“The white goddess by mistake took Ramabai’s goblet and was about to drink when the majordomo seized the goblet and drained the poison himself.  He confessed everything, where the king was, where you were.  They are again hunting through the city for you.  For the present you must hide with me.”

“The white woman must die,” said Umballa in a voice like one being strangled.

To this the priests agreed without hesitation.  This white woman whom the people were calling a goddess was a deadly menace to that scepter of theirs, superstition.

“What has gone is a pact?”

“A pact, Durga Ram,” said the chief priest.  With Ramabai spreading Christianity, the abhorred creed which gave people liberty of person and thought, the future of his own religion stood in imminent danger.  “A pact,” he reflected.  “To you, Durga Ram, the throne; to us half the treasury and all the ancient rites of our creed restored.”

“I have said it.”

Umballa followed the dancing girl into the square before the temple.  He turned and smiled ironically.  The bald fools!

“Lead on, thou flower of the jasmine!” lightly.

And the two of them disappeared into the night.

But the priests smiled, too, for Durga Ram should always be more in their power than they in his.

There was tremendous excitement in the city the next morning.  It seemed that the city would never be permitted to resume its old careless indolence.  Swift as the wind the news flew that the old king was alive, that he had been held prisoner all these months by Durga Ram and the now deposed council of three.  No more the old rut of dulness.  Never had they known such fetes.  Since the arrival of the white goddess not a day had passed without some thrilling excitement, which had cost them nothing but shouts.

So they deserted the bazaars and markets that morning to witness the most surprising spectacle of all:  the king who was dead was not dead, but alive!

He appeared before them in his rags.  For Ramabai, no mean politician, wished to impress upon the volatile populace the villainy of Umballa and the council, to gain wholly, without reservation, the sympathy of the people, the strongest staff a politician may lean upon.  Like a brave and honest man he had cast from his thoughts all hope of power.  The king might be old, senile, decrepit, but he was none the less the king.  If he had moments of blankness of thought, there were other moments when the old man was keen enough; and keen enough he was to realize in these lucid intervals that Ramabai, among all his people, was loyalest.

So, in the throne room, later, he gave the power to Ramabai to act in his stead till he had fully recovered from his terrible hardships.  More than this, he declared that Pundita, the wife of Ramabai, should ultimately rule; for of a truth the principality was lawfully hers.  He would make his will at once, but in order that this should be legal he would have to destroy the previous will he had given to Colonel Hare, his friend.