Page:Achmed Abdullah--Wings.djvu/147

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KRISHNAVANA
131

And the gentle Brahman pitied and helped him.

He took the empty soul of Oughtred Couzens and filled it with golden peace and happiness, he inoculated it with the ancient wisdom of India, and ever he made a point of dwelling on the fact that it was a little turtle which had worked the final conversion, which had destroyed the pagan belief in the Cross, which had opened to the Englishman the door of Asia's great, mysterious treasure-house. Thus had the many gods of India shown their might in the body of a small animal.

Couzens wondered and believed and worshiped, and even after Krishnavana had left him, he continued more and more to become an integral part of the land in which he lived, believing implicitly in the lessons of the land, and above all things happy in his new belief.

Never again could Christ come back to his soul.

But what of it? He had a new faith, a true faith, a faith which worked miracles, a faith in which happiness and wisdom mated.

And so the Reverend Oughtred Couzens became a Holy Man of Hindustan; he built a little temple near a village, and there, on an altar painted ocher,