Some weeks passed and the sun had scarcely risen when Beharilal sat in the ota in front of his house at his daily business, which began as soon as his teeth were cleaned and ended about eleven at night.  The place was not tidy.  Two or three mats were spread on the floor, a spare one was rolled up in a corner, several pairs of shoes were on the steps, umbrellas leaned against the wall, handles downwards, and a large chatty of drinking water stood beside them.  The Bunia himself, bare-headed and bare-footed, sat cross-legged on a cushion, with a wooden stool in front of him, on which lay an open ledger of stout yellowish paper, bound in soft red leather and nearly two feet in length.  In this he was carefully entering yesterday’s transactions with a reed pen, which he dipped frequently in a brass inkpot filled with a sponge soaked in a muddy black fluid.

Beside him sat his son, aged two years, playing with the red, lacquered cylinder in which he kept his reed pens.  Beharilal had two girls also, but they were with the women folk in the interior of the house, where he was content they should stay.  This was his only boy, the pride and joy of his heart.  Engrossed as he was in recording his gains, he could not refrain from lifting his eyes now and again to feast them on that rotund little body, like a goblet set on two pillars.  No clothing concealed the tense and shiny brown skin, but there were silver bracelets on the fat wrists and massive anklets where deep creases divided the fat little feet from the fat little legs, and a representation, in chased silver, of Eve’s fig leaf hung from a silver chain which encircled the sphere that should have been his waist.  His globular head was curiously shaven.  From two deep pits between the bulging brow and the fat cheeks that nearly squeezed out the little nose between them, two black diamonds twinkled, full of wonder, as the small purse mouth prattled to itself softly and inarticulately of the mysteries of life.

Suddenly a startled cry, passing into a prolonged wail of fear, roused old Beharilal, and he saw a sight that nearly caused him to swoon with terror.  The little man, a moment ago so placid and happy, was shrinking back with “I don’t like that thing” inscribed in lines of anguish on his distorted face, and not three feet from him a huge cobra, just emerged from the roll of matting, eyed him with a stony stare, its head raised and its hood expanded.  Its quivering tongue flickered out from between its lips like distant flashes of forked lightning.

For a moment Beharilal stood stupefied, then all the heroism that was in him spent itself at once.  Seizing the heavy wooden stool in both his hands, he raised it high over his head and dashed it down on the reptile.  The sharp edge of hard wood broke its back, and as it wriggled and lashed about, biting at everything within reach, the Bunia snatched up his boy and waddled into the house at a pace to which he had long been unaccustomed, calling out, in frantic