[1] John Lawrence, afterwards Lord Lawrence and Viceroy of India.

‘I do not think I will make the road,’ said the Maharajah reflectively.

’King, you are the wisest of men, and therefore your own best counsellor.  It is well decided.  But the Rajputs are all sons of one father, and even now there is grief among the chief of them that outcasts should be dwelling in the King’s favour.’

‘I will not make the road,’ said the Maharajah.  ‘Enough!’

Surji Rao thought it was not quite enough, however, and took various means to obtain more, means that would never be thought of anywhere but in countries where the sun beats upon the plots of Ministers and ferments fanaticism in the heads of the people.  He talked to the Rajput chiefs, and persuaded them—­they were not difficult to persuade—­that Dr. Roberts was an agent and a spy of the English Government at Calcutta, that his medicines were a sham.  When it was necessary, Surji Rao said that the medicines were a slow form of poison, but generally he said they were a sham.  He persuaded as many of the chiefs as dared, to remonstrate with the Maharajah, and to follow his example of going about looking as if they were upon the brink of some terrible disaster.  Surji Rao’s wife was a clever woman, and she arranged such a feeling in the Maharajah’s zenana, that one day as Dr. Roberts passed along a corridor to His Highness’s apartment, a curtain opened swiftly, and some one in the dark behind spat at him.  Amongst them they managed to make His Highness extremely uncomfortable.  But the old man continued to decline obstinately to send the missionary back.

Then it became obvious to Surji Rao that Dr. Roberts must be disposed of otherwise.  He went about that in the same elaborate and ingenious way.  His arrangements required time, but there is always plenty of time in Rajputana.  He became friendly with Dr. Roberts, and encouraged the hospital.  He did not wish in any way to be complicated with his arrangements.  Nobody else became friendly.  Surji Rao took care of that.  And at last one morning a report went like wildfire about the palace and the city that the missionary had killed a sacred bull, set free in honour of Krishna at the birth of a son to Maun Rao, the chief of the Maharajah’s generals.  Certainly the bull was found slaughtered behind the monkey temple, and certainly Dr. Roberts had beefsteak for breakfast that day.  Such a clamour rang through the palace about it that the Maharajah sent for the missionary, partly to inquire into the matter, and partly with a view to protect him.

It was very unsatisfactory—­the missionary did not know how the bull came to be killed behind his house, and, in spite of all the Maharajah’s hints, would not invent a story to account for it.  The Maharajah could have accounted for it fifty times over, if it had happened to him.  Besides, Dr. Roberts freely admitted having breakfasted upon beefsteak, and didn’t know where it had come from!  He rode home through an angry crowd, and nobody at all came for medicines that day.