The old priest arose as the three approached the kadamba tree.
"Peace, Brother," the girl said to him.
"Unto thee also, peace," he replied.
Skag marvelled at the inflections of her voice—low trailing words that awoke at intervals into short staccato utterances. It was all awake and alive with feeling. She did not ignore a fact the English often miss, that there are certain unwritten laws of these elder people which are as potent and unswerving as any mind-polished tablets that have come down to England from Greece and Rome.
It was an hour of marvelling to Skag. He saw something that he had not seen so far in India. To her face the darker Indian blood was but a redolence. Doubtless it was because of this—some ancient wonder and depth of lineage—that Skag had looked twice. He had never looked upon a woman this way before. No array of terms can convey the innocence of his concept. . . . She was tall for a girl—almost eye to eye with him.
He didn't quite follow her words of Hindi, but his mind was running deep and true to hers, in meanings. She told the priest that she had come to save her cousin, who never could be made to understand what he had done, even though he lost his life in forfeit. She said the monkey people would be devastated, if he paid his life; that the priests of Hanuman would be driven deeper and deeper into the jungles; that her heart was with them in soundness of understanding, for she was of India who hears and understands. She held up a little basket saying she had brought bandages, stimulants, nourishments, and had come asking permission to go with the priests now, to the wounded one, to care for him with her own strength. . . .
Skag saw that her scorn for the ignorance that had caused the wound was a true thing; that she felt something of the mystery of pity for the monkey people; that she could be very terrible in her rage if she let it loose, but that she loved this stupid cousin also. All Skag's faculties were playing at once, for he perceived at the same time this girl would see many things of life in terms of humour and it would be good to travel the roads with her because of this. . . . Apparently she had not seen him, Sanford Hantee, to this moment.
The priest weighed her words and spoke coldly, saying that his order did not consider consequences to men, when they took life. A monkey king had been shot. The wound was eating him to death. It was unwritten law which may never be broken, for the life of one who kills a monkey to be taken by the priests of Hanuman. Up through the ages this law had not served to destroy the monkey people, but to protect them.
The girl said gently: "Let me go to him. Do you not see that I am indeed of this land, with its blood in my veins?"
Ratna Ram had taken his seat once more under the kadamba tree. It was early afternoon and the three were travelling through the jungle. The girl Carlin was always looking ahead—one thing only upon her mind—time and distance and words, as clearly obstructions to her, as the occasional branches across the path. Once when Skag fixed a big stone for her to pass dry across a shallow ford, she turned to thank him, but her eyes did not actually fill with any image of himself. He missed nothing—neither the standpoint of the priest, nor of the English, nor the vantage of this girl who stood between.