st die," said Umballa in a voice like one being
strangled.

To this the priests agreed without hesitation. This white woman whom
the people were calling a goddess was a deadly menace to that scepter
of theirs, superstition.

"What has gone is a pact?"

"A pact, Durga Ram," said the chief priest. With Ramabai spreading
Christianity, the abhorred creed which gave people liberty of person
and thought, the future of his own religion stood in imminent danger.
"A pact," he reflected. "To you, Durga Ram, the throne; to us half the
treasury and all the ancient rites of our creed restored."

"I have said it."

Umballa followed the dancing girl into the square before the temple.
He turned and smiled ironically. The bald fools!

"Lead on, thou flower of the jasmine!" lightly.

And the two of them disappeared into the night.

But the priests smiled, too, for Durga Ram should always be more in
their power than they in his.

There was tremendous excitement in the city the next morning. It
seemed that the city would never be permitted to resume its old
careless indolence. Swift as the wind the news flew that the old king
was alive, that he had been held prisoner all these months by Durga Ram
and the now deposed council of three. No more the old rut of dulness.
Never had they known such fetes. Since the arrival of the white
goddess not a day had passed without some thrilling excitement, which
had cost them nothing but shouts.

So they deserted the bazaars and markets that morning to witness the
most surprising spectacle of all: the king who was dead was not dead,
but alive!

He appeared before them in his rags. For Ramabai, no mean politician,
wished to impress upon the volatile populace the villainy of Umballa
and the council, to gain wholly, without reservation, the sympathy of
the people, the strongest staff a politician may lean upon. Like a
brave and honest man he had cast from his thoughts all hope of power.
The king might be old, senile, decrepit, but he was none the less the
king. If he had moments of blankness of thought, there were other
moments when the old man was keen enough; and keen enough he was to
realize in these lucid intervals that Ramabai, among all his people,
was loyalest.

So, in the throne room, later, he gave the power to Ramabai to act in
his stead till he had fully recovered from his terrible hardships.
More than this, he declared that Pundita, the wife of Ramabai, should
ultimate