"Then away with you to bed and get one good sleep. The boy will bring you a substantial choti-hazri when you're out of your bath at six. I have a couple of small elephant-skin bags—you'll not find the like in shops—they're made for the interior medical service."
So Cadman and Skag went up from Bombay that night on the Calcutta-bound train, facing the far interior of India. The boy in Skag found joy in every detail of his outfit; especially the elephant-skin bag, stocked with necessary personal requirements and nothing more. But somewhere, far out before him, lost in this mystery-land—was a woman. That woman must be found.
"What's the secret about the Doctor?" he asked Cadman, after they had been rolling through the night some hours.
"Nobody knows, unless it's a woman he didn't get," Cadman answered.
"What's the grip this wonder-woman has on him?"
"Beauty and music and life, in the superlative degree; when it all happens together, in one woman—she grips."
After that they both dreamed vague man-dreams of Dhoop Ki Dhil.
"There stands Dickson Sahib himself!" Cadman exclaimed, at Hurda station; and Skag saw the two meet, perceiving at once that it was a friendship between men of very different type.
Then Dickson Sahib promptly gathered them both into that Anglo-Indian hospitality which is never forgotten by those who have found it. Skag was made to feel as much at home as the evidently much-loved Cadman; not by word or gesture, but by a kindly atmosphere about everything. He met a slender lad of twelve years, presented to him by Dickson Sahib as "My son Horace," whose clear grey eyes attracted him much.
After dinner Cadman told the story of Dhoop Ki Dhil. There was perfect silence for minutes when he finished. Skag was groping on and on—his quest already begun. Dickson was smoking hard, till he startled them both: