When I again looked from my window the scaffolds were removed, the crowd had departed, the sun had set. I strained my eyes, trying if I could distinguish anything on the great common before the house. There was a thick mist loaded with sepulchral vapors, a terrifying silence, an absolute quiet that made me shudder, as if I were entombed alive. At last I saw one solitary person coming towards my house through the gathering darkness. It was the slave-girl, Phim, whose life had been saved by the resolute bravery of her mistress; for it was she who had bought the priest's dress and aided her mistress to escape from the palace. She came to me in secret to tell me that the most merciful and yet the most dreadful doom, death by fire,--which is the punishment assigned by the laws of Siam to the crime of which they were accused,--had been pronounced upon the priest and Tuptim by that most irresponsible of human beings, the King of Siam; that they had suffered publicly outside of the moat and wall which enclose the cemetery Watt Sah Katè; and that some of the common people had been terribly affected by the sight of the priest's invincible courage and of Tuptim's heroic fortitude. With her low, massive brow, her wild, glistening eyes, and her whole soul in her face, she spoke as if she still beheld that fragile form in its last struggle with the flaming fire that wrapped it round about, and still heard her beloved mistress's voice, as she confronted the populace, holding up her mutilated hands, and saying: "I am pure, and the priest, my lord Bâlât, is pure also. See, these fingers have not made my lips to lie. The sacred Buddh in heaven judge between me and my accusers!" The slave-girl's grief was as deep and lasting as her gratitude. Every seventh day she offered fresh flowers and odoriferous tapers upon the spot where her mistress and the priest had suffered, firmly believing that their disembodied souls still hovered about the place at twilight, bewailing their cruel fate. She assured me that she often heard voices moaning plaintively through the mellow evening air, growing deeper and gathering strength as she listened, and seeming to draw her very soul away with them; now tenderly weeping, now fervently exulting, until they became indistinct, and finally died away in the regions of the blessed and the pure. I afterwards learned that the fickle populace, convinced of the innocence of Bâlât and Tuptim, would have taken speedy vengeance on the two priests, their accusers, had they not escaped from Bangkok to a monastery at Paknâm; and that the twenty caties offered for the capture of Tuptim had been expended in the purchase of yellow robes, earthen pots, pillows, and mats for the use of the bonzes at Watt Rajah Bah ditt Sang, no priest being allowed to touch silver or gold.