i 3 o THE COBRA BUNGALOW 



inscribed in lines of anguish on his distorted face, 

 and not three feet from him a huge cobra, just 

 emerged from the roll of matting, eyed him with a 

 stony stare, its head raised and its hood expanded. 

 Its quivering tongue flickered out from between 

 its lips like distant flashes of forked lightning. 



For a moment Beharilal stood stupefied, then all 

 the heroism that was in him spent itself at once. 

 Seizing the heavy wooden stool in both his hands, 

 he raised it high over his head and dashed it down 

 on the reptile. The sharp edge of hard wood broke 

 its back, and as it wriggled and lashed about, biting 

 at everything within reach, the Bunia snatched up 

 his boy and waddled into the house at a pace to 

 which he had long been unaccustomed, calling out, 

 in frantic gasps, for help. A rush of excited and 

 screaming women met him in the inner court, and 

 he dropped his precious burden, with pious ejacu- 

 lations, into the arms of its mother, and stood 

 panting and speechless. Then calling aloud to 

 know if all danger was past, he ventured cautiously 

 out again and saw that the Purdaisee and the Malee 

 had ejected the wriggling cobra and were pounding 

 its head into a jelly with a big stone. 



For some seconds he looked on in a strange 

 stupor, and then he realised what he had done. He, 

 Beharilal, the Bunia, who had always removed the 

 insects so tenderly from his own person that they 

 were not hurt, who had never committed the sin of 

 killing a mosquito or a fly ; he, with his own hands, 



