And we hurried from court to court to the same cage where the panther pressed himself against the bars, simultaneously showing fangs at King and me, and begging to have his ears rubbed.

The Mahatma opened the cage-door, again using no key that I could detect, although it was a padlock that he unfastened and shoved the brute to one side, holding him by the scruff of the neck while King and I made swift tracks for the door at the back of the cage.
But this time we did not go through the tunnel full of rats and cobras.
There was another passage on the same level with the courtyard that led from dark chamber to chamber until we emerged at last through an opening in the wall behind the huge image of a god into the gloom of the Tirthankers' temple--not that part of it that we had visited before, but another section fronting on the street.
And we could hear the crowd now very distinctly, egging one another on to commit the unforgivable offense and storm a woman's gates.

They were shouting for the Gray Mahatma in chorus; it had grown into a chant already, and when a crowd once turns its collective yearnings into a single chant, it is only a matter of minutes before the gates go down, and blood flows, and all those outrages occur that none can account for afterward.
As long as men do their own thinking, decency and self-restraint are uppermost, but once let what the leaders call a slogan usher in the crowd-psychology, and let the slogan turn into a chant, and the Gardarene swine become patterns of conduct that the wisest crowd in the world could improve itself by imitating.
"Think! Think for yourselves!" said the Gray Mahatma, as if he recognized the thoughts that were occurring to King and me.
Then, making a sign to us to stay where we were, he left us and strode out on to the temple porch, looking down on the street that was choked to the bursting point with men who sweated and slobbered as they swayed in time to the chant of "Mahatma! O Mahatma! Come to us, Mahatma!" King and I could see them through the jambs of the double-folding temple door.
The Mahatma stood looking down at them for about a minute before they recognized him.

One by one, then by sixes, then by dozens they grew aware of him; and as that happened they grew silent, until the whole street was more still than a forest.

They held their breath, and let it out in sibilant whispers like the voice of a little wind moving among leaves; and he did not speak until they were almost aburst with expectation.
"Go home!" he said then sternly.