Page:True Tales of Indian Life - Dwijendra Nath Neogi.pdf/16

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TRUE TALES OF INDIAN LIFE

After marching for a full hour the man brought them to another cornfield, at the same time saying to the captain, "Here, sir, your men may gather all they want for themselves and their comrades." But you can judge of their surprise, not to say disappointment, when they saw a field no better than the one which they had left. Exasperated at his men having had to make a long and apparently useless march at a time when they were already footsore and weary, the náik spoke sharply to the man and rated him for having brought him to a field with no better crops than those they had seen an hour earlier. The man listened patiently, and then answered, "This field is my own, whereas the other was not. What right had I to stand by and see other people's property taken from them without payment of any sort when my own could be given?"

Perhaps no finer instance of regard for the belongings of others than this of a man whose name even is unknown to us has ever been recorded.

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A GREAT SACRIFICE

Teg Bahadur, the Shikh guru, was beheaded at Delhi by order of the Emperor Aurangzebe, and at the same time an order was issued forbidding his relations either to remove the body or to give it proper burial, and so it came about that the body was left at the cross-roads where the execution had taken place exposed to the gaze of every passer-by. Now Teg had a son, Gurugovinda by name, then but a youth of sixteen, who resolved to