The wheels of the snorting train continued to move round and round, but there was no onward progress. The engineer and passengers descended to the platform to view the phenomenon. An English railroad guard approached Abhoya and her husband. Contrary to all precedent, he volunteered his services. “Babu,” he said, “give me the money. I will buy your tickets while you get aboard.” As soon as the couple was seated and had received the tickets, the train slowly moved forward. In panic, the engineer and passengers clambered again to their places, knowing neither how the train started, nor why it had stopped in the first place. Arriving at the home of Lahiri Mahasaya in Benares, Abhoya silently prostrated herself before the master, and tried to touch his feet. “Compose yourself, Abhoya,” he remarked. “How you love to bother me! As if you could not have come here by the next train!” Abhoya visited Lahiri Mahasaya on another memorable occasion. This time she wanted his intercession, not with a train, but with the stork. “I pray you to bless me that my ninth child may live,” she said. “Eight babies have been born to me; all died soon after birth.” The master smiled sympathetically. “Your coming child will live. Please follow my instructions carefully. The baby, a girl, will be born at night. See that the oil lamp is kept burning until dawn. Do not fall asleep and thus allow the light to become extinguished.” Abhoya’s child was a daughter, born at night, exactly as foreseen by the omniscient guru. The mother instructed her nurse to keep the lamp filled with oil. Both women kept the urgent vigil far into the early morning hours, but finally fell asleep. The lamp oil was almost gone; the light flickered feebly. The bedroom door unlatched and flew open with a violent sound. The startled women awoke. Their astonished eyes beheld the form of Lahiri Mahasaya. “Abhoya, behold, the light is almost gone!” He pointed to the lamp, which the nurse hastened to refill. As soon as it burned again brightly, the master vanished. The door closed; the latch was affixed without visible agency. Abhoya’s ninth child survived; in 1935, when I made inquiry, she was still living. One of Lahiri Mahasaya’s disciples, the venerable Kali Kumar Roy, related to me many fascinating details of his life with the master. “I was often a guest at his Benares home for weeks at a time,” Roy told me. “I observed that many saintly figures, DANDA {FN31-3} swamis, arrived in the quiet of night to sit at the guru’s feet. Sometimes they would engage in discussion of meditational and philosophical points. At dawn the exalted guests would depart. I found during my visits that Lahiri Mahasaya did not once lie down to sleep. “During an early period of my association with the master, I had to contend with the opposition of my employer,” Roy went on. “He was steeped in materialism.