The crowd stopped, out of respect to the head man, and each looked at the other, not knowing what to say. Then the old woman herself looked up. With a feeble attempt at the usual gay salaam with which she always greeted the chief, she answered his question.
"It is the cholera," she said.
"The cholera!" frightened voices screamed.
The hands that had so tenderly been guiding the woman's feeble steps were suddenly withdrawn. The women fled from her, dragging their children with them while the larger youngsters ran down the street, crying, "Old Sarah has the cholera! Old Sarah has the cholera!"
The cry was passed on from one person to another for miles along the road, for never are the roads of India, except in the hottest part of the day, without a throng of travellers.
The old woman, who, thus suddenly left unsupported, had fallen in a limp heap in the middle of the road, lay there for some time until the sun became unendurable and made its rays felt even in her acute suffering. She raised her head. Not a person was in sight. The little village was deserted. It consisted only of a few palm-leaf huts on each side of the street, shaded by cocoanut trees, and could be taken in at a glance. Old Sarah's head fell upon her hands. What could she do? If she stayed in the road her suffering would be more intense; although she expected to die now that her friends had deserted her, still she wanted to die with as little torture as possible.
About six feet away from her was the open door of a tiny hut. The shade within looked very inviting. Summoning all the strength she had, Old Sarah crawled upon her hands and knees, slowly, painfully, to the door and dropped at full length on the hard mud floor. It was cool there but, oh, how lonely! No one to care for her! no one to supply her wants! no one to be with her when she should die! and no one to give her body Christian burial before the pariah dogs should tear it to pieces! She heard a noise at the door. With a flash of joy in her heart to think that some one had returned to help her, painfully turning her head, she saw—only the sacred bull of the village sticking an inquiring nose into the door. Perhaps there might be something within that he might feed upon, for he, according to Hindu custom, was privileged to help himself to whatever he could find anywhere. With disappointed heart, Old Sarah let her head roll back and closed her eyes, although the thought passed through her mind that the bull might enter the house and trample upon her in his search for food in the tiny room; but if he should, it would bring her only a quick release from her pain. Then the pain and suffering became so great that she could not even think. The bull, however, evidently seeing nothing to please his appetite within the hut, turned away from the door and went on down the street, nosing along the front of every house until he reached the last one where a woman in her haste to flee from the cholera had overturned a basket of pea-pods and left them in a heap on the mud floor of the porch before the house—a fine meal for a hungry bull.
The minutes flew by and became hours; only the moaning from the house near the middle of the street disturbed the hot hush of the midday.
A cat crept into the hut and sniffed at the woman's feet; a dog peered in at the dark object on the floor; but no human being came near.