Gopi smiled comfortably. "Ay! To-morrow, and the next day, and the next. Then, once more, purification in the Pool of Immortality. Once more, sanctification at the 'Cradle of the Gods.'" He cast his eyes upwards unctuously, like an Eastern Chadband, so rehearsing the part of piety he meant to play once more on his release. Am-ma nodded his bodiless head cheerfully. "There will be no Pool of Immortality for the pilgrims this year. So Gorakh-nâth says. The canal will drain the spring. But then, he is angry at being turned out of his gun. The people will not give so much--that is it!" The _gosain's_ face lowered at the news. "Turned out? Who hath done it?" Am-ma's eyes were closed, for his feet had found likely ground; he paused a second, tensely alert-- "He who comes," he said, suddenly; "the Master." As he spoke, the quick thud, followed by a lingering reverberation of the first saluting gun, told that the Viceroy of India was entering his camp. "The Lord hath come!" said the circle of prisoners, in awed tones. All save Gopi, the _gosain_. He sneered. "The Lord-_sahib_. Ay! he may be that--but the Master--no!" Am-ma gave a contented little chuckle. "He killed _that_, anyhow," he said nodding again, "and he hath the _Dee-puk-râg_. Is not that enough for poor folk?" Then his feet, feeling something far out of sight in the still deep waters, came air-wards, and his head went down. When it came up again, the gang of prisoners were being filed back to gaol, leaving the still glowing embers of what had been a man to send a clear blue smoke into the clear blue sky. "They have the _Dee-puk-râg_--that is enough," murmured the fisher to himself as he slid with the stream. CHAPTER VII THE WORLD'S DESIRE The Viceroy's camp was no longer a city of dreams. Its silence had gone, lost in that indefinable sense of sound which seems to come from the heart-beats, even, of unseen humanity; and the whiteness, the purity of it, was stained and smirched by the scarlet-as-sin coatees of the innumerable orderlies, who bustled about from tent to tent, with huge files of references, or lingered at the tent doors extorting shoe-money from the native visitors, who came in shoals to plead for patronage from one or another of the bigwigs belonging to the Hosts of the Lord-_sahib_. Groups of these petitioners, awaiting their turn for an interview, were to be seen at most tents; but they stood in crowds round one, in which the Commissioner of the Division was making the final arrangements for the coming _durbar_; in consultation with the Under Secretary to Supreme Government. It was a difficult task, involving as it did the classification of the aristocracy, plutocracy, and democracy of India, in one generally satisfactory Court-guide.