magic, as distinguished from the unclean _jadoo_ which kills folk. It took
a long time before Suddhoo admitted that this was just what he had asked
me to come for. Then he told me, in jerks and quavers, that the man who
said he cut seals was a sorcerer of the cleanest kind; that every day he
gave Suddhoo news of his sick son in Peshawar more quickly than the
lightning could fly, and that this news was always corroborated by the
letters. Further, that he had told Suddhoo how a great danger was
threatening his son, which could be removed by clean _jadoo_; and, of
course, heavy payment. I began to see exactly how the land lay, and told
Suddhoo that _I_ also understood a little _jadoo_ in the Western line, and
would go to his house to see that everything was done decently and in
order. We set off together; and on the way Suddhoo told me that he had
paid the seal cutter between one hundred and two hundred rupees already;
and the _jadoo_ of that night would cost two hundred more. Which was
cheap, he said, considering the greatness of his son's danger; but I do
not think he meant it.

The lights were all cloaked in the front of the house when we arrived. I
could hear awful noises from behind the seal cutter's shop front, as if
some one were groaning his soul out. Suddhoo shook all over, and while we
groped our way upstairs told me that the _jadoo_ had begun. Janoo and
Azizun met us at the stair head, and told us that the _jadoo_ work was
coming off in their rooms, because there was more space there. Janoo is a
lady of a freethinking turn of mind. She whispered that the _jadoo_ was an
invention to get money out of Suddhoo, and that the seal cutter would go
to a hot place when he died. Suddhoo was nearly crying with fear and old
age. He kept walking up and down the room in the half light, repeating his
son's name over and over again, and asking Azizun if the seal cutter ought
not to make a reduction in the case of his own landlord. Janoo pulled me
over to the shadow in the recess of the carved bow-windows. The boards