flung by the woman, O white man, strewed the stone floor upon
which I have worn a path during the passing of the years; hundreds of
small lights flickered in every corner, causing the shadows to dance
about these weary feet and the eyes of the great gods to shine from the
corners of the roof; and without I heard against the wall the rubbing
of the great tiger as it waited for the blood sacrifice which it
nightly devoured before the dawn, the striped cat upon which Kali rides
forth at night on her journeyings through the jungle.

"Even as I plunged the sacrificial knife into the neck of the unworthy
sacrifice, I heard footsteps as of one running swiftly; and behold,
there came a low caste, pock-marked woman up the middle of the temple,
who flung herself at the feet of Kali, laying a sleeping babe upon the
altar steps."

"Ah!" barely whispered Jan Cuxson with his eyes fixed upon the
fanatical old face.

"And behold, the low caste woman was ayah in the services of one, even
a great colonel-sahib, who, being raised above his fellows, was
hastening back across the Black Water to his own land, taking with him
his one wife, and the one child of their union.

"Loving the white girl child with the great strange love of the servant
of India for the offspring of the _feringhee_, the ayah had secretly
brought the babe in the absence of the mem-sahib upon visits of
farewell, that I might dedicate her to the goddess, binding her in
spirit for ever to the land of her birth."

The white man sat in silence when the old man sprang to his feet,
standing relentless and formidable in the light of the one lamp.

"See'st thou? See'st thou, sahib, my sin? The sacrifice was within my
hands, and yet I spared the child because of the woman's beseechings.
I hesitated, yea! I even asked a sign. Aye! and the sign was good,
twice pleasing to the Goddess of Death, for behold the owl hooted not,
neither was the voice of the jackal uplifted as the doe, coming from
the _right_, looked through the open door.

"With the high caste woman I made covenant, that her male child in
return for his life should be a servant of the Black One, obeying in
all things the mandates of her priests.

"And I held those sleeping babes upon my arm, and within the lips of
the girl child I placed the _goor_, the sacred sugar, and around her
neck the _roomal_, the noose of sacrifice. And I cut the sign of Kali
between the breasts of the man child and between the b