There was once a man in India who was Prime Minister of one of the
semi-independent native States in the northwestern part of the
country. He was a Brahmin, so high-caste that caste ceased to have any
particular meaning for him; and his father had been an important
official in the gay-colored tag-rag and bobtail of an old-fashioned
Hindu Court. But as Purun Dass grew up he felt that the old order of
things was changing, and that if any one wished to get on in the world
he must stand well with the English, and imitate all that the English
believed to be good. At the same time a native official must keep his
own master's favor. This was a difficult game, but the quiet,
close-mouthed young Brahmin, helped by a good English education at a
Bombay University, played it coolly, and rose, step by step, to be
Prime Minister of the kingdom. That is to say, he held more real power
than his master, the Maharajah.
When the old king--who was suspicious of the English, their railways
and telegraphs--died, Purun Dass stood high with his young successor,
who had been tutored by an Englishman; and between them, though he
always took care that his master should have the credit, they
established schools for little girls, made roads, and started State
dispensaries and shows of agricultural implements, and published a
yearly blue-book on the "Moral and Material Progress of the State,"
and the Foreign Office and the Government of India were delighted.
Very few native States take up English progress altogether, for they
will not believe, as Purun Dass showed he did, that what was good for
the Englishman must be twice as good for the Asiatic. The Prime
Minister became the honored friend of Viceroys and Governors, and
Lieutenant-Governors, and medical missionaries, and common
missionaries, and hard-riding English officers who came to shoot in
the State preserves, as well as of whole hosts of tourists who
traveled up and down India in the cold weather, showing how things
ought to be managed. In his spare time he would endow scholarships for
the study of medicine and manufactures on strictly English lines, and
write letters to the "Pioneer," the greatest Indian daily paper,
explaining his master's aims and objects.
At last he went to England on a visit, and had to pay enormous sums to
the priests when he came back; for even so high-caste a Brahmin as
Purun Dass lost caste by crossing the black sea. In London he met and
talked with every one worth knowing--men whose names go all over the
world--and saw a great deal more than he said. He was given honorary
degrees by learned universities, and he made speeches and talked of
Hindu social reform to English ladies in evening dress, till all
London cried, "This is the most fascinating man we have ever met at
dinner since cloths were first laid."
When he returned to India there was a blaze of glory, for the Viceroy
himself made a special visit to confer upon the Maharajah the Grand
Cross of the Star of India--all diamonds and ribbons and enamel; and
at the same ceremony, while the cannon boomed, Purun Dass was made a
Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire; so that his name
stood Sir Purun Dass, K.C.I.E.
That evening, at dinner in the big Viceregal tent, he stood up with
the badge and the collar of the Order on his breast, and replying to
the toast of his master's health, made a speech few Englishmen could
have bettered.
Next month, when the city had returned to its sunbaked quiet, he did a
thing no Englishman would have dreamed of doing; for, so far as the
world's affairs went, he died. The jeweled order of his knighthood
went back to the Indian Government, and a new Prime Minister was
appointed to the charge of affairs, and a great game of General Post
began in all the subordinate appointments. The priests knew what had
happened and the people guessed; but India is the one place in the
world where a man can do as he pleases and nobody asks why; and the
fact that Dewan Sir Purun Dass, K.C.I.E., had resigned position,
palace, and power, and taken up the begging-bowl and ocher-colored
dress of a Sunnyasi or holy man, was considered nothing
extraordinary. He had been, as the Old Law recommends, twenty years a
youth, twenty years a fighter,--though he had never carried a weapon
in his life,--and twenty years head of a household. He had used his
wealth and his power for what he knew both to be worth; he had taken
honor when it came his way; he had seen men and cities far and near,
and men and cities had stood up and honored him. Now he would let
these things go, as a man drops the cloak he no longer needs.
