was compelled to confess that she had not; and, after the examination there was a brief consultation, and then the lady spoke. I am sorry, Sita,' she said, but I fear I can't save you from it. The inspector sahib thinks you must go to the segregation camp. We will make everything as comfortable for you as possible, and your old Mukhti shall attend you. I myself, or one of the ladies whom you know best at the mission house, shall come and see you. 'Twill really matter nothing to you, this change, since you are alone.'

'But,' said Sita in dismay, 'I promise faithfully to come to the hospital if I am ill. You know I have no ignorant prejudices.'

'Ah! then, my child, be obedient now,' was all the response she got. And even a farewell to the palm tree was impossible. She daren't risk betraying them. But, just as the party was safely outside the door, she begged one indulgence.

'A last good-bye to my home,' she urged, ' in solitude. I shall be but one minute, by the lotus pond. Let me go alone, dear lady.' And they let her, saving her the ignominy of a watch, though the Maratha wished it. Swiftly she sped to the palm tree. Father,' she whispered, keep a brave heart. There is food in the house: take it and fly, outside the town, to Singhur. Mind! Singhur! You will be safe so, for at the railway stations they examine folk. Marothi at the police station will get you a palanquin. I will tell him as I pass, now, and I shall watch for you by the segregation tents this evening at dusk. Your road lies past them you know. I'll meet you at the old toll-house. I can run away; they won't watch me very closely. Good-bye, dear father. Good-bye, my son. The blessing of the great God be upon you.' But there was no answer, for the old man had fainted when he saw Sita led away; yet so strong were both his will, even in unconsciousness, and that wellacquired habit to a praying Brahmin of maintaining any given posture, that the clutch on the branches never relaxed its grasp, nor did the knees unbend.

'You were longer than a minute, Sita,' said the lady reprovingly; but, as Sita's eyes were moist, she patted her hand and said no

more.

VI

When the Shastri recovered himself it was already noon, and though the sun blazed overhead he was stiff and cold; and-good God!-the boy lay dead on his lap!

It took him a minute or two to grasp the awful fact; but he had the spirit of another Eastern sage: While the child was yet alive I fasted and wept; but now that he is dead, wherefore should I weep?' Only, his sequel was otherwise. What mattered Death? that would come to all, sooner or later; 'twas contamination which

did matter. So long as that was avoided there would be some chance of recognition in the re-birth. Yes, he must thank the gods for saving his boy from the hands of sweepers. . . He would take him himself to the burning ghat. So, descending with difficulty, he placed the boy on the green-sward. There was the suffering of a dumb creature in his eyes, but tears were a luxury denied to him; and so, indeed, was the indulgence of grief of any sort. Might not the party be back any moment! But when he strove to readjust the little burden he tottered and fell, and a nameless fear overwhelmed him. What if he should not reach the ghat! Down he was on his hands and knees, muttering to every god and goddess his vast reading had ever suggested to him-praying for strength, a little strength. Spare me yet a little while, oh, Vishnu! oh, Krishna! oh, Maroti! oh, all ye gods! And thou, oh, great Brahm, Source of Life, grant me one short hour longer of the vital flame, . . . then quench it, if thou wilt, for ever!' . . . He rose dazed, and stumbled into the house, where, finding some still fresh milk, and the meal they three were to have eaten in happy unity, he fed savagely: and, thus refreshed, returned to the cold burden. 'Twas comparatively easy now to hoist it on to his back.

'No bier,' he muttered; they would suspect a death.' So round his neck he clasped the little dead hands, and on his shoulder rested involuntarily the unresisting head, and from under the cloth with which he covered it there peeped one limp dead foot. . . . Ah! the pathos of it!

The hour was auspicious. Plague officials were having a short compulsory rest, after the morning's exertions; heavy-eyed policemen dozed on their beat; and citizens, such as were abroad, were too occupied with their own ills to notice other folk. He had chosen the devious way through the garden wicket, and 'twas well, for the courtyard door was officially sealed.

Trudge, trudge, under the blazing sun, while the air seemed heavy with death, and a myriad thoughts flashed through the aching brain. 'No fire,' he said, 'my child! no fire, no incense, no censer, no bier, no mourners; and thy father-God knows where ! And there is the end of the house of Bhandarkar, son of Krishnaram! Who can tell what will anger the gods, or this or that; and in what generation Nemesis will come?'

After a time his senses got dulled; the aged feet moved mechanically. . . . Ah! there was the stretch of river coiling like a silverscaled snake among the rushes, and there on the farther side was the strip of dry sand, the 'mount of sacrifice.'

The water was low, and the bund dry; he would walk across this, avoiding the weary bridge, and save thus, too, a good fifteen minutes. . . . His feet held firmly to the sun-baked stone; but the

water, as it splashed cool and joyous against the great boulders, touched something in his brain.

