"I fancy the horse would have let me know if
the brute had been anywhere near. See that he is tied up in the
shed, and has food and water, and put a boy to keep the flies from
worrying him. And now let us get to business. First of all, I must
go through the village records and documents; after that I will
question four or five of the oldest inhabitants, and then we must
go over the ground. The whole question turns, you know, upon whether
the irrigation ditch mentioned in the Talookdar's grant is the one
that runs across at the foot of the rising ground on his side, or
whether it is the one that sweeps round on this side of the grove
with the little temple in it. Unfortunately most of the best land
lies between those ditches."
For hours Bathurst listened to the statements of the old people of
the village, cross questioning them closely, and sparing no efforts
to sift the truth from their confused and often contradictory evidence.
Then he spent two hours going over the ground and endeavoring to
satisfy himself which of the two ditches was the one named in the
village records. He had two days before taken equal pains in sifting
the evidence on the other side.
"I trust that my lord sees there can be no doubt as to the justice
of our claim," the head man said humbly, as he prepared to mount
again.
"According to your point of view, there is no doubt about it, Childee;
but then there is equally no doubt the other way, according to the
statements they put forward.
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