conch, and the latter, not being an integral part of public worship, was proclaimed a nuisance.

The deputy commissioner himself had no doubt about its being one, as he wiped the perspiration from his brow, and remarked to Dhunput Rai that that ought to finish the business.

The courteous old gentleman smiled.

"Huzoor," he said, "I have heard my father say that Akbar's order to his judges was, 'Write ever with the pen which has been cut by the sword; then there is peace in the land.' The case will be appealed, and the pen of the Huzoors is cut by machine."

He was a true prophet. Hunumân, backed by the 'Sun of Asia,' not only appealed the conch question, but raised another in the interim by putting a small blue plaster monkey on the top of the gold spike, in fulfilment, it was urged, of the pre-natal vow made for him by his mother, a pious Hindu lady, whose virtuous life was crowned with honour.

The monkey remained there exactly five-and-twenty minutes after the first beams of the rising sun disclosed the fact that it had been put there during the night. That it remained so long was due to three reasons: First, that the Jehâdpore troopers, if good swordsmen, were uncommonly bad shots; second, that Azmutoollah's blunderbuss was a flint-lock; third, that he insisted on letting it off himself until it knocked him down.

This time the case was taken direct to the deputy commissioner, who, urged on the one side by a remembrance of Dhunput Rai's remark, and on the other by a sneaking fear of revision, decided that the blue monkey, as an idolatrous image, was a distinct nuisance when displayed unnecessarily over the top of a Mohammedan gentleman's private mosque. On the other hand, viewed from the Hindu standpoint, the image of a blue monkey might be an integral part of public worship. Azmutoollah Khan Bahadur, C.I.E., ex-rissaldar, must therefore pay over to Mool Raj and to Hunumân Sing the price of the destroyed blue monkey, as they might wish to erect a similar one in a less conspicuous place.

Now, though Mool Raj's name was duly entered in the file as complainant, the affair had long ago passed out of his hands and become a real, solid, Heaven-sent grievance to a small knot of advanced young pleaders. Indeed, the old man was so distinctly unsatisfactory as chief victim, that they had more than once taken the opportunity of his absence to advance matters a step. Azmutoollah Khan, as shrewd an old soldier as could be found 

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