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DURGESA NANDINI

own way. After going some distance in this manner, the charger stumbled at some hard substance. As the lightning played just then, the traveller caught a glimpse of some gigantic white object before him. Taking it to be a building, he jumped to the ground, and came to know that some stone stairs had occasioned the accident. Hence concluding shelter to be at hand, he let his horse loose, and in darkness cautiously began to ascend the flight of steps. By the help of the lightning he soon ascertained that the pile before him was a temple. He adroitly reached its little door, but found it shut. He felt it about with his hand and perceived that it was not fastened outside. "In this temple, situated as it is in an uninhabited, solitary tract, who can have fastened the door within?"—the traveller asked himself with some surprise and curiosity. But the rain was beating pitilessly against his head, so that be the occupant whoever he might, the traveller fell to rapping at the door violently with his hand, again and again. But in vain. Irresistibly prompted to break it open by kicking, he refrained from going so far, lest thereby he should commit an act of graceless sacrilege. But notwithstanding this forbearance of his, the violence of his blows was such that the frail wooden thing was not able to bear it long—shortly it was deprived of its fastening pin. On the door being flung open, as the young man entered the temple, a faint shriek, issuing from it, entered his ear; and immediately a gust, rushing in, blew out the lamp which had been burning there. Who was in the temple and what the image of the god?—the newcomer could not at all determine. Finding himself thus placed, the dauntless young man only smiled, and