Behind him, as he walked through the city gates, an antelope skin and
brass-handled crutch under his arm, and a begging-bowl of polished
brown _coco-de-mer_ in his hand, barefoot, alone, with eyes cast on
the ground--behind him they were firing salutes from the bastions in
honor of his happy successor. Purun Dass nodded. All that life was
ended; and he bore it no more ill-will or good-will than a man bears
to a colorless dream of the night. He was a Sunnyasi--a houseless
wandering mendicant, depending on his neighbors for his daily bread;
and so long as there is a morsel to divide in India neither priest nor
beggar starves. He had never in his life tasted meat, and very seldom
eaten even fish. A five-pound note would have covered his personal
expenses for food through any one of the many years in which he had
been absolute master of millions of money. Even when he was being
lionized in London he had held before him his dream of peace and
quiet--the long, white, dusty Indian road, printed all over with bare
feet, the incessant, slow-moving traffic, and the sharp-smelling wood
smoke curling up under the fig-trees in the twilight, where the
wayfarers sit at their evening meal.
When the time came to make that dream true the Prime Minister took the
proper steps, and in three days you might more easily have found a
bubble in the trough of the long Atlantic seas than Purun Dass among
the roving, gathering, separating millions of India.
At night his antelope skin was spread where the darkness overtook
him--sometimes in a Sunnyasi monastery by the roadside; sometimes by a
mud pillar shrine of Kala Pir, where the Jogis, who are another misty
division of holy men, would receive him as they do those who know what
castes and divisions are worth; sometimes on the outskirts of a little
Hindu village, where the children would steal up with the food their
parents had prepared; and sometimes on the pitch of the bare
grazing-grounds, where the flame of his stick fire waked the drowsy
camels. It was all one to Purun Dass--or Purun Bhagat, as he called
himself now. Earth, people, and food were all one. But unconsciously
his feet drew him away northward and eastward; from the south to
Rohtak; from Rohtak to Kurnool; from Kurnool to ruined Samanah, and
then up-stream along the dried bed of the Gugger river that fills only
when the rain falls in the hills, till one day he saw the far line of
the great Himalayas.
Then Purun Bhagat smiled, for he remembered that his mother was of
Rajput Brahmin birth, from Kulu way--a Hill-woman, always homesick for
the snows--and that the least touch of Hill blood draws a man at the
end back to where he belongs.
"Yonder," said Purun Bhagat, breasting the lower slopes of the Sewaliks,
where the cacti stand up like seven-branched candlesticks--"yonder
I shall sit down and get knowledge"; and the cool wind of the
Himalayas whistled about his ears as he trod the road that led to
Simla.
The last time he had come that way it had been in state, with a
clattering cavalry escort, to visit the gentlest and most affable of
Viceroys; and the two had talked for an hour together about mutual
friends in London, and what the Indian common folk really thought of
things. This time Purun Bhagat paid no calls, but leaned on the rail
of the Mall, watching that glorious view of the Plains spread out
forty miles below, till a native Mohammedan policeman told him he was
obstructing traffic; and Purun Bhagat salaamed reverently to the Law,
because he knew the value of it, and was seeking for a Law of his own.
Then he moved on, and slept that night in an empty hut at Chota Simla,
which looks like the very last end of the earth, but it was only the
beginning of his journey.
[Illustration]
He followed the Himalaya-Thibet road, the little ten-foot track that
is blasted out of solid rock, or strutted out on timbers over gulfs a
thousand feet deep; that dips into warm, wet, shut-in valleys, and
climbs out across bare, grassy hill-shoulders where the sun strikes
like a burning-glass; or turns through dripping, dark forests where
the tree-ferns dress the trunks from head to heel, and the pheasant
calls to his mate. And he met Thibetan herdsmen with their dogs and
flocks of sheep, each sheep with a little bag of borax on his back,
and wandering wood-cutters, and cloaked and blanketed Lamas from
Thibet, coming into India on pilgrimage, and envoys of little solitary
Hill-states, posting furiously on ring-streaked and piebald ponies, or
the cavalcade of a Rajah paying a visit; or else for a long, clear day
he would see nothing more than a black bear grunting and rooting below
in the valley. When he first started, the roar of the world he had
left still rang in his ears, as the roar of a tunnel rings long after
the train has passed through; but when he had put the Mutteeanee Pass
behind him that was all done, and Purun Bhagat was alone with himself,
walking, wondering, and thinking, his eyes on the ground, and his
thoughts with the clouds.
One evening he crossed the highest pass he had met till then--it had
been a two days' climb--and came out on a line of snow-peaks that
banded all the horizon--mountains from fifteen to twenty thousand feet
high, looking almost near enough to hit with a stone, though they were
fifty or sixty miles away. The pass was crowned with dense, dark
forest--deodar, walnut, wild cherry, wild olive, and wild pear, but
mostly deodar, which is the Himalayan cedar; and under the shadow of
the deodars stood a deserted shrine to Kali--who is Durga, who is
Sitala, who is sometimes worshiped against the smallpox.
