In a remote corner of the garden, under the dark shade of a tamarind, there stood a small shrine, like a whitewashed tomb, with a niche or recess on one side of it containing a conical stone smeared with red ochre.  Some called it Mahadeo and some Khandoba, but no one could explain the presence of a Mahratta god in a Bunia’s garden in Dowlutpoor, except by quoting an old tradition about one Narayen who had come from the Mahratta country and lived for many years in this place.  Some said he was a prosperous goldsmith of great piety, but others maintained that he was a Sunyasee, or saint, and there was no certainty in the matter.  The one point on which all were agreed was the great sanctity of the shrine, and Beharilal was most careful to perform at it every ceremony which custom, or tradition, sanctioned for placating the god and averting any calamity that might arise from his displeasure.

At the base of one of the old cracked walls of the shrine there was a hole which was the den of a very large, black cobra.  Several times it had been seen in the garden, and, when pursued, had glided into this hole and escaped.  When Beharilal first heard of it he was much troubled in his mind, but, having consulted a Brahmin, he gave strict injunctions that the reptile should not be molested, and since that time he had never failed to place an offering of milk near to the hole in the morning and in the evening.

Now it happened that at this time there was in Dowlutpoor an English doctor who was generally known as the Jadoo-walla Saheb, because he was believed to practise sorcery and had some mysterious need of snakes.  Perhaps he was only making experiments with their venom.  At any rate, he wanted live cobras and offered a good price for them.  So when Nagoo, the snake-charmer, heard that there was a large one in Beharilal’s garden, he thought he might do good business by capturing it for the Jadoo-walla Saheb, and at the same time demanding a reward from the timorous Bunia for ridding him of such a dangerous neighbour.  With this intent he repaired to the garden with all the apparatus of his art, his flat snake baskets, his mongoose and his crooked pipe.  Having reconnoitred the ground, he commenced operations by sitting down on his hams and producing such ear-splitting strains from the crooked pipe as might have charmed Cerberus to leave his kennel at the gate of hell.  Great was his surprise and mortification when he heard the voice of Beharilal raised in tones of unwonted passion and saw a stalwart Purdaisee advancing towards him armed with an iron-bound lathee, who, without ceremony, nay, with abusive epithets, hustled him and all his gear out of the garden.  Nagoo was a snake-charmer and by nature a gipsy, and this treatment rankled in his dark bosom.