Page:Confessions of a Thug.djvu/114

 bland manners of my father, that what could he have suspected? That he was in the hands of those from whom he was to meet his death? Ah, no! And as I gazed and gazed, how I longed to scream out to him to fly! had I not known that my own death would have followed instantaneously, I had done it. Yet it would have been of no use. I turned away my eyes from them; but they returned to the same place involuntarily. Every movement of the men behind seemed the prelude to the fatal ending. At last I could bear the intensity of my feelings no longer: I got up, and was hurrying away, when my father followed me.

"Where are you going?" said he; "I insist on your staying here; this is your initiation; you must see it, and go through with the whole."

"I shall return directly," said I: "I go but a pace or two; I am sick."

"Faint-hearted!" said he in a low tone; "see you do not stay long, this farce must soon end."

A turn or two apart from the assembly restored me again, and I returned and took up my former place, exactly opposite the old man and his son. Ya Alla! Sahib, even now I think they are there, (and the Thug pointed with his finger), father and son; and the son's