Awed by his strange words, yet understanding them not, she gazed at him in silence, and, moved by a sudden impulse, he laid his hand tenderly on her head.
"May the God of love and peace bring you at last to His kingdom," he murmured, and was gone.
Perhaps, had he known that this quiet girl was destined to be one of the great women of the world, at whose slightest word, millions, even hundreds of millions, of loyal subjects would bow the knee, he would have spoken longer with her, but this he never knew.
It was not until they had eaten with all the zest that hunger gives of the provisions left them by the stranger, that the girl raised her eyes to the calm blue heavens above her, now dotted with countless glowing stars, and said, abruptly:
"Father, the stranger told me, in the temple, about one true God, who is alive, and who lives up there. What did he mean? I never heard before of Him, and I have worshipped many gods."
Niu Tsang nodded quickly at this confirmation of his suspicions.
"It is as I thought," he said. "Although that traveller wore the honorable costume of our country, and spoke to us in our own tongue, yet methinks he was not one of us, but a barbarian from beyond the sea."
The girl shuddered.
"And he talked to me!" she cried in horror. "I never dreamed that he was a foreign devil."
"Be he what he may, he was most kind to us," her father reminded her, "for his food was not polluted."