At stated times the men ceased their drowsy, grunting tune, and sat down for a smoke. Between the guttering of their water-pipes we could hear the cries of the beasts of the night, and the wind stirring in the folds of the mountain ahead. At the changing stations the voice of Adam, the first of men, would be lifted to rouse the sleepers in the huts till the fresh relays of bearers shambled from their cots, and the relief-pony with them. Then we would re-form and go on, and by the time the moon rose Adam was asleep, and there was no sound in the night except the grunting of the men, the husky murmur of some river a thousand feet down in the valley, and the squeaking of Strickland's saddle. So we went up from the date-palm to deodar, till the dawn wind came round a corner all fresh from the snows, and we snuffed it. I heard Strickland say: "Wife, my overcoat, please," and Adam, fretfully: "Where is Dalhousie, and the cow's child?" and then I slept till Strickland turned me out of the warm doolie at seven o'clock, and I stepped into the splendour of a cool hill day, the plains sweltering twenty miles back and three thousand feet below. Adam waked too, and needs must ride in front of me to ask a million questions, and shout at the monkeys, and clap his hands when the painted pheasants bolted across our road, and hail every wood-cutter and drover and pilgrim within sight, till we halted for breakfast at a staging-house. After breakfast, being a child, he went out to play with a train of bullock-drivers haltered by the road-side, and we had to chase him out of a native liquor-shop where he was bargaining with a naked seven-year-old for a mynah in a bamboo cage. Said he, wriggling on my pommel, as we went on again: "There were four men behosh [insensible] at the back of that house. Wherefore do men grow behosh from drinking?" "It is the nature of the water," l said, and calling back: "Strick, what's that grog-shop doing so close to the road? It's a temptation to any one's servants." "Dun'no," said a sleepy voice in the doolie. "This is Kennedy's district. 'Twasn't here in my time." "Truly the water smells bad," Adam went on. "I smelt it, but I did not get the mynah even for six annas. The woman of the house gave me a love-gift, that I found, playing near the verandah." "And what was the gift, Father Adam?" "A nose-ring for my ayah. Ohe! ohe! Look at that camel with a bag on his nose." A string of loaded camels came cruising round the corner, as a fleet rounds a cape. "Ho, Malik! why does not a camel salaam like an elephant? His neck is long enough," Adam cried. "The Angel Jibrail made him a fool from the beginning," said the driver, as he swayed on the top of the led beast, and laughter ran all along the line of red-bearded men. "That is true," said Adam, and they laughed again.