“Is the blessing passed away?” asked Rayo, prostrating himself before the priest, with deep sorrow in his tone and countenance. “Perhaps not, if you will freely confess.” “I will, father.” Marana moved away, and remained out of hearing with her back turned towards them, till the priest at length passed her. Dropping a few words of good cheer, he exhorted her to be a tender wife, but withal faithful to her religion, and then he trusted Rayo would become proof against every kind of evil instigation or influence. It really was remarkable that such influences seemed to beset him in particular places. His sins of theft took place at sea, where compunction never seemed to visit him; while no one could be more penitent and submissive than Rayo on land. Did Marana know of any instance of his committing a theft on shore, or being penitent at sea? Marana could recollect none, and was confirmed in her dread of the Malabar witch. If she could but get Rayo farther inland!—she said to herself, as father Anthony gave her his blessing, and went on his way. This aspiration was nearer its accomplishment than she could have supposed. “Rayo, what could make you take the pearl?” she asked, when she returned to her husband. “If there were a cocoa-nut tree here, as in the south, I should not want the money which I cannot get. We might build under its shade, and eat its fruit, and drink the milk from the kernel, and make our ropes of its fibres, and burn lamps of its oil. But as there are no cocoa-nuts where we live, I got chanks. You threw them away, and I tried to get a pearl. If I must not have a pearl——” “Let us go to the cocoa-trees, as they cannot come to us.” “If I go at all, I will go far;—down among the cinnamon gardens, Marana.” “Not to be a cinnamon peeler!” exclaimed Marana, who thought she saw a desperation in her husband’s countenance, such as a man might wear who was about to lose caste. It was now a disputed point which caste ought to rank highest,—the fishermen or the cinnamon-peelers; but Marana, as in duty bound, as a fisherman’s daughter, regarded the cinnamon-peelers as upstarts. “You, a fisherman, will not mix with the cinnamon-peelers?” Rayo explained no more of his purpose in going among the cinnamon gardens than that it was not to mix with the peelers. But he gloomily hinted that perhaps Marana ought not to go,—would she not there be out of the limit of her father’s charms? Might not the hag Amoottra—— “Touch me with leprosy? No,” said Marana, producing the precious shell from a corner of her mantle. “My father needs not draw out his spell at home while I carry this with me. I have shown it to you, Rayo, but you will not sell it? If we live among the cocoa-nuts, we shall not want the money. You will not take it from me to part with it?”