When it was finished they sang other songs, but still Sri Krishna was the theme. It must have been nearly an hour before the boats arrived from the shore to take them away, and all the time, without an appreciable pause, they sang the songs of Krishna. Their store of these seemed to be inexhaustible. Most of them, according to Padmanabham, who gathered that night a record harvest of new songs and versions, were choric dancing songs, intended to be sung by dancers in a ring, such as oftenest beguile the long evenings in the villages; but now the women sang them sitting as they were upon the floor. Strange and beautiful must have been the sight and sound of our lonely ark of melody, if any listener, mortal or immortal, were abroad that night upon the windy river. I am reminded how, nearly a week later, as we lay moored for the night beside a sand-bank not far from this very spot, after seeing (for we saw) the wonder of the hills, suddenly, but softly at first, I heard grow up out of the silence of the river, like an auricular mirage, a vast chirping of tree crickets, such as fills every Indian glade at night with a sound as of a thousand tinkling waterfalls. Leaning out of the window in amazement, since for miles about there was only water and sand, — I discovered that this wandering and elfin forest music arose from a great raft that was slowly drifting by, one of those immense bamboo stages, a hundred yards or more in length, which are constantly floated down from the upland forests, each in charge of a couple

of hillmen, to the urban timber-yards. It appeared that Padmanabham was also awake and listening, for as our indomitable and star-girt serenaders floated out of hearing he asked me we two had a habit of bandying similitudes what they reminded me of, citing for his own part the village women singing of Sri Krishna in midriver there the week before. His epic simile has remained in my memory as if it had been actually a part of the poem that Reality wrote there on the first night of the voyage.

So also the women went quiring from us into the river and the night as they had come, only they came and went alike in a great wind. The manner of their going was not unworthy of the strange occasion. Four boats they filled, each as large as the magic boat that brought them. They say that faith works miracles, but the greed of the contractors seems in this case to have been hardly less potent. The business of reembarking was set only to the music of Telugu speech and happy laughter, but as the last boatload pushed clear the singing began again, and this was the prettiest passage of all. I was told that while the women sang in the cabin there was never a repetition, save what the music ordered, but now, like the chorus of a Wagnerian opera, they returned again to the melody which had heralded their first appearance. My companions joined them in a stanza, but soon broke off to listen. The now familiar carol sounded fainter and fainter above the rustle of the waves, until it sank at last into the darkness whence it came.

V

We were alone again, and free to resume our voyage. The wind still called, but we found that our crew had been so much frightened by the accident

that they insisted on remaining where we were for the night, and we were not sorry to acquiesce. We fell to discussing our adventure; but on the subject of the vision, which must have been foremost in the minds of us all, my companions at first said very little. As a man of alien faith I took care to respect their seeming reticence, curious as I was to explore their thought of the matter. My curiosity was not long to remain unsatisfied.

Just as I was preparing to turn in, Padmanabham came to me with rather a mysterious air and said he had 'something beautiful' to show me. I followed him into the cabin and was told not to look round until the word was given. I stood at the far end of the cabin with my back to the door. Padmanabham said, 'Now,' and immediately I heard behind me the sound of a flute, and turned.

Beyond the doorway of the cabin a small porch, supported on two pillars, projected over the three steps that led up to the foredeck. The cabin was still in darkness, but the porch was now lit with a mysterious emerald radiance, and appeared like the shrine of a little temple, of which the cabin formed the nave. Between the pillars of this shrine, softly phosphorescent against the square of outer darkness framed in the doorway, I saw the very form and canonical attitude of the blue-green Cowherd God, standing with crossed legs and playing on his flute. The graceful form, the beautiful face, the glossy Rajput curls I recognized as those of our young scholar Venugopalan, as if he had lent his person as a vehicle to the divinity whose name he borrowed; but what was the meaning of that strange transfiguring radiance, the 'shadowed livery' of the blue-green god himself? For a moment the solemn import and unearthly beauty of the spectacle held me like a spell.

Then, with unconscious equivocation, I addressed the apparition by name, the boy's name and the god's at once. The emerald vision of the avatar was extinguished, and my scholar stood before me in the dark. I strode past him to the door and there I read the explanation, not only of the immediate mystery, but of that night's earlier epiphany as well; for under the eaves of the porch hung a plain green lamp, the starboard lamp of the staff-boat.

