Years passed; the blind old Maharajah, weighed down with sorrowful recollections of his sons and followers who had fallen in the great war, retired, with his wife Gandhari, into a jungle on the banks of the Ganges. Kunti also accompanied them. To this hermitage the Pandavas paid a visit. The conversation, as was natural, turned upon the friends and kinsfolk who had perished on the plain of Kurukshetra. While this sad subject was being discussed the sage Vyasa made his appearance, and promised the mourners that he would, that very night, show them the relatives for whom they had been sorrowing. After bathing in the Ganges the company stood together on the bank of the sacred river. Vyasa, standing by the king, summoned the dead to appear. A scene of inexpressible grandeur followed immediately. The river began to foam and boil. A great noise was heard, and out of the troubled water arose the men who had died at Kurukshetra. They came as when alive, but more beautiful and in all the pomp of martial glory, in full armour, upon their chariots and with music. The foes who had cruelly slaughtered each other now appeared as friends, and were attended by troops of singers and of dancing-girls. Dead and living communed freely with each other and, in the joy of reunion, the sorrows of so many years were forgotten. But, with the morning, the ghostly visitants disappeared. And now Vyasa gave the widows who wished to rejoin their dead husbands permission to do so; upon which all the widows drowned themselves in the Ganges and were reunited to their lords. The Pandavas with their followers returned to Hastinapur and, about two years afterwards, the old king, his wife and Kunti, with their attendants, perished in a jungle fire. Krishna, the friend of the Pandavas, also met with an untimely end after another fratricidal civil war in his own country, and his capital city of Dwarka--from which the remaining inhabitants had been removed by Arjuna to Hastinapur--was overwhelmed by a wave of the sea. After the many trials and sorrows they had gone through, a weariness of life, such as would seem only too natural under the circumstances, took possession of the Pandavas, and they were minded to be done with earthly things. “Let us go forth to die! Time slayeth all. We will find Death who seeketh other men.” --+SIR EDWIN ARNOLD.+