'Savages, you mean? Well, I don't know. I rather doubt it. You don't help the psychologist much, Ratemahatmaya. This man, now: I expect he's a quiet sort of man. All he wanted was to be left alone, poor devil. You don't shoot, I believe, Ratemahatmaya, so you don't know the jungle properly. But it's really the same with the other jungle animals, even your leopard, you know. They just want to be left alone, to sleep quietly in the day, and to get their food quietly at night. They won't touch you if you leave them alone. But if you worry 'em enough; follow 'em up and pen 'em up in a corner or a cave, and shoot '450 bullets at them out of an express rifle; well, if a bullet doesn't find the lungs or heart or brain, they get angry as you call it, and go out to kill. I don't blame them either. Isn't that true?'
'I believe it is, sir.'
'And it's the same with these jungle people. They want to be left alone, to reap their miserable chenas and eat their miserable kurakkan, to live quietly, as he said, in their miserable huts. I don't think that you know, any more than I do, Ratemahatmaya, what goes on up there in the jungle. He was a quiet man in the village, I believe that. He only wanted to be left alone. It must take a lot of cornering and torturing and shooting to rouse a man like that. I expect, as he said, they went on at him for years. This not letting one another alone, it's at the bottom of nine-tenths of the crime and trouble; and in nine-tenths of that nine-tenths there's one of your headmen concerned—whom you are supposed to look after.'
'It's very difficult, sir. They live far away in these little villages. Many of them are good men and help the villagers. But they are ignorant, too.'
'Oh, I'm not blaming you, Ratemahatmaya. I'm not blaming any one. And it's late if we are to start early to-morrow. You had better take your friend away with you and put him in the lock-up. Tell them to give him some food if he wants it. Good night.'
The Ratemahatmaya shook Silindu until he woke up. It was some little while before he realised where he was, and then that he had to set out again with the Ratemahatmaya. He turned to the magistrate.
'Where are they taking me to, Hamadoru?'
'You will be taken to the prison. You will have to stay there until you are tried.'
'But I have told the truth to the Hamadoru. Let him give his decision. It is to end it all that I came here.'
'I can't try you. You will have to be tried by the great judge.'