year to his sad face. He took little interest in the preparations which his mother pressed on with feverish haste, but passed days and nights out of doors among his fields, going the round of the crops with the village accountant, and seeing to the payment of revenue dues.

"Thou takest no rest, Gunesh Chund," exclaimed his mother, indignantly, when he pleaded business as an excuse for not going to the silversmith's to hurry him up with the remodelling of poor Veru's ornaments. "A lumberdar was a lumberdar long before the sahibs came to the land. What is it to thee if they want this written one way, and that another? There were no such piles of papers in thy father's day, and he was a better lumberdar than thou wilt ever be."

"Mayhap, mother; but somehow 'tis ill work nowadays doing things as they used to be done. It suits no one, not even thee."

"Not suit me--I'd like to know--"

"Nay! are not the old trinkets being altered even now. For my part, I liked them best as they were."

"Guneshwa thou art a ninny! But thou wilt sing another song when the bride comes to thee adorned. That new silversmith hath done well. There is a fashion of necklet--French pattern he called it--like needlework for fineness. And I have not forgotten the old ways, for the talisman Veru wore is made into a saukinmhora, to keep her ghost away."

The lumberdar's face assumed a startled, alarmed look.

"The ghost, mother! Wherefore the ghost? Veru was a good wife, loving me, and I was a good husband to her. There was no ill-will betwixt us, surely."

His mother could have bitten her tongue out for her inadvertence.

"'Twas but a thoughtless word, O my son, and I am over-anxious. Surely the woman took too many blessings from thee in life to give thee curses in death. And see," she added, hastily, in the hope of diverting his eager anxiety, "I have found what thou wert asking for--the certificates of thy fathers to many and many a generation. Thou hadst given them into Veru's keeping, but they are too precious for a woman's holding. Who knows but she has lost some? Squandering thy son's heritage out of spite! Who canst give back the praises of the dead?"

So she went on in purposeful grumbling, while Gunesha, opening the handkerchief in which the precious documents were folded, counted the frayed papers 

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