Haralal said to him, ‘I haven’t taken any money.’

‘I fully believe it,’ said the Manager, ‘but surely you know who has taken it.’

Haralal looked on the ground and remained silent.

‘Somebody,’ said the Manager, ‘must have taken it away with your connivance.’

‘Nobody,’ replied Haralal, ‘could take it away with my knowledge without taking first my life.’

‘Look here, Haralal,’ said the Manager, ‘I trusted you completely. I took no security. I employed you in a post of great responsibility. Every one in the office was against me for doing so. The three thousand rupees is a small matter, but the shame of all this to me is a great matter. I will do one thing. I will give you the whole day to bring back this money. If you do so, I shall say nothing about it and I will keep you on in your post.’

It was now eleven o’clock. Haralal with bent head went out of the office. The clerks began to discuss the affair with exultation.

‘What can I do? What can I do?’ Haralal repeated to himself, as he walked along like one dazed, the sun’s heat pouring down upon him. At last his mind ceased to think at all about what could be done, but the mechanical walk went on without ceasing.

This city of Calcutta, which offered its shelter to thousands and thousands of men had become like a steel trap. He could see no way out. The whole body of people were conspiring to surround and hold him captive—this most insignificant of men, whom no one knew. Nobody had any special grudge against him, yet everybody was his enemy. The crowd passed by, brushing against him: the clerks of the offices were eating their lunch on the road side from their plates made of leaves; a tired wayfarer on the maidan, under the shade of a tree, was lying with one hand beneath his head and one leg upraised over the other; the up-country women, crowded into hackney carriages, were wending their way to the temple; a chuprassie came up with a letter and asked him the address on the envelope—so the afternoon went by.

Then came the time when the offices were all about to close. Carriages started off in all directions, carrying people back to their homes. The clerks, packed tightly on the seats of the trams, looked at the theatre advertisements as they returned to their lodgings. From to-day, Haralal had neither his work in the office, nor release from work in the evening. He had no need to hurry to catch the tram to take him to his home. All the busy occupations of the city—the buildings, the horses and carriages, the incessant traffic—seemed, now at one time, to swell into dreadful reality, and at another time, to subside into the shadowy unreal.

Haralal had taken neither food, nor rest, nor shelter all that day.

The street lamps were lighted from one road to another and it seemed to him that a watchful darkness, like some demon, was keeping its eyes wide open to guard every movement of its victim. Haralal did not even have the energy to enquire how late it was. The veins on his forehead throbbed, and he felt as if his head would burst. Through the paroxysms of pain, which alternated with the apathy of dejection, only one thought came again and again to his mind; among the innumerable multitudes in that vast city, only one name found its way through his dry throat, ‘Mother!’