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As dawn rose pale-yellow in the eastern sky they thundered into view of Howrah City and drew rein to breathe their horses. The sun was high before they had trotted near enough to make out details. But, long before details could be seen, it was evident that an army was formed up to meet them on the tree-lined maidan that lay between them and the two-mile-long palace-wall.
Presently the blear-eyed guide with the angry voice returned from within, released us from the importunities of certain forward and inquisitive youth, and motioned us to doff our slippers at a stone step, or rather line, about twelve feet distant from the palace-wall. We grumbled that we were not entering a mosque, but in vain.
Suddenly he stopped at mid-word, and broke off in the full flight of his eloquence, as he saw something like a hand come and take down the top brick from the face of paint which he had laid over the little door in the palace-wall which Wio-wani had so beautifully painted.
He peered and peered and dropped tears into his paint-pots; but the secret of the mystery of such painting was far beyond him. The door in the palace-wall opened; out came a little old man and began walking down the pathway towards him. The soul of Tiki-pu gave a sharp leap in his grubby little body. "That must be Wio-wani himself and no other!" cried his soul.
Then the door opened and shut, and Wio-wani was gone. Softly as a flower the picture seemed to have folded its leaves over him. Tiki-pu leaned a wet face against the picture and kissed the door in the palace-wall which Wio-wani had painted so beautifully. "O Wio-wani, dear master," he cried, "are you there?" He waited, and called again, but no voice answered him.
Back came Cunningham's close-formed squadrons, straight through the writhing mass again; and now the whole of Jaimihr's army took to its heels, just as part of the five-feet-thick stone palace-wall succumbed to the attacks of crowbars and crashed down in the roadway, disclosing a dark vault on the other side. Jaimihr made a rush for the six-horse carriage, and tried vainly to get it started.
So beautiful was it then, that the Emperor himself had come to see it; and gazing enviously at those peaceful walks, and the palace nestling among the trees, had sighed and owned that he too would be glad of such a resting-place. Then Wio-wani stepped into the picture, and walked away along a path till he came, looking quite small and far-off, to a low door in the palace-wall.
He galloped none too fast, for his party was barely out of range before a ragged volley ripped from the palace-wall; one of his men, hampered and delayed by a led horse that was trying to break away from him, was actually hit, and begged Alwa to ride back and burn the palace after all.
The billows of the thunder-cloud slowly gather into vague form, and slowly deepen in lurid tints, and slowly roll across the fainting blue; they touch and then the fierce flash, like the swift hand on the palace-wall of Babylon, writes its message of destruction over all the heaven at once.
Tiki-pu was sobbing, and the tears were running down his cheeks as he stepped out of Wio-wani's wonderfully painted garden and stood once more upon earth. Turning, he saw the old man walking away along the path toward the little door under the palace-wall. At the door Wio-wani turned back and waved his hand for the last time. Tiki-pu still stood watching him.
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