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STORY OF TÍTÚ MIAN
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landed proprietors, who kept each in his pay a retinue of swashbucklers. The business of these bullies was to break each other's heads over their masters' disputes, whenever a boundary question or the right to a plot of land had passed beyond the power of argument. This occupation brought Títú Mian, who was an expert at it, within the four walls of one of the Company's jails. The experience seems to have led to a distaste for engaging in other people's quarrels. On his release he took ship to Mecca, where salvation awaited him. For Sayyid Ahmad met him; made him a disciple, and sent him back an Apostle to India. He preached the Wahábí tenets to the north and east of Calcutta. Many adhered to the Apostle; some doubted; others made a scoff of him. But Apostles are not to be lightly scoffed at. Títú Mian, though now enlisted in the service of a divine master, had not forgotten the cunning of the right hand which had been once raised in earthly interests. Hence the number of his followers waxed daily. Then the landed proprietors began to hear of it. They lifted up their eyes, and beheld Títú Mian with a large following. Complaints reached them from their tenants of forcible conversions and rude language. The matter seemed to them of questionable issue to the Apostle and his followers; but, to themselves, pecuniarily promising. Each landed proprietor adopted the method which he preferred in disposing of these complaints; to Kishen lál Rái the more excellent way appeared to be a tax upon Wahábí