Page:Anecdotes of Indian Life.djvu/112

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99

LOVE IN HUMBLE LIFE.

Gurucharan of Sakrail was of the lowest caste among the Hindus; but he had a heart for his wife which a man of the highest among them might envy. He was an old man with neither chick nor child nor kith and kin to stand round his bed wherein he lay dying. "Wife," said he painfully, "I feel as I never felt before; I'm, I fear, dying." The poor wife held his cold hand tighter in her grasp and sobbed aloud. Gurucharan said again more painfully than before, "Dear wife, I shall be soon dying; the sight of the struggle of death shall terrify you without anybody to uphold you." Then, after a while,—"My friend, Jamini, the washerman, is at home. Go, and tell him and fetch him. He will sit with you through the trial, my poor wife."

The man was fetched. Gurucharan breathed his last not many hours afterwards.