Who was LÂl? What was he? This was a question I asked many times; and though it was duly answered, LÂl remained, and remains still, an unknown quantity--an abstraction, a name, and nothing more. L A L. The same backwards and forwards, self-contained, self-sufficing.

The first time I heard of LÂl was on a bright spring morning, one of those mornings when the plains of Northern India glitter with dew-drops; when a purple haze of cloud-mountain bounds the pale wheat-fields to the north, and a golden glow strikes skywards from the sand-hills in the south. I was in a tamarisk jungle on the banks of the Indus, engaged in the decorous record of all the thefts and restitutions made during the year by that most grasping and generous of rivers. For year after year, armed by the majesty of law and bucklered by foot-rules and maps, the Government of India, in the person of one of its officers, came gravely and altered the proportion of land and water on the surface of the globe, while the river gurgled and dimpled as if it were laughing in its sleeve.

Strange work, but pleasant too, with a charm of its own wrought by infinite variety and sudden surprise. Sometimes watching the stream sapping at a wheat-field, where the tender green spikes fringed the edges of each crack and fissure in the fast-drying soil. A promise of harvest,--and then, sheer down, the turbid water gnawing hungrily. Every now and again a splash, telling that another inch or two of solid earth had yielded. Sometimes standing on a mud bank where the ever watchful villagers had sown a trial crop of coarse vetch; thus, as it were, casting their bread on the water in hopes of finding it again some day. But when? Would it be there at harvest-time? Grey-bearded patriarchs from the village would wag their heads sagely over the problem, and younger voices protest that it was not worth while to enter such a flotsam-jetsam as a field. But the ruthless iron chain would come into requisition, and another green spot be daubed on the revenue map, for Governments ignore chance. And still the river dimpled and gurgled with inward mirth; for if it gave the vetch, had it not taken the wheat?

So from one scene of loss or gain to another, while the sun shone in the cloudless sky overhead. Past pools of shining water where red-billed cranes stood huddled up on one leg, as if they felt cold in the crisp morning air. Out on the bare stretches of sand where glittering streams and flocks of white egrets combined to form a silver embroidery on the brown expanse. Over the shallow ford where the bottle-nosed alligators slipped silently into the stream, or lay still as shadows on the sun-baked sand. Down by the big river, where the swirling water parted right and left, and where the greybeards set their earthen pots a-swimming to decide which of the two streams would prove its strength by bearing away the greater number,--a weighty question, not lightly to be decided, since the land to the west of the big stream belonged to one village, and the land eastward to another. Back again to higher ground through thickets of tamarisk dripping with dew. The bushes sparse below with their thin brown stems, so thick above where the feathery pink-spiked branches interlaced. Riding through it, the hands had to defend the face from the sharp switch of the rosy flowers as they swung back disentangled; such tiny flowers, too, no bigger than a mustard seed, and leaving a pink powder of pollen behind them.

It was after forcing my way through one of these tamarisk jungles that I came out on an open patch of rudely ploughed land, where a mixed crop of pulse and barley grew sturdily, outlining an irregular oval with a pale green carpet glistening with dew. In the centre a shallow pool of water still testified to past floods, and from it a purple heron winged its flight, lazily craning its painted neck against the sky.

The whole posse comitatus of the village following me broke by twos and threes through the jungle, and gathered round me as I paused watching the bird's flight.

"Take the bridle from his honour's pony," cried a venerable pantaloon breathlessly. "Let the steed of the Lord of the Universe eat his fill. Is not this the field of LÂl?"

Twenty hands stretched out to do the old headman's bidding; twenty voices re-echoed the sentiment in varying words. A minute more, and my pony's nose was well down on the wet, sweet tufts of vetch, and I was asking for the first time, "Who is LÂl?"

LÂl, came the answer, why, LÂl was--LÂl. This was his field. Why should not the pony of the Protector of the Poor have a bellyful? Was it not more honourable than the parrot people and the squirrel people, and the pig people who battened on the field of LÂl?

It was early days yet for the flocks of green parrots to frequent the crops, and the dainty squirrels were, I knew, still snugly a-bed waiting for the sun to dry the dew; but at my feet sundry furrows and scratches told that the pig had already been at work.

