So, every instant, the distance lessened between the old man and the young one, both weary of life. It was broad daylight now, though the sun was still low on the horizon. The mystery of dawn had left the world, the very pilgrims, between their recurring cries, were chattering, laughing, over the every-day details of life which would make to-day as trivial as yesterday, to-morrow as trivial as to-day.
There had been a "Breathing" in the night, they told each other. Some shadow had fallen. Some God or Devil had had power. But the shackles of custom, of familiarity, were back again, the despotism of detail.
Only in those two strangely different minds in the van, in the rear, the mystery still clouded the reality.
And the distance between them lessened as Roshan drove his way through the saffron robes recklessly.
Yet, fast as he went, when he reached the end of the dry watercourse up which the last part of the rough track had wound, and stood in the hollow, backed by a further rise of the hill, where the quaint, dumpy, black temple hid itself under the huge blotch of the banyan tree--the only green thing visible, far or near--the figure he sought was not to be seen among the crowd.
Akbar Khân, indeed, he saw, utilizing one of the tall tapers as a pipe-light before casting himself on the ground to suck contentedly at the screwed banyan leaf full of tobacco which he had gathered by claiming a pinch in return for the loan of that same light to others. But with a curious shame Roshan avoided him, and passed on in his search among the jostling crowd, the continuous babel of trivial talk; for this was resting-time, when men and women could be men and women, and forget that they were on a pilgrimage; when they could even dream themselves back in the village under the familiar shelter of some village tree, asking no more than the familiar round of life.
But above the babel came every now and again the insistent clang of a bell, telling that some new petitioner was seeking a favour of the Gods, and making a golden oriole, which sat in the green leafage, flit to another bower with a sudden fluting note, full, joyful, mellow.
"What dost seek, Musulmân?" cavilled a saint, drawing back from Roshan's shadow, as he gabbled invocations, all he knew, on a rosary, ere solacing himself with the pipe which his disciple had prepared. "If 'tis the madman and his God--he hath gone yonder."
He pointed to a side track, which was a short cut to the road above.
Roshan flung himself from his horse without a word, and followed.