"He shaved for the heat, and then the hail fell on his bald pate," quoted the prettiest callously. "Serve him right, say I. He, at least, had two eyes."
The burst of laughter following this sally made the peacemaker, who, as the wife of the headman, had authority, turn in rebuke. 'Twas no laughing matter to Jâtnis, as they were, who did so much of the field work, that a token, maybe of ill, should come to the village when the harvest promised so well. The revenue had to be paid, smallpox or no smallpox, Toork or no Toork. And was not one of the Huzoors in camp already giving an eye to the look of the crops, and the other to the shooting of wild things? Could they not hear the sound of his gun for themselves if they listened instead of chattering? And truly enough, in the pause which came to mirth, there echoed from the pale northern horizon, beyond which lay the big jheels, a shot or two, faint and far; for all that dealing death to some of God's creatures. And these listeners dealt death to none; their faith forbade it.
"Think you they will come our way and kill our deer as they did once?" asked a slender slip of a girl anxiously. Her tame fawn had lately taken to joining the wild ones when they came at dawn to feed upon the wheat.
"God knows," replied one beside her. "They will come if they like, and kill if they like. Are they not the masters?"
So the final reference was in the women's minds also, as, while the muddy water strained slowly into their pots through a filtering corner of their veils, they raised their eyes curiously, doubtfully, to the horizon which held the master. It had held him always. To the north or to the south, the east or the west. Mohammedan, Mahratta, Christian. But always coming over the far horizon and slaying something. In old days husbands, brothers, fathers. Nowadays the herds of deer which the sacredness of life allowed to have their full of the wheat unchecked, or the peacocks who spread their tails, securely vainglorious, on the heaps of corn upon the threshing floors.
So the unleavened cake stayed in the village all day long, and when the slant shadows brought leisure, the headman's wife baked two cakes, one for the north the other for the west, and Dittu the old watchman, and the embryo watchman his son, set off with them to the next village west and north, since that was the old custom. So much must be done because their fathers had done it; for the rest, who could tell?
Nevertheless, as the messengers passed through the village street where the women sat spinning, many paused to look after them, with a vague relief that the unknown, unsought, had gone out of their life. Then the moon rose peacefully, and one by one the sights and sounds of that life ceased. The latest of all was the hum of a mill in one of the poorest houses, and a snatch of a harvest-song in murmuring accompaniment:
"When the sickle meets the corn,
From their meeting joy is born;
When the sickle smites the wheat,
Care is conquered, sorrow beat."
"Have a care, sister, have a care!" came that rebuking voice from the headman's house close by. "Wouldst bring ill-luck on us all, that grinding but millet thou singest the song of wheat?"
And thereinafter there was no song at all, and sleep settled on all things peacefully. The token had come and gone, leaving the mud shell and the laboring life within it as it had been before. Curiously impassive, impassively curious. There was one more portent in the sky, one more mist on the dim horizon. That was all.