Very anxiously did all those friends watch around the wounded man; and it was long before he showed any appearance of rallying strength. Night passed, and they hardly expected he would see the day; but still he breathed, and as morning was breaking, a warm moisture took the place of the chill, clammy, deathlike state in which he had remained previously, and then those attending him hoped that he would live.

He had received a fearful wound. Bareheaded as he was in the performance of the ceremonies so rudely interrupted, he had not thought of protecting himself; but, as the Abyssinians advanced, had caught a sword and shield offered him by a man in the crowd, who drew back and fled, and had passed to the front with some others, crying the shout of the Goddess, "Jey Kalee!" "Jey Toolja !" and catching blows on the shield rather than returning them. But when a gigantic negro before him was pressing upon the front rank of those who defended the entrance to the vestibule, so heavily that it seemed as if they must give way, the old soldier spirit within the Shastree was stirred, and he struck desperately at the man. Stung by the pain returned the blow

of the wound, the negro instantly

with a furious cut, which laid open the crown of the Shastree's head from back to front. Well for him that the shield had greatly broken the force of it, or he had died instantly; as it was, the Shastree fell stunned, and was trampled upon by the advancing crowd; and lay there, unconscious, until the early morning.

Then the two friends who had watched him fall, and VOL. III.

C

who, concealed in the recess behind the shrine, had escaped slaughter, came forth and sought for him. They found him under a pile of dead, still breathing, but utterly insensible. It was impossible to take him to his own house, for the gateway and bazar were filled with Abyssinians, and they feared a renewal of slaughter with the dawn; so they lifted the Shastree from the ground, obtained a bedstead from one of the closed archway rooms, put him upon it, and, being joined by several of the Bhópey priests, had broken open the postern by which Tara had been taken away, and carried him at once, unobserved, to Sindphul.

Had Tara remained where she had been first stopped, she must have seen her father borne past her, and would have been saved; but Fazil Khan had sent her palankeen to the trees by the back of the rivulet, about a gunshot's distance from the path, out of sight; and though those who carried the Shastree were challenged by Shêre Khan's horsemen, there was nothing suspicious in the fact of a dead body, for so it seemed, being carried away, and the little procession had passed unnoticed.

Heera, the barber of Sindphul, was a skilful surgeon, and on his arrival at the house of the Putwari or accountant of the village, the Shastree's wound was examined. The barber had seldom seen worse, and during the time which had elapsed since he had received it, the Shastree had become weak from loss of blood. So Heera shook his head. Still he did his best the wound was sewn up skilfully, and a com

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posing poultice of warm leaves and herbs applied to it, while the bruised body was fomented. All night had Heera watched anxiously with the friends about the Shastree, fearing the worst, for he was restless and feverish; but with the morning came refreshing sleep, and the warm moist skin for which the barber had so anxiously looked. Then he said, "If the Gods please, the Shastree will live. Let him be kept quiet, and the room darkened.”

At first the women of his family were hardly missed. All those who could escape had fled into the fields and gardens around little Tooljapoor, and many into the deep ravine beyond the town, or to adjacent villages. Sindphul was crowded with them, and no one dare return till the Mahomedan force had passed.

The Bhóslay of Sindphul had searched again and again through his village and its hamlets for the Shastree's wives and for Tara, but in vain. He had sent men to look for them in their own house, but they were not there. The place showed the signs of violence we already know of; and the men in charge of it could only hope that Janoo Näik might account for them.

Janoo had been sought therefore, and found in the liquor-seller's shop drinking out his money; and when asked for Anunda and Tara, said, with drunken solemnity, that he had buried them all. The idea had possessed him that this was the safest answer for all questioners, and he held to it the more pertinaciously as his drunkenness increased. It was impossible not to fear that the story might be true; for all had seen Tara in

the throng of priests and priestesses, and knew also that Anunda and Radha had been in the temple.

We left them crouching in a niche, as it were, of the rock, overgrown by long pendant creepers and grass, near the little spring, and there they passed the night. At early dawn Janoo had come to them with his son, and told them that their house had been attacked in the night, and was no safe place for them. It was polluted, moreover, and they could not return to it. That Tara and the Shastree had escaped to Sindphul; that he dare not take them past the force which was guarding the town and pass, and that they must go to Afsinga, where all was quiet. He knew they had friends in a Bramhun's family which resided there, and thither Anunda and Radha suffered themselves to be guided by the boy, while Janoo, after seeing them safe across the hill, returned to his post.

Weeping bitterly, hardly knowing whether to go on with the lad or to return, at all risks, to Tooljapoor, the two women had yielded to Janoo's well-intended but mistaken direction. The path was stony and rough, and their naked feet, unused to such places, were sorely bruised and cut in descending the rugged track by which, through the most intricate and gloomy ravines of the hills, they were guided. It was hardly four miles, perhaps, and yet, faint and wretched as they were, the sun was high in the heavens ere they reached their destination, and were kindly received.

They told their story; but what could be done? Who could go to Tooljapoor? The Bramhun to whose

house they had betaken themselves was old and feeble, but a student who lived with him, and who had been absent since daylight to obtain information, returned about noon. He had no news of the Shastree or of Tara; but he volunteered to go again to seek them, and did so, returning at night with accounts of a fruitless search. Janoo, he said, knew nothing of them, and he had found him telling the same story, that he had buried Anunda and Radha out of sight,-and understood what the faithful but drunken creature had perhaps meant to convey to all inquirers-that they were safely hidden away.

Perhaps Janoo would not have been absent so long had he been sober; but the excitement and his potations together had been too much for him. When he awoke, having lain down to sleep in the bazar, it was evening, and they were lighting the lamps in the shops. "It is too late now," thought he, "to go across the hills for the Shastree's wives, and they are safer where they are;" so he betook himself to the house. His men were there in charge. The dead negro had been taken out and buried, and some of the blood washed away; but the place was utterly defiled: the sacred fire had gone out, and the whole premises must undergo purification ere they could enter or inhabit it once more. Janoo shrugged his shoulders-"They cannot live here," he said; "there is the hut in the garden at Sindphul, and I will take them there and hide them in it."

So in the morning, before it was light, he set out from Tooljapoor, and crossed the hills, with two of his