And for three days my father lived in the house, preparing the charm. On the fourth day the Korala Mahatmaya and my father— taking cold cooked rice with them-set out from the house, saying they were going to my father's village for the treatment of the Korala with medicines in my father's house. father's house. But after leaving the village they turned aside from the path, and went secretly through the jungle to a cave near the Malay village. The cave was hidden in thick jungle, and they lay there through the day. When it was night and very dark they crept out, and the Korala showed the house to my father. My father stood in the garden of the house, and made the charm, and buried it in the earth of the garden, and returned to the cave with the Korala Mahatmaya. All through the next day they lay in the cave, and ate only the cold rice, and the Korala Mahatmaya talked much of the Malay women, and their eyes, which were shaped like pomegranate seeds. And in the evening, at the time when the women go to draw water, the girl came to the cave, and the Korala Mahatmaya enjoyed her. Then he sent her away, and he called my father who was sitting outside in the jungle, and told him that the girl was cross-eyed and ugly, and not worth £5, but at the most ten rupees. He gave my

father ten rupees, and told him he would give the other forty some other time-but the money was never paid. Next day they went back to the Korala's house, and told a tale how the Korala Mahatmaya had got well on the way to my father's village, and so they had returned at once. But the girl had seen the Korala Mahatmaya in the village, and she recognised his black face and big belly, and she told her mother how she had been charmed to go to the cave. The mother told the Malay men, and they were very angry. Next time that the Korala Mahatmaya went to their village, they set upon him, and beat him with clubs and sticks until he nearly died. Then they put him in a bullock-cart, and tied his hands together above his head to the hood of the cart, and took him twelve miles into Kamburupitiya, to the Agent Hamadoru, and said that they had caught the Korala Mahatmaya with a bag on his back stealing salt. And there was a great case, and the magistrate Hamadoru believed the story of the Korala Mahatmaya, who had many witnesses to show that on the very day on which the girl said she had gone to the cave they had seen him on the road to my father's village. So the Malay men all were sent to prison; but my father got a great name; for all the country, except

the magistrate Hamadoru, knew of the charm by which he had brought the girl to the fat Korala Mahatmaya in the cave.'

'Did your father teach you the making of the charm?' asked Karlinahami.

'Am I not a vederala and the son of a vederala? The learning of the father is handed down to the son.'

'Yes, I remember hearing my mother speak of him there was no one in the district, she said, so skilled in charms and medicines as your father.'

'Yes, he knew many things which other vederalas know nothing of. He had a charm by which devils are charmed to become the servants of the charmer. He learnt it from a man of Sinhala,' who lived long ago in the neighbouring village. This man was called Tikiri Banda, and he wanted to marry the daughter of the headman. The headman refused to give her, and Tikiri Banda being very angry put a charm upon a devil which lived in a banian-tree. And the devil took a snake in his hand and touched the headman with it on the back as he passed under the tree in the dusk, and the headman's back was bent into a bow for the rest of his days.'

'Was that the village called Bogama?' asked 1 Kandyan district.

Silindu, who had listened with interest. 'Where the nuga-trees1 now stand in the jungle to the south? The last house was abandoned when I was a boy, but the devil still dances beneath the nuga-trees.'

'Yes, it was Bogama. It was a village like this in my father's time, and in your father's time. I can myself remember houses there near the nuga-trees.'

'Of course,' said Karlinahami. 'Podi Sinho's wife Angohami came from there. Aiyo! when the jungle comes in, how things are forgotten!'

'Well, well,' said the vederala, 'the devils still dance under the trees, though the men have gone. The chena crops were bad, and every year the fever came; it is the same now in this village. The old medicines of the vederalas are no longer used, but people go to the towns and hospitals for these foreign medicines. But they die very quickly, and where there was a village there are only trees and devils!'

The little group was silent for a while; nothing could be heard but the sigh of the wind among the trees for miles around them. Then the vederala began to speak again :

'Yes, that was a wonderful charm. The headman walked bow-backed for the rest of his life

1 The banian-tree.

because he would not give the girl. Aiyo! it is always the women who bring trouble to us men, and yet what can a man do? A man without a wife, they say, is only half a man. There is no comfort in a house where there is no woman to cook the meal.'

'There is no need to use your charm, vederala,' said Karlinahami, 'if you want one for yourself.'

'There is only one unmarried woman in the village now,' said the vederala, ‘and she is Silindu's daughter.'

An uncomfortable silence fell upon the listeners. Karlinahami and Babun looked at Silindu, who remained silent, his eyes fixed upon the ground. The vederala's intentions were very clear, and the point of his previous stories very obvious now. Punchirala turned to Karlinahami:

'I was thinking but yesterday that it is time that the girl was given in marriage. Babun here has taken her twin sister, and it is wrong that a woman should live alone.'

'It is not for me to give the girl. She is her father's daughter.'

Silindu's face showed his distress. vederala was a dangerous man to

too much was being asked of him. in a low voice:

The

offend, but

He began