A village called Jhundawala was the scene of their next exploit--a Bearer their next victim. After that they came to Tuppa, and, as they were setting out next morning, were joined by a Havildar, a sepoy, and two women, whom they murdered on the following day. Arriving at Kenjarra they strangled two more sepoys, and four more a few days afterwards. The gang then broke up, and Feringeea returned to his home in Tehree. Since he last parted from his wife, unconscious of his crimes, he had been an accomplice in the murder of one hundred men and five women. Let not this appalling number appear incredible. In the kingdom of Oude, a fair sample of native government, there were 1406 miles of road infested by Thugs, and no fewer than two hundred and seventy-four _Beyls_, or sites of murder; that is, one in every five miles and a half. Twenty Thugs, admitted as Approvers, acknowledged that they were present, respectively, at 508, 931, 350, 377, 604, 119, 42, 103, 264, 203, 195, 294, 117, 322, 340, 28, 65, 81, 153, and twenty-four murders, the least experienced having witnessed twenty-four murders, and the most 931--thus giving an average of 256 murders to each of the twenty. The same Beyl was not unfrequently the scene of several murders. Captain Sleeman mentions a striking instance of this. When Feringeea was first brought before him a prisoner, in December 1830, he offered, if his life were spared, to give information that would lead to the arrest of some large gangs who had appointed to rendezvous at Jyepore in the following February. Some incredulity as to his power to do so having been expressed, he begged to be allowed to accompany the "Sahib" a short distance on his official tour of inspection, when he would afford ample evidence as to his knowledge of Thuggee. He promised no more than he was able to perform. Two stages from Saugor on the road to Seronge, Captain Sleeman encamped for the night in a small mango grove near the village of Selohda. At an early hour of the next morning Feringeea desired to see him, and pointing to three different spots declared they were so many graves. "A Pundit and six attendants, murdered in 1818, lay among the ropes of my sleeping tent, a Havildar and four Sipahees murdered in 1824, lay under my horses, and four Brahman carriers of Ganges-water and a woman, murdered soon after the Pundit, lay within my sleeping-tent. The sward had grown over the whole, and not the slightest sign of its ever having been broken was to be seen." All night long Mrs. Sleeman had tossed about in her sleep, tormented by horrible dreams, probably engendered by the foul air arising from so many graves--certainly not caused by the spirits of the departed, and, perhaps, many a ghost story may owe its origin to some similar cause. Still doubting, Captain Sleeman sent for the police and a posse of villagers, who after digging down about five feet came upon the skeletons of the Havildar and his comrades, and afterwards the others were discovered in succession. Feringeea then proposed to discover other graves in the neighbouring groves, but Captain Sleeman could stand no more of such horrors for that morning. It transpired that the Pundit's horse had been presented to the proprietor of the village, in which some of the gang actually resided, and that the others came thither every year and stopped some time "feasting, carousing and murdering," and yet neither the police nor the inhabitants appeared to have the slightest suspicion of the real nature of their pursuits. It must be remembered that they never murdered any but strangers and wayfarers, and that the villagers and their property would be perfectly secure. It would be an excess of charity, however, to suppose that the Zemindar had not a shrewd guess as to the means by which his horse was obtained. During the three years, 1822 to 1824, both inclusive, that Captain Sleeman was magistrate of the Nursingpore district in the Nerbuddah valley, and--as he imagined--cognizant of every crime and every bad character within its limits, he was perfectly unconscious that there was a Thug village only 400 yards from the Court-house, and that only a few miles distant the groves of Mundaisur contained fully one hundred dead bodies. These groves were a favourite place of rendezvous for gangs coming from Upper India and from the Deccan, with the connivance and under the protection of two respectable landholders, descendants of the pious individuals who had planted those trees to shelter the unhoused wanderer.