punchi menika had been present at the inquiry of the magistrate in the village, but she had not spoken to silindu after her meeting with him when he was being brought to beddagama by the police sergeant. the magistrate and the headman and the prisoner had left for kamburupitiya very early in the morning following the day of the inquiry. she and the other villagers woke up to find that the village had already been left to its usual sleepy life. there was nothing for her to do but to obey silindu's instructions, to wait for babun's release, living as best she might in the hut with karlinahami. her present misfortunes, the imprisonment of babun, the loss of her father, and the fate (and the uncertainty of it) which hung over him, weighed numbly upon her. and the future filled her with vague fears; she did not, could not plan about it, or calculate about it, or visualise it, or anything in it. she did not even think definitely of how she was going to live for six months, until babun should return. there was scarcely food in the house for her and karlinahami to exist in semi-starvation through those six months. yet the future loomed somehow upon her, filling her with a horrible sense of uneasiness, uncertainty. it was a new feeling. she sat in the hut silent and frightened the greater part of the day. she thought of silindu stories of hunters who had lost their way in the jungle. their terror must have been very like hers; she was alone, terribly alone and deserted; she too had lost her way, and like them one path was as good or as bad to her as another.

karlinahami was nearly fifty years old now, and in a jungle village a woman—and especially a woman without a husband—is very old, very near the grave at fifty. the sun and the wind, the toil, the hunger, and the disease sap the strength of body and mind, bring folds and lines into the skin, and dry up the breasts. a woman is old at forty or even thirty. no one, man or woman, in the jungle, lives to the term of years allotted to man. it would have been difficult to say whether karlinahami looked nearer eighty than ninety, nearer ninety than a hundred. the jungle had left its mark on her. her body was bent and twisted, like the stunted trees, which the south-west wind had tortured into grotesque shapes. the skin, too, on her face and thin limbs reminded one of the bark of the jungle trees; it was shrunken against the bones, and wrinkled, and here and there flaking off into whitish brown scales, as the bark flakes off the kumbuk-trees. the flesh of the cheeks had dried and shrunk; the lips seemed to have sunk into the toothless mouth, leaving a long line damp with saliva under the nose. and under the lined forehead were the eyes, lifeless and filmy, peering out of innumerable wrinkles. the eyes were not blind, but they seemed to be sightless—the pupil, the iris, and even the white had merged—because the mind was dying. it is what usually happens in the jungle—to women especially—the mind dies before the body. imperceptibly the power of initiative, of thought, of feeling, dies out before the monotony of life, the monotony of the tearing hot wind, the monotony of endless trees, the monotony of perpetual hardship. it will happen at an age when in other climates a man is in his prime, and a woman still bears children. the man will still help at the work in the chena, cutting down the undergrowth and sowing the crop; but he will do so unthinking, without feeling, like a machine or an animal; and when it is done he will sit hour after hour in his compound staring with his filmy eyes into nothing, motionless, except when he winds one long thin arm round himself, like a grey monkey, and scratches himself on the back. and the woman still carries the waterpot to the muddy pool to fetch water; still cooks the meal in the house. while they still stand upright, they must do their work; they eat and they sleep; they mutter frequently to themselves; but they do not speak to others, and no one speaks to them. they live in a twilight, where even pain is scarcely felt.

karlinahami was sinking rapidly into this twilight. in the jungle decay and growth are equally swift. the trial of silindu and babun, the murder of the arachchi and fernando, and now the loss of silindu had meant very little to her. she had felt vaguely that many evils were happening, but facts no longer had meaning for her clouded mind. she fetched the water as usual for the cooking, muttering to herself; but she did not speak to punchi menika, and punchi menika knew that to talk to her or consult with her would be useless.

