1 32 SECRET HISTORY OF THE LAHORE DURBAR.
2 by the minister to keep alive and feed the flame of bitterness
3 and enmity in the mind of each. During all this time No
4 Nehal Sing never once imagined — even when his father was
5 proclaimed as being beyond recovery — but that he was dying
6 from natural causes, brought on perhaps by taking too much
7 unwholesome medicine in support of his feigned illness. It
8 has already been stated that Kurruck Sing saw his son but
9 once during his illness, though he often implored and begged
10 that he would visit him. Dehan Sing' in the meanwhile kept
11 up the outward appearance of peace maker, as though he
12 were sincerely desirous of producing a reconciliation between the
13 two parties — or, as he expressed it, to bring them to a proper
14 sense of their duty as father and son. But still he took
15 care by sinister means to instil the rancorous poison of enmity
16 so deeply into the minds of both, that all his outward endea-
17 vors for an amicable settlement and meeting must necessarily
18 fail. Thus, he was seen more than once with tears in his
19 eyes imploring No Nehal Sing to see his father — as it
20 became a son to do — in kindness, friendship, and love. Fail-
21 ing in this he would proceed to the father and represent to
22 him the manner in which he had acted for the benefit of
23 both — but that unfortunately, and he grieved to say it — he
24 had not sufficient power, to destroy the inimical feeling that
25 existed in the breast of No Nehal Sing towards his father.*
26 In fact the old king was frequently told that he must now
27 begin to be aware that his son's object was simply to gain a
28 convenient opportunity to assassinate him. At length Kurruck
29 Sing died; and it neither must nor can be made a secret, that
30 he died from the slow effects of small doses of " Sapheda
31 Kaskaree," (white lead or the acetate of lead) and " Rus
32 * Several of the secret enemies of the Rajah assisted privately or connived at
33 all this,— being well aware that the fate of him and his family was inevitably
34 sealed the moment Koonwur No Nehal Sing should enter into the full possession
35 of the throne.