The Englishman regained Gerowlia and demanded to be taken away, but Gerowlia’s driver went forward instead and showed him a new Mahal just built by the present Maharana. If a fourth sack of Chitor could be managed for a Viceroy’s edification, the blowing up of the new Mahal would supply a pleasant evening’s entertainment. Near the Mahal lie the remains of the great tanks of Chitor, for the hill has, through a great part of its length, a depression in the centre which, by means of bunds, stored, in the old time, a full supply of water. A general keeping in order is visible throughout many of the ruins; and, in places, a carriage-drive is being constructed. Carriage-drives, however, do not consort well with Chitor and the “shadow of her ancient beauty.” The return journey, past temple after temple and palace upon palace, began in the failing light, and Gerowlia was still blundering up and down narrow bye-paths--for she possessed all an old woman’s delusion as to the slimness of her waist--when the twilight fell, and the smoke from the town below began to creep up the brown flanks of Chitor, and the jackals howled. Then the sense of desolation, which had been strong enough in all conscience in the sunshine, began to grow and grow:-- “The sun’s eye had a sickly glare, The earth with age was wan, The skeletons of ages stood Around that lonely man.” Near the Ram Pol there was some semblance of a town with living people in it, and a priest sat in the middle of the road and howled aloud upon his Gods, until a little boy came and laughed in his face heretically, and he went away grumbling. This touch was deeply refreshing; in the contemplation of it, the Englishman clean forgot that he had overlooked the gathering in of materials for an elaborate statistical, historical, geographical account of Chitor. All that remained to him was a shuddering reminiscence of the Gau-Mukh and two lines of the “Holy Grail.” “And up into the sounding halls he passed, But nothing in the sounding halls he saw.”