village of any size through which they were to pass was Maha Potana, an agricultural village, one day's journey from Beragama, which had sprung up around a vast tank restored by Government. They carried their food with them, and slept at night on the bare earth under bushes or trees. Every day they trudged, straggling along in single file, from seven to eleven in the morning, and from three to six in the evening. Silindu was dazed and weak, and often had to be helped along by Babun. The women carried large bundles of food and chatties,[27] wrapped up in cloths, upon their heads. It was the hottest time of the year, when the jungle is withered with drought, the grass has died down, the earth is caked and cracked with heat; the trees along the paths and road are white with dust. The pools had dried up, and the little streams were now mere channels of gleaming sand. Often they had to go all day without finding a pool or a well with water in it. For twelve hours every day the sun beat down upon them fiercely; the quivering heat from the white roads beat up into their faces and eyes; the wind swept them with its burning gusts and eddies of dust. Their feet were torn by the thorns, and swollen and blistered by the hot roads. As Hinnihami followed hour after hour along the white track, which for ever coiled out before her into the walls of dusty trees, the old song, which Karlinahami had sung to them when they were children, continually was in her mind, and she sang as she walked:

'Our women's feet are weary, but the day Must end somewhere for the followers in the way.'

Two days' journey from Beddagama they joined a larger and more frequented track. Here they continually met little bands of pilgrims bound for the same destination as themselves. The majority of them were Tamils, Hindus from India, from the tea estates, and from the north and east of the island; strange-looking men, such as Hinnihami had never seen before; very dark, with bodies naked to the waist; with lines of white and red paint on their shoulders, their foreheads smeared with ashes, and the mark of God's eye between their eyebrows. They wore clothes of fine white cotton, caught up between the legs, and they carried brass bowls and brass tongs. Their women, heavy and sullen-looking, followed, carrying bundles and children.

There were, however, also little bands of Buddhists, Sinhalese like themselves, and to one of these bands they attached themselves. Four of them were a family from a village only twenty miles north of Beddagama, and jungle people like themselves. They were taking a blind child to see whether, if they called upon the god, he would 

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