"Sir Headman, when we had some of your old ox to eat, we promised to give you rice for it in two months' time. Not half a month has passed; then why do you try to make us pay now? That's not the reason you are here: you must have come for something else. I don't like your ways. That wicked and sinful woman yonder knows that there is no rice in the garner, but she has climbed up, and there she sits, crying [136] 'No rice here!' and you cry 'Give!' I don't like your doings, either of you!" and to make his meaning clear, he uttered these lines:--

"I like not this, I like not that; I like not her, I say,
Who stands beside the granary, and cries 'I cannot pay!'

"Nor you, nor you, Sir! listen now:--my means and store are small;
You gave me once a skinny cow, and two months' grace withal;
Now, ere the day, you bid me pay! I like it not at all."

So saying, he seized the headman by the lock of hair on the top of his head, dragged him out into the courtyard, threw him down, and as he cried, "I'm the Headman!" mocked him thus--"Damages, please, for injury done to the chattels under another man's watch and ward!" while he thrashed him till the man was faint. Then he took him by the neck and cast him out of the house. The wicked woman he seized by the hair of her head, pulled her away from the garner, knocked her down, and threatened her--"If you ever do this kind of thing again, I'll make you remember it!"

From that day forward the headman durst not even look at that house, and the woman did not dare to transgress even in thought.

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[137] When this discourse was ended, the Master declared- the Truths, at the conclusion of which the backsliding Brother reached the Fruit of the First Path:--"The goodman who punished that headman was I myself."

[j200]