Hira said:  “How will you get to see her?”

“By your kindness it will be accomplished,” said Debendra.

“Then do you remain here on the watch; I will bring her to you.”

With these words Hira went out of the summer-house.  Proceeding some distance, she stopped beneath the shelter of a tree and gave way to a burst of sobbing:  then went on into the house—­not to Kunda Nandini, but to the darwans (gatekeepers), to whom she said—­

“Come quickly; there is a thief in the garden.”

Then Dobe, Chobe, Paure, and Teowari, taking thick bamboo sticks in their hands, started off for the flower-garden.  Debendra, hearing from afar the sound of their clumsy, clattering shoes, and seeing their black, napkin-swathed chins, leaped from the summer-house and fled in haste.  Teowari and Co. ran some distance, but they could not catch him; yet he did not get off scot-free.  We cannot certainly say whether he tasted the bamboo, but we have heard that he was pursued by some very abusive terms from the mouths of the darwans; and that his servant, having had a little of his brandy, in gossip the next day with a female friend remarked—­

“To-day, when I was rubbing the Babu with oil, I saw a bruise on his back.”

Returning home, Debendra made two resolutions:  the first, that while Hira remained he would never again enter the Datta house; the second, that he would retaliate upon Hira.  In the end he had a frightful revenge upon her.  Hira’s venial fault received a heavy punishment, so heavy that at sight of it even Debendra’s stony heart was lacerated.  We will relate it briefly later.

CHAPTER XXVII.

BY THE ROADSIDE.

It is one of the worst days of the rainy season; not once had the sun appeared, only a continuous downpour of rain.  The well metalled road to Benares was a mass of slush.  But one traveller was to be seen, his dress was that of a Brahmachari (an ascetic):  yellow garments, a bead chaplet on his neck, the mark on the forehead, the bald crown surrounded by only a few white hairs, a palm leaf umbrella in one hand, in the other a brass drinking-vessel.  Thus the Brahmachari travelled in the soaking rain through the dark day, followed by a night as black as though the earth were full of ink.  He could not distinguish between road and no road; nevertheless he continued his way, for he had renounced the world, he was a Brahmachari.  To those who have given up worldly pleasures, light and darkness, a good and a bad road, are all one.  It was now far on in the night; now and then it lightened; the darkness itself was preferable, was less frightful than those flashes of light.

“Friend!”