ORDER II. QUADRUMANA. 11 



"Wliilelwas gathering up this liair, one of my companions called my 

 attention to some marks upon the floor. A quantity of blood had run down 

 upon a grass mat by the side of the bed, and not far from this, upon the 

 floor, were several bloody prints, which appeared to me to have been made 

 by a man's hand. They were certainly not the prints of a human foot. 

 I could only account for them upon the supposition that the murderer had 

 cither slipped and fallen, or had been pushed over by the struggling zemin- 

 dar, and that here was where his bloody hands had struck. The window 

 was open, and we found stains of blood upon the stool very much in the 

 shape of those upon the floor. This sleeping-room was the only chanil)cr, 

 and the murderer had made his exit by the window into the tree, the limbs 

 of which dropped towards the house. 



" The first jierson whom we called as witness was an old woman who had 

 been employed for some years in the family. The zemindar's wife was just 

 then too deeply affected to give us any coherent information. This old 

 woman, whose name, I think, was Zaloli, recognized the razor as having 

 belonged to her master, and she also showed us the little closet where it 

 had been kept. Tlie closet door had been opened, and the razor taken 

 from the dressing-case, and that, too, in the dark, from all which it 

 appeared that the deed had been done by some one familiar with the 

 premises. There had been no robbery ; so we were led to the further conclu- 

 sion that tlie murder had been an act of vengeance. And who could have 

 entertained such feelings towai'ds Iloosian Kahn? We had questioned 

 Zaloh, but she shook her head. She did not reply with that promptness 

 which might have been expected from one who had no suspicions ; liut she 

 seemed rather to avoid the subject. I questioned her closely, but she was 

 not inclined to speak. 



" ' Do you know,' said I, ' if an}' of the servants in the house have had 

 any feelings of ill-will against your master?' 



" 8he begged of me to ask her mistress. Tlic mistress had just then 

 entered the room, and, as she heard this rcmai-k, she spoke. ,She said 

 there was a servant who had such enmity against her husliand ; and she 

 mentioned a table-servant named Gholam, and he was the most powerful 

 fellow on the place. I knew him well. He was high-tempered and bold, 

 but I had never thought him vindictive. It seems that two or three days 

 before the zemindar had punished Gholam for some slight misdemeanor, 

 and the latter had declared that he would have vengeance. Finally the 

 woman Zaloli confessed that she heard the man make such a tin-cat ; and 

 she had hesitated about telling it because Gholam was a good-hearted man, 

 and had been very kind to her. 



" Gholam was arrested and confined, and two days afterwards he was 



