An Appeal to the Gods by B.M. Croker — Read

"We be the gods of the East, / Older than all; / Masters of mourning and feast, / How shall we fall?"

Within forty miles of where the Himalayas rise from the plains, and the sunrise unveils the blushing snows -- and precisely half a koss from the Kanāt river -- lies the hamlet of Haru, surrounded by a tangle of castor-oil plants, mango trees, and tamarinds, and standing in the midst of a fertile tract of cane, corn, and poppy. The scarlet-and-white poppies, the stiff, green cane, the waving yellow wheat, also the village (which boasted nine hundred souls at the last census), were the joint property of two wealthy zemindars. The northern part of Haru -- including the crops sown for the opium department -- was the inheritance of Durga Pershad, a tall, dark, gaunt man, with an unpleasant and sinister expression. The wheat, cane, and southern end of the town belonged to Golab Rai Sing, who bore but a scant resemblance to his name -- "the King of Roses;" he was, in fact, a stout, smiling, pock-marked person, with a glib tongue, and a close fist. These two zemindars hated one another as thoroughly as men in their position were not only bound, but born to do. They had not merely been bequeathed adjoining lands, and a whole village between them, but a venerable blood feud, which had been conscientiously handed down from generation to generation.