The rest was as the rattle of ripe seeds in a windblown pod.... Routledge turned his face from the final wrench. There was a foot-fall in the sand, and a shadow upon the threshold, but Routledge raised his hand for silence. The moment of all life in the flesh when silence is dearest is the _last_.... The child stirred and opened its eyes--roused, who can tell, by its own needs of a metaphysical sympathy? And what does it matter? The man covered in the sheet the poor body which the soul had spurned, and turned to feed the child again. The American was at the door. “And have you been specializing in famine at first hand, Mr. Jasper?” Routledge inquired. “Yes, and I see, sir, that you have been doing more.” “The task came to me this morning. A little touch of motherhood makes the whole world kin, you know.... This baby seal is the son of Madan Das. He is sleepy, having ridden all night bareback--and the bones of his mount were sharp.” “Allow me to say, rather from necessity than any notion of being pleasant,” Mr. Jasper observed slowly, “that I think you are a wonderful man.... I have found myself weak and cowardly and full of strange sickness. I am going back to the railway filled with a great dislike for myself. The things which I find to do here, and want to do, prove a physical impossibility. I want to leave a hundred pounds in Rydamphur. It is but a makeshift of a coward. It occurred to me to ask you how it would be best to leave the money, and where.” “Don’t be disturbed, Mr. Jasper,” Routledge said, struck by the realness of the other’s gloom. “I know the feeling--know it well. A white man is not drilled in these matters. God, I have been ill, too! I am ill now. See the soaps and water-basins which I have served with my ministrations--and I am old in India. It is the weakness from hunger which makes the people a prey to all the atrocities of filth and disease. First famine, then plague.... A hundred pounds--that is good of you. I know a missionary who will thank God directly for it--all night on his knees--and he will not buy a can of butter for himself. I will lead you to him if you wish.” They passed through the village. The English were coming with the bullock-carts, and the people, all those who could crawl out of their huts, were gathered in the blazing sunlight on the public threshing-floor. Mr. Jasper quickened his step and averted his face.... Routledge had been several days in Rydamphur, and a guest in most of the huts, but there were many upon the threshing-floor now (the old in agony, borne there by the young; loathsome human remnants moving upon the sand) that he had not seen before. It profited not to look deeply into that harrowing dream of hell, in the light of the most high sun, lest the spectacle remain in the brain, an indissoluble haunt. “Yes, I know, Mr. Jasper,” Routledge muttered. “It is shocking as the bottom of the sea--with the waters drained off. It is the carnal mystery of a famine.”