The only bedroom was half open to the sky, but the main room was still whole, though it had seen better days.

There was a shrine in this room with ancestral tablets, and a sheet of many-featured gods, conspicuous amongst them being the God of Riches, who had been little attentive to the prayers offered him in this poor hamlet.

In a stall adjoining our bedroom the mule was housed, and jingled his bell discontentedly all through the night.

A poor man, nearly blind with acute inflammation of the eyes, was shivering over the scanty embers of an open fire which was burning in a square hole scooped in the earthern floor near the doorway.

He ate the humblest dishful of maize husks and meal strainings.