om Kurrachee. Till we reach Kurrachee, there is no fear that we shall
starve. Dwellers in the villages will befriend us."

"Why, that is true," said Shere Ali, "but since you are countrymen of my
own and my father's subjects, you shall not tax too heavily your friends
upon the road."

He added to their scanty store of rupees, and one after another they
thanked him and so went cheerily down the Pass. Shere Ali watched them as
they went, wondering that men should take such a journey and endure so
much discomfort for their faith. He watched their dwindling figures and
understood how far he was set apart from them. He was of their faith
himself, nominally at all events, but Mecca--? He shrugged his
shoulders at the name. It meant no more to him than it did to the White
People who had cast him out. But that chance meeting lingered in his
memory, and as he travelled northwards, he would wonder at times by night
at what village his three countrymen slept and by day whether their faith
still cheered them on their road.

He came at last to the borders of Chiltistan, and travelled thenceforward
through a country rich with orchards and green rice and golden amaranth.
The terraced slopes of the mountains, ablaze with wild indigo, closed in
upon him and widened out. Above the terraces great dark forests of pines
and deodars, maples and horse chestnuts clung to the hill sides; and
above the forests grass slopes stretched up to bare rock and the
snowfields. From the villages the people came out to meet him, and here
and there from some castle of a greater importance a chieftain would ride
out with his bodyguard, gay in velvets, and silks from Bokhara and chogas
of gold kinkob, and offer to him gold dust twisted up in the petal of a
flower, which he touched and remitted. He was escorted to polo-grounds
and sat for hours witnessing sports and trials of skill, and at night to
the music of kettledrums and pipes men and boys danced interminably
before him. There was one evening which he particularly remembered. He
had set up his camp outside a large village and was sitting alone by his
fire in the open air. The night was very still, the sky dark but studded
with stars extraordinarily bright--so bright, indeed, that Shere Ali
could see upon the water of the river below the low cliff on which his
camp fire was lit a trembling golden path made by the rays of a planet.
And as he sat, unexpectedly in the hush a boy with a clear, sweet voice
b