t, as it were, above some
new-ploughed levels; and his eyelids, bathed in soft air, grew heavy as
he neared it. The ground was good clean dust--no new herbage that,
living, is half-way to death already, but the hopeful dust that holds
the seeds of all life. He felt it between his toes, patted it with his
palms, and joint by joint, sighing luxuriously, laid him down full
length along in the shadow of the wooden-pinned cart. And Mother Earth
was as faithful as the Sahiba. She breathed through him to restore the
poise he had lost lying so long on a cot cut off from her good
currents. His head lay powerless upon her breast, and his opened hands
surrendered to her strength. The many-rooted tree above him, and even
the dead manhandled wood beside, knew what he sought, as he himself did
not know. Hour upon hour he lay deeper than sleep.

Towards evening, when the dust of returning kine made all the horizons
smoke, came the lama and Mahbub Ali, both afoot, walking cautiously,
for the house had told them where he had gone.

'Allah! What a fool's trick to play in open country!' muttered the
horse-dealer. 'He could be shot a hundred times--but this is not the
Border.'

'And,' said the lama, repeating a many-times-told tale, 'never was such
a chela. Temperate, kindly, wise, of ungrudging disposition, a merry
heart upon the road, never forgetting, learned, truthful, courteous.
Great is his reward!'

'I know the boy--as I have said.'

'And he was all those things?'

'Some of them--but I have not yet found a Red Hat's charm for making
him overly truthful. He has certainly been well nursed.'

'The Sahiba is a heart of gold,' said the lama earnestly. 'She looks
upon him as her son.'

'Hmph! Half Hind seems that way disposed. I only wished to see that
the boy had come to no harm and was a free agent. As thou knowest, he
and I were old friends in the first days of your pilgrimage together.'

'That is a bond between us.' The lama sat down. 'We are at the end of
the pilgrimage.'

'No thanks to thee thine was not cut off for good and all a week back.
I heard what the Sahiba said to thee when we bore thee up on the cot.'
Mahbub laughed, and tugged his newly dyed beard.

'I was meditating upon other matters that tide. It was the hakim from
Dacca broke my meditations.'

'Otherwise'--this was in Pushtu for decency's sake--'thou wouldst have
ended thy meditations upon the sultry side of Hell--being an unbeliever