own way.

by his side, Silindu used to take them out with him into the jungle. The villagers were astonished and shocked, but Silindu went his He showed them the water-holes upon the rocks; the thick jungle where the elephant hides himself from the heat of the day, strolling leisurely among the trees and breaking off great branches to feed upon the leaves as he strolls; the wallow of the buffalo, and the caves where the bear and the leopard make their lairs. He showed them the sambur lying during the day in the other great caves; they dashed out, tens and tens of them, like enormous bats from the shadow of the overhanging rocks, to disappear with a crash into the jungle below. He taught them to walk so that no leaf rustled or twig snapped under their feet, to creep up close to the deer and the sambur and the pig. They were surprised at first that the animals in the jungle did not speak to them as they always did to Silindu when he was alone. But Silindu explained it to them. 'You are very young,' he said. 'You do not know the tracks. You are strange to the beasts. But they know me. I have grown old among the tracks. A man must live many years in the jungle before the beasts speak to him, or he can understand what they say.'

Punchi Menika and Hinnihami were also unlike the other village children in appearance. They, like Silindu, never had fever, and even in the days of greatest scarcity Karlinahami had seen that they got food. Karlinahami was far more careful to wash them than most mothers are she used to quote the saying, 'Dirt is bad and children are trouble, but a dirty child is the worst of troubles.' The result was that they never got parangi, or the swollen belly and pale skin of fever. Their skin was smooth and blooming; it shone with a golden colour, like the coat of a fawn when the sun shines on it. Their eyes were large Xand melancholy; like the eyes of Buddha in the Jataka, 'they were like two windows made of sapphire shining in a golden palace.' Their limbs were strong and straight, for their wanderings with Silindu had made their muscles firm as a man's, not soft like the women's who sit about in the compound, cooking and gossiping and sleeping all day.

There was therefore considerable jealousy among the women, and ill-feeling against Karlinahami, when they saw how her foster children were growing up. When they were ten or eleven years old, it often burst out against her in angry taunts at the tank.

'O Karlinahami!' Nanchohami, the head

man's wife, would say, 'you are growing an old woman and, alas, childless! But you have done much for your brother's children. Shameless they must be to leave it to you to fetch the water from the tank and not to help you. This is the fourth chatty full you are carrying to-day. I have seen it with these eyes. The lot of the childless woman is a hard one. See how my little one of eight years helps me!'

'Nanchohami, your tongue is still as sharp as chillies. Punchi Menika has gone with my brother, and Hinnihami is busy in the house.'

'Punchi Menika wants but three things to make her a man. I pity you, Karlinahami, to live in the house of a madman, and to bring up his children shameless, having no children of your own. They are vedda1 children, and will be vedda women, wandering in the jungle like men.'

The other women laughed, and Angohami, a dirty shrivelled woman, with thin shrivelled breasts, called out in a shrill voice:

Why should we suffer these veddas in the village? Their compound smells of their own droppings, and of the offal and rotten meat on which they feed. I have borne six children, and the last died but yesterday. In the morn

1 The veddas are the aborigines of Ceylon, and are or were hunters. They are often identified with Yakkas or devils.

ing he was well then Silindu cast the evil eye upon him as he passed our door, and in the evening he was dead. They wither our children that their own may thrive.'

'You lie,' said Karlinahami, roused for the moment by this abuse; 'you lie, mother of dirt. Yesterday at this hour I saw your Podi Sinho here in the tank, pale and shivering with fever, and pouring the cold tank water over himself. How should such a mother keep her children? All know that All know that you have borne six, and that all are dead. What did you ever give them but foul words?'

'Go and lie with your brother, the madman, the vedda, the pariah,' shrieked Angohami as Karlinahami turned to go. 'Go to your brother of the evil eye. You blighter of others' children, eater of offal, vesi, vesige mau ! Go to him of the evil eye, belli, bellige duwa; go to your brother. Aiyo! aiyo! My little Podi Sinho! I am a mother only of the dead, a mother of six dead children. Look at my breasts, shrivelled and milkless. I say to the father of my child,' "Father of Podi Sinho," I say, "there is no kurakkan in the house, there is no millet and no pumpkin, not

1 A Sinhalese woman will not speak to or refer to her husband by name. She always speaks of or to him as 'The father of my child,' or 'The father of Podi Sinho,' etc., or simply 'He.'

get

even a pinch of salt. Three days now I have eaten nothing but jungle leaves. There is no milk in my breasts for the child." Then I foul words and blows. "Does the rain come in August?" he says. "Can I make the kurakkan flower in July? Hold your tongue, you fool. August is the month in which the children die. What can I do?" Then comes fever and Silindu's evil eye, curse him, and the little ones die. Aiyo! aiyo!'

'Your man is right,' said Nanchohami. This is the month when the children die. Last year in this month I buried one and my brother's wife another. Good rain never falls now, and there is always hunger and fever. The old die and the little ones with them. The father of my children has but nine houses under him, and makes but five shillings a year from his headmanship. His father's father, who was headman before him, had thirty houses in his headmanship, and twenty shillings were paid him by the Government every year, besides twenty-four kurunies of paddy from the fields below the tank. I have not seen rice these five years. The headman now gives all and receives nothing.' Here one of the women laughed. 'You may well laugh, Podi Nona,' she continued. 'Did not he1 lend your man

1 Vide note supra.