heaven above, the hot cloudless sky cools slowly into shadow. The men
leave their labour amid the fields, which, like an oasis in the
desert, surround the mud-built village, and, plough on shoulder, drive
their bullocks homewards. The women set aside their spinning-wheels,
and prepare the simple evening meal. The little girls troop, basket
on head, from the outskirts of the village, where all day long they
have been at work, kneading, drying, and stacking the fuel-cakes so
necessary in that woodless country. The boys, half hidden in clouds
of dust, drive the herds of gaunt cattle and ponderous buffaloes to
the thorn-hedged yards. The day is over, the day which has been so
hard and toilful even for the children,--and with the night comes rest
and play. The village, so deserted before, is alive with voices; the
elders cluster round the courtyard doors, the little ones whoop
through the narrow alleys. But as the short-lived Indian twilight
dies into darkness, the voices one by one are hushed, and as the stars
come out the children disappear. But not to sleep: it is too hot,
for the sun which has beaten so fiercely all day on the mud walls, and
floors, and roofs, has left a legacy of warmth behind it, and not till
midnight will the cool breeze spring up, bringing with it refreshment
and repose. How then are the long dark hours to be passed? In all
the village not a lamp or candle is to be found; the only light--and
that too used but sparingly and of necessity--being the dim smoky
flame of an oil-fed wick. Yet, in spite of this, the hours, though
dark, are not dreary, for this, in an Indian village, is
_story-telling time_; not only from choice, but from obedience to
the well-known precept which forbids such idle amusement between
sunrise and sunset. Ask little Kaniya, yonder, why it is that he, the
best story-teller in the village, never opens his lips till after
sunset, and he will grin from ear to ear, and with a flash of dark
eyes and white teeth, answer that travellers lose their way when idle