Byram and Ghopal. 



205 



after the welfare of the citizens, and then 

 continued on his way to the Serai, but one 

 of the Bunyans called a lad and bade him 

 go to the Bazaar and inform the people 

 that Byram the Wise was at the Serai, and 

 request them to send supplies; and to his 

 own, son he sent orders to furnish two 

 pounds of rice and a quarter of a pound of 

 ghee or clarified butter, and niiisala or curry 

 powder and spices. 



A young Brahmin presented himself also 

 and volunteered to prepare a repast for 

 Byram, and ere long our travelers were 

 seated at their suppers. This ended, the 

 hookahs were lighted, and many of the 

 townspeople gathered about Byram and 

 entered into conversation and inquired of 

 him about the places he had seen and the 

 people he had met on his travels since 

 they had last seen him. But Ghopal was 

 weary, and as soon as he had finished his 

 pipe he stretched himself on the cot, and 

 ere long the hum of voices around him 

 was mingled with his dreams. 



Ghopal had eaten a hearty supper, and 

 strange and fantastic were the dreams that 

 disturbed his slumbers. He dreamed that 

 he was dead, and that his spirit had trans- 

 migrated into a working bee, and that Mon- 

 eram, his creditor, was a drone in the same 

 hive. All the summer long he regarded 

 him with indifference and treated him with 

 friendly deference, but when the autumn 

 came, and Moneram and other drones at- 

 tempted to encroach on the winter stores 

 of honey, a wild, uncontrollable impulse of 

 fury took possession of him, and he fell 

 upon the Moneram drone and stung him. 

 When he looked round he saw that the 

 other working bees had acted similarly by 

 the other drones, and now nothing re- 

 mained but to throw their dead bodies out 

 of the hive. Then consciousness ceased 

 for a while, and when Ghopal's attention 

 was next directed to himself he found he 

 was no longer a bee, but a young fawn 

 trotting along by the side of his dam. 



Time passed on and he got a pair of 

 branching horns, and ceased to remember 

 that he had ever been other than a stag; 

 but one day, as he roamed the woods in 

 company with half a dozen females, he sud- 

 denly halted appalled, face to face with a 

 tiger, in which he recognized his old cred- 

 itor, Moneram. For a moment he stood 

 riveted to the spot, paralyzed, while he 

 began to cast up mentally how much the 

 fifty rupees came to at compound interest, 

 and whether there was enough meat on his 

 haunches to settle the account. The next 

 instant he turned and dashed through the 

 forest, fear lending speed to his feet. In 

 vain — the pursuing tiger was close behind, 

 and now suddenly a precipice yawned in 

 front. Ghopal paused not to think, but 

 plunged despairingly over, and kept on 

 falling for an interminable length of time, 

 conscious, too, that the tiger was falling 

 through the air after him. Mile after mile 

 they fell through space, until Ghopal gave 

 up expecting to reach bottom, but after a 

 time he found he was standing on firm 

 ground, but concealed in grass that reached 

 high above his head. Ghopal listened, for 

 he knew the tiger could not be very far off. 

 All was deathly still; not a movement, not 

 a reed stirred. The tiger was crouching 

 probably — it may be on this side, it may be 

 on that — perhaps preparing for the fatal 

 spring. The sweat rose in beads to Gho- 

 pal's forehead; his knees knocked together, 

 his heart almost stopped its pulsations, 

 when the silence was broken by a most un- 

 earthly roar, at which Ghopal fairly awoke 

 with terror to find that the roar proceeded 

 from a camel that some Beloochee travelers 

 were loading in the dim twilight that her- 

 alded the approaching dawn. 



It was a great relief to Ghopal to find 

 that it was only a dream, although he 

 thought that very likely it was a revelation 

 of what might happen in the course of his 

 transmigrations. On the whole, he was 

 disposed to take great comfort out of the 



