s among the crowd, and we had freedom to go to them and give
them what we could, and talk to the many others who would listen.
Outside the moonlight was shining on the dark pile of the Temple tower,
and upon the palms planted along the wall, which rises in its solid
strength 30 feet high and encloses the whole Temple precincts. There
were very few people out in the moonlight. It was too quiet there for
them, too pure in its silvery whiteness. Inside the hall, with its
great-doored rooms and recesses, there were earth-lights in abundance,
flaring torches, smoking lamps and lanterns. And there was noise--the
noise of words and of wailing Indian music. For up near the closed doors
which open on the shrine within which the idol sat surrounded by a
thousand lights, there was a band of musicians playing upon stringed
instruments; sometimes they broke out excitedly and banged their drums
and made their conch-shells blare.

Suddenly there was a tumultuous rush of every produceable sound;
tom-tom, conch-shell, cymbal, flute, stringed instruments and bells
burst into chorus together. The idol was going to be carried out from
his innermost shrine behind the lights; and as the great doors moved
slowly, the excitement became intense, the thrill of it quivered through
all the hall and sent a tremor through the crowd out to the street. But
we passed out and away, and turned into a quiet courtyard known to us
and talked to the women there.

There were three, one the grandmother of the house, one her daughter,
and another a friend. The grandmother and her daughter were Temple
women, the eldest grandchild had been dedicated only a few months
before. There were three more children, one Mungie, a lovable child of
six, one a pretty three-year-old with a mop of beautiful curls, the
youngest a baby just then asleep in its hammock; a little foot dangled
out of the hammock, which was hung from a rafter in the verandah roof.
We had come to talk to the grandmother and mother about the dear little
six-year-old child, and hoped to find their heart.

But we seemed to talk to stone, hard as the stone of the Temple tower
that rose above the roofs, black against the purity of the moonlit sky.
It was a bitter half-hour. Some hours are like stabs to remember, or
like the pitiless pressing down of an iron on living flesh. At last we
could bear it no longer, and rose to go. As we left we heard the
grandmother turn to her daughter's friend and say: "Thoug