kag's nostrils--the chest and the rose-jar
that never could die and the old friend became one identity. . . .

India didn't excite Skag, who was twenty-five by this time. In fact,
some aspects of India were more natural to him than his own country.
Many people did a lot of walking and they lived while they walked,
instead of pushing forward in a tension to get somewhere. Skag
approved emphatically of the Now. The present moving point was the
best he had at any given time. He thought a man should forget himself
in the Now like the animals.

Besides they didn't regulate dress in India; in fact, they dressed in
so many different ways that a man could wear what he pleased without
being stared at. Skag hated to be stared at above all things. You are
beginning to get a picture of him now--unobtrusive, silent, strong in
understanding, swift, actually in pain as the point of many eyes,
altogether interested in his own unheard-of things.

Alec told him how to reach the jungle of all jungles, ever old, ever
new, ever innocent on the outside, ever deadly within--the Grass Jungle
country around Hattah and Bigawar--the Bund el Khand. The Cloud
Brothers had paid him well for his years; there was still script in his
clothes for travel, but Skag had a queer relation to money, only using
it when the law required. Not a tight-wad, far from that, though he
preferred to work for a meal than pay for it; much preferred to walk or
ride than to purchase other people's energy, having much of his own.

He came at last to a village called Butthighur, near Makrai, north of
the Mahadeo Mountains in the Central Provinces. On the first day, on
the main road near the rest-house, there passed him on the street, a
slim, slightly-stooped and spectacled young white man. The face under
the huge cork helmet, Skag looked at twice, not knowing why altogether;
then he followed leisurely to a bungalow, walked up the path to the
steps and knocked. The stranger himself answered, before the servant
could come. He looked Skag over, through spectacles that made his eyes
appear insane, at times, and sometimes merely absurd. Finally he
questioned with soft cheer:

"And what sort of a highbinder are you?"

Skag answered that he was an American, acquainted with wild animals in
captivity, and that he had come to this place to know wild animals in
the open.

"But why to me?" the white man asked.

"It seemed well. I have looked into many faces withou