CHAPTER X.
The Marriage Contract.
The waving of lamps and the loud clanging of bells showed the worship of the goddess Nistarini to be in full swing in Sheoraphuli. Becharam Babu looked into the shrine of the goddess as he went by on foot: lining both sides of the road were shops: in some of them heaps of potatoes, grown at Bandipore and Gopalpore, were exposed for sale: in others, the shopkeepers were hard at work selling parched rice and sweetmeats, grain and dal. Here in one part were oil-merchants sitting near their mills, (which were simply the hollowed out trunks of trees,) and reading the Ramayan in the vulgar tongue: now and then they would urge on their cattle, as they went circling round, with a click of the tongue, and when the circle was completed, would shriek out the passage: "Oh Ram! we are monkeys, Ram, we are monkeys!" Women were busily engaged in cutting up fish for sale by the light of their lamps, and calling out: "Buy our fish, buy our fish!" while cloth merchants, reciting some passage from the Mahabharat, were murdering its unhappy author. All this, as he passed through the Bazaar, Becharam Babu was closely observing. When a man is taking a solitary walk, anything that has recently occupied his attention keeps recurring to his mind. Now, Becharam Babu was very fond in those days of processional singing; and as he went along an unfrequented path, after leaving his dwelling, one of his favourite songs came into his mind. The night was dark and
