"My son, the Christian faith may be all very well for Christians. We are Hindus, born, by a fate over which we have no control, in the Hindu faith. The faith is bound up with our social and political laws and cannot be separated. Let me point out to you how important it is that you should make no change. If by remaining an outcaste you cannot fulfil the part of chief mourner at my death, the law of caste--and it is upheld by our country's law--disinherits you, You cannot inherit any of my wealth, my lands, my houses, my looms, my silk farms, my jewels and hoard of silver. Not a single rupee will be yours if another hand drops the rice and butter into the fire before my dead body immediately after death; if another bears the pot of fire in my funeral procession; if another lights the funeral pile. Would you wish to lose your birthright, the riches that should be yours, the honour as head of one of the oldest and most respected families of Chirakul? Would you deliberately make yourself a pauper, an outcaste, despised even by the pariahs? Consider well all that you propose to sacrifice." Once more Pantulu gazed anxiously into his boy's face for a sign that he relented, that his pleading had prevailed; and his heart sank within him as he noted the tightening of the lower lip and the obstinate tilt of the chin. Again he spoke, repeating the old arguments, enumerating the property that should one day belong to his son; but without avail. At length Ananda made a kind of response in putting a question. "If I do not take upon myself the duties of chief mourner, on whom do they fall?" he asked. "On your son." "And the child will inherit your fortune?" "Everything; and as soon as he comes of age he will take my place in the family councils and you will be as one that has died in a foreign land." Ananda rose to his feet intimating that as far as he was concerned the interview was at an end. "Your answer, my son! your answer! what news am I to carry to your mother?" cried Pantulu, in sudden dismay, as he realised two facts--his son was leaving him, and he had failed miserably in his attempt to win him back. "I have nothing to say that has not been already said." Ananda spoke with evident pain. It grieved him to wound his father by refusing to comply with his wishes. He knew of what vital importance it was to a Hindu to have the assurance that the funeral rites would be duly performed by a fitting and proper member of the family; and he found the greatest difficulty in maintaining his honesty of speech. The temptation to temporise was strong. "It is impossible, even if I desired it, to re-establish my faith in the Hindu teaching concerning the future life. It is a miserable groping in the dark, a wilful blinding of the eyes; the whole thing is a relic of the ancestor worship of a barbarous people not worthy of our nation with its present civilisation. I must have something better----"