Placing his offerings at the holy man's feet, and laying the garlands
gently about the bowed shoulders, Madhu Krishnaghar, the son of
princes, stooped and lifting the hem of the dust-covered garment, laid
it against his forehead, then quietly sat down a pace removed from the
ancient who took no notice whatever of his proceedings.

And time passed, linking one hour of noon to its neighbour and the
next, until the hags, matrons, maidens, and little maids awoke to the
freshness of the evening and the monotony of its tasks.

Kites called, crows screamed, men gambled in the shadows of the evening
and the upstanding, distorted, disgusting water buffalo; while the two
men, master and pupil in the religion of death, sat hour after hour
without movement, staring at the mountains, the dwelling-place of Siva
the terrible, and the birthplace of Kali his bride.

Far into the night they sat, until the last quarter of the moon had
sunk to rest, when, with one single movement, the old man sprang to his
feet, flung out his arms, and bent in utter humility and cast dust upon
his once white turban.

His voice was but a shrill cracked whisper when he called upon his god
from the crumbling top of the sunbaked, moon-drenched wall, and
turning, lifted his travel-stained mantle and laid it on the young
shoulders beside him.

An hour had passed, and more, before the holy man's tale, which ran
back through the past seventeen years, was finished. And when it had
been told the high caste youth trembled in the ecstasy of his religion,
amazed at the enlightenment thrown upon his own enigmatical life,