Padmanabham was watching me with a look that claimed appreciation, such as he would use in reporting a choice ballad, or indicating some gem of local art. 'Now you see, sir,' said he, 'what the woman saw, only in her case there was no artifice behind it.'

'You mean that she saw Gopal clamber aboard after his ducking at the beginning?' I said.

'Just that. He happened to climb up in front of the green light. You told him to swim round to that side. This woman was one of the first to be taken across, and must have been at the end of the row, just behind the light. Those that followed her were taken through the cabin.'

'Of course!' I said. 'I wonder I did n't think of it before. She naturally did n't suppose that a mere mortal would come up out of the river at such a time. Gopal would have frightened anybody.'

'But what would I not have given, sir, to have seen him with her eyes! Just so did Sri Krishna come up out of the pool where he fought with the Lord of Serpents. Gopal's flute was still in his hand. She did n't mention it, but no doubt it formed part of her impression. And how marvelously every little circumstance conspired to help her interpretation-for misinterpretation I dare not call it. Gopal had difficulty in getting aboard, owing to our heavy list to port, and she read his struggles as

the effort of the god to right the ship. Once aboard, he climbed by way of the roof to the dressing-room

'But,' I interrupted, 'he was standing within a yard of her in the cabin when she told her story. I suppose she did n't know him in the dark.'

'No, and the crowd; and she was n't expecting to find him there; and besides he had changed his linen waistcloth for that purple silk one, and also put on a Salem scarf.'

'I've no doubt you are right,' I said. 'It was very clever of you to guess it all. I thought the woman might have seen you or me swimming in the water, and dreamed the rest. I quite forgot about Gopal.'

'It was Murahari, painter and opera-goer, who first explained the miracle. He wanted Gopal to stage his little mystery in the porch while the women were still in the cabin, but we would n't allow it. We did n't want to wreck their beautiful belief. Now,' his eyes glowed, 'it will grow into a legend.'

I smiled at his enthusiasm. 'I suppose I ought to be flattered,' I said, 'that you don't class me with those simple souls, but I could almost wish that you had been as careful even of my feebler wisp of illusion. You don't seem to feel at all like that yourself, Padmam. I suppose you find the miracle more "convincing" now that you can account for it, like the voices on the water that began it.'

Padmanabham reflected for a moment. 'Yes, I think I would rather know that something beautiful actually happened than be left in doubt whether the woman did n't imagine everything. But I don't see why this explanation should altogether destroy the spiritual meaning of the vision. I, as you know, am a pantheist. I believe that God works His will, not by breaking in upon the order of events, but in the order itself. Why should not His epiphanies be accomplished in the same way?'

'Such epiphanies,' I said, tempting him, 'would always be liable to be dismissed as accidental illusions.'

'Nothing is really accidental,' replied my young scholar and preceptor, 'and everything, as we perceive it, is illusion. To the sannyasin even the incarnation of Sri Krishna himself is an illusion, justified in the last resort, like the rest of our experience, only by its beauty and helpfulness. It seems to me that our river vision has a measure at least of the same justification.'

This time it was my turn to pause and think.

"The hour is late,' I said at last, 'the matter complicated; and I suspect that you are something of a sophist. I admit that your interpretation is the better poetry, and I claim that mine's the better history. I am still doubtful which is the better religion. But if you believe, and I deny, the right will be with one of us.'

'Or between us,' he said.

FOR the hundredth time, savagely, I rang that doorbell. It was not my first visit, by any means, although there was no hope that the mistress of the household could be seen, for she had eloped several days before with a millionaire manufacturer of cosmetics; and as for her husband, he was under restraint in a private sanitarium. There was a grown daughter who was supposed to be in her mother's confidence, and I hoped to worm out of her the secret of the lovers' whereabouts. The newspaper I was working for was getting uneasy. It had printed the scandal with gusto but without provocation. There had been no court action, no street encounter between the two men; the millionaire had not even been expelled from his clubs. There was no legal privilege of publication. And as time wore on, the other newspapers not daring in the circumstances to say anything about the case, there had come to the office an acute feeling that unless the runaways were found there might be short shrift in a libel suit.

