Chapter Three

Mahendra went his way. Kalyani, alone with her little girl in that desolate place, sat in the well-nigh dark hovel and looked about her on every hand. A great fear was rising in her heart. No man was anywhere; not a sound of human kind was to be heard, save only the cry of the jackal and the dog. She thought within herself: "Wherefore did I let him go? Better that we had borne the hunger and the thirst yet a little longer." She thought to bar the doors on every side and so sit within.

But on not one door was there leaf nor bolt. As thus she looked about her on every side, she beheld in the doorway before her a thing as it were a shadow. The form of a man it seemed, and yet not of a man. Exceeding dry, wasted, exceeding black, naked, of fearful aspect — somewhat man-like did it come and stand in the doorway. After a space the shadow lifted as it were a hand, and with the long withered finger of that long withered hand of skin and bone made a sign as though beckoning to some other.

Kalyani's heart sank within her. Then yet another such shadow — withered, black, tall of stature, naked — came and stood beside the first. After that another came. And then yet another. How many came I cannot say — slowly, silently, they began to enter into the dwelling. That well-nigh dark chamber grew terrible as a burning-ghat at midnight. Then those phantom shapes stood ringed about Kalyani and her daughter. Kalyani was wellnigh swooning. The black and withered men then seized Kalyani and her child, lifted them up, bore them forth out of the hovel, crossed the field and passed within a thicket.

A while after, Mahendra came thither with his pitcher and the milk in it. He beheld no soul anywhere; he searched here and there, he called many times by the child's name, and at the last by his wife's name; he received no answer, he found no trace of them.