reasts of the
woman child, and marked him between the brows with her blood, and
marked her upon the forehead with his blood, so that his mind should be
her mind. And her will I bent to _my_ will, that her eyes should open
in sleep at the light of the full moon, and that she should go forth
upon the mission of the Black One, making sacrifice to the spouse of
Siva.

"And yet, though she be bound to the secret temple and to Kali, and to
the son of princes until death shall release her, the Great Mother is
not pleased, nay, her wrath is terrible at the averted sacrifice, and
India, my land, has suffered through my fault."

The priest stood motionless, staring down unseeingly upon the man at
his feet who spoke softly.

"And what became of the white child?"

"The white child, the infant _feringhee_? She lay asleep in my arms
with eyes wide open, and the high caste woman, picking up a jewel, even
one of the colour and shape of cat's eye, smeared it with the blood of
the kid, placed it above the heart of Kali, and then hung it by a
slender golden chain about the neck of the woman child. And the women,
content, departed, bearing with them the united babes, but since that
ill-begotten night my land has travailed in agony, stricken with plague
and pestilence and famine!"

"And?" Cuxson scarcely breathed the word.

The light of the moon slipped over the ruined wall, drawing a nimbus
round the old white head as the tall thin figure in the snow-white
garments swayed slightly.

"I waited for the command of Kali, and after many years I sent my
beloved disciple, the son of princes, across the Black Water to bring
the white woman by the force of his will back to the land of her birth
and up to the altar steps. And now I wait--I wait--for a little,
little while."

The old voice rose to a thin shout of triumph which lapsed into silence
as, totally oblivious of his prisoner, he sank to the ground, lost,
quite suddenly, in that wonderful abstraction of the East in which the
native can find escape from the trials of life at odd moments, and in
unaccountably odd places.

During the long silence that followed, Jan Cuxson sat patiently puffing
at his pipe and trying to piece the strange tale together, until at an
advanced hour of the night he once more felt the hawk-like eyes fixed
upon his face.

Eagerly he picked up the thread of the story as though there had been
no lapse.

"You mesmerised her, you say, eighteen years ago