e back of the cage.

But this time we did not go through the tunnel full of rats and cobras.
There was another passage on the same level with the courtyard that led
from dark chamber to chamber until we emerged at last through an opening
in the wall behind the huge image of a god into the gloom of the
Tirthankers' temple--not that part of it that we had visited before, but
another section fronting on the street.

And we could hear the crowd now very distinctly, egging one another on
to commit the unforgivable offense and storm a woman's gates. They were
shouting for the Gray Mahatma in chorus; it had grown into a chant
already, and when a crowd once turns its collective yearnings into a
single chant, it is only a matter of minutes before the gates go down,
and blood flows, and all those outrages occur that none can account for
afterward.

As long as men do their own thinking, decency and self-restraint are
uppermost, but once let what the leaders call a slogan usher in the
crowd-psychology, and let the slogan turn into a chant, and the
Gardarene swine become patterns of conduct that the wisest crowd in the
world could improve itself by imitating.

"Think! Think for yourselves!" said the Gray Mahatma, as if he
recognized the thoughts that were occurring to King and me.

Then, making a sign to us to stay where we were, he left us and strode
out on to the temple porch, looking down on the street that was choked
to the bursting point with men who sweated and slobbered as they swayed
in time to the chant of "Mahatma! O Mahatma! Come to us, Mahatma!"

King and I could see them through the jambs of the double-folding temple
door.

The Mahatma stood looking down at them for about a minute before they
recognized him. One by one, then by sixes, then by dozens they grew
aware of him; and as that happened they grew silent, until the whole
street was more still than a forest. They held their breath, and let it
out in sibilant whispers like the voice of a little wind moving among
leaves; and he did not speak until they were almost aburst with
expectation.

"Go home!" he said then sternly. "Am I your property that ye break gates
to get me? Go home!"

And they obeyed him, in sixes, in dozens, and at last in one great
stream.

CHAPTER XII

THE CAVE OF BONES

The Gray Mahatma stood watching the crowd until the last sweating
nondescript had obediently disappeared, and then returned into the
temple to dismiss King