'Did your father teach you the making of the charm?' asked Karlinahami.
'Am I not a vederala and the son of a vederala? The learning of the father is handed down to the son.'
'Yes, I remember hearing my mother speak of him: there was no one in the district, she said, so skilled in charms and medicines as your father.'
'Yes, he knew many things which other vederalas know nothing of. He had a charm by which devils are charmed to become the servants of the charmer. He learnt it from a man of Sinhala,[22] who lived long ago in the neighbouring village. This man was called Tikiri Banda, and he wanted to marry the daughter of the headman. The headman refused to give her, and Tikiri Banda being very angry put a charm upon a devil which lived in a banian-tree. And the devil took a snake in his hand and touched the headman with it on the back as he passed under the tree in the dusk, and the headman's back was bent into a bow for the rest of his days.'
'Was that the village called Bogama?' asked Silindu, who had listened with interest. 'Where the nuga-trees[23] now stand in the jungle to the south? The last house was abandoned when I was a boy, but the devil still dances beneath the nuga-trees.'
'Yes, it was Bogama. It was a village like this in my father's time, and in your father's time. I can myself remember houses there near the nuga-trees.'
'Of course,' said Karlinahami. 'Podi Sinho's wife Angohami came from there. Aiyo! when the jungle comes in, how things are forgotten!'
'Well, well,' said the vederala, 'the devils still dance under the trees, though the men have gone. The chena crops were bad, and every year the fever came; it is the same now in this village. The old medicines of the vederalas are no longer used, but people go to the towns and hospitals for these foreign medicines. But they die very quickly, and where there was a village there are only trees and devils!'
The little group was silent for a while; nothing could be heard but the sigh of the wind among the trees for miles around them. Then the vederala began to speak again:
'Yes, that was a wonderful charm. The headman walked bow-backed for the rest of his life because he would not give the girl. Aiyo! it is always the women who bring trouble to us men, and yet what can a man do? A man without a wife, they say, is only half a man. There is no comfort in a house where there is no woman to cook the meal.'