His life, at this time, was far from happy. He was closely bound, even as to his thoughts; and he had really no freedom. His state was almost constantly one of melancholy; but he was subject to violently changeable points of view; and, in his continual secret analysis and meditation, he endured the first pangs of loneliness. How strongly he felt all this, it would be difficult to say. At the time, his existence seemed to him overwhelming. Later on, he could remember it with yearning, as holding a peace and a contentment that would never come for him again. The years passed over the head of the boy, slowly for him, swiftly for many around him; and when he was thirteen years old, and had been for five years a Snataka, a heavy sickness came, and he was taken to the home of his father, to be cared for there. He alone knew how, for many days, his body and his mind were torn with strangest anguish. Dimly he understood that the souls imprisoned in him were struggling mightily to burst the bonds of flesh, and free themselves. Finally came the evening that was always most vivid in his memory. Toward sunset he was carried out into the vine-walled veranda of the house; and he felt that people—two, three, four—stood around him, looking upon him. He heard murmurings and exclamations, which gradually melted away; and then only his father and mother were there, standing on either side of him; and he felt afraid, and wept, in misery. There, indeed, through the whole night, the man and the woman who had brought him into the world stood over him in the agony of the crisis, Kota shaken with sobs of affliction, Gokarna stiff and straight, hands clenched, skin damp with sweat. There the father gave up his son, the priest renounced his hope and his ambition. Lifting up his voice he prayed Siva to take the life of Ramasarman; and this prayer the child, and the mother of the child, dumbly echoed in their hearts. Yet, in the clear, red light of dawn, the agony left Oman’s body, and his mind, exhausted with a weight too terrible to bear, grew gradually quieter. Kota and Gokarna, knowing nothing more to do, spent with weariness and emotion, returned together in silence into the house, leaving Oman alone in the half-light of early day.