a month after the conviction of silindu the life of the village would at first sight have appeared to have regained its ordinary course. but in reality a great change had come over it. it had been a small village, a dwindling village before; one of those villages doomed to slow decay, to fade out at last into the surrounding jungle. now at a blow, in a day, it lost one out of its six houses, and seven out of its twenty-five inhabitants. for after the death of the arachchi, nanchohami, his wife, decided to leave the village. her children were too young to do chena work; so that it was not possible any longer to support herself in beddagama. in kotegoda, where the arachchi's relations lived, there was paddy land and cocoanuts, and rain fell in plenty every year. they would give her a hut, and a little land; she would marry her children there; she had always said that beddagama was an unholy place, full of evil and evil omens. she packed up her few possessions in a bullock hackery, which she borrowed from the korala, and set out for kotegoda. the arachchi's house was abandoned to the jungle. there was no one to inhabit it; and indeed no one would have been foolhardy enough to go and live in it. it was ill-omened, accursed, and very soon came to be known as the haunt of devils. it seemed to make a long fight against the jungle. the fence itself merged into the low scrub which surrounded it, growing into a thick line of small trees. the wara bushes, with their pale grey thick leaves and purple flowers the rank grass, the great spined slabs of prickly pear, crawled out from under the shadow of the fence over the compound up to the walls and the very door. but the walls were thicker and better made than those of most huts: the roof was of tiles; there was no cadjan thatch to be torn and scattered by the south-west wind. the rains of the north-east monsoon beat against the mud walls for two years in vain; they washed out great holes in them, through which you could see the jungle sticks upon which the mud had been plastered. the sticks exposed to the damp air took root and burst into leaf. great weeds, and even bushes, began to grow up between the tiles, from seeds dropped by birds or scattered by the wind. an immense twisted cactus towered over the roof. the tiles were dislodged and pushed aside by the roots. the jungle was bursting through the walls, overwhelming the house from above. the jungle moved within the walls: at last they crumbled; the tiled roof fell in. the grass and the weeds grew up over the little mound of broken red pottery; the jungle sticks of the walls spread out into thick bushes. tall saplings of larger trees began to show themselves. by the end of the third rains the compound and the house had been blotted out.

it was as if the jungle had broken into the village. other huts had been abandoned, overwhelmed, blotted out before, but they had always lain on the outside of the village. the jungle had only drawn its ring closer round the remaining huts; it had not broken into the village—the village had remained a whole, intact. but now the jungle cut across the village, separating silindu's and bastian appu's hut from the rest. the villagers themselves noted it: they felt that they were living in a doomed place. 'the village is dying,' nanchohami had said before she left. 'an evil place, devil-haunted. it is dying, as its young die with the old. no children are born in it now. an evil place. in ten years it will have gone, trampled by the elephants.'

it was, however, only very gradually that this feeling of doom came to be felt by the village and the villagers. at first, after the excitement of the trials and the murder, they seemed to have settled down to the old monotonous life, as it had been before. the vederala was appointed arachchi. punchi menika waited for babun. she did not and could not count the passing of time: a week was only some days to her, and six months only many months; but she waited, watching the passage of time, vaguely but continuously, for the day when babun should return. she heard the rumour which eventually reached the village that after all silindu was not to be hanged; he was to be kept in prison, they said, for ever, for the remainder of his life. it brought no comfort to her; he had been taken out of her life, she would never see him again; did it matter whether he was dead or in prison?

she waited month after month. her first feelings of fear were lost in the perpetual sense of expectancy as the time slipped away. and she had to work, to labour hard in order to keep herself and karlinahami alive. the little store of kurakkan in the house dwindled rapidly. she had to search the jungle for edible leaves and wild fruit and roots, like the wild onions which the pig feed upon. when the chena season came she worked in the others' chenas, balappu's and bastian appu's, and even punchirala's. she worked hard like a man for a few handfuls of kurakkan, given to her as a charity. the others liked her, and were in their way kind to her; they liked her quietness, her gentleness and submission. even punchirala said of her: 'she goes about like a doe. they used to call the mad vedda a leopard. the leopard's cub has turned into a deer.'

as the months passed, she gradually began to feel as if each day might be the one on which babun would return. and as each day passed without bringing him, she tried to reckon whether the six months had really gone. she talked it over with the other villagers. some said it was five months, others seven months since the conviction. they discussed it for hours, wrangling, quarrelling, shouting at one another. he had been convicted two months—about two months—before the sinhalese new year. 'no, it was one month before the new year. it couldn't be one month before, because the chena crop was not reaped yet. reaped? why it had only just been sown. it must have been three months before. three months, you fool? isa chena crop like ninety days' rice? fool? who is a fool? hold your tongue! hold your tongue! at any rate, it was before the new year, and it's already six months since the new year. aiyo! six months since the new year. it is only a month since i sowed my chena. who ever heard of sowing a chena five months after the new year? it is not three months since the new year.'

punchi menika would stand listening to them going over it again and again, hour after hour. she listened in silence, and would then slip quietly away to wander in the evening down the track towards kamburupitiya. it was on the track that she hoped, that she was certain that she would meet him. then all would be well; the evil would end, as silindu had said. but as the days went by, the certainty left her; even hope began to tremble, to give place to forebodings, fears. the time came when all were agreed that the six months had passed; something must have happened to him; he was ill, perhaps, or he had just been forgotten there; one can never tell, anything may happen when a man gets into prison; 'they' simply have forgotten to let him out.

punchirala, the new headman, was consulted.

