muffled voice that startled the hearer by its dull despair. "What ails thee, then, Guneshwa?" The man sat up amid his heavy wrappings and looked at her without resentment. The ague cramped his blue fingers, and made him draw shuddering breaths through widely distended nostrils, as he sat gazing at her with wild eyes full of a mute appeal and reproach. Then, with a little, almost childish cry, he fell back among the quilts once more. "Thou knowest, mother; thou knowest it well." Her heart throbbed, but her voice was steady as she replied: "What do I know, O Gunesh Chund?" "That Veru kept her promise and I broke mine! She knew you would not tell me, so she wrote. That was the letter." The old woman stood for an instant bewildered. Then, as she realized that all her wisdom had not availed against the dead wife's knowledge, she threw her lean arms up over her head and beat her hands together wildly, while the court re-echoed with her high, resonant voice. "She wrote it? Now may God curse her utterly! My curse upon her and every woman who learns--" A shivering hand reached out towards her. "Hush, mother! I have had enough of curses to-day." The mild reproof made her forget her anger in thoughts for him. "Light of mine eyes! heart of my heart!" she cried, flinging herself on her knees by the bed and stretching the arms, but now raised in cursing, around him in fierce protecting. "She cannot hurt thee--she dare not, if charms avail. The iron rings are about her hands and feet, the nails are through her cursed, writing fingers--would God they had been there ere she wrote that letter!--and the mustard-seed lies thick between her grave and the hearth. I have sown it, and will sow it with each new moon. Look up, Guneshwa! She cannot, she dare not return." "She hath returned already." The old woman rose with a gesture of despair. "Say not so! Break not thy mother's heart with idle words. 'Tis but the chills, and thou hast them often. The powder will cure them." "Perhaps 'tis so," he replied, listlessly.
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