Ramabai and her brother were alone, but they had one treasure that very few Hindu brothers and sisters then had. They had their friendship for each other, their common interests and hopes and fears. They were still very reverent to shrines and idols, though strange thoughts and questions were rising in their minds, and the thought of the one great God of whom their father had spoken to them grew ever stronger. One day they found that they were near a sacred lake, in which there were seven floating mountains;--at least they were called mountains, but they were really only small hills. On the shore of the lake there were priests, for worship was paid to the spirits of the mountains. Ramabai and her brother had often heard of this spirit-haunted lake, for it was a place of pilgrimage, and the wonderful thing about it was that if the pilgrim who prayed at the water’s edge was good the mountains slowly moved towards the shore, but if he was bad the cliffs remained stolidly still, and no prayers could move them one inch. When Ramabai and her brother reached the lake they found that what had been called mountains were only wooded island mounds, but there they were, all seven of them, rising from the still waters. [Illustration: A SCHOOL FOR GIRLS] The priests warned everyone who came that they must on no account bathe in the waters of the lake because of the crocodiles. They seemed to be so much afraid that any of the pilgrims might be eaten up, that they kept a very strict watch all round the lake.