Page:Rabindranath Tagore - A Biographical Study.djvu/83

 his belief in the identity of nature and man, of nature and supernature. So far the tales described have been virtually of everyday life in Bengal. But one remains among Mr. Ranjan Sen's versions, "The Hungry Stones," which shows a truly uncanny power in romance. In it the place-interest centres in a dead and deserted palace of white marble, very stately in its Persian courts and galleries, standing above a Ghât or river-stair in Hyderabad. It had been built two centuries and a half earlier by the Shah Mahamed II., and long abandoned. Then a cotton-toll agent or collector takes up his abode there, a creature of uncommon tastes in his way, and given to look for wonders in his experience; and it is he who tells the tale, though in no more romance-befitting a place than the waiting-room at a railway station.

He is first made aware of something unusual when he has taken a chair down to the lowest step of the long palace stairs one evening to sit by the water. He notices "the dense sweet aroma of mint, anise, and wild basil" that floats down from the neighbouring hills. The sun goes; a tall drop-scene of deep shadow falls on