He allowed two years to slip away before making up his mind to undertake the fourth and crowning ordeal. Finally, however, he set himself to the task, and he came triumphantly through, though the periods of fasting were doubled, and the memorizing more severe than any which he had before experienced. He returned to his house a mere shadow of a man, with hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, and almost fleshless bones, but with a position and influence in the Nation shared by none except the Medicine Makers of a few of the leading towns.