utterly weary of hanging about the courts. They were just breaking up when suddenly the magistrate's carriage was heard approaching. Shouts were at once raised: "The Saheb is coming! The Saheb is coming!" The astrologer looked utterly crestfallen, and people began to say to him: "Your honour's calculations are somewhat amazing." "Ah!" replied he, "it must be owing to something pungent that I have eaten to-day that my calculations have been so upset." The clerks of the court were all standing in their places, and directly the magistrate entered they all bent their heads low to the ground and salaamed to him.
The magistrate took his seat on the bench whistling casually. His hooka bearer brought him his hooka: he put his feet up on the table, and lying back in his chair, pulled away contentedly, now and then drawing out his handkerchief, which was scented with lavender-water, to mop his face. The office of the court interpreter was crowded. Men were hard at work writing out depositions, but as the old proverb has it: "He wins who pays." The head clerk of the court, the sheristadar, with a shawl over his shoulders and a fine turban on his head, took a number of records of cases and read them out in a sing-song before the magistrate, who all the while was glancing at a newspaper, or writing some of his own private letters: as each case was read out he asked: "Well, what is all this about?" The sheristadar gave him the information that suited his own wishes on the subject, and the opinion of the sheristadar was practically the opinion of the magistrate.
Barada Babu was standing on one side with Beni Babu and Ramlall, and was perfectly amazed when he heard the kind of judgments that were being delivered. Considering the depositions that had been made in
