Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/403

Rh Steps lead to adjoining viharas, three-story caves where the square cells with sculptured walls allowed room only for the stone shelf or string-bed of the anchorite.

Workmen dawdled with pick and crowbar, clearing away rubbish at the entrance, and the discomfited priests lounged there, chatting, when we came back from the viharas. Black rain-clouds were rolling up, and we started down the rocky path, leaving Dhoond Dhu to stir up and drive the chair-coolies. Then a great cry arose as priests, workmen, and coolies ran howling: "Prissint! Prissint! Memsahib!" rubbing their itching palms across their faces and extending them beseechingly. They shoved one another aside, wrangled fiercely, and seemed ready to do violence to the small guide. It was not the place in which to have an argument with even one bad man, and the dozen big beggars could easily have pitched us over the precipice, or shut us up in farther caves, without killing, until we were ready to pay ransom. But one has such contempt for the Hindu that fear or the possibility of danger never suggested itself until we were well away and thought what that number of Afghans or Macedonians might have done. To stop the clatter and warn off the bogus priest who had snatched Dhoond Dhu roughly by the shoulder, I lifted my umbrella and took but one step forward, when the pack ran back to the cave entrance, and the chair-coolies threw themselves flat and crawled to their poles, imploring mercy. We had to lean against the rock wall while we laughed at the farcical dénoue-