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He is generally a Doosadh, or other low caste man, and perambulates the village at night, at intervals uttering a loud cry or a fierce howl, which is caught up and echoed by all the chowkeydars of the neighbouring villages. It is a weird, strange sound, cry after cry echoing far away, distance beyond distance, till it fades into faintness.

Other localities have their peculiar throngs, and certain classes and castes are proper to certain thoroughfares; Sepoys and dogboys to the Midaun; circars or clerks, and chowkeydars or private police, to Tank Square; a world of pampered women, fat civil servants, coachmen, ayahs or nurses, durwans or doorkeepers, cha-prasseys or messengers, kitmudgars or waiters, to Garden Reach; palanquin-bearers, the smaller fry of banyans or shopkeepers, and dandees or boatmen, to the Ghauts; together with no end of coolies, and bheestees or water-carriers, horse-dealers, and syces or grooms, to Durumtollah; sailors, British and American, Malay and Lascar, to Flag Street, the quarter of punch-houses; but in Cossitollah all castes and vocations are met, whether their talk be of gold mohurs or cowries; here the Sahib gives the horrid leper a wide berth, and the Baboo walks carefully round the shadow of Mehtur, the sweeper.

I asked where was the chowkeydar, and seeing from my coolness and determination that the game was up, he shouted out, and from round the corner of the huts came another policeman, and two village chowkeydars from a distance. They had evidently been hiding, observing all that passed, and meaning to act as witnesses against me, if I had been led by the first scoundrel's behaviour to lose my temper.