'the man,' he said, 'is probably dead.' punchi menika shuddered. her great eyes, in which the look of suffering had already grown profound and steady, did not leave the vederala's face. 'yes, i expect the man's dead. they die quickly over there in prison. especially strong men like babun. they lie down in a corner and die. there is medicine for diseases, but is there any medicine for fate? so they say, and lie down in the corner and die. there is nothing for you to do. no. i can give you no medicine for fate either. you must sit down here in the village and marry a young man—if you can find one, and if not, perhaps, an old one. eh? why not? though the jackals are picking the bones of the elephant on the river bank, there are other elephants bathing in the river. nor are they all cows. well, well.'

'ralahami, do you really know anything? have you heard that he is dead?'

'i have heard nothing. from whom could i hear? if you want to hear anything you must go to the prison. it will take you many days—first to kamburupitiya, and then west along the great road, three days to tangalla, where the prison is. you must ask at the prison. they can tell you.'

punchi menika left the vederala in silence. she walked away very slowly to the hut; the conviction had come to her at once that she must go to the prison. the thought of the journey alone into an unknown world frightened her; but she felt that she must go, that she could not bear any longer this waiting in doubt in the village. she made some cakes of kurakkan, tied them up in a handkerchief, together with some uncooked grain which the villagers gave her when they heard of her intended journey, and started next day for kamburupitiya.

the first part of her journey, the track to kamburupitiya, she knew well. she had, too, no fear, as other women have, of being alone in the jungle. it was when she turned west along the main road to tangalla that her real troubles began. she felt lost and terribly alone on the straight, white, dusty road. the great clumsy bullock carts, laden with salt or paddy, perpetually rumbled by her; the carters she knew were bad men, terrible tales were told about them in the villages. the life of the road frightened her far more than the silence and solitude of the jungle. that she understood: she belonged to it. but the stream of passers-by upon the road, the unknown faces and the eyes that always stared strangely, inquiringly at her for a moment, and had then passed on for ever, made her feel vaguely how utterly alone she was in the world. and nowhere was this feeling so strong for her as in the villages which she slunk through like a frightened jackal. everywhere it was the same; the crowd of villagers and travellers staring at her from in front of the village boutique, the group of women gossiping and laughing round the well in the paddy field—not a known face among them all. she had not the courage even to ask to be allowed to sleep at night in a boutique or hut. she preferred to creep into some small piece of jungle by the roadside, when darkness found her tired and hungry.

she was very tired and very hungry before she reached tangalla. her bewilderment was increased by the network of narrow streets. she wandered about until she suddenly found herself in the market. it was market-day, and a crowd of four or five hundred people were packed together into the narrow space, which was littered with the goods and produce which they were buying and selling: fruit and vegetables and grain and salt and clothes and pots. every one was talking, shouting, gesticulating at the same time. the noise terrified her, and she fled away. she hurried down another narrow street, and found herself at the foot of a hill which rose from the middle of the town. there were no houses upon its sides, but there was an immense building on the top of it. there was no crowd there, only an old man sitting on the bare hillside watching five lean cows which were trying to find some stray blades of parched brown grass on the stony soil.

she squatted down, happy in the silence and solitude of the place after the noise of the streets and market. nothing was to be heard except the cough of one of the cows from time to time, and from far off the faint, confused murmur from the market-place. she looked up at the great white building; it was very glaring and dazzling in the blaze of the sun. she wondered whether it was the prison in which babun lay. she looked at the old man sitting among the five starved cows. he reminded her a little of silindu; he sat so motionless, staring at a group of cocoanut-trees that lay around the bottom of the hill. he was as thin as the cattle which he watched: as their flanks heaved in the heat you saw the ribs sticking out under their mangy coats, and you could see, too, every bone of his chest and sides panting up and down under his dry, wrinkled skin. the insolent noisy towns-people had terrified her; this withered old man seemed familiar to her, like a friend. he might very easily have come out of the jungle.

she went over to where he sat, and stood in front of him. for a moment he turned on her his eyes, which were covered with a film the colour of the film which forms on stagnant water; then he began again to stare at the palms in silence.

