CHAPTER V.
FAR CITIES The Gray Mahatma led the way toward one of the great square pillars that supported a portion of the roof.
In that pillar there was an opening, about six feet high and barely wide enough for a man of my build to squeeze himself through, but once inside it there was ample space and a stairway, hewn in the stone, wound upward.

Still swinging the lantern he had brought with him from Yasmini's palace the Mahatma led the way up that, and we followed, I last as usual.
We emerged through a wooden door into a temple, whose walls were almost entirely hidden by enormous images of India's gods.

There were no windows.
The resulting gloom was punctuated by dots of yellow light that came from hanging brass lamps, whose smoke in the course of centuries had covered everything with soot that it was nobody's business to remove.

So it looked like a coal-black pantheon, and in the darkness you could hardly see the forms of long-robed men who were mumbling through some sort of ceremony.
"Those," said the Gray Mahatma, "are priests.

They receive payment to pray for people who may not enter lest their sinfulness defile the sanctuary." There was only one consideration that prevented me from looking for a door behind a carved stone screen placed at the end wall screen and bidding the Mahatma a discourteous farewell, and that was the prospect of walking through the streets with nothing on but a dish-rag and a small red turban.
However, the Gray Mahatma, as naked as the day he was born, led the way to the screen, opened a hinged door in it and beckoned us through; and we emerged, instead of into the street as I expected, into a marvelous courtyard bathed in moonlight, for the moon was just appearing over the roof of what looked like another temple at the rear.
All around the courtyard was a portico, supported by pillars of most wonderful workmanship; and the four walls within the portico were subdivided into open compartments, in each of which was the image of a different god.