"Now may the omen be good!" said one.
"The dawn will show," replied the grandmother, calmly. "I will wait here; go you home to bed."
But when the rising sun brought sufficient light to see withal, her eager eyes could find no certain indication on which to build either hope or fear. Marks there were, and plenty, showing where the beasts had fought, but no broad track of dragging, either away from or towards the village, conveying Nihâli's last message to her friends.
Had she gone over the edge of the world seeking for the long-sought son? Or had she come back to haunt the hearth with her unwelcome presence? Who could tell?
"Everything goes wrong nowadays," muttered the discontented old woman. "Even the omens fail! 'Tis all the fault of the great Queen and her new-fangled notions."
IV.
The next three months brought Gunesh Chund many an uneasy hour. Even when, driven to bay by his mother's entreaties to allow her to look for a new wife, he confessed his promise to wait a year, he gained no respite from her reproaches, but rather enhanced their venom by her contempt for his weakness. What was he, to set himself above the wisdom of his fathers? What was the reading-writing woman, that she should run counter to the traditions which held the first duty of a Hindu wife was to be that of bringing a son to the hearth? He had no answer save a dull consciousness that somehow he was not quite as his fathers. They, for instance, had calmly acquiesced in such customs as the exposure of the dead child to the jackals; while, despite his familiarity with the idea, its practice had filled him with aversion. Honest as he was by nature, he never regretted the deceit which sent Veru, after she recovered from the illness following on the shock of Nihâli's death, to cool a little grave[[3]] by the burning-ground with her tears and offerings.
"'Twill only make her ill again to know what thou hast done," he had said to his mother, with a decision new to him. "Silence will be the wisest for thee also, since in this I am on her side."
As for the casting out of the demon which had hurried on the inevitable end, Veru always maintained to her mother-in-law that it partook of the nature of murder; but with her usual shrewdness she exonerated Gunesh Chund from blame. For this he was grateful, though his mind was by no means made up as to the rights and wrongs of the question.
From this and many another problem he took refuge in the fields. The fierce dry winds of summer blew with scorching heat, bringing with them the necessity for a ceaseless watering of the crops. Many and many a silent, peaceful hour he spent in the forked seat behind the oxen, half asleep, half awake; while the well-wheel circled round he circled round the wheel, and the great world circled round beyond him. Whether it span swift or slow he knew not and he cared not.