The old priest arose as the three approached the kadamba tree.

"Peace, Brother," the girl said to him.

"Unto thee also, peace," he replied.

Skag marvelled at the inflections of her voice--low trailing words that
awoke at intervals into short staccato utterances. It was all awake
and alive with feeling. She did not ignore a fact the English often
miss, that there are certain unwritten laws of these elder people which
are as potent and unswerving as any mind-polished tablets that have
come down to England from Greece and Rome.

It was an hour of marvelling to Skag. He saw something that he had not
seen so far in India. To her face the darker Indian blood was but a
redolence. Doubtless it was because of this--some ancient wonder and
depth of lineage--that Skag had looked twice. He had never looked upon
a woman this way before. No array of terms can convey the innocence of
his concept. . . . She was tall for a girl--almost eye to eye with him.

He didn't quite follow her words of Hindi, but his mind was running
deep and true to hers, in meanings. She told the priest that she had
come to save her cousin, who never could be made to understand what he
had done, even though he lost his life in forfeit. She said the monkey
people would be devastated, if he paid his life; that the priests of
Hanuman would be driven deeper and deeper into the jungles; that her
heart was with them in soundness of understanding, for she was of India
who hears and understands. She held up a little basket saying she had
brought bandages, stimulants, nourishments, and had come asking
permission to go with the priests now, to the wounded one, to care for
him with her own strength. . . .

Skag saw that her scorn for the ignorance that had caused the wound was
a true thing; that she felt something of the mystery of pity for the
monkey people; that she could be very terrible in her rage if she let
it loose, but that she loved this stupid cousin also. All Skag's
faculties were playing at once, for he perceived at the same time this
girl would see many things of life in terms of humour and it would be
good to travel the roads with her because of this. . . . Apparently
she had not seen him, Sanford Hantee, to this moment.

The priest weighed her words and spoke coldly, saying that his order
did not consider consequences to men, when they took life. A monkey
king had been shot. The wound was eating him to death. It was
unwritten