As I turned away from the door a telegraph messenger boy was wearily mounting the steps.

"There's nobody home,' I told him curtly, 'not even a servant.'

"You can sign for this, can't you?' he asked. 'Friend of the family.'

On the open book he held out for my signature was a telegram addressed to the daughter of the house. It must surely be from her mother. I set down

I

an assumed name, pocketed the message, and waited until the boy was out of sight.

It was evening and I was working for an afternoon newspaper, so I took my booty home. There, with a borrowed and heated hatpin, I opened the telegram- not very expertly, for I tore the flap. The message was dated from Tucson, and was an inquiry from the wife about the condition of the deserted husband. I had found the runaways.

The anxiety behind this telegram did not at all concern me, nor was I concerned at having stolen it. As the child of God-fearing parents I think I may say I had a strict sense of private property rights: I would not have pilfered ten cents or ten dollars. But my conscience was wholly untroubled about the message, because I had done the conventional thing. I was living up to the standards of my fellows. Other reporters would have done as I did, confident of the approval of their superiors; and this was true of nearly all metropolitan newspapers twenty years ago, not merely of those which were denominated yellow. We used to hear of some that did not join in such practices, but they were notoriously stodgy, and suffered correspondingly in revenue. A comparison of the circulation and advertising statistics of the Boston Transcript as against the New York World, of the New York Evening Post of that day as against the Chicago Tribune, will illustrate my point.

Newspapers that were successful financially went after news aggressively, and on occasion made news, as my paper had done in the case of this illicit elopement.

I was exultant, not ashamed; and it was with repressed triumph that I laid the telegram on the city editor's desk the next morning, explaining in detail how I had come by it.

He heard me unmoved, gazing out over the 'local room.' Then he said hastily that he must go into the editorial conference, a daily formality, and would see me when he returned. He took the telegram with him. This impressed me as rather odd behavior, but what happened when he came back was really trying.

'You are aware,' he said severely, 'that you have committed a felony?'

I nodded. I was beginning to get angry.

"This newspaper cannot countenance such conduct,' he continued, 'and will make no use whatever of information obtained in that way. If I did not realize that you acted from overzeal I should be compelled to discharge you. As it is, you will be permitted to remain on the staff, on probation. Now, what are you going to do with this telegram?' His gravity relaxed; his manner implied a bantering reproach. 'Rough work,' he said. "The flap's torn.'

'I'll paste it up,' I replied sullenly, 'and stick it under the door."

the task was safely accomplished. The message was slow in coming. Once, when I emerged from a telephone booth after answering a personal call, the city editor summoned me impatiently. He leaned forward and whispered with the air of a conspirator: 'Have you removed the corpse from the premises?'

Although I was in a state of high moral indignation at the manner in which my lawbreaking was being accepted, I was somewhat mollified at this tacit indication of fellow responsibility. After all, the city editor was a good scout. Presently I learned that the telegram had been put under the right door, and that my messenger, after ringing the bell, had escaped without being questioned, and I so reported. I was made to feel, somehow, that I was in quite good odor at the office.

That afternoon the paper printed on the first page a story from Tucson. The runaways were there, registered under an assumed name at the principal hotel. If 'no use whatever' had been made of the information in the stolen telegram, then some obscure reporter out West must have been blessed suddenly with clairvoyance. The couple, thus discovered, started at once toward home, and I was sent out to meet the train halfway. There was no suit for libel.

II

Thereafter I thought it proper to say

I returned to my desk, and presently the Sunday editor, with a curious smile, handed me a receiving telegraph envelope, properly addressed. As he turned wordlessly away the city editor beckoned me, slipped the message into the fresh envelope, sealed it, and directed me, instead of returning it in person, to employ someone I could trust, and have him telephone me when

was expected to deliver the goods and no questions asked. There was the time, for instance, when I broke into a house to steal a photograph. We prized pictures highly in those days, although it was fifteen years before the advent of the illustrated tabloid.

I was reporting an unsavory will-case in an Illinois city, and the wife of a Baptist clergyman from a near-by town was disagreeably involved in it. She