Purun Dass swept the stone floor clean, smiled at the grinning statue,
made himself a little mud fireplace at the back of the shrine, spread
his antelope skin on a bed of fresh pine-needles, tucked his
_bairagi_--his brass-handled crutch--under his armpit, and sat down to
rest.
Immediately below him the hillside fell away, clean and cleared for
fifteen hundred feet, where a little village of stone-walled houses,
with roofs of beaten earth, clung to the steep tilt. All round it the
tiny terraced fields lay out like aprons of patchwork on the knees of
the mountain, and cows no bigger than beetles grazed between the
smooth stone circles of the threshing-floors. Looking across the
valley, the eye was deceived by the size of things, and could not at
first realize that what seemed to be low scrub, on the opposite
mountain-flank, was in truth a forest of hundred-foot pines. Purun
Bhagat saw an eagle swoop across the gigantic hollow, but the great
bird dwindled to a dot ere it was half-way over. A few bands of
scattered clouds strung up and down the valley, catching on a shoulder
of the hills, or rising up and dying out when they were level with the
head of the pass. And "Here shall I find peace," said Purun Bhagat.
Now, a Hill-man makes nothing of a few hundred feet up or down, and as
soon as the villagers saw the smoke in the deserted shrine, the
village priest climbed up the terraced hillside to welcome the
stranger.
When he met Purun Bhagat's eyes--the eyes of a man used to control
thousands--he bowed to the earth, took the begging-bowl without a
word, and returned to the village, saying, "We have at last a holy
man. Never have I seen such a man. He is of the Plains--but
pale-colored--a Brahmin of the Brahmins." Then all the housewives of
the village said, "Think you he will stay with us?" and each did her
best to cook the most savory meal for the Bhagat. Hill-food is very
simple, but with buckwheat and Indian corn, and rice and red pepper,
and little fish out of the stream in the valley, and honey from the
flue-like hives built in the stone walls, and dried apricots, and
turmeric, and wild ginger, and bannocks of flour, a devout woman can
make good things, and it was a full bowl that the priest carried to
the Bhagat. Was he going to stay? asked the priest. Would he need a
_chela_--a disciple--to beg for him? Had he a blanket against the cold
weather? Was the food good?
Purun Bhagat ate, and thanked the giver. It was in his mind to stay.
That was sufficient, said the priest. Let the begging-bowl be placed
outside the shrine, in the hollow made by those two twisted roots, and
daily should the Bhagat be fed; for the village felt honored that such
a man--he looked timidly into the Bhagat's face--should tarry among
them.
That day saw the end of Purun Bhagat's wanderings. He had come to the
place appointed for him--the silence and the space. After this, time
stopped, and he, sitting at the mouth of the shrine, could not tell
whether he were alive or dead; a man with control of his limbs, or a
part of the hills, and the clouds, and the shifting rain and sunlight.
He would repeat a Name softly to himself a hundred hundred times,
till, at each repetition, he seemed to move more and more out of his
body, sweeping up to the doors of some tremendous discovery; but,
just as the door was opening, his body would drag him back, and, with
grief, he felt he was locked up again in the flesh and bones of Purun
Bhagat.
Every morning the filled begging-bowl was laid silently in the crutch
of the roots outside the shrine. Sometimes the priest brought it;
sometimes a Ladakhi trader, lodging in the village, and anxious to get
merit, trudged up the path; but, more often, it was the woman who had
cooked the meal overnight; and she would murmur, hardly above her
breath: "Speak for me before the gods, Bhagat. Speak for such a one,
the wife of so-and-so!" Now and then some bold child would be allowed
the honor, and Purun Bhagat would hear him drop the bowl and run as
fast as his little legs could carry him, but the Bhagat never came
down to the village. It was laid out like a map at his feet. He could
see the evening gatherings, held on the circle of the threshing-floors
because that was the only level ground; could see the wonderful
unnamed green of the young rice, the indigo blues of the Indian corn,
the dock-like patches of buckwheat, and, in its season, the red bloom
of the amaranth, whose tiny seeds, being neither grain nor pulse, make
a food that can be lawfully eaten by Hindus in time of fasts.