Was it last night he had dreamed of a bath in the river of life? The river rose in the enchanting mountains of mystery, and it flowed through the valleys of time, and it made its way to the fathomless sea of eternity! And so kind it was to all who trusted themselves, unquestioning, to its swift current. Was this the river of life?

But here is the ghat; and the preparations are simple enough. A few dry twigs laid so, beneath and over the little dead' fuel.' 'Do the sticks hurt, my child?'

A rope!-he'd never brought a rope! And he must grope about for some suitable flints for the initiatory spark. The search was slow; round black pebbles and yellow sand in abundance were there, but never a white gleaming crystal; and, oh, God! dear God!-how the sun blazes! And those brown-winged, strong-beaked kites, how they whirl closer and closer to the little upturned face!

But he had come now upon a cottage: he would beg a light and a rope, and perhaps a little incense. Peace be to this house!' he said, 'peace! and the blessing of Vishnu! And may disease and death be slain—the victims of health and life!'

But no one made answer, and pushing open the door he found a smouldering fire, and a half-baked cake-and a woman lying on her back, lifeless, though not yet cold. . . . 'Death, death,' he said wearily—' everywhere death!' but he took what he sought, and made his way back to the ghat.

The little corpse was bound firmly now, and the Shastri contemplated his work with some satisfaction. But what was it that he had to tell the gods ?--something, something, quick-before the flame should reach the feet! Ah! he knew now. 'Great Brahm!' he said, 'in this city of the dead no ceremonies have been possible. I have omitted the washings and anointings, the perfumes and the flowers; no gold, no gem has saluted the child's mouth, his nostrils, eyes or ears. I myself am unbathed. Forgive, great Brahm, forgive the omission, lay it not to his charge. . . . Forgive!' . . . And now the flame was doing its work; the rope crumbled into ashes, the puny little body leapt into the air-and then-both hands were shielding the old man's ears against the sound of that awful combustion ... the single salute as the soul entered the spirit world! .

He gathered his weary limbs together, yet what need to hurry? who was there who would expect him? Cruel Time, to claim the tender saplings and leave the old withered trunk! . . . Then a fierce impulse seized him. The river of life'-ah! there was the reason of his solitude.

Bear me gently, good river, to the shoreless sea of eternity!'

VII

'Twas in the grey dawn of the next morning that the segregation inspector, making his punctual way to his duties at the camp, found, on the road to Singhur, the dead body of a young and gently nurtured woman.

Scouts and a litter were soon in requisition, and the official examination resulted in the verdict he had foreseen. Death from that type of plague which lays a sudden chill grasp on the breaking heart. .. And, as night fell over the city, once more was an unresisting burden borne to the water's edge; while the watchman, proclaiming the hour, sang his usual lullaby-'Rest in peace, in peace, ye living! and, eke, ye dead! For love is stronger than death, than death, than death!'

CORNELIA SORABJI.

THE FATHER OF LETTERS

THE great edition of Cicero's Correspondence, begun twenty years ago by Professor Tyrrell of Dublin, has at last been completed by Professor Purser and himself. As a monument of acuteness and erudition it is an honour to the scholarship of the United Kingdom, and especially of Ireland. If we do not always find in it the perfect taste which distinguishes all the work of Professor Jebb also an Irishman, though a transplanted one-we must be grateful for the sound learning, the sympathetic enthusiasm, and the indefatigable industry which have supplied the intelligent reader of these unique letters with all the assistance he wants. Cicero did not, as the schoolboy said of Cæsar's Commentaries, write them for beginners in Latin. They are difficult because they are elliptical, because they are familiar, because they were addressed for the most part to men who knew what was in the writer's mind. It was not till the closing years of his life that Cicero began to think about their publication and he never published them. For my part, I can never forget the sensation of reading as a boy in a crowded railwaycarriage the confidential note which Cicero tells Atticus that he would not have sent but for his absolute certainty that it would never be seen by any other eyes than his. Habent sua fata libelli. Except Trajan's celebrated epistle to Pliny, there is now hardly a remnant of all the imperial rescripts in which the rulers of the Roman world expounded their policy and disclosed their ambition. Of Cicero's familiar correspondence, from the stately treatise on colonial government addressed to his brother Quintus to the hurried and scarcely coherent scrawl in which he declared, and perhaps rather exaggerated, to his friend Basilus his delight at the death of Cæsar, we have more than eight hundred specimens. Quite apart from their literary excellence, they have more historic value than almost any other relic of antiquity, that antiquity which seems to us so strangely modern. Not even Horace tells one so much about the life of his time, and Horace wrote in the next generation, when the agitated world had settled down into a rather dull and monotonous peace.

Cicero lived through the greatest civil war that has ever disturbed