died and were buried early in the morning by Ephraim. The deaths never appeared in the City returns. ‘The sorrow is my sorrow,’ said Ephraim; and this to him seemed a sufficient reason for setting at naught the sanitary regulations of a large, flourishing, and remarkably well-governed Empire.

      The orphan boy, dependent on the charity of Ephraim and his wife, could have felt no gratitude, and

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