er palace of Rawanna, the Monstrous; and there lay
Seeta, buried in a profound trance of despair.

Hoonamunta bit, very tenderly, her slender white finger; but she stirred
not, she made no sign.

Then he whispered softly in her ear, "Rama comes!" and Seeta started
from her death-sleep, and sat erect; her eyes were open, and she cried,
"My Lord, I am here!"

So Hoonamunta spake to her, bidding her be of good cheer, for Brahm was
with her, and the Omnipotent Three,--bade her be of good heart and wait.
And Seeta's smile was as the alighting of many butterflies, and her
voice of murmured joy was as the rustling of all the roses of Ayodhya.

Then Hoonamunta took counsel with his cunning; and he said unto himself,
"I will arouse the sleepers; I will take the strength of the city; I
will count the heads of Rawunna, and the arms of him."

So straightway he resumed his monkey shape, and went forth into the
streets, by the tanks and through the bazaars, among the places of the
oppressed and the places of the powerful.

And he bit the ears of the Pariah dogs, so that they howled; he twisted
the tails of the Brahmin bulls, so that they rushed, bellowing, down to
the ghauts; he plucked the beards of gorged adjutants, till they snapped
their great beaks with a terrible clatter.

He made a great splashing in the tanks; he ran through the bazaars,
banging the gongs of the bell-makers, and smashing the brittle wares of
the potters; he tore holes in the roofs of houses, and threw down tiles
upon them that were buried in slumber; he cried with a loud voice,
"Siva, Siva, the Destroyer, cometh!"

So that the city awoke with a great outcry and a din, with all its
torches and all its dogs. And the multitude filled the streets, and the
compounds, and the open places round about the tanks; and all cried,
"Siva, Siva!"

But when they beheld Hoonamunta, how he tore off roofs, and pelted them
with tiles,--how he climbed to the tops of pagodas, and jangled the
sacred bells,--how he laid his shoulder to the city walls and overthrew
them, so that the noise of their fall was as the roar of the breakers on
the far-off coast of Lunka when the Typhoon blows,--then they cried,
"A demon! a fiend from the halls of Yama!" and they gave chase with a
mighty uproar,--the gooroos, and the yogees, and the jugglers going
first.

Then Hoonamunta took counsel with his cunning; and he came down and
stood in the midst of the angry people, and asked, "What