There was silence in the smoking-room. I looked round. The Colonel had fallen asleep with his mouth open. The jobber tried to look bored, the Archdeacon was, apparently, rather put out. "Its too late, I think," said the Archdeacon, "to--Dear me, dear me, past one o'clock". He got up. "Don't you think you've chosen rather exceptional circumstances, out of the ordinary case?" The Commissioner was looking into the few red coals that were all that was left of the fire. "There's another Tamil proverb," he said: "When the cat puts his head into a pot, he thinks all is darkness." THE TWO BRAHMANS Yalpanam is a very large town in the north of Ceylon; but nobody who suddenly found himself in it would believe this. Only in two or three streets is there any bustle or stir of people. It is like a gigantic village that for centuries has slept and grown, and sleeps and grows, under a forest of cocoanut trees and the fierce sun. All the streets are the same, dazzling dusty roads between high fences made of the dried leaves of the cocoanut palms. Behind the fences, and completely hidden by them, are the compounds; and in the compounds still more hidden under the palms and orange and lime trees are the huts and houses of the Tamils who live there. The north of the town lies, as it has lain for centuries, sleeping by the side of the blue lagoon, and there is a hut standing now in a compound by the the side of the lagoon, where it has stood for centuries. In this hut there lived a man called Chellaya who was by caste a Brahman, and in the compound next to Chellaya's lived another Brahman, called Chittampalam; and in all the other 50 or 60 compounds around them lived other Brahmans. They belonged to the highest of all castes in Yalpanam: and they could not eat food with or touch or marry into any other caste, nor could they carry earth on their heads or work at any trade, without being defiled or losing caste. Therefore all the Brahmans live together in this quarter of the town, so that they may not be defiled but may marry off their sons and daughters to daughters and sons of other Brahmans. Chellaya and Chittampalam and all the Brahmans knew that they and their fathers and their fathers' fathers had lived in the same way by the side of the blue lagoon under the palm trees for many thousands of years. They did no work, for there was no need to work. The dhobi or washer caste man, who washed the clothes of Brahmans and of no other caste, washed their white cloths and in return was given rice and allowed to be present at weddings and funerals. And there was the barber caste man who shaved the Brahmans and no other caste. And half a mile from their compounds were their Brahman rice fields in which Chellaya and each of the other Brahmans had shares; some shares had descended to them from their fathers and their grandfathers and great-grandfathers and so on from the first Brahmans, and other shares had been brought to them as dowry with their wives.