with swiftness and secrecy. I command you. If you do not obey, I
will make it the worse for you."

He snarled suddenly, and Lena jumped back as though a tiger had sprung
at her throat.

The face disappeared among the leaves, and Lena sped toward the house,
hastened by a crash of thunder and a few great drops, that seemed to her
frightened imagination like the servants of the savage creature that
she had left in the tree-tops. She slipped out again, in spite of wind
and rain, obedient to his command, and as she dropped her bundle at the
foot of the tree trunk, she whispered,

"I hope, oh, I hope that you will get away!" But she heard no reply. The
storm came down and the night fell, seamed with lightning.

Lena quietly ate her dinner, and listened to the well-bred calm voice of
her mother-in-law as she wondered what Dick was doing, and when he would
be at home again. But Lena wondered what Ram Juna was doing, and whether
she should ever see him again.

CHAPTER XX

A LIGHT FROM THE EAST GOES OUT

To be in the heart of a great country, fifteen hundred miles from the
Atlantic, and two thousand miles from the Pacific, to be forbidden the
public highway of the train, and to have one's objective point
India,--this is by no means an easy problem, even to the oriental mind.
And who could know what was going on in the being that crept away into
the storm, strong with the instinct of hiding and of cunning. He must
have balanced all things. To go westward, where the great steamers plied
toward the Orient, this would seem the natural course; and yet that way
lay interminable prairies and empty stretches, and again deserts and
piled mountains, without shelter and without food. It is easier to hide
among people than amid solitudes. On crowded city streets, we jostle
without seeing.

It was no great feat to transform the once Swami of the flowing robes
and lofty port into a hulking skulking negro tramp, like the sturdy
villains of ancient days, sleeping in woody nooks by day, and pursuing
his slow journey under the stars, answering the look of such human
beings as he met with suspicion, keeping to the hamlets where police
officers were scarce and knowledge of the criminal world scarcer, and
where solitary house-wives, whose men were in the field, could be
persuaded, half through charity and half through fear, to dole out food.
Ah, but it was a weary journey. The world, of whose littleness we boast
when we think of ste