the pride and joy
of his heart. Engrossed as he was in recording his gains, he could not
refrain from lifting his eyes now and again to feast them on that rotund
little body, like a goblet set on two pillars. No clothing concealed the
tense and shiny brown skin, but there were silver bracelets on the fat
wrists and massive anklets where deep creases divided the fat little
feet from the fat little legs, and a representation, in chased silver,
of Eve's fig leaf hung from a silver chain which encircled the sphere
that should have been his waist. His globular head was curiously shaven.
From two deep pits between the bulging brow and the fat cheeks that
nearly squeezed out the little nose between them, two black diamonds
twinkled, full of wonder, as the small purse mouth prattled to itself
softly and inarticulately of the mysteries of life.

Suddenly a startled cry, passing into a prolonged wail of fear, roused
old Beharilal, and he saw a sight that nearly caused him to swoon with
terror. The little man, a moment ago so placid and happy, was shrinking
back with "I don't like that thing" 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 ejaculations, 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 o