THE DARKNESS of the wood was very deep and Kalyani could not find her way. In the thickly-woven entanglement of trees, creepers and thorns there was no path at the best of times and on that there came this impenetrable darkness. Separating the branches and creepers, pushing through thorn and briar Kalyani began to make her way into the thickness of the wood. The thorns pierced the child's skin and she cried from time to time; and at that the shouts of the pursuing robbers rose higher. In this way with torn and bleeding body, Kalyani made far progress into the woodland. After a little while the moon rose. Until then there was some slight confidence in Kalyani's mind that in the darkness the robbers would not be able to find her and after a brief and fruitless search would desist from the pursuit, but, now that the moon had risen, that confidence left her. The moon, as it mounted into the sky, shed its light on the woodland tops and the darkness within was suffused with it. The darkness brightened, and here and there, through gaps, the outer luminousness found its way inside and peeped into the thickets. The higher the moon mounted, the more the light penetrated into the reaches of foliage, the deeper all the shadows took refuge in the thicker parts of the forest. Kalyani too with her child hid herself farther and farther in where the shadows retreated. And now the robbers shouted higher and began to come running from all sides, and the child in her terror wept louder. Kalyani then gave up the struggle and made no farther attempt to escape. She sat down with the girl on her lap on a grassy thornless spot at the foot of a great tree and called repeatedly "Where art Thou? Thou whom I worship daily, to whom daily I bow down, in reliance on whom I had the strength to penetrate into this forest, where art Thou, O Madhusudan?" At this time, what with fear, the deep emotion of spiritual love and worship and the lassitude of hunger and thirst, Kalyani gradually lost sense of her outward surroundings and became full of an inward consciousness in which she was aware of a heavenly voice singing in mid-air,
"O Hari, O Murari, O foe of Kaitabh and Madhu!
O Gopal, O Govinda, O Mukunda, O Shauri!
O Hari, O Murari, O foe of Kaitabh and Madhu!"
Kalyani had heard from her childhood, in the recitation of the Puranas, that the sages of Paradise roam the world on the paths of the sky, crying aloud to the music of the harp the name of Hari. That imagination took shape in her mind and she began to see with the inner vision a mighty ascetic, harp in hand, whitebodied, whitehaired, whitebearded, whiterobed, tall of stature, singing in the path of the azure heavens,
"O Hari, O Murari, O foe of Kaitabh and Madhu!"
Gradually the song grew nearer, louder she heard the words,
"O Hari, O Murari, O foe of Kaitabh and Madhu!"
Then still nearer, still clearer,
"O Hari, O Murari, O foe of Kaitabh and Madhu!"
At last over Kalyani's head the chant rang echoing in the woodland,
"O Hari, O Murari, O foe of Kaitabh and Madhu!"
Then Kalyani opened her eyes. In the half-lustrous moonbeams suffused and shadowed with the darkness of the forest, she saw in front of her that whitebodied, whitehaired, whitebearded, whiterobed image of a sage. Dreamily all her consciousness centred on the vision. Kalyani thought to bow down to it, but she could not perform the salutation; even as she bent her head, all consciousness left her and she lay fallen supine on the ground.