ened pace. At last he began to ascend the sand hill. Then he felt a bit nervous. However, he went on through the work with unshaken limbs. On nearing the man squatted there, his flesh creeped at what his eyes met with. He was indecisive whether to advance or withdraw.
The man seated on the height was absorbed in meditation with closed eyes. So he could not observe Nabokumar at first. Nabokumar saw the man on the verge of fifty. He could not perceive whether the man had any cloth on or not. He had a tiger-skin wrapped round his loins that reached to his knee and a string of Rudrakha round his neck. His big broad face was overgrown with shaggy hair and surmounted with a crown of matted locks.
A fire glowed before him—the same that acted the lodestar to Nabokumar to guide his steps there. An offensive smell stinked into his nostrils and he made out the reason when he happened to glance at the mans' seat. The man of matted locks sat on a headless corpse in a state of disintegration. He grew all the more alarmed when he detected a skull lying before him with some crimson liquid in the hollow. Around him were strewn about here and there bones whitened in the sand. Even the string of Rudrakha suspended round his neck had small bones fastened between them at intervals. Nabokumar was rooted to the spot spell-bound. He could not decide whether to move before or behind. He had heard of Kapaliks and he knew the man to be a Kapalik.
