inert, and sullen he worked in the chena or squatted about his compound, but when he started for the jungle he became a different man. With slightly bent knees and toes turned out, he glided through the impenetrable scrub with a long, slinking stride, which seemed to show at once both the fear and the joy in his heart.

And Silindu's passions, his anger, and his desire were strange and violent even for the jungle. It was not easy to rouse his anger; he was a quiet man, who did not easily recognise the hand which wronged him. But if he were roused he would sit for hours or days motionless in his compound, his mind moving vaguely with hatred; and then suddenly he would rise and search out his enemy, and fall upon him like a wild beast. And sometimes at night a long-drawn howl would come from Silindu's hut, and the villagers would laugh and say, 'Hark! the leopard is with his mate,' and the women next morning when they saw Dingihami drawing water from the tank would jeer at her.

At length Dingihami bore twins, two girls, of whom one was called Punchi Menika and the other Hinnihami. When the women told Silindu that his wife was delivered of two girls, he rushed into the hut and began to beat his wife on the head and breasts as she lay on the mat, crying, 'Vesi! vesi mau! Where is the son who is to carry my gun into the jungle, and who will clear the chena for me? Do you bear me vesi for me to feed and clothe and provide dowries? Curse you!' And this was the beginning of Silindu's quarrel with Babehami, the headman; for Babehami, hearing the cries of Dingihami and the other women, rushed up from the adjoining compound and dragged Silindu from the house.

Dingihami died two days after giving birth to the twins. Silindu had a sister called Karlinahami, who lived in a house at the other end of the village. Misfortune had fallen upon her, the misfortune so common in the life of a jungle village. Her husband had died of fever two months before: a month later she bore a child which lived but two weeks. When Dingihami died, Silindu brought her to his hut to bring up his two children. Her hut was abandoned to the jungle. When the next rains fell the mud walls crumbled away, the tattered roof fell in, the jungle crept forward into the compound and over the ruined walls; and when Punchi Menika was two years old, only a little mound in the jungle marked the place where Karlinahami's house had stood.

Karlinahami was a short, dark, stumpy woman, with large impassive eyes set far apart from one another, flat broad cheeks, big breasts, and thick legs. Unlike her brother she was 

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