26 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
CHAPTER III. 
About noon the soldier awoke from a refreshing 
sleep,, and upon rising found the old man seated 
before the door of his miserable dwelling ; his eyes 
were raised towards the sun, that was pouring its fiery 
beams upon his naked head,, upon which a single lock 
rising from the crown,, grey, lank, and withered, in- 
dicated his caste to be the highest. As the deserter 
had assumed the costume of the country, in order the 
more effectually to elude pursuit and evade discovery, 
the venerable zealot, who was nearly blind from age, 
was not aware of the propinquity of an object sup- 
posed to impart contamination to the very atmosphere 
within the influence of a Brahmin’s respiration. When, 
therefore, the stranger invaded the privacy of this 
senile fanatic, the latter had not questioned the pro- 
priety of his intrusion, knowing that no native of 
inferior caste would have dared to violate by his pre- 
sence the abode of Brahminical sanctity ; but when 
the intruder appeared at the door of the dwelling 
which he had so unceremoniously appropriated, and 
announced himself to be a faringhee, or Christian in 
disguise, the old man seemed in a moment to have 
obtained new life. He started from the ground. 
