There was a Pathan, a Mohammedan, in a Hindu village, employed by the village moneylender as a debt-collector, which is not a popular trade.  He lived alone among Hindus, and—­so ran the charge in the lower court—­he wilfully broke the caste of a Hindu villager by forcing on him forbidden Mussulman food, and when that pious villager would have taken him before the headman to make reparation, the godless one drew his Afghan knife and killed the headman, besides wounding a few others.  The evidence ran without flaw, as smoothly as well-arranged cases should, and the Pathan was condemned to death for wilful murder.  He appealed and, by some arrangement or other, got leave to state his case personally to the Court of Revision.  ’Said, I believe, that he did not much trust lawyers, but that if the sahibs would give him a hearing, as man to man, he might have a run for his money.

Out of the jail, then, he came, and, Pathan-like, not content with his own good facts, must needs begin by some fairy-tale that he was a secret agent of the government sent down to spy on that village.  Then he warmed to it.  Yes, he was that money-lender’s agent—­a persuader of the reluctant, if you like—­working for a Hindu employer.  Naturally, many men owed him grudges.  A lot of the evidence against him was quite true, but the prosecution had twisted it abominably.  About that knife, for instance.  True, he had a knife in his hand exactly as they had alleged.  But why?  Because with that very knife he was cutting up and distributing a roast sheep which he had given as a feast to the villagers.  At that feast, he sitting in amity with all his world, the village rose up at the word of command, laid hands on him, and dragged him off to the headman’s house.  How could he have broken any man’s caste when they were all eating his sheep?  And in the courtyard of the headman’s house they surrounded him with heavy sticks and worked themselves into anger against him, each man exciting his neighbour.  He was a Pathan.  He knew what that sort of talk meant.  A man cannot collect debts without making enemies.  So he warned them.  Again and again he warned them, saying:  ‘Leave me alone.  Do not lay hands on me.’  But the trouble grew worse, and he saw it was intended that he should be clubbed to death like a jackal in a drain.  Then he said, ’If blows are struck, I strike, and I strike to kill, because I am a Pathan,’ But the blows were struck, heavy ones.  Therefore, with the very Afghan knife that had cut up the mutton, he struck the headman.  ‘Had you meant to kill the headman?’ ’Assuredly!  I am a Pathan.  When I strike, I strike to kill.  I had warned them again and again.  I think I got him in the liver.  He died.  And that is all there is to it, sahibs.  It was my life or theirs.  They would have taken mine over my freely given meats. Now, what’ll you do with me?’

In the long run, he got several years for culpable homicide.