corpse, and from the profusion of hair on its head, that it was the body of a little girl, and they had no doubt in their minds that it was the corpse of Yádumani, whom they had often seen. The news was soon spread, and the whole village came to the tank. But how was the body to be brought to land? The reader will recollect that the Krishnaságara was regarded with mysterious awe, and that scarcely any person dipped his feet in any other part of the tank than at the bathing ghats, which were sadly out of repair. Amongst the hundreds of spectators crowding the slope of the embankment down to the water's edge, none offered to undertake the task. At last, Kálamánik, the boldest man in the village, went down into the water, swam up to the corpse, and dragged it ashore. The crowd shrieked with horror; there was no mistaking it—it was the veritable Yádumani, but without life, without clothes, without her silver ornaments. The poor child had been evidently murdered for the sake of the jewels on her person.

The question now was, not as it would have been in other countries-who was the murderer ?-but

whether the body should be burnt that very night or not. The pressing necessity of an immediate solution of the question will be apparent to every one who remembers that Hindus consider it a great calamity and a great sin if the body of a deceased person is not burnt within twenty-four hours after his death. The invariable practice is to perform the rite of cremation immediately after the spirit has left its clayey tenement. But in the present case it was contrary to law to burn the body without the knowledge and sanction of the police. It was therefore deemed advisable to ask the advice of the zamindár of the village. The landlord, as an orthodox Hindu, was for immediate cremation; but to guard against unpleasant consequences he sent for the police-constable of the village, called phándidár, and ordered him (for he was the zamindár's humble and obedient servant) not to send a report of the affair to the tháná (police-station) of Mantresvar, which was the head police-station of Parganá Sáhábád, in which Kánchanpur was situated. On receiving a douceur the phánḍidár agreed to hush up the matter. The corpse was then that very

night taken from the Krishnaságara to another tank, where the remains of all the deceased persons of that part of the village were usually burnt, and the rite of cremation was duly performed.

Next morning the whole village were on the alert to discover, if possible, the perpetrator of that atrocious deed. One old woman came forward and said that she had seen, the day before, at about eleven o'clock, Yádumani going along with Bejá Bágdi and his sister towards Krishnaságara. Scores of people immediately ran to the hut of Bejá Bágdi, caught hold of him and of his sister, and dragged them to the Cutcherry of the zamindár. On the way the culprits were half killed with slaps, blows, cuffs, and kicks of the angry multitude. The zamindár ordered them to be tortured till they confessed the crime. The bamboo torture soon compelled them to make a clean breast of the affair. They said that they had enticed away the girl from the street, where she was playing, with the promise of giving her some fine mangoes, that they had taken all her ornaments, which were only of silver, killed her, and hid the corpse among the

flags of the Krishnaságara. I need scarcely say, that at this confession, the crowd, almost maddened with rage, poured such a hailstorm of blows, kicks, and cuffs, upon the culprits, that they were almost within an inch of their lives. But the question was—what was to be done to them? They could not be handed over to the police, for that would have put both Padma Pál and the zamindár into a scrape, for having burnt the corpse without the knowledge and permission of the police. The zamindár resolved to expel the murderers from the village, warning them, that if they returned to the village, they would be handed over to the police, and hanged. There and then the miscreants were expelled from the village, accompanied with a whirlwind of abuse, and a hailstorm of brickbats and old shoes. Thanks to the easy virtue of the village constable, the higher police authorities never got a scent of this affair.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE VILLAGE MARKET.

Some, burthened with their homely ware,
Journey to village hát or fair.

H. H. Wilson.

Háts, that is markets, whether held weekly or twice in the week, are a very useful institution; they not only supply with the necessaries of life the inhabitants of those little hamlets in which there are no shops, but also promote social intercourse between people of different villages. The hát of Kánchanpur, as the reader knows already, was held on Tuesdays and Saturdays on a plain in the south-west corner of the village. It was not a large one compared with the monstrous háts held in other parts of the country, especially in Eastern Bengal, still it was a pretty good one, being attended by between two and three