THE DOOM OF THE VRISHNIS ^31
kittens were fathered by dogs, and mice by the mungoose. Fires, when first lighted, bent their flames toward the left. Sometimes they threw out a blaze whose splendour burnt blue and red. The sun, at his rising and setting over the doomed city^ seemed to be encircled with headless bodies of men. Those who kept silence, for prayer or thought, immediately became aware of the hea^ tread about them, of marching hosts, yet never could they find out what had caused the sound. The constellations were again and again seen to be struck by the planets. The wives of Vrishni heroes dreamt nightly of a witch who came and snatched from their wrists the auspicious thread. And the guards of the royal armoury suddenly discovered that the place where the weapons and standards of State should be were empty.
Then the Vrishnis, in their fear of what seemed to be coming upon them, felt the need of some opportunity for public prayer and penance for the averting of evil destiny. But Krishna, pondering alone upon all these portents, under- stood that the thirty-sixth year was come, and that the words of Gandhari, burning with grief at the death of her sons, and deprived as she had been of all her kinsmen, were about to be fulfilled. And seeing all things, and understanding that what was to be would surely come to pass. He did not attempt to turn aside the course of destiny, but
