inhabitants a debating club; but here the goad of Fate hit keenly at times when the talk fell on the coming settlement, and Kishnu's people would condole with him in covert sneers. For Gunesh Chund had been accustomed, ever since his father died, to have the first and last word in that assembly of elders, and even his gentle self-depreciation could not fail to feel a certain loss of authority. One night, after Kishnu's husband, his own cousin, backed by some friends, had openly derided his opinion, and talked big about changes in the future, Gunesh sat on longer than was his wont among the elder men. They had been his father's friends, and he turned to them instinctively for support. Yet as they sat, solemnly crouched up on the high wooden bench which filled the rudely carved veranda from end to end, no voice came from the darkness where they showed grey and shadowy in their white drapery; almost formless, save when every now and again a more vigorous pull at a pipe fanned the embers in it to a glow, which lit up the lean, high-featured faces and wrinkled hands.

And Gunesh, too, remained silent and perturbed, knowing well what was in their thoughts. It was a relief when the hubble-bubble of the pipes dropped into insignificance before a speech summoned up by neighbourly nods and nudges. It came from the patriarch, whose palsied hand shook as he stretched it forward.

"Listen, O Guneshwa, the lumberdar. Thy grandfather and I played together as boys in the house of my father and his. But his father was the lumberdar, and mine but an elder. If the seed of strife springs in the village, whose task is it to root it out? Answer me, ye who hear me!"

A murmur of approbation ran round the assembly, whereat the patriarch went on in a louder key.

"If there be young, untutored cattle in the herd, whose duty is it to see they do not gore the old? Answer ye who hear me!"

But Gunesh Chund, knowing of old the length to which this system of exhortation could be extended, broke in quickly:

"Granted that 'tis my task, wouldst thou have me root out mine own family?"

"Nay!" retorted the elder, laughing in proud anticipation of his own joke, "I would have thee plant some more of the same stock.--Is it not so, my brothers?"

This time a wheezy chuckle of assent came from the darkness, followed by a fresh voice:

"A man without a son hath one life; a man rejoicing in a son hath 

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