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requested that neither Harrabhy nor any other person might leave 

 the spot until we had gone through the rice ordeal ; to this we 

 submitted, though by no means palatable to Harrabhy. He reluc- 

 tantly complied, and with all the rest of us put a few grains of 

 unboiled rice into his mouth: it was previously intimated that 

 from the mouth of the innocent after mastication it would come 

 out a milky liquid, from the guilty a dry powder. We were all 

 of the milky party except Harrabhy : mingling with the saliva it 

 became a white fluid; with him it remained a dry powder, notwith- 

 standing a number of fruitless efforts to liquefy it. He was com- 

 pelled thus to spit it out: his complexion changed from a rich 

 brown to a sort of livid blue, his lips quivered, and his altered 

 countenance plainly indicated guilt; he would make no confession, 

 and on this evidence we could only put him in confinement under 

 the court of Adawlet, until we obtained further proof. The next 

 day a little slave-boy, whom I afterwards brought to England, 

 discovered the bent iron hasp of the plate-chest just appear- 

 ing out of the steep bank of the Nerbudda, at the end of our 

 garden, about twenty feet above the river, and as much below the 

 summit of the cliff; there Ave found the chest, buried in the 

 earth. The robbers had attempted to wrench it open, and the 

 clasps fastened by padlocks had given wa}-; but the lock occasion- 

 ing greater difficulty, they waited for a more favorable opportu- 

 nity. When the culprit found the chest had been discovered and 

 restored to the owners, and had no prospect of benefiting by its 

 contents, he confessed that in concert with three other men he had 

 carried it off in the night, while our people were asleep, and was in 

 hopes we should have departed without finding it. Profane history 



