The people thronged round the marble block. The new temple stood near, but all eyes were on the stone, not on the temple. Then the priests began their work. They washed the stone all over with milk lest anything might have soiled it while it lay untended. Then they brought cocoa nuts and limes to lay before it. After that it was wreathed with garlands and painted with saffron, and lamps were swung backwards and forwards which filled the night air with the scent of burning camphor. The crowd watched eagerly, and when the great stone with its added weight of flowers was lifted on to the shoulders of eight men, their joy burst out in shouts, for did they not know that famine and plague and death would leave their city with the goddess. Music and lights marked the great procession as it wound its way through the narrow darkened streets. Without the city gate eight men waited to carry the idol forward. Many of those who had followed it through the streets turned back, but some pressed on to see the stone pass into the hands of new bearers at the next village. There the lights, the music, and the gaily decked stone struck awe into the minds of the village-folk, and they fell in worship before the block, and hastened to find men to bear it on. So the black marble block travelled over many miles of the land. It never reached Benares, for a priest on the way dreamt another dream about it. He dreamt that Mariamma wished to rest in his village, so he had a shrine built for her; and there, amidst lamps and garlands, the unused stone received the worship of the people from the country round, and the priest grew wealthy by the gifts that were brought to the goddess in the marble. But the other priest, Ramachandra, died of the plague which he had said would leave the city with the angry goddess. Some Hindu gods look very terrible. One of these that is commonly worshipped is called Ganesa, and he has a man’s body with an elephant’s head. Whenever a Hindu is going to begin a new piece of work, or to do something important, he makes offerings to Ganesa, for he believes that the elephant-headed god can take obstacles out of the way and give success. There was a little boy in Madras called Ramaswami, who went to worship Ganesa for the first time. As he trotted down through the bazaar by his mother’s side he chatted gaily. He had garlands on his arms, and his hands were full of incense. He had listened to his mother when she told him how to lay his gifts in the god’s lap, and when to bow to the god, but he was not thinking much about the god or the gifts. The temple was a small place, as Hindu temples often are, for crowds of people do not worship in them together. One by one, or in small groups, they bring their gifts, offer them to the idol, and turn away.