And her story? full of humour and pathos. She and a younger Brother, orphaned early in life, were left to the care of an Uncle. The property was the Brother’s with reversion to herself. The Brother died while still a child; helped out of life, she conceived when old enough to understand these things, and the property was hers and she bride-elect to her cousin. She had loved her Brother passionately--Oh! you saw that, in her eyes and in the picture she left with you of her attempts to push Death away from the threshold. “Stroke the brindled cow,” was the last prescription of the old Priestess, who sat in the near-by forest: and the child brought in the old cow to the neglected bedside. Then, in a frenzy, she ran to the old Priestess: “Cut off my hair”--she was but ten years old--“and initiate me. It will, maybe, please the Gods, and spare the life.” And the Priestess, alleged seller of God-favours, initiated the child, being not unaware of her position and prospects. But when the beloved Brother died, and the Uncle sought to recover the child, she refused to come, nor could she now as initiated Priestess be bride to the cousin. So a bribe to the opium eater procured silence, and the disciple her freedom. It was a wandering life--now grove, now cave, now hill camping-ground--the little Priestess sitting over the opium fire, her head on a prayer-stick, meditating--her instructress raking in the offerings. A prayer-stick is shaped so--T: and the head lies on the arm stretched across the bar, while the fumes of the opium fire produce drowsiness. But the life of prayer and meditation, in the name of her Brother, became very real to the Baby Priestess: and as she grew, and her Old-Woman-Guru used her to attract devotees to the Shrine, there was many a tussle between righteousness and unrighteousness, till policy suggested the Child’s sanctity as the more lasting bait. She must have been about twenty when they made the pilgrimage to Nasik; and here the old woman met her own one-time Guru, and he claimed the prayer-stick of the beautiful grand-disciple as a talisman. Perhaps he claimed more, we were not told; but the rupture on refusal brought her to that wayside throwing of herself on the mercy of a stranger.... She was wonderfully adaptive to the demands of civilization, cast away her opium pipe, and even struggled bravely with forgotten memories of reading and writing; but she loved best to sit huddled up in the dusk and tell stories of her wanderings. What stories they were! “In every house a Father, in every house a Mother”--a great phrase with her; and soon, the wander spirit proved too much for her. The road called her, and she went--comet-like. This was many years ago; but I still hope to come upon the copper-headed owner of the prayer-stick.