The poor cultivator, after begging his pardon in secret, ventured to
drive his plough a few yards beyond the proper line of his boundary,
and thus add half an acre of Barkhara to his own little tenement,
which was situated in Bedu. That very night his only son was bitten
by a snake, and his two bullocks were seized with the murrain. In
terror he went of to the village temple, confessed his sin, and
vowed, not only to restore the half-acre of land to the village of
Barkhara, but to build a very handsome shrine upon the spot as a
perpetual sign of his repentance. The boy and the bullocks all three
recovered, and the shrine was built; and is, I believe, still to be
seen as the boundary mark.
The fact was that the village stood upon an elevated piece of ground
rising out of a moist plain, and a colony of snakes had taken up
their abode in it. The bites of these snakes had on many occasions
proved fatal, and such accidents were all attributed to the anger of
a spirit which was supposed to haunt the village. At one time, under
the former government, no one would take a lease of the village on
any terms, and it had become almost entirely deserted, though the
soil was the finest in the whole district.
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