Such details, however, were hidden even from the nearest point of the angled curve of bathing-steps which swept right away to the starlit horizon on the opposite side of the river. The only movement visible thence by the waiting crowd, as it looked across the river, was a curious dazzling flicker, as if the bridge were shivering, which was caused by the continuous stream on its outer footway of arriving pilgrims, showing now against the dark girders, now against the paler sky. "Mai Gunga hath her hands full!" murmured one of the group squatting immovable on these nearest steps; "they come, and come." A face or two, patient, dark, turned to the bridge, and another voice came, calm, passive. "Ay! 'tis easier for folk to find salvation with 'rails' and bridges than, as of old, with blistered feet and boats." A dark hand nearest the water's lip, as it lapped a lazy, silvery whisper on the worn stone steps, slid into the sacred flood with a sort of tentative caress. "Yet they said _She_ would revenge Herself for the rending of Her bosom, for the burden of bricks laid on Her; but She hath not. She gives and takes as ever." The long, dark fingers gathered some of the fallen petals which the river was returning to those who had cast their flower-offering on its surface, and the dark eyes watched a white-swathed corpse that was drifting down stream, a faint streak in the slumbering shadow. "True!" came another passive voice; "but the time is not past. There is to-morrow yet." The absolutely unrepresentable _chuck!_ made by the tongue against the roof of the mouth, which is the most emphatic denial of India, echoed suddenly, aggressively, into the peaceful air. It came from the blackness of a low masonry abutment which, traversing the last three steps, projected a few feet into the river, like a pier. A yard maybe above the water, some three long, and perhaps a couple broad, there was just room on its outer end for a small square temple with a rude spiked spire--the plainest of temples, guiltless of ornament, looking out over the Ganges blankly. For its only aperture, a low arched doorway, faced the steps and showed now as a blot of utter darkness. "Not She, brethren!" said a cracked voice following on the denial. "She or Her like will never harm the _Huzoors!_ They have paid their toll, see you, they have squared the gods." A dozen or more faces turned to the voice, the figures belonging to them remaining immovable, as if carved in stone. "Dost think so really, Baha-_jee?_" came a question. "I have heard that tale before--and that 'tis done in the 'Magic-houses.'"[2] --------------------- [Footnote 2: The natives call Freemasonry Lodges by this name.] --------------------- The emphatic denial rose again. "Not so! These eyes saw it done--here, in this very place, forty years ago! here, at Mai Kâli's shrine!"