"The wisdom of our Lord Ganêsh----" Then he had found freedom.
"You seem to know their ways, sir," said a horsey-looking man who had come in with us and who had evidently something to do with the show. "So, if you could give us a 'elp with this pore fellar's beast, I'd be obliged. Hasn't touched food this ten days--never since the old man took worse, and a elephant, sir, is a dead loss to a show. The master lef' 'im here with me, but I'm blowed if I can do nothing with him."
I found Ganêsh happier than his master, for, no place being large enough for him, he lay in the open; but they had stretched a tarpaulin over him like a rick-cover, as a protection.
A glance told me he was far gone, though he lay crouched, not prone; his trunk--marvellous agent for good or ill--stretched out before him beyond shelter into the snow.
As I came up to him, I fancied I saw a flicker in his eyes, those eyes so small, so full of wisdom. Then I laid in front of him the old man's turban, ragged, worn, which I had begged of the prim nurses. In a second the whole, huge, inert mass of flesh became instinct with life. He rose to his feet with incredible swiftness, and softly encircling the old ragged pugree, raised it gently and placed it in the master's seat. For a moment I doubted what would come next; but the instinct which is held in leviathan's small brain is great. He knew by some mysterious art that the master was dead, that the human mind which had been his guide was gone.
He took one step forward, threw up his trunk, and the echoes of the surrounding houses cracked with the roaring bellow of his trumpet as he swayed sideways and fell dead.
That was all the little smug provincial English town ever knew of the
"Wisdom of our Lord Ganêsh."