Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/181

 servant, prisoner. The servant he sent to Ujjeni for ransom. As this, for some reason, was not forthcoming, he had, according to robber usage, put Kamanita to death.

At these frightful words I should certainly have lost consciousness, had not a possibility presented itself to my despairing mind of hoping against hope.

"Satagira is a base and a crafty fellow," I answered, with apparent calm, "who would stop at no fraud; and he has set his heart, or rather his pride, upon gaining me for his wife. If he, at the time you speak of, examined the chain so attentively, what was to hinder him from having one made like it? I imagine that this idea occurred to him when he first heard of Angulimala. If he had not taken Angulimala himself prisoner, he could always say that the chain had been found in possession of the robbers, and that they had confessed to having killed Kamanita."

"That is hardly possible, my daughter," said my father, shaking his head, "and for a reason which thou, it is true, canst not see, but which I, as a goldsmith, can fortunately reveal to thee. If thou wilt examine the small gold links which connect the crystals with one another, thou wilt notice that the metal is redder than that of our jewellery here, because we use in our alloys more silver than copper. The workmanship also is of the somewhat coarser type seen in the mountain districts."

On my lips there hung the reply that so clever a goldsmith as himself would, no doubt, succeed as perfectly in the matter of the proper mixture of the gold as in turning out the characteristic workmanship; for I saw every one and everything conspiring against our love,