Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/166

And, indeed, his books proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that the debt, instead of being reduced, would grow with each successive payment, until in the end of a few years the original loan of fifty rupees had become half a lakh. He would then give thanks to Shiva, the great god, and to the just laws of the English.

For look you:

During the lawless old Moghul days, the days when the Moslem dogs ruled to the South of the Passes, a quick, crooked dagger-thrust would have ended the babu's earthly career. But the British Raj, the guardian angel of the poor and the pitiful, had established the just laws of Europe in this land of oppression. Thus Harar Lal carried on his business in security, under the shadow of the law, even as they do in England and in America.

There was nothing he would not lend money on, from a nautch girl's blue beads to an unborn calf, from an acre of indigo plants to ten yards of muslin turban cloth; provided the papers were drawn up in proper form and witnessed by a notary public.

And so in good years, when abundant rain watered the smiling fields, when the crops were green and bounteous, the fish swarming in the river, and the trees heavy with fruit, he would reap a goodish share of the gifts of the gods, and—everything being so rich and plentiful—he would naturally increase the interest on loans a little, just a little; while in bad years, when black famine stalked through the fields, when the sun burnt as do the eternal fires in the seventh hall of perdition, when the smoky yellow haze rose from the ground and suffocated the parching crops, when the fish perished of thirst in the drying streams,