When the year turned, the roofs of the huts were all little squares of
purest gold, for it was on the roofs that they laid out their cobs of
the corn to dry. Hiving and harvest, rice-sowing and husking, passed
before his eyes, all embroidered down there on the many-sided plots of
fields, and he thought of them all, and wondered what they all led to
at the long last.
[Illustration]
Even in populated India a man cannot a day sit still before the wild
things run over him as though he were a rock; and in that wilderness
very soon the wild things, who knew Kali's Shrine well, came back to
look at the intruder. The _langurs_, the big gray-whiskered monkeys of
the Himalayas, were, naturally, the first, for they are alive with
curiosity; and when they had upset the begging-bowl, and rolled it
round the floor, and tried their teeth on the brass-handled crutch,
and made faces at the antelope skin, they decided that the human being
who sat so still was harmless. At evening, they would leap down from
the pines, and beg with their hands for things to eat, and then swing
off in graceful curves. They liked the warmth of the fire, too, and
huddled round it till Purun Bhagat had to push them aside to throw on
more fuel; and in the morning, as often as not, he would find a furry
ape sharing his blanket. All day long, one or other of the tribe would
sit by his side, staring out at the snows, crooning and looking
unspeakably wise and sorrowful.
After the monkeys came the _barasingh_, that big deer which is like
our red deer, but stronger. He wished to rub off the velvet of his
horns against the cold stones of Kali's statue, and stamped his feet
when he saw the man at the shrine. But Purun Bhagat never moved, and,
little by little, the royal stag edged up and nuzzled his shoulder.
Purun Bhagat slid one cool hand along the hot antlers, and the touch
soothed the fretted beast, who bowed his head, and Purun Bhagat very
softly rubbed and raveled off the velvet. Afterward, the _barasingh_
brought his doe and fawn--gentle things that mumbled on the holy man's
blanket--or would come alone at night, his eyes green in the
fire-flicker, to take his share of fresh walnuts. At last, the
musk-deer, the shyest and almost the smallest of the deerlets, came,
too, her big rabbity ears erect; even brindled, silent _mushick-nabha_
must needs find out what the light in the shrine meant, and drop her
moose-like nose into Purun Bhagat's lap, coming and going with the
shadows of the fire. Purun Bhagat called them all "my brothers," and
his low call of "_Bhai! Bhai!_" would draw them from the forest at
noon if they were within earshot. The Himalayan black bear, moody and
suspicious--Sona, who has the V-shaped white mark under his
chin--passed that way more than once; and since the Bhagat showed no
fear, Sona showed no anger, but watched him, and came closer, and
begged a share of the caresses, and a dole of bread or wild berries.
Often, in the still dawns, when the Bhagat would climb to the very
crest of the pass to watch the red day walking along the peaks of the
snows, he would find Sona shuffling and grunting at his heels,
thrusting a curious fore-paw under fallen trunks, and bringing it away
with a _whoof_ of impatience; or his early steps would wake Sona where
he lay curled up, and the great brute, rising erect, would think to
fight, till he heard the Bhagat's voice and knew his best friend.
Nearly all hermits and holy men who live apart from the big cities
have the reputation of being able to work miracles with the wild
things, but all the miracle lies in keeping still, in never making a
hasty movement, and, for a long time, at least, in never looking
directly at a visitor. The villagers saw the outline of the
_barasingh_ stalking like a shadow through the dark forest behind the
shrine; saw the _minaul_, the Himalayan pheasant, blazing in her best
colors before Kali's statue; and the _langurs_ on their haunches,
inside, playing with the walnut shells. Some of the children, too, had
heard Sona singing to himself, bear-fashion, behind the fallen rocks,
and the Bhagat's reputation as miracle-worker stood firm.
Yet nothing was further from his mind than miracles. He believed that
all things were one big Miracle, and when a man knows that much he
knows something to go upon. He knew for a certainty that there was
nothing great and nothing little in this world; and day and night he
strove to think out his way into the heart of things, back to the
place whence his soul had come.
