The story was published in the Civil and Military Gazette on April 30 1886 under the title "Section 420, I.P.C." (Indian Penal Code), in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and in subsequent editions of that collection. Suddhoo, an old man in an old wooden house in Lahore, is very anxious about his son, who is gravely ill with pleurisy in Peshawar. A seal-cutter, who lives in the house, sees this as a means of extorting money from Suddhoo. He secretly gets a friend in Peshawar to telegraph him daily accounts of the son's health, and undertakes to save him by magic, on payment of many rupees.