prudence of his change of residence.  Gunga Purshad was absent at the time on business.  All the prisoners were taken to the jungles and tortured with red-hot iron ramrods, and put into heavy fetters.  He demanded a ransom of nine hundred and fifty rupees for all.  Gunga Purshad sold all he had except some cows and bullocks, and collected four hundred rupees, and his relation’s clubbed together and raised one hundred more.  The five hundred were sent to Bhooree Khan, and he took them and released all but Bhowanee Purshad.  His two younger brothers collected the cows and bullocks, and went with them to Mukdoompoor, in the hope of being allowed to till their lands; but Bhooree Khan and his gang came, seized and sold all the cows and bullocks they had saved, plundered them of everything, and took their lands from them.  They all fled once more, and went to reside at Putgowa.  At Mukdoompoor, Bhooree Khan had Bhowanee Purshad flogged so severely that he fell down insensible, and he then had red-hot iron spikes thrust into his eyes, and a few days after he died in confinement of his sufferings.  The value of the property taken from the family, besides the five hundred rupees’ ransom, was one thousand rupees.  He, about the same time, seized and carried off from Mukdoompoor Gunga Sookul, a Brahmin, tortured him to death, and threw his body into the river.

About the same time, August 1847, he seized and carried off Cheyn, a Brahmin of Mukdoompoor, son of Bhowanee Buksh.  He had come to him to pay the year’s rent for the lands he held in that village.  After paying his own rents and those of others who were afraid to put themselves into Bhooree Khan’s power, and had sent by Cheyn all that was due, he demanded from him a ransom of four hundred rupees.  He could give no more, and was put under a guard and tortured in the usual way.  As he persisted in declaring his inability to pay more, a necklace of cow’s bones was put round his neck, and one of the bones was thrust into his mouth, and the blood of a cow was thrown over him, from which he became for ever an outcast from his religion.  He expected to be put to death, but a friend conveyed to him the sum of ten rupees, which he gave to the robbers employed to torture him, and they spared his life.  His son had taken shelter in the village of Pallee, whence he sent a pausee bowman, named Bhowaneedeen, to inquire after him, and offered him ninety rupees if he would rescue his father.  The pausee pledged himself to Bhooree Khan to pay the money punctually, and Cheyn was released.  But Bhooree Khan had cut down all the crops upon the lands, and taken them away, and cut down also the five mango-trees which stood upon his land and had been planted by his ancestors.  During his confinement, Cheyn saw Bhooree Khan torture and murder many men, and dishonour many respectable women, whom he had seized in the same way.