with their orange bills, and resting, when tired, upon the painted balconies of the pleasure-house.
And we rowed past the dwarfed walls with the dreary, pleasant sound of the flood lapping against them, and passed down the stately reach of water till we came to the beautiful temple of Mahadeva, that lifts up its crown of maroon and gold high out of the solemn hush of the trees among which its foundations lie. A golden god glittered at the point — a star to the people. The gate was closed, but as we lay on our oars before it, there came, on the sudden from within, the clanging of the temple bell, that through all the year rings in every hour of night or day! Who was pulling the bell? A merman? Perhaps, forsaken by all his priests, the god himself! We shouted. A tern was startled by the shout, and an owl fell out of a hole in the wall; but there was no reply. Another shout, however, was answered — was it a human voice? — and then we heard the unseen bell-ringer swimming to the gate. It opened after much trouble and splashing, and we floated into the enclosure, came into the Lake of Silence, our guide swimming alongside. What a strangely sacred place it seemed, this temple to Mahadeva! Up to its terrace in water, the marble bulls conchant in the flood, on which floated here and there the last votive marigolds thrown before the god, the shrine was the very emblem of Faith, as it reared its glittering crown skyward up above the creeping, treacherous water, — in the hands of the Philistines perhaps, but the Samson nevertheless, — its feet in the toils, but head erect to heaven. We all talked in a more or less maudlin way, for sentiment made a fool of each in turn. But no one of us who saw it can forget that strange Indian scene. The gracious water sparkled from wall
