thickly wooded with Deodars. Into this wilderness I would venture alone
with my iron-spiked staff. These lordly forest trees, with their huge
shadows, towering there like so many giants--what immense lives had
they lived through the centuries! And yet this boy of only the other day
was crawling round about their trunks unchallenged. I seemed to feel a
presence, the moment I stepped into their shade, as of the solid
coolness of some old-world saurian, and the checkered light and shade on
the leafy mould seemed like its scales.

My room was at one end of the house. Lying on my bed I could see,
through the uncurtained windows, the distant snowy peaks shimmering
dimly in the starlight. Sometimes, at what hour I could not make out, I,
half awakened, would see my father, wrapped in a red shawl, with a
lighted lamp in his hand, softly passing by to the glazed verandah where
he sat at his devotions. After one more sleep I would find him at my
bedside, rousing me with a push, before yet the darkness of night had
passed. This was my appointed hour for memorising Sanscrit declensions.
What an excruciatingly wintry awakening from the caressing warmth of my
blankets!

By the time the sun rose, my father, after his prayers, finished with me
our morning milk, and then, I standing at his side, he would once more
hold communion with God, chanting the Upanishads.

Then we would go out for a walk. But how should I keep pace with him?
Many an older person could not! So, after a while, I would give it up
and scramble back home through some short cut up the mountain side.

After my father's return I had an hour of English lessons. After ten
o'clock came the bath in icy-cold water; it was no use asking the
servants to temper it with even a jugful of hot water without my
father's permission. To give me courage my father would tell of the
unbearably freezing baths he had himself been through in his younger
days.

Another penance was the drinking of milk. My father was very fond of
milk and could take quantities of it. But whether it was a failure to
inherit this capacity, or that the unfavourable environment of which I
have told proved the stronger, my appetite for milk was grievously
wanting. Unfortunately we used to have our milk together. So I had to
throw myself on the mercy of the servants; and to their human kindness
(or frailty) I was indebted for my goblet being thenceforth more than
half full of foam.

After our midday meal less