“They will tell you so in the morning. Come home now. I will take you by a path where the waters cannot beat you down like the dragon-fly, nor carry you away like the squirrel that is caught far from its hole. But I forbade your coming abroad. You were afraid to await the hag under a roof, I suppose. If she must come, I wish it might be in the morning. She would see in the garden that which would make her so merry that she would forget you.” “Can you say your prayers to keep off the curse to-night, Rayo? Dare you?” “O, yes; and quickly, that I may sleep, and be early ready to see the Challias collect in the garden.” In the morning, before Marana’s long ague-fit had given place to sleep, her husband was on the spot of the late cinnamon harvest. The sky was not clear of clouds, large masses still being in act of rising from the east; but a mild sunshine burnished the scene; the rose-coloured peaks of the distant mountains,—the fresh-springing verdure of the fields which were so lately brown,—and the multitudes of winged creatures that flitted, hovered, and sailed in the balmy air. All was as fair in the interval of the storms as if no storm had ever been. It was much more wonderful to Rayo to see no signs of storm in the faces of those who were most concerned in the loss of the cinnamon. Mr. Carr looked not only free from anger towards the lightning to which he attributed the destruction, but satisfied and pleased at the existing state of things. “The lightning has saved the Company from the curses of the people,” he heard Captain Cinnamon whisper to a modelier of the garden. “There was too good a crop this year; and if some of it must be burned, it was very well that accident should do it.” “And that accident should have burned more than the Company would have dared to destroy in the face of the natives. Now they may put their own price upon their bark; and a pretty price it will be, to judge by Mr. Carr’s pleased face.” “Not that he wishes ill to the natives, or to the eaters of cinnamon in other lands. But he is thinking of the good news he has to send to his employers.” Rayo rolled himself in the sand when he thus learned what was the result of his enterprise. CHAPTER V. MATERNAL ECONOMY.