chela whom no man of the Temple had ever seen.  Yes, he had followed the traces of the Blessed Feet throughout all India. (The Curator has still in his possession a most marvellous account of his wanderings and meditations.) There remained nothing more in life but to find the River of the Arrow.  Yet it was shown to him in dreams that it was a matter not to be undertaken with any hope of success unless that seeker had with him the one chela appointed to bring the event to a happy issue, and versed in great wisdom — such wisdom as white-haired Keepers of Images possess.  For example (here came out the snuff-gourd, and the kindly Jain priests made haste to be silent): 

’Long and long ago, when Devadatta was King of Benares — let all listen to the Tataka! — an elephant was captured for a time by the king’s hunters and ere he broke free, beringed with a grievous legiron.  This he strove to remove with hate and frenzy in his heart, and hurrying up and down the forests, besought his brother-elephants to wrench it asunder.  One by one, with their strong trunks, they tried and failed.  At the last they gave it as their opinion that the ring was not to be broken by any bestial power.  And in a thicket, new-born, wet with moisture of birth, lay a day-old calf of the herd whose mother had died.  The fettered elephant, forgetting his own agony, said:  “If I do not help this suckling it will perish under our feet.”  So he stood above the young thing, making his legs buttresses against the uneasily moving herd; and he begged milk of a virtuous cow, and the calf throve, and the ringed elephant was the calf’s guide and defence.  Now the days of an elephant — let all listen to the Tataka! — are thirty-five years to his full strength, and through thirty-five Rains the ringed elephant befriended the younger, and all the while the fetter ate into the flesh.

’Then one day the young elephant saw the half-buried iron, and turning to the elder said:  “What is this?” “It is even my sorrow,” said he who had befriended him.  Then that other put out his trunk and in the twinkling of an eyelash abolished the ring, saying:  “The appointed time has come.”  So the virtuous elephant who had waited temperately and done kind acts was relieved, at the appointed time, by the very calf whom he had turned aside to cherish — let all listen to the Tataka! for the Elephant was Ananda, and the Calf that broke the ring was none other than The Lord Himself...’

Then he would shake his head benignly, and over the ever-clicking rosary point out how free that elephant-calf was from the sin of pride.  He was as humble as a chela who, seeing his master sitting in the dust outside the Gates of Learning, over-leapt the gates (though they were locked) and took his master to his heart in the presence of the proud-stomached city.  Rich would be the reward of such a master and such a chela when the time came for them to seek freedom together!