So thinking, his untrimmed hair fell down about his shoulders, the
stone slab at the side of the antelope skin was dented into a little
hole by the foot of his brass-handled crutch, and the place between
the tree-trunks, where the begging-bowl rested day after day, sunk and
wore into a hollow almost as smooth as the brown shell itself; and
each beast knew his exact place at the fire. The fields changed their
colors with the seasons; the threshing-floors filled and emptied, and
filled again and again; and again and again, when winter came, the
_langurs_ frisked among the branches feathered with light snow, till
the mother-monkeys brought their sad-eyed little babies up from the
warmer valleys with the spring. There were few changes in the village.
The priest was older, and many of the little children who used to come
with the begging-dish sent their own children now; and when you asked
of the villagers how long their holy man had lived in Kali's Shrine at
the head of the pass, they answered, "Always."
Then came such summer rains as had not been known in the Hills for
many seasons. Through three good months the valley was wrapped in
cloud and soaking mist--steady, unrelenting downfall, breaking off
into thunder-shower after thunder-shower. Kali's Shrine stood above
the clouds, for the most part, and there was a whole month in which
the Bhagat never saw his village. It was packed away under a white
floor of cloud that swayed and shifted and rolled on itself and bulged
upward, but never broke from its piers--the streaming flanks of the
valley.
All that time he heard nothing but the sound of a million little
waters, overhead from the trees, and underfoot along the ground,
soaking through the pine-needles, dripping from the tongues of
draggled fern, and spouting in newly torn muddy channels down the
slopes. Then the sun came out, and drew forth the good incense of the
deodars and the rhododendrons, and that far-off, clean smell which the
Hill people call "the smell of the snows." The hot sunshine lasted for
a week, and then the rains gathered together for their last downpour,
and the water fell in sheets that flayed off the skin of the ground
and leaped back in mud. Purun Bhagat heaped his fire high that night,
for he was sure his brothers would need warmth; but never a beast came
to the shrine, though he called and called till he dropped asleep,
wondering what had happened in the woods.
It was in the black heart of the night, the rain drumming like a
thousand drums, that he was roused by a plucking at his blanket, and,
stretching out, felt the little hand of a _langur_. "It is better here
than in the trees," he said sleepily, loosening a fold of blanket;
"take it and be warm." The monkey caught his hand and pulled hard. "Is
it food, then?" said Purun Bhagat. "Wait awhile, and I will prepare
some." As he kneeled to throw fuel on the fire the _langur_ ran to the
door of the shrine, crooned, and ran back again, plucking at the man's
knee.
"What is it? What is thy trouble, Brother?" said Purun Bhagat, for the
_langur's_ eyes were full of things that he could not tell. "Unless
one of thy caste be in a trap--and none set traps here--I will not go
into that weather. Look, Brother, even the _barasingh_ comes for
shelter!"
The deer's antlers clashed as he strode into the shrine, clashed
against the grinning statue of Kali. He lowered them in Purun Bhagat's
direction and stamped uneasily, hissing through his half-shut
nostrils.
"Hai! Hai! Hai!" said the Bhagat, snapping his fingers. "Is _this_
payment for a night's lodging?" But the deer pushed him toward the
door, and as he did so Purun Bhagat heard the sound of something
opening with a sigh, and saw two slabs of the floor draw away from
each other, while the sticky earth below smacked its lips.
"Now I see," said Purun Bhagat. "No blame to my brothers that they did
not sit by the fire to-night. The mountain is falling. And yet--why
should I go?" His eye fell on the empty begging-bowl, and his face
changed. "They have given me good food daily since--since I came, and,
if I am not swift, to-morrow there will not be one mouth in the
valley. Indeed, I must go and warn them below. Back there, Brother!
Let me get to the fire."
The _barasingh_ backed unwillingly as Purun Bhagat drove a pine torch
deep into the flame, twirling it till it was well lit. "Ah! ye came to
warn me," he said, rising. "Better than that we shall do; better than
that. Out, now, and lend me thy neck, Brother, for I have but two
feet."
