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He endured the loss of a valuable property, resolving to be even some day with his enemy. On the following night he was about to retire to bed, when the Lakhimpur Naib burst into the parlour and clasped his master's feet which he bedewed with tears. Nagendra shook him off roughly and asked how he dared to intrude upon him. "Mahásay," whined the Naib, "I want to make a clean breast of my misdeeds.
It was Priya who persuaded me to withhold the revenue due on Lakhimpur, by promising me a reward of Rs. 2,000 if the estate was auctioned. Now that he has got possession of it, he refuses to carry out his bargain and actually offers me Rs. 20, saying that I deserved no more. The black-hearted villain! Now I am come to implore forgiveness of my sin and to make amends for it."
I was punctual to the minute, and sure enough the tout came with one of the Collectorate clerks. I asked him whether it would not be possible so to manipulate the accounts of Lakhimpur, as to show that all Government revenue had been paid prior to the alleged default. He said that he would do his best and made me swear never to divulge his name.
As days and weeks wore on, his despondency became deeper and, one evening, while sitting with the Lakhimpur bailiff, he asked whether there was any remedy which would restore his peace of mind. The cunning rascal said nothing at the time; but at a late hour on the morrow he came to Nagendra Babu's house with a large bottle hidden under his wrapper.
He at once dismissed the Naib from his employ and hastened to Ghoria, where he instructed a pleader named Asu Babu to petition the collector for leave to make good the arrears on Lakhimpur. The request was perforce rejected. Lakhimpur was put up for sale and Nagendra ascertained that the purchaser was a man of straw representing Priya himself.
A few days afterwards the bailiff of Nagendra Babu's estate, known as Lakhimpur, called on Rámdá with a verbal request that he should surrender his ancestral tenure and, meeting with a curt refusal, left the house threatening all sorts of evil consequences.
Once inside, he suddenly thrust a brass vessel into his visitor's hand and dragged him into the yard, shouting "Thief! thief!" The Lakhimpur bailiff, who was sitting on the verandah, also laid hands on Rámdá and, with the aid of two up-country servants, he was dragged to the police station, too bewildered to resist.
Peal goes on to state the interesting fact that when he was at Ledo and Tikak, Naga villages, east of Makum, on the south-east frontier of the Lakhimpur district of Assam, in 1895, he found iron implements, miniature hoes, used by the Nagas, of a similar shape to the "shoulder-headed celts" which had been found in the Malay Peninsula and Chota Nagpur.
About a month after his unlucky lawsuit, Nagendra learnt quite by accident that one of his estates named Lakhimpur had been notified for sale for arrears of land revenue amounting to Rs. 197 odd. Nagendra rebuked him for gross negligence and failing to report the matter, for, he added, the arrears would have been paid from his own pocket.
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