All was exactly as it had been, thirty years before. From the watch-towers the soldiers looked out and up into the hills, taking no notice of the solitary, toil-worn mendicant who passed toward the plateau. If they perceived the bird in his bosom, they only thought him some dealer in magic who had trained the creature to be his oracle. Nor, indeed, did Oman notice them. They were part of the whole scene, but not to be singled out. His eyes rested on the fields that stretched along beside two roads that wound, one to the right, the other to the left, along the plateau. Which of the roads to choose, he scarcely knew. Memory did not serve. The fields, already planted, were empty; and he bethought himself that it was the time of the Sravana ceremony, when all the people would be in the town, sacrificing and celebrating in temple and bazaar. At a venture, he turned to the left, and walked for some time past fertile rice-fields, and through a patch of woodland; and all the while, as he went, his heart was full to bursting, and his eyes were bright with tears. For he had come home—home. This land was home. He knew the feel of it. The very air was familiar to his cheek. The little sounds of animal and bird life were as the sounds of childhood heard again after many years. A great restfulness pervaded him. The tears that were in his eyes fell, slowly. Then his heart swelled with a mighty prayer of joy and thanksgiving. His way had been very long, very dark and dreary; but it was traversed now. His struggle and his loneliness were over. Behind him lay the wilderness, and all about him was the promised land. CHAPTER XIII A BROTHER OF THE SOUL Thirty years had passed over Mandu since that strange time of death, when, in a single day and night, a Rajah, his minister, his Ranee, and his favorite slave had perished, each in his own way. During those thirty years Bhavani, the only son of Rai-Khizar-Pál, had been nominal ruler of Mandu. A boy of eleven at the time of his father’s death, he had of his own will placed himself and Mandu under the guardianship of Manava, a minister grown old in service, who acted as regent till, on his twentieth birthday, the young man took the cares of government upon his own shoulders. So well did Manava acquit himself during the nine years of his regency, that, at the end of that time, had he chosen to take the throne from Bhavani and install himself thereon, Mandu would willingly have hailed him Rajah. But if Manava had been capable of such an act, he would not have been the ruler he proved himself to be; and he had his reward for faithful labor in seeing, before he died, his young charge come to be called “beloved” by his people.