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114 fires which shed a glare on the crowd of half-clad adults and naked children. A shadow had just fallen upon the surface of the queen of night, slowly if spread over it until the face of the great luminary was covered, and it hung in the cloudless heavens an orb of roseate hue, its radiance all gone. Then the noise became terrific, the reports of guns and crackers were almost deafening, which increased as a gleam of silver tinged the outer rim of the dimmed goddess. Slowly the shadow passed away, the light growing brighter and brighter, the great, dragon Asura Rahu, that had attempted to swallow the moon, had been driven away and it again shone in all of its brilliancy, but soon faded away before the corruscations of the coming dawn. It was a scene photographed on the memory worthy the pen of an Arnold or the pencil of a Titian: the ruddy glow of the flowing water, the multitude upon the river banks with its white houses embowered in dense foliage, the frantic efforts of the people as the shadow drifted across the disk of the moon and fell across the landscape and the glare of the fires that lighted up the immediate surroundings, a spectacle that could be witnessed nowhere else save in the interior of Siam, where no white man dwells and the native clings to his superstitions as religiously as did his forefathers ere the present dynasty ascended the throne of this kingdom. It was early morn ere peace reigned once more, and when, the sun rose amid the pearliest of skies its beams lit up a lovely scene, gilding the spires of the wats and roofs of the palaces; business had resumed its sway, the fisherman was hawking fish, the fruitier his fruit, the merchant had displayed his goods on the counter, the priests were gathering their food into their rice