'That is for thee to say. I am old, and a stranger - far from my
own place. But that the rail-carriage fills my head with noises of
devil-drums I would go in it to Benares now ... Yet by so going
we may miss the River. Let us find another river.'

Where the hard-worked soil gives three and even four crops a year
through patches of sugar-cane, tobacco, long white radishes,
and nol-kol, all that day they strolled on, turning aside to
every glimpse of water; rousing village dogs and sleeping
villages at noonday; the lama replying to the volleyed questions
with an unswerving simplicity. They sought a River: a River of
miraculous healing. Had any one knowledge of such a stream?

Sometimes men laughed, but more often heard the story out to the
end and offered them a place in the shade, a drink of milk, and a
meal. The women were always kind, and the little children as
children are the world over, alternately shy and venturesome.

Evening found them at rest under the village tree of a mud-walled, mud-roofed hamlet, talking to
the headman as the cattle
came in from the grazing-grounds and the women prepared the day's
last meal. They had passed beyond the belt of market-gardens
round hungry Umballa, and were among the mile-wide green of the
staple crops.

He was a white-bearded and affable elder, used to entertaining
strangers. He dragged out a string bedstead for the lama, set
warm cooked food before him, prepared him a pipe, and, the
evening ceremonies being finished in the village temple, sent for
the village priest.