'father,' she said, 'is that the prison?'

the old man looked up slowly at the great glaring building as if he had seen it for the first time, and then looked from it to punchi menika.

'yes,' he said in a dry husky voice. 'why?'

'my man must be there,' said punchi menika gazing at the white walls. 'he was sent there many months ago. they sent him there for six months. it was a false case. the six months have passed now, but he has not returned to the village. i have come to ask about him here—a long way. i am tired, father, tired of all this. but he must be there.'

the old man's eyes remained fixed upon the cocoanut-palms; he did not move.

'what is your village, woman?' he asked.

'i come from beddagama.'

'beddagama, i know it. i knew it long ago. i, too, come from over there, from mahawelagama, beyond beddagama. you should go back to your village, woman.'

'but my man, father, what about my man?'

the old man turned his head very slowly and looked up at the prison. the sun beat down upon his face, which seemed to have been battered and pinched and folded and lined by age and misery. his eyes wandered from the prison to one of the cows. she stood still, stretching out her head in front of her, her great eyes bulging; she coughed in great spasms which strained her flanks. he waited until the coughing had stopped, and she began again to search the earth for something to eat. then he said, speaking as if to himself:

'they never come out from there—not if they are from the jungle. how can they live in there, always shut in between walls? these town people—they do not mind, but we——surely i should know—i am from mahawelagama, a village in the jungle over there. i would go back now, but i am too old. when one is old, it is useless; but you——go back to your village, woman. it is folly to leave the village. there is hunger there, i know, i remember that; but there is the hut and the compound all by themselves, and the jungle beyond. here there is nothing but noise and trouble, and one house upon the other.'

'but i must ask at the prison first for my man. why are they keeping him there?'

'they never come out. surely i should know. my son was sent there. he never came out. the case was in this town, and i came here and spent all i had for him. then i thought i will wait here until they let him out; but he never came. it will be the same with your man. go back to the village.'

punchi menika wept quietly from weariness and hunger and misery at the old man's words:

'it is no good crying,' he said; 'i am old, and who should know better than i? they never come out. it is better to go back to the village.'

punchi menika got up and walked slowly up the hill, and then round the prison. there was only one entrance to it, an immense solid wooden gate studded with iron nails. she knocked timidly, so timidly that the sound was not heard within. then she sat down against the wall and waited. hours passed, and nothing happened; the gate remained closed; no sound could be heard from within the prison; the hill was deserted except for the five cows whose coughing she could hear from time to time below her. but she waited patiently for something to happen, only moving now and again into the shadow of the wall, when the sun in its course beat down upon her.

at last the door opened, and a man in a khaki uniform and helmet, carrying a club in his hand, came out. he looked at punchi menika, and said sharply:

'what do you want here?'

'i have come about my man, aiya. a long time ago he was sent here for six months. the time has passed, but he has not returned to the village. they say he is dead. is it true, aiya?'

'what was his name and village?'

'he was from beddagama.'

'his name?'

'aiya, how can i tell his name?'

'what was his name, fool?'

'they called him babun.'

'what was he convicted for?'

'it was a false case. they said he had robbed the arachchi.'

'oh, that man, yes. the arachchi was killed afterwards, wasn't he?'

'yes, yes, my father did that.'

'well, he was here, too. have you any money, woman?'

'no, aiya, none; we are very poor.'

'ah! well. we can't tell you anything here. you must go to kamburupitiya, and send a petition to the agent hamadoru.'

'but you know my man, aiya; you said you did. what harm to tell me? is he here now? what has happened to him? i have come many days' journey to ask about him, and now you send me away to more trouble.'

the jail guard looked at punchi menika for a minute or two.

'well,' he said, 'charity they say is like rain to a parched crop. you are asking for drought in a parched field. i knew the man; he was here, but he is dead. he died two months back.'

the jail guard expected to hear the shrill cry and the beating of the breast, the signs of a woman's mourning. punchi menika astonished him by walking slowly away to the shade, and sitting down again by the prison wall. the blow was too heavy for the conventional signs of grief. she sat dry-eyed; she felt little, but the intense desire to get away to the village, to get away out of this world, where she was lost and alone, to the compound, where she could sit and watch the sun set behind the jungle. she did not wait long; she set out at once down the hill. the old man still sat among his cows looking at the cocoanut-trees.

'ah,' he said, as she passed him, 'they never come out. i told you so.'

'he is dead, father.'

'yes, they never come out. go back to the village, child.'

'i am going, father.'