ngely fell upon him, and though he
could not move, the agony of his hands and lacerated waist vanished
entirely; such perfect peace that he leant back against the wall and
idly tried to count the myriad tiny dainty hoof marks in the dust
between the doorway facing him, and the ruined archway on his left.

He did not think it strange when turning his head he discovered an
ancient priest seated against the wall with his mahogany coloured old
body outlined against the dull blues and reds of the painted stones;
and his eyes, bright with religious fervour, fixed through the
crumbling arch, beyond the delicate sun-dried leaves, the blazing sun,
and the steel blue heavens, upon Eternity.

The fine old man had no intention of torturing the white man, he had
merely bound him to the ring until his goddess should inspire him, her
servant, with her wishes concerning this stranger who was intimately
connected with the white woman in the care of his beloved disciple,
even Madhu Krishnaghar.

Neither did he intend to starve the white man nor bring him to the
point of madness from thirst; but accustomed to hours and days of
self-subjection in which he neither ate, drank nor felt the need of
material sustenance, he failed to take into account the inner cravings
of a man when he had been tied for two nights to a ring in the wall.

And he sprang to his feet and crossed the floor when Cuxson, after an
interval of forty-eight hours during which he had neither eaten nor
drunk, tortured by cramp from his waist to his feet caused by the
strangling hold of the hide thong, with his heart pounding the blood
against his brain until it shook, and his arms feeling like burning
staves ending in blocks of ice, suddenly scrambled somehow to his
knees, shouted, and fell forward with the soles of his feet against the
wall, and the whole weight of his heavy body hanging upon the wrists.

It was but the work of an instant and a flashing knife and he lay face
down upon the floor at the feet of the priest who passed swiftly
through the doorway out into the jungle, and returning as swiftly,
bound great green shining leaves about the wounds, and squatting on his
heels gently massaged the black and swollen arms.

A holy man! a Hindu priest touching the contaminating flesh of an
infidel! Impossible!

There are many methods of purification from contamination, but the main
point in the priest's mental process of self-extenuation _was_ that an
infidel awai