“First we sold the cow,” she mumbled, trying to find him with her eyes, “then we sold the household things. After that we sold the doors and door-posts. Even after that the food was all gone, and my husband, whose name is Madan Das, gave his clothing to his brother, who is a leper, to sell in the village for food. A neighbor lent my husband a cotton cloth to put about his loins. The _chaukadari_ tax was due. Madan Das could not pay. We were starving, and one of the babes, a girl, was dead. The _tahsildar_” (a collector for the English) “came and took away from the second babe, who was in the doorway of our house, a little brass bowl for the tax. There was in the bowl some soup which my babe was eating--a little soup made of bark, flower-pods and wild berries.... Since then there has been no food. Madan Das is dead, and the two girls are dead, and the brother of Madan Das, who is a leper, died last night. The white holy man carried me here, leaving the other on the road. This is the son of Madan Das----” Life was going out of her with the words, but she would not stop. Her heart was pounding like a frightened bird’s. The weight of them both was but that of a healthy child--an armful of dissolution. “Listen, mother,” Routledge said. “Do not talk any more. I am going to the Rest House to get food for you and the son of Madan Das. Lie here and rest. I shall not be long.” Even as he left her, she was repeating her story. He returned with a pitcher of hot tea, strong enough to color and make palatable the nourishment of half a can of condensed milk. He brought a servant with him, and a sheet to cover the woman. Routledge handed the child to the servant, and lifted the mother’s head to a cup. Afterward he cleansed her face and throat and arms with cool water, and bade her sleep. “The little one is quite well, mother,” he told her softly. “All is well with you now. The English will be here to-day with much food, and you have only to rest. The child eats.” “He is the son of Madan Das,” she mumbled, “and I am his mother.... Do not forget.” She sank into a half-stupor. The servant had spooned a few drops into the babe’s mouth. Routledge took the child--a wee thing, light as a kitten, numbed from want, and too weak to cry. Its body had the feel of a glove, and the bones showed white under the dry brown skin, and protruded like the bones of a bat’s wing. The servant went to fetch a basin of water. “Why must you, little seedling, learn the hunger-lesson so soon?” Routledge reflected whimsically. “You are lots too little to have done any wrong, and if your bit of a soul is stained with the sins of other lives, you are lots too little to know that you are being punished for them now.... I should have asked Sekar of what avail is the karmic imposition of hunger upon the body of a babe.”