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Beharilal had a fine house, designed by himself and surrounded by a vast garden stocked with mangoes, guavas, custard apples, oranges and other fruit trees, and made beautiful and fragrant with all manner of flowers.
Then a decree was obtained and the debtor's house, or land, was sold to defray the debt, Beharilal himself being usually the purchaser, though not, of course, in his own name, for he was a prudent man.
"If its mate died by the hand of a man, it will follow that man until it has accomplished its purpose." "But how will it know," asked Beharilal, "by whose hand its mate died?" Nagoo replied with pious simplicity, "How can I tell by what means it knows? God informs it." "But," pleaded Beharilal, "is there no escape? if a man goes away by the railway or by water?"
Then he took up his baskets and his pipe and followed the Malee. Beharilal proceeded to business with a directness foreign to his habit, looking over his shoulder at intervals lest a snake might be silently approaching. "Good Nagoo," he said, "a great misfortune has happened. The cobra of the shrine has been killed. Has it a mate?" "How can a cobra not have a mate?" answered Nagoo curtly.
Its quivering tongue flickered out from between its lips like distant flashes of forked lightning. For a moment Beharilal stood stupefied, then all the heroism that was in him spent itself at once. Seizing the heavy wooden stool in both his hands, he raised it high over his head and dashed it down on the reptile.
Beside him sat his son, aged two years, playing with the red, lacquered cylinder in which he kept his reed pens. Beharilal had two girls also, but they were with the women folk in the interior of the house, where he was content they should stay. This was his only boy, the pride and joy of his heart.
He, Beharilal, the Bunia, who had always removed the insects so tenderly from his own person that they were not hurt, who had never committed the sin of killing a mosquito or a fly; he, with his own hands, had taken the life of the guardian cobra of the shrine! "Urray-ray! Bap-ray!" he cried, "for what demerit of mine has this ill-luck befallen me in my old age? What will happen now?"
By these means Beharilal had become possessed of large estates, which he managed with such skill that they yielded to him revenues which they had never yielded to the former owners of them, while his tenants, who were mostly former owners, grew daily more deeply involved in their pecuniary obligations to him, and therefore entertained no thought of leaving him, for he could put them into prison any day if he chose.
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