class="normal">"'Ay! Prove it! Prove that I, Sukya, taught of the great Swami, twice-born Brahman, faithful disciple, blameless householder and pious anchorite in due turn, as the faith demands, have failed once in the law without repentance and atonement! Lo! I swear by the Shining Ones that I stand before ye to-day, body and soul, holy to the uttermost.'

"'God gie us a gude conceit o' oursels,' muttered Taylor.

"The remark jarred on me painfully, for the spiritual exaltation in the man's face had nothing personal in it; nothing more selfish than the rapt confidence which glorified the young disciple's whole bearing, as he gazed on his master with the sort of blind adoration one sees in the eyes of a dog.

"'Think! I am Sukya!' went on the high-pitched voice. 'Would Sukya come between his brethren and the Shining Ones? I, chosen for the oblation by reason of virtue and learning; I, Sukya, journeying to holy Amar-nâth not for my own sake,--for I fear no judgment,--but for the sake of the disciple, yonder boy Amra, betrothed to the daughter of my daughter, and vowed to the pilgrimage from birth.'

"A yell of crackling laughter came from the jogi as he leapt to the bastion of the bathing-place, and so, raised within sight of all, struck an attitude of indignant appeal. 'When was an outcast vowed to pilgrimage? And by my jogi's vow I swear the boy Amra, disciple of Sukya, to be an outcast. A Sudra of Sudras! seeing that his mother, being twice-born, defiled her race with scum from beyond the seas.'

"'By George!' muttered Taylor again, 'this is getting lively--for the scum.'

"'Perhaps the Presence is becoming tired of this vulgar scene,' suggested an obsequious chuprassi, who had been devoted to our service by order of the Cashmere officials; but the Presences were deeply interested. For all that, I should not care to witness such a sight again. The attention of the crowd, centred a moment before on the jogi, was turned now on the boy, who stood absolutely alone; the girl, moved by the unreasoning habit of race, having dropped his hand at the first word and crept to her grandfather's side. I can see that young face still, awful in its terror, piteous in its entreaty.

"'Thou liest, Gopi!' cried the Brahman, gasping with passion; and at the words a gleam of hope crept to those hunted eyes. 'Prove it, I say; for I appeal to the Shining Ones whom I have served.'

"'I accept the challenge,' yelled the jogi with frantic gestures, while a perfect roar of assent, cries of devotion, and prayers for guidance, rose from the crowd.

"Taylor looked round at me quickly. 'You are in luck. There is going to be a miracle. I saw that Gopi at Hurdwâr once; he is a rare hand at them.' He must have understood my resentment at being thus recalled to the nineteenth century, for he added half to himself, ''Tis tragedy for all that,--to the boy.'

"An appeal for silence enabled us to hear that both parties had agreed to refer the question of birth to the sacred cord, with which every male of the three twice-born castes is invested. If the strands were of the pure cotton ordained by ritual to the Brahman, the boy should be held of pure blood; but the admixture of anything pointing to the despised Sudra would make him anathema maranatha, and render his master impure, and therefore unfit to lead the devotions of others.

"I cannot attempt to describe the scene which followed; for even now, the confusion inseparable from finding yourself in surroundings which require explanation before they can fall into their appointed place in the picture, prevents me from remembering anything in detail--anything but a surging sea of saffron and white, a babel of wild cries, 'Hurri! Gunga-ji! Dhurm! Dhurm!' (Hurri!^[2] Ganges! the Faith! the Faith!) Then suddenly a roar--'Gopi! a miracle! a miracle! Praise be to the Shining Ones!'

"It seemed but a moment ere the enthusiastic crowd had swept the jogi from his pedestal, and, crowned with jasmin chaplets, he was being borne high on men's shoulders to make a round of the various temples; while the keepers of the shrine swelled the tumult judiciously by cries of 'Oblations! offerings! The Shining Ones are present to-day!'

"In my excitement at the scene itself I had forgotten its cause, and was regretting the all too sudden ending of the spectacle, when Taylor touched me on the arm. 'The tragedy is about to begin! Look!'

"Following his eyes I saw, indeed, tragedy enough to make me forget what had gone before; yet I knew well that I did not, could not, fathom its depth or measure its breadth. Still, in a dim way I realised that the boy, standing as if turned to stone, had passed in those few moments from life as surely as if a physical death had struck him down; that he might indeed have been less forlorn had such been the case, since some one for their own sakes might then have given him six feet of earth. And now, even a cup of water, that last refuge of cold charity, was denied to him for ever, save from hands whose touch was to his Brahmanised soul worse than death. For him there was no future. For the old man who, burdened by the weeping girl, stood opposite him, there was no past. Nothing but a hell of defilement; of daily, hourly impurity for twelve long years. The thought was damnation.

"'Come, Premi! come!' he muttered, turning suddenly to leave the platform. 'This is no place for us now. Quick! we must cleanse ourselves from deadly sin--from deadly, deadly sin.'

"They had reached the steps leading down to the tank when the boy, with a sob like that of a wounded animal, flung himself in agonised entreaty at his master's feet. 'Oh, cleanse me, even me also, oh my father!'

"The old man shrank back instinctively; yet there was no anger, only a merciless decision in his face. 'Ask not the impossible! Thou art not alone impure; thou art uncleansable from birth--yea! for ever and ever. Come, Premi, come, my child.'

"I shall never forget the cry which echoed over the water, startling the pigeons from their evening rest amid the encircling trees. 'Uncleansable for ever and ever!' Then in wild appeal from earth to heaven he threw his arms skyward. 'Oh, Shining Ones! say I am the same Amra, the twice-born Amra, thy servant!'

"'Peace! blasphemer!' interrupted the Brahman sternly. 'There are no Shining Ones for such as thou. Go! lest they strike thee dead in wrath.'

"A momentary glimpse of a young face distraught by despair, of an old one firm in repudiation, and the platform lay empty of the passions which had played their parts on it as on a stage. Only from the distance came the discordant triumph of the jogi's procession.

"I besieged Taylor's superior knowledge by vain questions, to most of which he shook his head. 'How can I tell?' he said somewhat fretfully. 'The cord was manipulated in some way, of course. For all that, there may be truth in Gopi's story. There is generally the devil to pay if a Brahmani goes wrong, and she may have tried to save the boy's life by getting rid of him. If you want to know more, I'll send for Victor Emanuel. Five rupees will fetch some slight fraction of truth from the bottom of his well, and that, as a rule, is all we aliens can expect in these incidents.'

"So the old ruffian came and sat ostentatiously far from our contaminating influences in the attitude of a bronze Buddha, his mustaches curled to his eyebrows, his large lips wreathed in solemn smiles. 'It was a truly divine miracle,' he said