s heart he
despises them. Those whom he leads he knows to be blind, and his trade
is to persuade them that they can see. The Illusion has made them mad;
none sees whither he is going; the next step may plunge them all into
the pit; they live for they know not what. All this is known to yonder
man; and, being unenlightened, he has no way of escape, but yields to
his destiny, which is, that he shall be the bond-servant of lies." In
short, the discovery which the Oriental believed himself to have made
was this--that neither the Great Man before him, nor the millions whom
he led, had the faintest conception of the Meaning of Life; and,
further, that the Great Man was aware of his ignorance and troubled by
it, whereas the millions knew it not and were at their ease.

With the Writer on Mystics he was reserved to the point of coldness. In
this man's presence Chandrapal felt that he was being regarded as an
"interesting case" for analysis. So he wrapped himself in a mantle
impervious to professional scrutiny, and gave answers which could not be
worked up into a chapter for any book. The Writer was disappointed in
Chandrapal, and Chandrapal had no satisfaction in the Writer. "This
man," he thought, "has studied the Light until he has become blind. He
would speak of the things which belong to Silence. He is the most deeply
entangled of them all."

Fortunately for Chandrapal, there were children in the house, and these
alone succeeded in finding the path to his heart. There was one Little
Fellow of five years who continually haunted the drawing-room when he
was there, hiding behind screens or the backs of arm-chairs, and staring
at the Strange Man with wide eyes and finger in mouth. One day, when he
was reading, the Little Fellow crept up to his chair on hands and knees
and began industriously rubbing the dark wrist of the Indian with his
wetted finger. "It dothn't come off," said the Little Fellow. From that
moment he and the Strange Man became the fastest of friends and were
seldom far apart.

Except for this companionship it may be said that never since leaving
his native land was the spirit of Chandrapal more solitary nor more
aloof from the things and the persons around him. Never did he despair
so utterly of beholding that which he was most eager to find. Only when
in the company of the Little Fellow, and in the hours reserved for
meditation, was he able to shake off the sense of oppression and recover
the balance of his