It was the end of June, just before the rains broke; the sky was like molten brass, the earth like stone. Who would travel in such a time?—who but two homeless unfortunates, who must press forward or else lie down and perish! Girunda staggered along, carrying his sister, at the rate of three koss a day. The four annas were long exhausted, and they now openly begged their bread! Some gave them a few handsful of rice,—which they ate raw—some a few cowries, which they spent at the little bunnia shops; they could barely keep body and soul together! Yes, they were like the mendicants that had come to their own door in the good times Girunda remembered, when his mother was alive—and the cow.
His mother—he could recollect her well. She had pretty white teeth, and she laughed often; but one day she came back from the fields between two women. She was weeping, and so were they, and they sent him across the river to play; and when he returned, a boy in the village ran shouting to meet him, and cried, “Thy mother is dead; a snake bit her.”
Sometimes Girunda thought he would die too; he was so hot, and so tired, and his feet were so sore. If only he could reach his father first! But how long the miles had become! How he strained his eyes to catch sight of the next milestone! and what an enormous time it seemed before it came into view! The road never varied—never turned to the right hand or the left; sometimes, as he toiled on, his poor tired brain imagined that it had taken the form of a great grey serpent, and was coming towards him to swallow him up. They were now within five miles of Shahjhanpur city—would he ever reach it? There were fine trees lining the route; there were plenty of ekkas and ponies; there was a loud-puffing fire-devil going yonder over a bridge (he had heard of it), with a lot of black boxes behind it; and still he was three miles from Shahjhanpur—now two. Oh, he could never arrive there—never!
CHAPTER V.
About half-past six o’clock the next morning a gang of convicts were working on the road near the jail, carrying stones with much chain-clanking, all obtrusively industrious for the moment, as the keen black eye of the jail burkundaz was fixed upon them; but presently his gaze was attracted by a little group that approached him: a policeman escorting two ragged children.
“What are these?” he inquired.
“They were found last night near the police thana on the Futupore Road. The boy had fainted on the wayside, and I kept them till dawn, when I brought them in on a passing hackery. They come, they say, from Paroor, a village seventy miles off. The boy has walked all the way, carrying the girl on his back—so he says.”
“Truly, but it is a fable! Of a surety, they are beggars from our own city.”
“We can easily prove them. They have come hither to seek their father, who is in prison here; they aver that his name is Chūnnee Sing, of Paroor.”
The convicts lagged to listen, and one whispered to another, “It is the tall man, who never smiles.”