w!"

Then the people ran as only Hill folk can run, for they knew that in a
landslip you must climb for the highest ground across the valley. They
fled, splashing through the little river at the bottom, and panted up
the terraced fields on the far side, while the Bhagat and his brethren
followed. Up and up the opposite mountain they climbed, calling to each
other by name--the roll-call of the village--and at their heels toiled
the big barasingh, weighted by the failing strength of Purun Bhagat.
At last the deer stopped in the shadow of a deep pinewood, five hundred
feet up the hillside. His instinct, that had warned him of the coming
slide, told him he would he safe here.

Purun Bhagat dropped fainting by his side, for the chill of the rain and
that fierce climb were killing him; but first he called to the scattered
torches ahead, "Stay and count your numbers"; then, whispering to the
deer as he saw the lights gather in a cluster: "Stay with me, Brother.
Stay--till--I--go!"

There was a sigh in the air that grew to a mutter, and a mutter that
grew to a roar, and a roar that passed all sense of hearing, and the
hillside on which the villagers stood was hit in the darkness, and
rocked to the blow. Then a note as steady, deep, and true as the deep C
of the organ drowned everything for perhaps five minutes, while the very
roots of the pines quivered to it. It died away, and the sound of the
rain falling on miles of hard ground and grass changed to the muffled
drum of water on soft earth. That told its own tale.

Never a villager--not even the priest--was bold enough to speak to the
Bhagat who had saved their lives. They crouched under the pines and
waited till the day. When it came they looked across the valley and
saw that what had been forest, and terraced field, and track-threaded
grazing-ground was one raw, red, fan-shaped smear, with a few trees
flung head-down on the scarp. That red ran high up the hill of their
refuge, damming back the little river, which had begun to spread into a
brick-coloured lake. Of the village, of the road to the shrine, of the
shrine itself, and the forest behind, there was no trace. For one mile
in width and two thousand feet in sheer depth the mountain-side had come
away bodily, planed clean from head to heel.

And the villagers, one by one, crept through the wood to pray before
their Bhagat. They saw the barasingh standing over him, who fled when
they came near, and they heard the lan