The fakir appeared to lose his nerve, and set the utensils down. A sigh of mixed relief and disappointment ran through the onlookers. Someone darted up and tossed a paisa onto the table. The fakir put his hands together in a prayerful attitude and muttered indistinctly for a while, then reached for his Bible, opened it up, and read a paragraph or two, faltering as he came to bits that had been elided by book-worms. But this was something from the Old Testament with many "begats" and so it scarcely mattered.