The fakir paused to gaze around his audience. The look of interest and expectancy on each face showed the impression his impulsive flow of language had made. No interrupting word was spoken, but every eye remained fastened on the lean, keen face peering over long slender shanks and hand-clasped knees. The narrator continued:
"In those days I had twenty retainers at my call, and these men I commanded when I rode forth to service with a certain Nawab, from whom I held my lands for the feudal service I thus performed. It was my fate to take part in many a fight and in many a foray, and to send many a man to his doom. But God had ordained it so; the fault was not mine.
"Well, it befell that a certain city was given over to sack and carnage, for the word had gone forth that the only way to break the power of its Hindu occupants was to demolish their temples, destroy their idols, and thereby show the impotence of their false gods to protect them."
The Rajput drew himself up proudly, and a flush of resentment stole over his face. But the Moslem fanatic, unconscious now of anything but his reminiscences of the past, went on unheeding and unabashed:
"It was toward the hour of sunset when a body of our soldiery broke into a temple devoted to the worship of Siva the Destroyer. We had battered in the heavy wooden doors that protected the inner court, and within the threshold a score or more of priests fell to our swords, and a dozen dancing girls as well, attendants on the idols—self-slain these women, for when they saw that there was no quarter for the men they rushed on us like female panthers and flung themselves on our dripping blades."
The Hindu listeners were visibly disturbed and affected by this cold recital of bloody deeds. The hands of the Rajput clenched and unclenched themselves nervously, and the merchant gave a deep, guttural groan of horror as he flung the end of his robe over his face as if to shut out a vision of sacrilege and shame.
"It was written in the beginning, nay before creation it was written," murmured the Moslem astrologer, quoting, in courteous sympathy, the familiar formula of his faith. "And as your priests themselves say," he added, addressing himself more particularly to the Rajput, "'The destiny of each man is irrevocably inscribed on his forehead by the hand of Brahma himself.'"
The Rajput bowed his head in acquiescent silence, and as the fakir proceeded with his story the trader also regained his composure and withdrew the covering from his face.
"When the shadows of night fell, the temple made a bonfire that illuminated the scenes of pillage going on all around. The big idols of loathly aspect had been thrown down, broken to pieces, and despoiled of their jewels and the heavy plates of gold that encumbered them. Our soldiers had swarmed out of the building, past a tank to the houses of some priests beyond. Not one single custodian of the temple survived, and I stood alone in the outer courtyard, watching in idle fashion the tongues of flame licking the beams and rafters and paint-bedaubed walls of the wrecked edifice.
"Then did my eyes chance to light on a small idol in the passage-way between the two courtyards of the temple, set in a deep niche, on which account it had escaped the notice of the despoilers. It was the familiar elephant-headed idol of the Hindus, Ganapati, as I knew they called him, their god of wisdom and the remover of obstacles according to their creed.