'I cannot tell yet. I must be guided by circumstances.'
'Promise me not to expose yourself unnecessarily.'
'Unnecessarily? No!'
'But——'
'My friend,' says Tom, holding out his hand, with a winning smile; 'it is impossible for me to say more. Before both of us the future is invisible. God has willed it so. Farewell! I dare not stay. Here or there we shall meet again.'
'May the Gods grant it!' says Gambier Singh.
And then he throws himself into his friend's arms, embraces him with tears, mounts his horse, and turns to ride down the hill.
Tom meanwhile, with many a backward look at the retreating figure, goes off slowly in the opposite direction.
And so the Rajah's Heir entered upon his next important journey. I find, by referring to his diary, which is my chief source of information, that although wearisome and full of perils, it was not without interest, and even enjoyment. He was much calmer, for he had laid out his plans for the near future, and the conflict between the old life and the new, that had helped to aggravate his illness, was over. Whether the fantastic belief of his Eastern friends was true, or whether having, as he now believed, blood of the East in his veins, the life and doctrines of the Indian sages did really, in some strange way, appeal to him, he did not ask himself. The result was the same. He was actually, for the time, an Oriental amongst Orientals.
The season was advancing. When he left the hill region and entered upon the plains he found the heat almost insupportable; but the deadly Terai was healthier than it had been a month before, when it was still reeking with the vaporous distilments left behind by the midwinter rains, and they did not experience much discomfort in crossing it.