whipped out a knife and tried to pick the lock, with an assurance that bespoke familiarity with such processes, but the rusty clamp would not yield. A longer and a louder clamor, and then a lusty Brahman seized one of the big keys on the table, a bar of iron as solid as the key of the Bastille, and began hammering the clasp, laying on blacksmith's blows with a will. The padlock flew off, the heavy lid creaked back, and with deafening yells the riches of Chidambram came in view.
They drew out all the jeweled ornaments, the crowns, caps, hand-and arm-coverings, necklaces, ear-rings, nose-rings, bracelets, anklets, and staffs given to the temple's precious idols for centuries back, laid them on the table, and passed them to us to handle and defile at will. The Brahmans shouted, talked, oh'd and ah'd, stretched hands over our shoulders to call attention to some special beauty or marvel, and even snatched them from our hands. Their eyes shone and their faces glowed with pride and joy in these treasures, their delight at seeing them childlike in its expression. They all told at once how the ruby bracelets were given the goddess by the rani, wife of the Raja of Tanjore, in fulfilment of a vow; and how, when the pious rani learned that the goddess had no ear-bosses, she despoiled her own jewel-boxes of her most magnificent ones. Then they told of Patcheapper Mudalier, the rich man of Madras, who had given the goddess pairs of gold serpents scaled over with great jewels; and, at the sale of the effects of the late Raja of Tanjore in 1891, had bought and presented the temple with a
