I should certainly have been a dead man before morning.

It is well known', said the old gentleman, 'that their spells and curses can only reach a certain distance, ten or twelve miles; and, if you offend one of them, the sooner you place that distance between you the better.' Jangbar Khan, the representative of the Shahgarh Raja,[9] as grave and reverend an old gentleman as ever sat in the senate of Venice, told me one day that he was himself an eye-witness of the powers of the women of Khilauti.

He was with a great concourse of people at a fair held at the town of Raipur,[10] and, while sauntering with many other strangers in the fair, one of them began bargaining with two women of middle age for some very fine sugar-canes.

They asked double the fair price for their canes.

The man got angry, and took up one of them, when the women seized the other end, and a struggle ensued.