Fidá, in the meantime, unconscious of the little sensation he was stirring up, was occupied in making an exploration of one corner of the plateau. As soon as the Rajah dismissed him he had started off by himself, having a great desire for solitude in which to meditate on a situation that was becoming every day more galling to him. Two weeks had passed since the departure of the embassy to his uncle’s camp; and he found himself gradually beginning to hope against hope that he would, after all, be rescued from his slavery. For this captivity which, for a few days, had been tinged with the glamour of adventure and romance, had now become the most irksome, the most unendurable of degradations. He walked for a long time, thinking deeply, paying little heed to his way till the scene became too remarkable to go unnoticed. He was two miles away from the palace when the road, which, some distance back, had turned sharply to the left, ran out of the flat, cultivated fields, and entered a wood which shortly became a little jungle, the road being cut through the heaviest undergrowth of bushes, trees, and sinuous vines. Around him, monkeys and paroquets chattered and screamed. The foliage was brilliant as with a second summer; for with autumn and the first suggestion of the second rains, summer leaps up again over all the northwest country; and Fidá was gazing about him delighted with the color and the life, the trouble of his heart banished by the beauty of nature, when suddenly his road turned again, and—ended. Before him, to the precipitous edge of the plateau, stretched a naturally clear space, in the centre of which stood a giant building, gone all to ruin. Its huge sandstone blocks were black with age and green with moss and growing plants. Its veranda and great doors were open to the daylight; and within, through openings in the roof, bright sunlight shone. The architecture was crude and heavy; but Fidá recognized, without difficulty, the style of the oldest Buddhism. And he divined correctly the history of this building, which he had started out to find: that it had once been a Vihara, later converted to the uses of Surya, one of the Brahman gods.