III. A FAIR COUNSELLOR
Ten years of Nobo Kumar's wise and careful management had brought the estates of Birnagar and Debipur into order. Villages which had been deserted during the wars of the Moguls and the Afghans were repopulated. Husbandmen and labourers rebuilt their huts on the old homesteads which they had left in panic. Fields overgrown with weeds and jungle were brought under the plough. Village boys picked up bullets and broken muskets from the fields, and their fathers told them stories of the marches and counter-marches of armies they had witnessed. Old soldiers who had followed Dayud Khan or Todar Mull now sat by the evening fire under the pepul tree, and spoke of the deeds they had performed. The stories lost nothing by the rehearsing, the incidents of the war became more and more marvellous as they were repeated from year to year, and admiring listeners looked up to the grey-headed narrators as men of a heroic age, whose deeds a younger generation could never hope to emulate.
A suspicious and watchful world could find no fault in Nobo Kumar's management of the estates. He retained and rewarded the old servants of Birnagar. He showed respect to the memory of Noren's grandfather. He maintained all the charitable institutions, all the temples, all the Dharamsalas which Noren's ancestors had founded. And quietly
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