"Is LÂl here?" I asked.

A smile, such as greets a child's innocent ignorance, came to the good-humoured faces around me.

LÂl, they explained, came when the crop was ripe, when the parrot, the squirrel, and the pig people--and his honour's pony too--had had their fill. LÂl was a good man, one who walked straight, and laboured truly.

"But where is he?" I insisted.

Face looked at face half puzzled, half amused. Who could tell where LÂl was? He might be miles away, or in the next jungle. Some one had seen him at Sukkhur a week agone, but that was no reason why he should not be at Bhukkur now, for LÂl followed the river, and like it was here to-day, gone to-morrow.

Baulked in my curiosity, I took refuge in business by inquiring what revenue LÂl paid on his field. This was too much for the polite gravity of my hearers. The idea of LÂl's paying revenue was evidently irresistibly comic, and the venerable pantaloon actually choked himself between a cough and a laugh, requiring to be held up and patted on the back.

"But some one must pay the revenue," I remarked a little testily.

Certainly! the Lord of the Universe was right. The village community paid it. It was the village which lent LÂl the field, and the bullocks, and the plough. It was the village which gave him the few handfuls of seed-grain to scatter broadcast over the roughly-tilled soil. So much they lent to LÂl. The sun and the good God gave him the rest. All, that is to say, that was not wanted for the parrot, the pig, and the squirrel people, and, of course, for the pony of the Lord of the Universe.

There are so many mysteries in Indian peasant life, safe hidden from alien eyes, that I was lazily content to let LÂl and his field slip into the limbo of things not thoroughly understood, and so, ere long, I forgot all about him. Spring passed ripening the crops; summer came bringing fresh floods to the river; and autumn watched the earth once more make way against the water; but LÂl was to me as though he had not been.

It was only when another year found me once more in the strange land which lies, as the natives say, "in the stomach of the river," that memory awoke with the words, "This is the field of LÂl." There was, however, no suggestion made about loosening my pony's bridle as on the former occasion, the reason for such reticence being palpable. LÂl had either been less fortunate in his original choice of a field this year, or else the sun and the good God had been less diligent care-takers. A large portion of the land, too, bore marks of an over-recent flood in a thick deposit of fine glistening white sand. A favourite trick of the mischievous Indus, by which she disappoints hope raised by previous gifts of rich alluvial soil--a trick which has given her a bad name, the worst a woman can bear, because she gives and destroys with one hand. Here and there, in patches, the sparse crop showed green; but for the most part the ground lay bare, cracking into large fissures under the noonday sun, and peeling at the top into shiny brown scales.

"A bad lookout for LÂl," I remarked.

Bad, they said, for the squirrel people and the parrot people, no doubt; but for LÂl--that was another matter. L&I did not live by bread alone. The river gave, the river took away; but to LÂl at any rate it gave more than it stole.

"What does it give?" I asked.

It gave crocodiles. Of all things in the world crocodiles! Not a welcome gift to many, but LÂl, it seemed, was a hunter of crocodiles. Not a mere slayer of alligators, like the men of the half-savage tribes who frequent the river land; who array themselves in a plethora of blue beads, and live by the creeks and jheels on what they can catch or steal; who track the cumbersome beasts to their nightly lair in some narrow inlet, and, after barring escape by a stealthy earthwork, fall on the helpless creature at dawn with spears and arrows. LÂl was not of these; he was of another temper. He hunted the crocodile in its native element, stalked it through the quicksands, knife in hand, dived with it into the swift stream, sped like a fish to the soft belly beneath, and struck upwards with unerring hand, once, twice, thrice, while the turbid orange water glowed crimson with the spouting blood.

