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CHAPTER VI.


In conversation.


Having taken his seat, the Kapalik showed Nabokumar his two hands which were broken.

The reader may remember that the same night when Nabokumar fled from the sea-shore in company of Kapalkundala, the Kapalik, in hunting down the couple, fell from the crest of a sand-hill. In course of his fall to the earth, he tried to save his body by clutching the ground with his two hands. Thus he saved his body but could not save his arms which were fractured. He narrated the whole story to Nabokumar in detail and then said "I feel not much difficulty in going through my daily necessary work though I possess no strength in them. They are of no service to me, even, in collecting dry sticks of wood."

Afterwards, he said "At the moment, I fell to the earth, I could not feel that my hands were fractured though the body was uninjured, as I swooned away at the time. First I lay in a perfect comatose state which was later on broken by half-conscious states. I have no clear recollection how long I lay in this condition but at its rough guess it might be estimated at two nights and one day. It was in the