When this strange and solemn procession entered the portal of Brahmanee Wade they suddenly halted, threw up their arms and folded their hands above their heads, and repeated one of the most magnificent utterances of Krishna: "O thou who art the life in all things, the eternal seed of nature, the understanding of the wise and the weakness of the foolish, the glory of the proud and the strength of the strong, the sacrifice and the worship, the incense and the fire, the victim and the slayer, the father and the mother of the world, gird thy servants with power and wisdom to-day to slay the slayer and to vanquish the deceiver,"[37] etc. After which they marched to the sound of music into the temple, and offered sacrifices of wine and oil, and wheaten cakes and fresh flowers, and with their eyes lifted to the dark vaulted roof they again prayed, calling upon Brahma the father, the comforter, the creator, the tender mother, the holy way, the witness, the asylum, the friend of man, to illumine with the light of his understanding their feeble intellects to discern the devil and to vanquish him. At length the astrologers, wizards, and witches took their places in the hall, with eager crowds all round them, standing in rows on all the steps of the building. Then came two officers from the king with a royal letter,--one was the chief judge of the Supreme Court, and the other his secretary to report the trial. After this lordly personage had taken his seat, the prisoners--the two handmaids of the princess and my friend May-Peâh, who, as I feared, was the deaf and dumb "changeling"--were brought in. She was deadly pale, and there was a wild light as of madness or intense suffering in her eyes. They were placed at the end of the hall, strongly guarded by as many as fifty Amazons, while the soldiers scattered themselves all round about the building. Not a word was spoken, and the strange assembly looked into one another's faces, as if each knew his neighbor's thoughts. I trembled for the unhappy prisoners; and the crowd, who seemed to look upon poor May-Peâh as a veritable witch, were silent in breathless expectation. It was a frightful spot, and a still more indescribably terrifying scene, where one might indeed say with Hassan of Balsora, "Lo! this is the abode of genii and of ghouls and of devils." I had half a mind to slip down from my rocky perch and run away. But very soon my anxiety for poor May-Peâh absorbed every other feeling. The three prisoners sat profoundly silent, waiting in sadness to hear their doom. But why did they not begin the trial? There were the boxes and the planks with little niches cut into them, deep enough to enable any nimble person to climb with the tips of their toes, and scale any wall against which they might be placed. I turned to a soldier who was standing close by, and asked him why they still delayed the trial.