To judge by appearances, not at all. There was no more restlessness, no more movement than was inevitable in such a concourse of men, women, and children. Here and there files of shadowy forms drifted about, but the most of them, seen by the little lights set on the ground beside each group, were in heaps, like the heaps of dead on a battle-field, huddled up on each other, sleeping, resting, indistinguishable, shrouded in their shawls, waiting for the dawn to come. And, above the soft, yet increasing murmur of the still windless storm, came a softer murmuring of prayers, a weird low chanting. The Hosts of the Lord had not yet risen to battle. The Spirit had not moved; the Word had not been made manifest. The palace, also, lay as yet undisturbed, unseen, in the darkness. Except for a glimmer of red light just above the river, a paler glimmer closer at hand. The red light must be by the stairs for which he was steering. The other?-- He did not know, but as he slipped past it another murmuring as of prayer seemed to come from within. It must come from the chapel; if so, then Pidar Narâyan must be awake also. He felt a certain relief at the thought when he caught sight of the canoe at the bottom of the steps. Then Vincent, as he had feared, was there; but not on the errand he had feared, if Pidar Narâyan knew of it. So, mooring his strange craft to the canoe, he ran up the stairs eagerly. CHAPTER XXI MARGHERITA Father Ninian had been awake all night. He had been vaguely uneasy all day, conscious, with that fine perception of his, that something was amiss. But it was no fear of what _might_ happen which had kept him watching when others slept. It was the memory of something which _had_ happened; for, by a coincidence that for more than fifty years had never lost its mystical significance for Ninian Bruce--sentimentalist as he was to his finger tips--the night of the _Vaisakh_ festival, when the pilgrims watched for the dawn to guide them on their way to the 'Cradle of the Gods,' was to him, personally, the saddest and gladdest of the whole year. Since it was the night on which he had sinned the great sin of his life, and repented of it, even in the sinning. And that sinning, that repenting, was no slight thing to him. It was the man himself; for the passion that was in him in his youth was in him in his old age. It had only changed its dwelling-place. It had fled from the senses, and found refuge in the emotions. In a way, indeed, by thus seeking freedom from it, he had fallen into a greater thraldom, so that his whole life had been as much swayed by this renunciation of a woman as it would have been by her possession.