for them. She could not understand, therefore, how Punchi Menika could turn from them to this man whom she had scarcely known the day before.

She saw and understood her father's anger and unhappiness, but she could not turn against her sister. Something had happened which she did not understand: 'an evil had come out of the jungle,' as such evils come. If any one could be blamed, it was the stranger Babun; but as her sister desired to go to him, she put on one side her own feelings of anger against him. She watched in silence the new house being put up, and she watched in silence Punchi Menika leave the old hut for the new. She felt as if she were losing something; that her sister was going away from her, and that her life had greatly altered. She turned with an increased passion of attachment to her father; she refused to allow Karlinahami to cook his food for him; if he went out alone in the jungle, she would sit for hours in the compound watching the path by which she knew he would return; and whenever he would allow her, she followed him on his expeditions.

The marriage of Punchi Menika and Babun created a great sensation in the village. The headman and his wife did not at first hide their anger, and the thought that they had been crossed was not unpleasant to many of the villagers. Moreover, Babun was liked, and in many ways respected. The contempt in which the veddas had been held could no longer be shown towards a compound where he had married and where he lived. The compound was no longer avoided; the men entered it now to see Babun, and the women began to come and gossip with Punchi Menika.

It was not in Babehami's nature to remain long openly an enemy of any one. His cunning mind was inclined to, and suited for, intrigue. He understood how much easier—and more enjoyable—it is to harm your enemy, if he thinks that you are his friend, rather than if he knows you are his enemy. He was, however, too angry with Babun for any open reconciliation. He hid his anger; and though he never went into Babun's compound, nor Babun into his, when they met in the village paths, they spoke to one another as if there was nothing between them. But he often thought over the reckoning which he was determined one day to have; and it was Silindu and his family who, he made up his mind, would feel it most heavily. He was a man who never forgot what he considered a wrong done him. He could wait long to repay a real or imaginary injury: the repayment might be made in many divers ways, but until it was repaid with interest his mind was unsatisfied.

As time passed Silindu's 

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