In a few minutes their chief, a stalwart, brawny biped, swaggered in,
twirling his moustaches, clanking his sword, and studying to seem
truculent. He, no less than his men, was at a loss to know what I
could have come there for. So I told him the unvarnished facts of the
case, and paused for his reply. He had none to make. The latest news
from Lucknow he inquired for, indeed, but as I had come from the
opposite direction, and withal did not know the latest news of the
capital from the stalest, I could contribute nothing to his
enlightenment. Besides my rifle, I had in my belt a pair of loaded
pistols. He desired to look at them, but took in good part enough my
objection that I never trusted them in any hands but my own. We went
on talking for a little while, when he called for betel and pan. This
meant that I might go. I helped myself, took leave and recrossed the
drawbridge. It was a notorious freebooter, a Hindoo Robin Hood, that I
had dropped upon. But why did he not tumble me into his ditch and
enrich his armory with my rifle and pistols? It may be that prudence
operated, in his letting me go free, as a check on his lust for a very
small gain. Despite the then disordered condition of the country--or,
in some instances, by very reason of it--people of his stamp were
every here and there called to a summary reckoning.
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