repeated that comfort to myself, as hour passed hour, that night!
Now—at last! No, it was a rustling of the tree-tops, and died away in the distance, to rise again as before. It sounded as though a great shaggy animal had shaken itself. Again and again it was repeated, and once there sounded the shrill cry of some bird.
Were not these signs of approaching day?
Fear made me cold. Was it possible that I was to be disappointed? Yes, I trembled now at the thought that, after all, the robbers might not come. How close, within my reach, the end had appeared to be—a short, exciting fight, and then death, scarcely felt. Nothing seemed to me so hopeless now as the wretched prospect of being found here in the morning, in the old surroundings, my old self again, and again bound to the old life. Was that really to happen? Were they not coming, my deliverers? It must assuredly be high time—but I didn't even dare to look. Yet how was that possible? Was I, after all, the victim of some illusion when I recognised Angulimala in that ascetic? Again and again did I ask myself the question, but that I could not believe. And yet if it were he, he would be sure to come—without a purpose, he would certainly not have appeared at my house in his very clever disguise, only to disappear at once again as though the earth had swallowed him. For I had caused inquiries to be made, and knew that he had begged for alms nowhere else.
The drowsy crowing of a young cock in the courtyard near woke me out of my brooding. The constellation that I sought I was scarcely able now to find, several of its stars having already sunk beneath the tree-tops. All the other groups, with the exception of those that stood highest in
