om and to whom. Besides himself there was
no one in the courtyard as far as he could see.

The cry was not renewed, and his watchful eyes, scanning warily the
misty solitude of Willems' enclosure, were met everywhere only by the
stolid impassiveness of inanimate things: the big sombre-looking tree,
the shut-up, sightless house, the glistening bamboo fences, the damp and
drooping bushes further off--all these things, that condemned to look
for ever at the incomprehensible afflictions or joys of mankind, assert
in their aspect of cold unconcern the high dignity of lifeless matter
that surrounds, incurious and unmoved, the restless mysteries of the
ever-changing, of the never-ending life.

Lingard, stepping aside, put the trunk of the tree between himself
and the house, then, moving cautiously round one of the projecting
buttresses, had to tread short in order to avoid scattering a small heap
of black embers upon which he came unexpectedly on the other side. A
thin, wizened, little old woman, who, standing behind the tree, had been
looking at the house, turned towards him with a start, gazed with faded,
expressionless eyes at the intruder, then made a limping attempt to get
away. She seemed, however, to realize directly the hopelessness or the
difficulty of the undertaking, stopped, hesitated, tottered back slowly;
then, after blinking dully, fell suddenly on her knees amongst the white
ashes, and, bending over the heap of smouldering coals, distended her
sunken cheeks in a steady effort to blow up the hidden sparks into a
useful blaze. Lingard looked down on her, but she seemed to have made
up her mind that there was not enough life left in her lean body for
anything else than the discharge of the simple domestic duty, and,
apparently, she begrudged him the least moment of attention.

After waiting for awhile, Lingard asked--

"Why did you call, O daughter?"

"I saw you enter," she croaked feebly, still grovelling with her
face near the ashes and without looking up, "and I called--the cry of
warning. It was her order. Her order," she repeated, with a moaning
sigh.

"And did she hear?" pursued Lingard, with gentle composure.

Her projecting shoulder-blades moved uneasily under the thin stuff of
the tight body jacket. She scrambled up with difficulty to her feet,
and hobbled away, muttering peevishly to herself, towards a pile of dry
brushwood heaped up against the fence.

Lingard, looking idly after her, heard the