From year's end to year's end he seldom fingered a coin, and if he did, it was Surâbhi who brought it to him. Her last calf had long since become an ox, and drifted away from the village to fill a gap in the great company of the ploughers and martyrs who give the coffer of the Empire all its gold and die in thousands--long before famine touches humanity--without a penny piece from that coffer being spent to save them from starvation. Yet she still, after the fashion of her race, gave milk and to spare. The latter went, as a rule, to folk poorer still than the old Brahmin, especially to children; but when he sold it, part of the money was always spent on a new charm for Surâbhi's neck. And it might be noted that whenever, by looking over the old mud walls which separated the village courtyards one from the other, he found that Govinda's brown cow had a fresh bell or disposition of cowries round her neck, there was always enough milk over and above Gopi's wants next day to procure a similar adornment for the white one with its heavy dewlap. The rivalry grew, by degrees, into a definite challenge between their owners, so that when, after a time, Govinda's beast fell off in her milk, Gopi's delight was palpable, and he scouted all reasonable explanations of the fact. The cow, he said, was underbred. You could see by her hoofs that she had been accustomed to wander about and pick up her own living like low-caste folk; while Surâbhi bore token of her lifelong seclusion in every polished ring of her long-pointed black toes. But before the question at issue could be decided, that came about which dried up every cow in the village, and made even old Gopi's brass _lotah_ cease to brim. There was no rain. Even in December and January, though the skies were dappled as the partridge's breast, the clouds carried their moisture elsewhere. Where, did not affect the villagers. It was not here, and that was all they knew. The autumn crop, which means fodder, had been a scant one, the cattle were thrown entirely on the still scantier growth of grass in the waste land; and when that failed, custom did not fail. The herds were driven forth from the thorn enclosures every morning to the wilderness and taken back from it at eve, just as if that wilderness were still a grazing-ground. What else could be done, seeing that when cattle starve it is not a famine? _That_ is a time when help is given by the new master. God knows why, since the old masters never gave any. Such time of help must come, of course, ere long, if the clouds remained dry; but meanwhile the flocks and herds went out to graze on mud, and if some failed to return in the evening, what else was to be expected?