HER majesty no sooner heard of the good understanding between them, than she rushed forward, and with one foot sent the Son rolling back to the east whence he came, and with the other kicked little Johilla sprawling after him; for, said the high priest, who told us the story, “You see what a towering passion she was likely to have been in under such indignities from the furious manner in which she cuts her way through the marble rocks beneath us, and casts huge masses right and left as she goes along.”

“And was she,” asked I, “to have flowed eastward with him, or was he to have flowed westward with her?” “She was to have accompanied him eastward,” said the high priest, “but her majesty, after this indignity, declared that she would not go a single pace in the same direction with such wretches, and would flow west, though all the other rivers in India might flow east;* and west she flows accordingly, a virgin queen.”