some húndis (earthen pots) which contained all their stores, consisting chiefly of rice, a few vegetables, and some culinary condiments like turmeric, salt, mustard oil and the like. There was no furniture.. Rupá's mother, who was of the bágdi caste, appeared to be a woman of between forty and fifty years of age, of rather below the average height of Bengali women, and had a slender figure; indeed, her limbs seemed to be as thin and shrivelled as the dry stalks of the lotos. For some reason or other she had very few teeth in her head, and those few at a great distance from one another; in consequence of which she spoke like a woman eighty years old. We have used the circumlocutory phrase, Rupá's mother, instead of mentioning her own name; but the fact is, we never heard her name mentioned by anybody in the village; and though we have made laborious inquiries into the matter, our exertions. have proved fruitless,-every one insisting on calling her Rupa's mother. Rupá herself appeared to be a young woman about twenty years old, and the fact that she had not on her wrist the usual iron circlet, nor the vermilion paint on the top of her forehead,,

where the hair was parted, showed that she was a widow.

Rupa's mother had no great preparations to make for accompanying Mánik. She had no bundles to make up of her clothes, for she usually carried about with her on her person the whole of her wardrobe, which consisted of one long sári and one short one; the latter of which she put on every day after bathing, while the former one was being sunned, and both of which she used to whiten once a month by steeping them in a solution of ashes and cows' urine-the cheap soap of the peasantry of Bengal. She uncovered one of the hándis, took out some drugs, put out the light, and ordered Rupá to lock the door and follow her. But as Rupá was putting the padlock on the door, a lizard, which was resting on the eaves of the thatch, chirped. The tik, tik, tik, of the lizard is always regarded as a bad omen by all classes of the people of Bengal, so the journey was delayed. The door was re-opened, the lamp was again lit, and they sat for half an hour in pensive meditation, though Mánik vented no little wrath against the audacious reptile. At last, however,

they set out. They went the same way through which Mánik had come, went nearly to the middleof the village, and entered a house. By this time the stars had disappeared from the heavens, excepting the kingly Sukra (or regent of the planet Venus), which was shining above the eastern horizon, and proclaiming to an awakening world the cheerful approach of day.

As I already perceive people passing in the street, smoking as they are walking on, and coughing over their hookahs, I do not intend going into the house into which Mánik and the two women have just entered, but purpose taking a stroll through the village, and trust my reader will give me the pleasure of his company.

CHAPTER III.

SKETCHES A VILLAGE IN BENGAL.

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,

Where health and plenty cheer'd the labouring swain.
The Deserted Village.

KANCHANPUR, or the Golden City, is a considerable village in Parganá Sáhábád, in the district of Vardhamána, and lies about six miles to the north-east of the town of that name. It has a population of about fifteen hundred souls, belonging to most of the thirty-six castes into which the Hindus of Bengal are generally divided, though the predominating caste in the village was the sadgopa, or the agricultural class. Why the village has obtained the name of the "golden city," I have not been able exactly to ascertain; some of the oldest inhabitants maintain that it has been so called on account of the wealth

accumulated, and comforts enjoyed by the peasantry in general; while others are of the opinion that the village has been called "golden," on account of the residence in it of some rich families of the suvarnavanikas (literally, traders in gold), usually called the banker caste. However this may be, Kanchanpur is a large and prosperous village. There is a considerable Bráhmana population, the great majority of whom are of the srotriya order, often called rádhi, from the fact of their living in Rádh, the name by which the country lying on the western side of the Bhágurathi river is usually designated. The káyasthas, or the writer caste, are comparatively few in number. Ugra-kshatriyas, or Aguris, as they are called in common parlance, who are all engaged in agricultural pursuits, though less numerous than the sadgopas, are an influential class in the village; while there is the usual complement of the medical caste, of blacksmiths, barbers, weavers, spice-sellers, oilmen, bágdis, doms, hádis, and the rest.

Strange

to say, there is hardly a single Muhammadan family in the village-the votaries of that faith being less numerous in western than in eastern Bengal.