Kuppoorpuckree. He rushed up to where I was sitting in the verandah,
threw himself at my feet, with tears streaming down his cheeks, and
amid loud cries for pity and help, told me that his wife had just been
bewitched. Getting him somewhat soothed and pacified, I learned that a
reputed witch lived next door to his house; that she and the man's wife
had quarrelled in the morning about some capsicums which the witch was
trying to steal from his garden; that in the evening, as his wife was
washing herself inside the _angana_, or little courtyard appertaining
to his house, she was seized with cramps and shivering fits, and was
now in a raging fever; that the witch had been also bathing at the
time, and that the water from her body had splashed over this man's
fence, and part of it had come in contact with his wife's body--hence
undoubtedly this strange possession. He wished me to send peons at
once, and have the witch seized, beaten, and expelled from the village.
It would have been no use my trying to persuade him that no witchcraft
existed. So I gave him a good dose of quinine for his wife, which she
was to take as soon as the fit subsided. Next I got my old _moonshee_,
or native writer, to write some Persian characters on a piece of paper;
I then gave him this paper, muttering a bit of English rhyme at the
time, and telling him this was a powerful spell. I told him to take
three hairs from his wife's head, and a paring from her thumb and big
toe nails, and at the rising of the moon to burn them outside the walls
of his hut. The poor fellow took the quinine and the paper with the
deepest reverence, made me a most lowly _salaam_ or obeisance, and
departed with a light heart. He carried out my instructions to the
letter, the quinine acted like a charm on the feverish woman, and I
found myself quite a famous witch-doctor.

There was a nice flat little field close to the water at Parewah, in
which I thought I could get a good crop of oats during the cold