Long years after prayer has passed from a man's life, the sound of the "Our Father" may bring him back in thought to his mother's knee. So it was with Ramanund, as in the silence which followed, he watched (by the flickering light of the cresset set on the ground between them) his adversary's lips moving in the secret verse which none but the twice-born may repeat. It brought back to him, as if it had been yesterday, the time when, half-frightened, half-important, he had heard it whispered in his ear for the first time. When for the first time also he had felt the encircling thread of the twice-born castes on his soft young body. That thread which girdled him from the common herd, which happed and wrapped him round with a righteousness not his own, but imputed to him by divine law. Despite logarithms, despite pure morality, something thrilled in him half in exultation, half in fear. It was unforgetable, and yet, in a way, he had forgotten!--forgotten what? The question was troublesome, so he gave it the go-by quickly.
"I have not forgotten the old wisdom jôgi jee," he said. "I hold more of it than thou, with all thy trickery. But remember this. We of the Sacred Land[[18]] will not stand down-country cheating, and if thou art caught at it here, 'tis the lock-up."
"If I am caught," echoed the man as he drew a small earthen pot closer to him and began to stir its contents with his hand, every now and again testing their consistency by letting a few drops fall from his lifted fingers back into the pot. They were thick and red, showing in the dim light like blood. "It is not we, servants of dread Kâli, who are caught, 'tis ye faithless ones who have wandered from Her. Ye who pretend to know----"
"A scoundrel when we see one," broke in the schoolmaster, his high thin tones rising. "And I do know one at least. What is more, I will have thee watched by the police."
"Don't," put in one of the others in English. "What use to rouse anger needlessly. Such men are dangerous."
"Dangerous!" echoed Ramanund. "Their day is past----"
"The people believe in them still," persisted another, looking uneasily at the jôgi's scowl, which, in truth, was not pleasant.
"And such language is, in my poor opinion, descriptive of that calculated to cause a breach of peace," remarked a rotund little pleader, "thus contrary to mores public. In moderation lies safety."
"And cowardice," retorted Ramanund, returning purposely to Hindustani and keeping his eager face full on the jôgi. "It is because the people, illiterate and ignorant, believe in them, that I advocate resistance. Let us purge the old, pure faith of our fathers from the defilements which have crept in! Let us, by the light of new wisdom revealing the old, sweep from our land the nameless horrors which deface it. Let us teach our illiterate brothers and sisters to treat these priests of Kâli as they deserve, and to cease worshipping that outrage on the very name of womanhood upstairs--that devil drunk with blood, unsexed, obscene----"
He was proceeding after his wont, stringing adjectives on a single thread of meaning, when a triumphant yell startled him into a pause.