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Srikanta ashes into your mouth. You can take them yourself if you want them." But don't, for God's sake, give away fish with your own hand—even if he were exactly like me. Do you understand?'

'But why?'

'I'll tell you when I come back. But be careful!' He disappeared as quickly as he had come.

This time every hair on my body stood on end. Through every vein my blood suddenly ran cold, cold as melted ice. I was no child that I could not guess at what awful thing Indra was hinting. Many events have occurred in my life compared to which our little adventure was an insignificant affair. But I can truly say that language is powerless to describe the terror which surged through my soul when Indra left me. I all but lost consciousness through sheer fright. Every minute it seemed to me as if somebody was peering at me from beyond the high, sandy bank in front of me, and every time I looked sideways at him he seemed to thrust forward his head.

What an endless time Indra was taking to return!

At last I thought I heard human voices. I twisted my sacred thread a hundredfold round my thumb and sat with my head bent low, straining to catch the slightest sound. As the voices became clearer I realized that two or three men were coming towards me talking. One of them was Indra and the other two were up-country men. But before I saw their faces, I had a good look to see if they cast shadows in the moonlight; for I had known the indisputable truth from my childhood that those beings cast no shadows.