I heard this tale curiously, but incredulously. Why, I asked, should LÂl run such risks? What good were crocodiles to him when they were slain? There was not so much risk, after all, they replied, for it was only the bottle-nosed ones that he hunted, and though, of course, the snub-nosed ones lived in the river also--God destroy the horrid monsters!--still they did not interfere in the fight. And LÂl was careful, all the more careful, because he had but two possessions to guard, his skin and his knife. As to what LÂl did with the crocodiles, why, he ate them, of course. Not all; he spared some for his friends, for those who were good to him, and gave him something in return. Had the Presence never heard that the poor ate crocodile flesh? They themselves, of course, did not touch the unclean animal; and their gifts to LÂl were purely disinterested. He was a straight-walking, a labourful man, and that was the only reason why they lent him a field. Even the Presence would acknowledge that crocodile flesh without bread would be uninteresting diet; but as a rule the pig, the parrots, the squirrels left enough for LÂl to eat with his jerked meat. The village lent him the sickle, of course, and the flail, and the mill, sometimes even the girdle on which to bake the unleavened bread; but all for love, only for love. Yet if the Presence desired it they could show him the jerked meat, some that LÂl had left for the poor. It was dry? Oh, yes! LÂl cut the great beasts into strips, and laid them in the sun on the dry sand, sitting beside them to scare away the carrion birds. Sometimes there would be a crowd of vultures, and LÂl with his knife sitting in the midst. "He will have to sell some of his jerked crocodile to pay his revenue this year," I remarked, just to amuse them. Again the idea was comic; evidently LÂl and money were incompatible, and the very idea of his owning any caused them to chuckle unrestrainedly amongst themselves. Then, growing grave, they explained at length how LÂl had nothing in the world but his knife. All the rest--the sun, the river, the crocodiles, the field, the bullocks, the plough, and the seed-grain--were lent to him by them and the good God; lent to him and to the other people who ate of the field of LÂl.

As I rode away a brace of black partridges rose from one of the green patches, and close to the tamarisk shelter a brown rat sat balancing a half-dried stalk of barley. The river gleamed in the distance, a wedge-shaped flight of coolin cleft the sky. All that day, when the shadow-like crocodiles slipped into the sliding water, I thought of LÂl and his knife. Was it a crocodile, after all; or was it a man, stealthy, swift, and silent? Who could tell, when there was nothing but a shadow, a slip, and then a few air bubbles on the sliding river? Or was that LÂl yonder where the vultures ringed a sand-bank far on the western side? Why not? None knew whence he came or whither he went, what he hoped, or what he feared; only his field bare witness to one human frailty--hunger; and that he shared with the pig, and the parrot, and the squirrel people. But though my thoughts were full of LÂl for a day or two, the memory of him passed as I left the river land, and once more spring, summer, and autumn brought forgetfulness.

There were busy times for all the revenue officers next year. The fitful river had chosen to desert its eastern bank altogether, and concentrate its force upon the western; so while yard after yard of ancestral land was giving way before the fierce stream, amidst much wringing of hands on the one side, there was joy on the other over long rich stretches ready for the plough and the red tape of measurement. In the press of work even the sight of the river land failed to awake any memory of LÂl. It was not until I was re-entering the outskirts of the village at sundown that something jogged my brain, making me turn to the posse comitatus behind me and ask,--

"And where, this year, is the field of LÂl?"

We were passing over an open space baked almost to whiteness by the constant sun,--a hard resonant place set round with gnarled jhand trees, and dotted over with innumerable little mud mounds.

"There," wheezed the venerable pantaloon, pressing forward and pointing to one newer than the rest. "That is the field of LÂl."

Then I saw that we were in the village burial-ground. I looked up inquiringly.

"Huzoor!" repeated a younger man, "that is LÂl's field. It is his own this time; but for all that the SirkÂr will not charge him revenue." The grim joke, and the idea of LÂl's having six feet of earth of his own at last, once more roused their sense of humour.

"And the other people who ate of the field of LÂl?" I asked, half in earnest, for somehow my heart was sad.

"The good God will look after them, as He has after the crocodiles."

Since then, strangely enough, the memory of LÂl has remained with me, and I often ask myself if he really existed, and if he really died. Does he still slip silently into the stream, knife in hand? Does he still come back to his field under the broad harvest moon, to glean his scanty share after the other people have had their fill? I cannot say; but whenever I see a particularly fat squirrel I say to myself, "It has been feeding in the field of LÂl."