law, and I sent my mother after her, for I had no longer a home. I left the village with an aching heart, to see if my father's friends, the sahoukars, could do anything for me at the court. But they too had changed, as I might perhaps have expected, and would do nothing.
"Brij Lall, they said, was too powerful to be interfered with; and they recommended me to give up all hopes of justice, as the attempt to fix the crime of murder upon him, with the insufficient evidence I possessed, would be attended with my certain destruction. Nor would they assist me to regain my lost rights; so that I was friendless, and, as it were, forsaken in the world. I had but one resource: I joined the first band of Thugs I could discover, though I had previously not practised the profession, and I have since lived a lonely and wretched life in the world. My mother is long since dead. My sister still lives, and has some children; she is happy, and has no remembrance of the past. I pay her a visit now and then, and am received with affection and kindness. She is the only one in this world except you, my friends, who cares for me. She believes me to be a soldier in the service of Holkar, and she will never know to the contrary. Praise be to
