"Is he Krishna himself?" asked a female coolie eagerly, the glass bangles
on her arm rattling as she raised her hand to draw her _sari_ over her face
when she thus addressed men. "Is he Krishna, think you? He is handsome
enough to be the Holy One."

"Who knows, daughter? It may be. Shri Krishn has many incarnations," said
the old man solemnly.

"Nay, I do not think that he is Krishna," remarked an elderly coolie. "It
may be that he is another of the Holy Ones."

"Perhaps he is _Gunesh_," ventured a younger man.

"No; he bestrides _Gunesh_. I think he must be Krishna," chimed in another.
"What lesser god would dare to use Gunesh as his steed?"

"He is _Gunesh_ himself," asserted a grey-beard. "Does he not range the
jungle and the mountains at the head of all the elephants of the Terai? Can
he not call them to his aid as Hanuman did the monkeys?"

"He is certainly a Holy One or else a very powerful demon," declared the
old man. "It is an evil and a dangerous thing to molest those whom he
protects. The Bhuttias, ignorant pagans that they are, carried off the
missie _baba_ he favours. What, think ye, has been their fate? With your
own eyes ye have all seen the blood and the flesh of men upon the tusk and
legs of his sacred elephant."

And so through the night the shuttle of superstitious talk went backward
and forward and wove a still more marvellous garment of fancy to drape the