cocoa-nut leaves to burn, and splitting resinous woods into torches. When the twilight expired, he was there. When the black darkness had descended a full hour, he was lighting himself through the wood with one of his new torches. “It is time to close the door against the panther,” said he to Marana, before he set forth. “Spread the mat and sleep, when you have prayed to St. Anthony for me.” “And you? will you not kneel to pray on the same mat?” “I have a prayer to say some way off which no one may overhear. So go in, and trust to my returning,—before day-break, if not in darkness.” “O, do not bring any more curses, Rayo, by taking what is not ours. Here is money to buy grain in the harbour, and——” “Money!” exclaimed Rayo. “Your friend Amoottra must have brought you money. Does it not taint your fingers with leprosy, Marana?” She let the money fall in a fit of horror; but when her husband laughed a laugh which must have been highly offensive to any hag who might happen to be within hearing, Marana conjured him to do nothing to remind the foe of her expecting victim. Rayo had superstition enough in him to induce him to take the hint, though not sufficient to prevent his searching for the dropped money by the light of his torch, and being very glad to pick it up from the brown, crumbling turf where it had fallen. In vain Marana entreated to be permitted to carry the torch for her husband. In vain she urged the desirableness of her being at hand to sing the “Hail!” to the first burst of the season’s thunder. She was commanded to pray and sleep, and dream of the verdure which might possibly have overspread the rice-fields before the morning. She ventured, however, to steal out on the track of Rayo’s footsteps. The risk of falling in with a leopard or a tiger-cat while she carried no torch was nothing in comparison with the uncertainty as to what was being done or undergone by her husband. She had been his companion on the raft one night, and in his flight through the woods on another; and now he went out alone, and in silence as to his object. She feared that this reserve argued something more than care for her health; some desperation of design too great to be confided even to her. She blamed herself for all. Some immediate misfortune was, she believed, to follow her impious act of the morning; and all her husband’s sins, from his withdrawal of confidence from her, to whatever act he might be now about to perpetrate, must be answered for by her. She went out to watch, as an unpractised magician may be supposed to await the results of his first spell, in a state of expectation made wretched by horror and fear.