It was a long and solemn talk. Since the days of his sickness, three years before, Oman and his father had spoken scarcely a dozen words together. True, he usually slept at home, and his mother always left him food for the day in a corner of the veranda. But he was not of his family. In the village he had come to be looked on as a recluse, almost a hermit; and as such was in some measure respected. Now, however, Oman had come to demand one of two things: speedy death, or a place in the world. Gokarna was taken aback, demurred, finally offered his son a menial position among the priests, which Oman straightway refused. “My brain is sick of religion and the gods. My power of worship is spent. Let me work.” “Work! You are a Brahman.” “Thou knowest I am not—cannot be.” Gokarna glared at him, and muttered some sort of insult; whereupon Oman rose and left his father, and within twelve hours apprenticed himself to a weaver in the town, thereby renouncing caste and becoming one of the Vaisyas, the lowest order to whom was granted the right of re-birth and investiture with the sacred cord. Yet, in the village, Oman was now regarded as a privileged being; and, after a week of banishment from his home, during which time he worked steadily and well, Kota went to him, and begged him to return to his father’s house, to sleep and eat as he had been wont to do; and when Gokarna sent a message to the same effect, Oman, for his mother’s sake, consented, and resumed the old relations with his people. He could not, of course, eat in their presence, nor sleep in the same room with one of them, nor take part in the Agnihotra. But at night he was there, in the veranda, as of old; and the heart of his mother was at peace. Now, in the endless sunshine, Oman Ramasarman worked at his trade: first combing and carding the wool, later dyeing it, then learning how to mix the different threads for warp and woof, and finally sitting down to the loom, where, under his skilful manipulation, the cloth was turned off, smooth and strong and useful. And now, at last, Oman’s thoughts were taken from himself, and he was like a busy child, playing at work, working at play, till two swift years had rolled round again, and it was the spring of the year 1224, with Oman in his eighteenth year of expiative life. CHAPTER IV HUSHKA IN THE MARKET-PLACE