The ways in which the gods are worshipped vary greatly. Some of the idols are washed and dressed and fed each morning, and bathed and put to bed each night, and there are long rites that are performed in the temples. But, there are also many wayside shrines where men and women lay their offerings as they pass, and murmur a few words of prayer. Often a new idol is found. For the Hindus think that the spirit of a god may enter an animal or a stone or a tree as the spirit of a man may enter any one of these. [Illustration: A WAYSIDE SHRINE] One day a Brahman priest lay in a temple court, drowsy and troubled. The reason of his trouble was that plague was in the city and the people fled from it, and the offerings that were brought to the temple were poor and small. The priest was full of dread alike of the plague and of the poverty that would face him, if the gifts to the temple grew less and less. Soon the drowsiness grew stronger than his anxious thoughts, and he fell asleep. As he slept he dreamt that a great goddess appeared to him, and told him that she had come to the city in a block of stone, but that she had not been worshipped, and so she was angry with the people, and had sent the plague, and that if honour were not done to her she would send fire to finish the work that plague had begun. She wished the people of the place to hold a feast, and then to carry the stone in which she lived away hundreds of miles over the country to Benares. The priest wakened, and, as he thought of his dream, he remembered a great block of black marble that lay beside a temple that had just been built in the city. Ere the women came to gather round him that day after offering their gifts in his temple, the priest had thought out the meaning of his dream, and he told it to them, as they gazed in awe and fear. He said that the stone in which the goddess dwelt should have been polished, and set up to guard the entrance to the new temple; but the workmen had not seen that the stone was a special one, and had left it aside, and the goddess in her anger had burned up the fields. The women sighed, for this part of the story was only too true. The fields were hard and bare, because there had been no rain, and the river beds were dry. Plague had followed famine, and death was at the door. But the priest told of more terrible things yet, for he said that Mariamma, the angry goddess, would send fire if she were not honoured speedily. The story of the priest was soon known throughout the city, for each one told it to another. Within a few days fire broke out in the palace of the Maharajah there. The fire as it raged and destroyed the beautiful building made everyone sure of the truth of the priest’s vision, and hurried plans were made to have the goddess in the stone carried one stage towards Benares.