‘Very strange!’ said the Raja, turning round to his followers.

‘Yes,’ replied they,’ it is very strange, Raja Sahib; but such is your ‘ikbal’ (good fortune), that everything thrives under it; and, if the colonel should wish to have a few crows, we could easily collect them for him.’

‘If’, said the colonel, greatly delighted, ’you could provide us with a few of these crows, we should really feel very much obliged to you; for we have a long and cold campaign before us among the bleak hills of Nepal; and we are all fond of crows.’

‘Indeed,’ returned the Raja, ’I shall be happy to send you as many as you wish.’ (’Much’ and ‘many’ are expressed by the same term.)

’Then we should be glad to have two or three bags full, if it would not be robbing you.’

‘Not in the least,’ said the Raja; ’I will go home and order them to be collected immediately.’

In the evening, as the officers, with the colonel at their head, were sitting down to dinner, a man came up to announce the Raja’s present.  Three fine large bags were brought in, and the colonel requested that one might be opened immediately.  It was opened accordingly, and the mess butler (’khansaman’) drew out by the legs a fine old crow.  The colonel immediately saw the mistake, and laughed as heartily as the rest at the result.  A polite message was sent to the Raja, requesting that he would excuse his having made it—­for he had had half a dozen men out shooting crows all day with their matchlocks.  Few Europeans spoke the language better than General ------, and I do not believe that one European in a thousand, at this very moment, makes any difference, or knows any difference, in the sound of the two terms.

Kam Baksh had one sister married to the King of Oudh, and another to Mirza Salim, the younger son of the Emperor.  Mirza Salim and his wife could not agree, and a separation took place, and she went to reside with her sister, the Queen of Oudh.  The King saw her frequently; and, finding her more beautiful than his wife, he demanded her also in marriage from her father, who resided at Lucknow, the capital of Oudh, on a pension of five thousand rupees a month from the King.  He would not consent, and demanded his daughter; the King, finding her willing to share his bed and board with her sister, would not give her up.[17] The father got his old friend, Colonel Gardiner, who had married a Muhammadan woman of rank, to come down and plead his cause.  The King gave up the young woman, but at the same time stopped the father’s pension, and ordered him and all his family out of his dominions.  He set out with Colonel Gardiner and his daughter, on his road to Delhi, through Kasganj, the residence of the colonel, who was one day recommending the prince to seek consolation for the loss of his pension in the proud recollection of having saved the honour of the house of Tamerlane, when news was brought to them that the daughter had run off