116 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



below the surface. These people don't tell of each other 

 lest worse befall them in revenge. There had never been 

 any intention on the part of that make or his girl of letting 

 us know about the awful coercion to which she had been 

 subjected — it all came out accidentally. 



I have been told that in days gone by, before my time, 

 natives were very simple — they are not so now — and they 

 used to be given chits (tiny scribbles) to carry from one 

 sahib to another containing requests or orders to thrash the 

 bearer ! In those unsuspecting days, also, the ordeal by 

 rice was resorted to for the detection of a thief in any 

 one's household. All were assembled, and each man made 

 to take some raw rice in his mouth ; the innocent munched 

 away, but the guilty one could not do so ; his mouth was 

 too dry and parched in feverish terror for him to be able to 

 masticate the hard grains — clear proof of guilt ! This was 

 certainly not a bad plan if you had a pretty shrewd idea 

 as to the culprit, who, be sure, was watching you, and 

 knew, if the rest didn't, that you knew him for the thief. 



Another plan — and this F. sometimes adopted — useful 

 when suspicion amounts to certainty, for otherwise it is 

 apt to end in a fiasco, consists in using a small galvanic 

 battery, so arranged that the suspect shall get a slight but 

 startling shock on plunging his eager hand into a bowl of 

 water with shining eight-anna bits at the bottom ; every 

 one but he can pick up a prize — self -convicted again. For 

 justice this method of detecting guilt is about on a par 

 with our ancient Saxon ordeals by fire, water, etc., unless 

 one already knows the culprit, as F. made sure of doing. 



Chowry, the gardener's child, the victim in the bangle- 

 theft story, was in most respects an ugly little sprite, but 

 she possessed one element of beauty in her long, thick hair. 

 This hair her father once vowed as a sacrifice at his special 

 shrine should his wife recover from an illness which had 

 laid her low ; she did recover, and her husband duly offered 



