The next three months brought Gunesh Chund many an uneasy hour. Even when, driven to bay by his mother's entreaties to allow her to look for a new wife, he confessed his promise to wait a year, he gained no respite from her reproaches, but rather enhanced their venom by her contempt for his weakness. What was he, to set himself above the wisdom of his fathers? What was the reading-writing woman, that she should run counter to the traditions which held the first duty of a Hindu wife was to be that of bringing a son to the hearth? He had no answer save a dull consciousness that somehow he was not quite as his fathers. They, for instance, had calmly acquiesced in such customs as the exposure of the dead child to the jackals; while, despite his familiarity with the idea, its practice had filled him with aversion. Honest as he was by nature, he never regretted the deceit which sent Veru, after she recovered from the illness following on the shock of Nihâli's death, to cool a little grave[3] by the burning-ground with her tears and offerings.

"'Twill only make her ill again to know what thou hast done," he had said to his mother, with a decision new to him. "Silence will be the wisest for thee also, since in this I am on her side."

As for the casting out of the demon which had hurried on the inevitable end, Veru always maintained to her mother-in-law that it partook of the nature of murder; but with her usual shrewdness she exonerated Gunesh Chund from blame. For this he was grateful, though his mind was by no means made up as to the rights and wrongs of the question.

From this and many another problem he took refuge in the fields. The fierce dry winds of summer blew with scorching heat, bringing with them the necessity for a ceaseless watering of the crops. Many and many a silent, peaceful hour he spent in the forked seat behind the oxen, half asleep, half awake; while the well-wheel circled round he circled round the wheel, and the great world circled round beyond him. Whether it span swift or slow he knew not and he cared not.

Many an hour, too, he spent resting, smoking and talking, under the shade of the one big mulberry-tree, while the greybeards wheezed out their mouldy proverbs, and the lads listened with their mouths full of the overripe dead-sweet fruit. A kindly, honest crew; mayhap not far above the circling bullocks in mind or ambitions, but for the most part without an ungenerous thought or unfriendly wish.

Or he would take his pipe down to the village dharmsala, where strangers found a lodging and the 

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