ground floor, in which you have given me room, has two apartments,
divided by a little passage, and that the little passage gives not upon
the public highway, but upon a garden, quiet and lovely, that faces the
sun and is shut in by brick walls and hedges. The farther one of these
rooms is bare and but slightly furnished, though my bedroom is sumptuous
like that of a maha-rajah. Still the bare small room pleases me best. If
I might have this room when I come again! If I might keep the bare room
sacred to my meditations, all unentered save by myself! It means to me
much that no alien mind, no soul of a common servant, should mar the
serenity of the atmosphere in that spot where I sit alone with myself. I
would have it dedicated to the greater Me. It would be the cap-sheaf--do
you not so say in this land of great harvests?--thus to give shelter not
only to my body, but to my soul, in this bare and quiet little room."

"Why, certainly, certainly!" Mr. Early could not help thinking that a
guest who spent most of his time alone in an empty room would prove no
great tax upon his entertainer.

"I thank you," said Ram Juna, rising and making a salaam of curious
dignity and courtesy. "You bid me lecture. You bid me write and instruct
in the sacred truths. That will I do when I come again; and my
consolation shall be the unblemished hours when I sit alone in the
little room which faces the sun. You comprehend me? You understand?"

And Mr. Early, who never, if he could help it, spent a half-hour in
either solitude or idleness, answered again:

"Why, certainly, certainly."

"In some months, then, I may return, noble friend. And now I will bid
you farewell until the dawn."

The Swami, with marvelous lightness of foot in spite of his huge body,
made off for his own domain. If Mr. Early, who now sat and yawned alone
by the dying fire, could have peeped in on the excellent Ram Juna, he
would have been much gratified by the evident satisfaction with which
the Oriental surveyed the quarters which were one day to be his. The
Swami strode at once across the bedroom, across the little passage that
opened into the garden, into the unused room beyond. Here with a swift
thrust he turned on the electric light, then moved from window to
window, opened them, examined the heavy wooden shutters which he closed
and unclosed, craning his bull-neck through the opened sashes. Around
and under each piece of furniture he peered, nodding and smiling