In the evening the line is re-formed before the bungalow.  A huge bag of copper coin is produced.  The old Lallah, or writer, with spectacles on nose, squats down in the middle of the assembled coolies, and as each name is called, the mates count out the pice, and make it over to the coolie, who forthwith hurries off to get his little purchases made at the village Bunneah’s shop; and so, on a poor supper of parched peas, or boiled rice, with no other relish but a pinch of salt, the poor coolie crawls to bed, only to dream of more hard work and scanty fare on the morrow.  Poor thing! a village coolie has a hard time of it!  During the hot months, if rice be cheap and plentiful, he can jog along pretty comfortably, but when the cold nights come on, and he cowers in his wretched hut, hungry, half naked, cold, and wearied, he is of all objects most pitiable.  It is, however, a fact little creditable to his more prosperous fellow-countrymen, that he gets better paid for his labour in connection with factory work, than he does in many cases for tasks forced on him by the leading ryots of the village in connection with their own fields.

[Illustration:  COOLIE’S HUT.]

This first cleaning of the fields—­or, as it is called, Oustennie—­being finished, the lands are all again re-ploughed, re-harrowed, and then once more re-cleaned by the coolies, till not a weed or spot of dirt remains; and till the whole surface is uniformly soft, friable, moist, and clean.  We have now some breathing time; and as this is the most enjoyable season of the year, when the days are cool, and roaring wood fires at night remind us of home, we hunt, visit, race, dance, and generally enjoy ourselves.  Should heavy rain fall, as it sometimes does about Christmas and early in February, the whole cultivation gets beaten down and caked over.  In such a case amusements must for a time be thrown aside, till all the lands have been again re-ploughed.  Of course we are never wholly idle.  There are always rents to collect, matters to adjust in connexion with our villages and tenantry, law-suits to recover bad debts, to enforce contracts, or protect manorial or other rights,—­but generally speaking, when the lands have been prepared, we have a slack season or breathing time for a month or so.

Arrangements having been made for the supply of seed, which generally comes from about the neighbourhood of Cawnpore, as February draws near we make preparations for beginning our sowings.  February is the usual month, but it depends on the moisture, and sometimes sowings may go on up till May and June.  In Purneah and Bhaugulpore, where the cultivation is much rougher than in Tirhoot, the sowing is done broadcast.  And in Bengal the sowing is often done upon the soft mud which is left on the banks of the rivers at the retiring of the annual floods.  In Tirhoot, however, where the high farming I have been trying to describe is practised, the sowing is done by means of drills.