udent
man.

By these means Beharilal had become possessed of large estates, which he
managed with such skill that they yielded to him revenues which they had
never yielded to the former owners of them, while his tenants, who were
mostly former owners, grew daily more deeply involved in their pecuniary
obligations to him, and therefore entertained no thought of leaving him,
for he could put them into prison any day if he chose. Their contentment
gave him great satisfaction, and he treated them with benevolence,
giving them advances of money for all their necessary expenses and
appropriating the whole of their crops at the harvest to repay himself.
He bound them to buy all that they had need of at his shop, so that he
made profit off them on both sides.

And as his wealth increased, his person increased with it and his
appearance became more imposing, so that he was regarded everywhere with
the highest respect and esteem. He was, moreover, a very religious man
and charitable beyond most. By early risers he might be seen in his
garden seeking out the nests of ants and giving them, with his own
hands, their daily dole of rice. It was his benevolent thoughtfulness
which had supplied drinking troughs for the flocks of pigeons that
continually plundered the stores of the other grain merchants. He had
also established a pinjrapole for aged, sickly and ownerless animals of
all kinds. To this he required all his tenants to send their bullocks
when they became unfit for work, and he sold them new cattle, good and
strong, at prices fixed by himself. If any of his old debtors, when
reduced to beggary, came to his door for alms, they were never sent away
without a handful of rice or a copper coin. He kept a bag of the
smallest copper coins always at hand for such purposes.

Beharilal had a fine house, designed by himself and surrounded by a vast
garden stocked with mangoes, guavas, custard apples, oranges and other
fruit trees, and made beautiful and fragrant with all manner of flowers.
The cool shade drew together birds of many kinds from the dry plains of
the surrounding country, and it pleased Beharilal to think that they
also were recipients of his bounty and that the benefits which he
conferred on them would certainly be entered to the credit of his
account with Heaven.

Some he fed, such as the crows, which flocked about the back door, like
a convocation of Christian padres, in the morning and afternoon, when
the ladies of