“Thou art within the most holy temple of Gola-Gokeranath,” answered the priest, impressively. “We have appealed to man for justice--and in vain. Therefore, we now approach the gods! Is it not so, my brothers?” The reply was a prolonged murmur of hoarse assent from the quiet, fierce-eyed crowd. “Behold the image of Mahadeo, the destroyer!” continued the priest, pointing to a conical stone in the middle of the temple, on which the holy Ganges water dripped without ceasing. “Here is the mark of Hanuman’s thumb, where he rested on his way to Ceylon to war against the great giant Ravan.” A venerable Mahant, or high-priest of the Gosains, now advanced, and said, in a voice tremulous with age-- “Lay thy hand upon this spot, O Durga Pershad, and swear as I shall speak.” Durga Pershad held back instinctively, but the pressure of fifty arms constrained him, and he yielded. “If I have had part or lot in the death of Soonder, the son of Golab Rai Sing----” There was an expressive pause for a full moment, and no sound was audible save the slow, monotonous dripping of the sacred stream. Durga Pershad shuddered, but repeated the sentence somewhat unsteadily. “--I call upon Mahadeo, the most holy, the destroyer, to smite me with the black leprosy in the sight of all men, and that within three moons. May I die in torture, and by piecemeal. May I be abhorrent alike to men and gods, and after death, may I hang by my feet for one thousand years above a fire of chaff.” Durga Pershad echoed this hideous sentence with recovered composure. Truly, it was a vast relief to find that his end was not yet--his life in no present danger. Here was a weird and ghostly scene! The dark, damp temple, at dead of night, the crowd of stern, accusing countenances, lit up by flashes of torchlight, the austere high-priest in his robe of office, and the haggard culprit, the central figure, glaring defiance, with his uplifted hand upon the cold wet stone! There seemed to the wretched accused some accursed power in this holy image; the stone clung tenaciously to his trembling flesh, and he was sensible of an awful, death-like chill that penetrated to the very marrow of his bones. * * * * * In a few minutes the lights were extinguished, the wolfish-faced crowd had melted away, and Durga Pershad found himself alone. He stumbled out of the shrine, and by the cold, keen starlight descried the edge of a large tank, which was surrounded by temples. He had never visited the place of his own free will, but he recognized it from description as undoubtedly the most holy Gola, where two hundred thousand pilgrims flocked to worship once a year. At daybreak he made his way to the bazaar, and there sold a silver chain,--for he had no money. It might be imagination, but he believed that people looked upon him with suspicious eyes. Three days later, he was at home once more. He told no one that he had been kidnapped--no, not even his mother or his wife.