"
He unscrewed the mouthpiece of his silver water-pipe, fitted a plain amber one,
and passed the pipe to me. "Not content with refusing revenue," he continued,
"this outlander refuses also to beegar" (this is the corvee or forced labor on
the roads), "and stirs my people up to the like treason. Yet he is, if so he
wills, an expert log-snatcher. There is none better or bolder among my people
to clear a block of the river when the logs stick fast."
"But he worships strange gods," said the prime minister, deferentially.
"For that I have no concern," said the king, who was as tolerant as Akbar in
matters of belief. "To each man his own god, and the fire or Mother Earth for
us all at the last. It is the rebellion that offends me."
"The king has an army," I suggested. "Has not the king burned the man's house,
and left him naked to the night dews?"
"Nay. A hut is a hut, and it holds the life of a man. But once I sent my army
against him when his excuses became wearisome. Of their heads he brake three
across the top with a stick. The other two men ran away. Also the guns would
not shoot."
I had seen the equipment of the infantry. One-third of it was an old muzzle-
loading fowling-piece with ragged rust holes where the nipples should have
been; one-third a wirebound matchlock with a worm-eaten stock, and one-third a
four-bore flint duck-gun, without a flint.
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