Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/180

 announced that Satagira was returning in triumph to the city, having either cut down the robbers or taken them prisoner; and that the horrible Angulimala himself had fallen into his hands alive. She invited me to go out with her and Somadatta to the street, to witness the entry of the soldiers with the captive robbers, but I did not wish Satagira to have the satisfaction of seeing me among the spectators of his triumph. So I stayed behind alone, more than happy at the thought that the roads were now again open to my beloved. For so little do mortals understand of the workings of fate that they sometimes, as I did then, greet as a specially fortunate day just that one on which the current of their lives takes a turn for the worse.

On the following morning my father entered my room. He handed me a crystal chain with a tiger-eye as amulet, and asked me if I, by any possibility, recognised it.

I felt as though I should drop, but I summoned up all my strength and answered that the chain resembled one which thou hadst always worn round thy neck.

"It isn't like it," said my father, with brutal calmness, "it is it. When Angulimala was made prisoner he was wearing the chain, and Satagira at once recognised it. For, as he related to me, he had once wrestled with Kamanita in the park for your ball, and, in the course of the struggle, had seized Kamanita's chain in order to hold the latter back. The chain parted and remained in Satagira's hands, so that he was able to examine it minutely. He was convinced that he couldn't be deceived. And then Angulimala, closely questioned, confessed that in the region of the Vedisa, he had, two years ago, attacked Kamanita's caravan on its return journey to Ujjeni, had cut down his people, and had taken Kamanita, with a