One day about noon Yhahil sought the abode of this prophetess. It was a deep cavern, near the base of a hill. No human habitation was near. Situated on the north side, the beams of the sun were excluded from it. At the entrance were scattered several large fragments of rock, as if casually flung there by some violent convulsion of nature. Not a shrub or particle of verdure was visible within at least fifty yards of the cavern. Lizards crawled about the stones, and snakes were occasionally seen to glide for a moment from their rocky retreats, and retire at the sound of human footsteps. The whole place had an aspect of desolation, perfectly concurring with the life and character of the unnatural being who inhabited the cave. For years the place had been trodden by no foot save her own. Yhahil, with a trembling step, approached the den of the prophetic hag. The old woman was seated on a fragment of rock which lay just in front of her dreary dwelling. On her lap was a Pariah dog, blind with age and disfigured with mange. As the lovely girl approached, the squalid brute raised its head, and commenced a shrill continuous howl, and, when it had finished, began licking its mistress’s face with disgusting familiarity. Having finished this canine caress, it resumed its howl in a still louder key. Yhahil undauntedly approached, but, on a nearer scrutiny, was for an instant repelled at the sight of the object whom she had come to consult upon the events of the future. Never was anything akin to humanity so perfectly hideous. She might have been taken for any age above a hundred years. She seemed almost to have lived from eternity. Her whole aspect was so essentially old, that every mark which in age so frequently conveys an association with youth was entirely obliterated. She appeared the withered consort of old Time, with whom one might have imagined she had travelled through all the cycles of duration. Every feature of her face was frightful. Her hair, matted and grizzled, fell upon her shrivelled shoulders in long thin wisps, like the dull wiry grass which occasionally hangs from the crest of the sun-scorched rock. Her forehead appeared as if it had been crimped. The wrinkles were so near together, that a needle’s point could scarcely have been inserted between them. The skin clung so close to her cheek-bones as to develop the grim anatomy of her visage with a minuteness almost appalling. Nose she had none, but the slight indication of it which remained showed that such a member had once a “local habitation” upon her now revolting countenance. Her eyes were so deeply sunk into her head, and the lids approximated so closely, that the dim lurid orbs were scarcely discernible. When Yhahil reached the spot where the jiggerkhar was sitting, she flung a gold mohur[26] into her lap, saying, “I seek a boon, mother.”