now.'

Karlinahami, who had been growing more and more impatient, here broke in:

'Are you mad, brother? The child is a woman now, and it is time to give her to a man. Is she to die childless because she has a father? There is no need for her even to leave the compound. There is room for Babun to make himself a house here.'

Babun eagerly seized upon this suggestion. He assured Silindu that he had no intention of taking Punchi Menika out of the compound. Punchi Menika, still crouching at his feet, told her father that she would never leave him.

It was eventually arranged that for the present Babun should live in the house while he put up another house for himself and Punchi Menika. Silindu took no part in the discussion. After Karlinahami intervened, he became silent: there was nothing for him to do or to say which could help him: it was only one more of the evils which inevitably came upon him. The talk died down: the others went into the house to prepare the evening meal. He sat on under the mustard-tree, staring at the outline of the trees against the starlit sky. The silence of the jungle settled down upon the compound. Punchi Menika brought him his food. She tried to comfort him, to get him to come into the house, but for once she could not rouse him. He sat in the compound through the night, staring into the darkness, and muttering from time to time, 'Aiyo, the house is empty!'

 CHAPTER V

Babun put up a new hut in Silindu's compound, and three weeks after he left his brother-in-law, he and Punchi Menika began to live together in it. It was the beginning of a far greater prosperity for the family. Babun worked hard: he cleared his chena and watched it well: his crop was always the best in the village, and the produce went with Silindu's into a barn which served in common for the whole compound.

Silindu did not again refer to Punchi Menika's leaving him. He seemed hardly to be aware of Babun's existence in the compound: he very rarely addressed a word to him. In fact, he now scarcely ever spoke to any one except Hinnihami. When he came back to the compound from the jungle or from the chenas, he never went into the new hut, where Punchi Menika lived: he never called her to him as he had been used to do. If she came out in the evenings to sit with him and speak with him, he answered her questions; but he no longer poured out to her everything that was in his mind, as he still did to Hinnihami. It seemed as if he were unable to share her with another.

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