ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 111 



the paddy crops of one, killing the cattle and goats of 

 another, or even sending a grey-eyed firstborn child ! 



This last calamity is considered very awful, grey eyes 

 being ' cats' eyes ' ; to be called ' cat-eyed ' through life 

 would be a curse no one could stand up against. The 

 prejudice is universal in India. 



Only once did I ever see a pure-bred native with grey 

 eyes ; to do so is the rarest thing in the world, though 

 amongst Eurasians they are common, and sometimes very 

 beautiful in their type of face. He was a peon of ours, and 

 was detected in horrible torturing of an old tribesman, one 

 of the jungle people who are so helpless in the hands of some 

 belted wretch armed with a little ' brief authority/ unless 

 they can make their voices heard. 1 The old man had been 

 hung up by a cord round his crossed wrists : the peon came 

 up to the verandah, pulling him along, more or less gently, 

 as I could see from where I was sitting, and in F.'s absence 

 began relating his version of the story to me that I might 

 interest myself — a thing I never did, in the sense of inter- 

 fering — on his, the peon's, behalf, telling me of his vigilance 

 in the prosecution of his duty and of the dangers he had run 

 in capturing this formidable rogue, and so on. 



One glance at the trembling old man and then at the 

 peon with those grey and feline eyes, for such they truly 

 looked in his dark face, was enough to turn any one against 

 the latter, whatever there might be to be said on his side. 

 On the other side nothing was needed to enlist my sympathies 

 but the sight of the victim. Holding up his wrists, cut to 

 the bone by the cruel cord and the weight, slight as it was, 

 of his wizened little frame, the poor old man mumbled 

 something which was interpreted to mean that he did not 

 know who the thief was in a certain case in his village (of 

 which he was the head-man), and that he had been tortured 



1 I am Bpeaking here only of peons who abused their power ; as a body 

 they are fine fellows, 



