Transcriber's Notes:

1. Page scan source:
http://books.google.com/books?id=XqMYAAAAYAAJ
(Harvard University)

THE FLOWER OF FORGIVENESS

THE

FLOWER OF FORGIVENESS

BY

FLORA ANNIE STEEL

Author of "Miss Stuart's Legacy," Etc.

New York

MACMILLAN AND CO.

AND LONDON

1894

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1894,
By MACMILLAN AND CO.

Norwood Press:
J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Boston, Mass. U.S.A.

CONTENTS.

The Flower of Forgiveness.

Harvest.

For the Faith.

The Bhut-Baby.

Râmchunderji.

Heera Nund.

Feroza.

In the House of a Coppersmith.

Faizullah.

The Footstep of Death.

Habitual Criminals.

Mussumât Kirpo's Doll.

"London."

Lâl.

A Debt of Honour.

The Village Legacy.

THE FLOWER OF FORGIVENESS.

"Surely this is very rare?" I remarked, as looking through a herbarium of Himalayan plants belonging to a friend of mine, I came upon a small anemone which, contrary to the custom of that most delicate of flowers, had preserved its colour in all its first freshness. Indeed, the scarlet petals, each bearing a distinct, heart-shaped blotch of white in the centre, could scarcely have glowed more brilliantly in life than they did in death.

"Very rare," returned the owner after a pause; "I have reason to believe it unique--so far as collections go, at any rate."

"I see you have called it Remissionensis. What induced you to give it such an odd name?"

He smiled. "Dog Latin, I acknowledge. As for the reason--can you not guess?"

"Well," I replied, looking closer at the white and red flowers, "I have not your vivid imagination, but I presume it was in allusion to sins as scarlet, and hearts white as wool. Ah! it was found, I see, near the Cave of Amar-nâth; that accounts for the connection of ideas."

"No doubt," he said quietly, "that accounts for the connection in a measure; not entirely. The fact is, a very odd story--the oddest story I ever came into personally--is connected with that flower. You remember Taylor, surgeon of the 101st, who died of pyæmia contracted in some of his cholera experiments? Well, just after I joined we chummed together in Cashmere, where he was making the herbarium at which you have been looking. He was a most charming companion for a youngster eager to understand something of a new life, for, without exception, he knew more of native thought and feeling than any other man I ever met. He had a sort of intuition about it; yet at the same time he was curiously unsympathetic, and seemed to look upon it merely as a field for research, and nothing more. He used to talk to every man he met on the road, and in this way managed to acquire an extraordinary amount of information utterly undreamed of by most Englishmen. For instance, his first acquaintance with the existence of this anemone grew out of a chance conversation with an old ruffian besmeared with filth from head to foot, and it was his consequent desire to add the rarity to his collection, joined to my fancy for seeing a real pilgrimage, which brought us to Islamabad about the end of July, about the time, that is to say, of the annual festival.

"The sacred spring where the pilgrimage is inaugurated by a solemn feeding of the holy fish is some way from the town, so we pitched our tents under a plane-tree close to the temples, in order to see the whole show. And a queer show it was. Brummagem umbrellas stuck like