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The collection of the body tax was a good example of the way in which the headman worked against him. Every villager had to pay the three-shilling tax or do work on the roads, work which was the worst of hardships to them. It had always been Babehami's custom to pay himself the tax for each villager, and then recover what he had paid, with heavy interest, out of the crops at the time of reaping. But for some years after Dingihami's death, Silindu found that when the time to pay the tax came round, Babehami was always short of money. Silindu never had any money himself, and he was therefore compelled to work upon the roads.

As the years passed he became more sullen, more taciturn, and more lazy. Some evil power—one of the unseen powers which he could not understand—was, he felt, perpetually working against him. He tried to escape from it, or at any rate to forget it by leaving the village for the jungle. He would disappear for days together into the jungle, living upon roots and the fruit of jungle trees, and anything which might fall to his gun. He talked with no one except Punchi Menika and Hinnihami. For them he never had a harsh word, and it was seldom that he returned to the hut without bringing them some wild fruit or a comb of the wild honey.