e heart-beat, I
saw incredulity change to the realization of sudden death, the first
wild appeal for pity turn into rigid despair. But this momentary flash
of revelation had shown me something else. It was a maid into whose
soul I had gazed. I had put to death a woman.'

"Now for the first time in his narrative did the strangler betray
emotion. Bending forward, he raised a hand to shield his quivering
features from my scrutiny. I turned away, that he might the better
recover himself. After a little time he resumed:

"'Oh, the horror of it!' he cried, uplifting haggard eyes to mine. 'The
frightful crime against Bowani! To have killed one of her own sex! For a
thug there is no crime in all the world to equal this one. Too late I
realized what I had done. But in my first impulse of fear I resolved to
keep the dread secret to myself. With my own hands I rifled the body,
and laid the spoil of gold and other valuables on the cotton cloth
outspread in the moonlight for the reception of such gifts to the
goddess. I removed the outer garments, robes of cost, silken, and
heavily wrought with gold. Then, when the grave-diggers emerged from the
nullah to show us the places of burial prepared, one for each victim, in
my own arms I carried the body down into the darkness, laid it in its
narrow bed, filled in the sand, and heaped on top the stones already
gathered together in a pile, so that hyenas or jackals should not
disturb the grave, finally covering all with brushwood cut and ready,
that even the signs of recent excavation should be hidden from prying
eyes and the sacrifice to Bowani disclosed to none besides her votaries.

"'I kept my secret--the terrible knowledge that a woman had died at our
hands. By the morning dawn the spoil had been divided, and our
cavalcade, smaller now by nearly one-third, moved on. At the first
cross-roads we split up into several groups, and later on into smaller
parties still, so as to divert attention from us. And thus have I come
on to Delhi, only I and one other member of that body of thugs,
dispersed to assemble again as the omens of the goddess should direct.
At Delhi we two await another gathering of thugs. But meanwhile my heavy
secret has weighed upon my soul. I have heard incessantly, these last
few days and nights, Bowani denouncing me as false to her because I have
taken the life of a woman in her name, and bidding me hand over all the
thugs to the justice of Akbar. Therefore have I com