He clutched the bristling withers of the _barasingh_ with his right
hand, held the torch away with his left, and stepped out of the shrine
into the desperate night. There was no breath of wind, but the rain
nearly drowned the flare as the great deer hurried down the slope,
sliding on his haunches. As soon as they were clear of the forest
more of the Bhagat's brothers joined them. He heard, though he could
not see, the _langurs_ pressing about him, and behind them the _uhh!
uhh!_ of Sona. The rain matted his long white hair into ropes; the
water splashed beneath his bare feet, and his yellow robe clung to his
frail old body, but he stepped down steadily, leaning against the
_barasingh_. He was no longer a holy man, but Sir Purun Dass, K.C.I.E.,
Prime Minister of no small State, a man accustomed to command,
going out to save life. Down the steep, plashy path they poured all
together, the Bhagat and his brothers, down and down till the deer's
feet clicked and stumbled on the wall of a threshing-floor, and he
snorted because he smelt Man. Now they were at the head of the one
crooked village street, and the Bhagat beat with his crutch on the
barred windows of the blacksmith's house as his torch blazed up in the
shelter of the eaves. "Up and out!" cried Purun Bhagat; and he did not
know his own voice, for it was years since he had spoken aloud to a
man. "The hill falls! The hill is falling! Up and out, oh, you
within!"
"It is our Bhagat," said the blacksmith's wife. "He stands among his
beasts. Gather the little ones and give the call."
It ran from house to house, while the beasts, cramped in the narrow
way, surged and huddled round the Bhagat, and Sona puffed impatiently.
The people hurried into the street--they were no more than seventy
souls all told--and in the glare of the torches they saw their Bhagat
holding back the terrified _barasingh_, while the monkeys plucked
piteously at his skirts, and Sona sat on his haunches and roared.
"Across the valley and up the next hill!" shouted Purun Bhagat. "Leave
none behind! We follow!"
Then the people ran as only Hill folk can run, for they knew that in a
landslip you must climb for the highest ground across the valley. They
fled, splashing through the little river at the bottom, and panted up
the terraced fields on the far side, while the Bhagat and his brethren
followed. Up and up the opposite mountain they climbed, calling to
each other by name--the roll-call of the village--and at their heels
toiled the big _barasingh_, weighted by the failing strength of Purun
Bhagat. At last the deer stopped in the shadow of a deep pine-wood,
five hundred feet up the hillside. His instinct, that had warned him
of the coming slide, told him he would be safe here.
Purun Bhagat dropped fainting by his side, for the chill of the rain
and that fierce climb were killing him; but first he called to the
scattered torches ahead, "Stay and count your numbers"; then,
whispering to the deer as he saw the lights gather in a cluster: "Stay
with me, Brother. Stay--till--I--go!"
There was a sigh in the air that grew to a mutter, and a mutter that
grew to a roar, and a roar that passed all sense of hearing, and the
hillside on which the villagers stood was hit in the darkness, and
rocked to the blow. Then a note as steady, deep, and true as the deep
C of the organ drowned everything for perhaps five minutes, while the
very roots of the pines quivered to it. It died away, and the sound of
the rain falling on miles of hard ground and grass changed to the
muffled drum of water on soft earth. That told its own tale.
Never a villager--not even the priest--was bold enough to speak to the
Bhagat who had saved their lives. They crouched under the pines and
waited till the day. When it came they looked across the valley and
saw that what had been forest, and terraced field, and track-threaded
grazing-ground was one raw, red, fan-shaped smear, with a few trees
flung head-down on the scarp. That red ran high up the hill of their
refuge, damming back the little river, which had begun to spread into
a brick-colored lake. Of the village, of the road to the shrine, of
the shrine itself, and the forest behind, there was not trace. For one
mile in width and two thousand feet in sheer depth the mountain-side
had come away bodily, planed clean from head to heel.
And the villagers, one by one, crept through the wood to pray before
their Bhagat. They saw the _barasingh_ standing over him, who fled
when they came near, and they heard the _langurs_ wailing in the
branches, and Sona moaning up the hill; but their Bhagat was dead,
sitting cross-legged, his back against a tree, his crutch under his
armpit, and his face turned to the northeast.
The priest said: "Behold a miracle after a miracle, for in this very
attitude must all Sunnyasis be buried! Therefore where he now is we
will build the temple to our holy man."
They built the temple before a year was ended--a little
stone-and-earth shrine--and they called the hill the Bhagat's Hill,
and they worship there with lights and flowers and offerings to this
day. But they do not know that the saint of their worship is the late
Sir Purun Dass, K.C.I.E., D.C.L., Ph.D., etc., once Prime
Minister of the progressive and enlightened State of Mohiniwala, and
honorary or corresponding member of more learned and scientific
societies than will ever do any good in this world or the next.
[Illustration]