emerge from his turban and curl in front of his ears. Several times
a day he goes into his room to contemplate himself in a small hand
mirror, and to wind up the love-locks on his finger. Poor Mukkun
has, indeed, a very human side, and the phenomenon which we recognise
as our Mussaul is not the whole of him. By birth he is an
agriculturist, and there is in the environs of Surat a little plot of
land and a small dilapidated hut in one corner of it, overgrown with
monstrous gourds, which he thinks of as home, sweet home. There are
his young barbarians all at play, but he, their sire, is forced to
seek service abroad because, as he practically expresses it, the
produce of his small field is not sufficient to fill so many bellies.
But, wherever he wanders, his heart--for he has a heart--flutters
about that rickety hut, and as he sits polishing your boots of a
morning, you may hear him pensively humming to himself:--


Beatus ille qui, procul negotiis,
Ut prisca gens mortalium,
Paterna rura bobus exercet suis,
Solutus omni foenore.


He puts a peculiar pathos into the last line, for he is grievously
haunted by an apparition in the form of an old man with a small red
turban, gold earrings, and grey beard parted in the middle, who
flourishes a paper in his face and talks of the debtors' gaol; and
hints that he will have the little house and field near Surat.
Mukkun first fell into the net of this spider many years ago, when he
wanted a few hundred rupees to enable him to celebrate the marriage
of his little child. He signed a bond for twice the amount he