Finally, lulled by the movement of the doolie, she fell asleep; and awoke to find herself in a changed world; a world of rough-cut volcanic rock and boulder, piled up on either hand in fantastic disarray; a world of white light and sharp black shadows; of mystery, and terror, and uncanny beauty. It was as if she had been transported back to the morning of Time, when the earth giants wrenched up the mountains, and pelted one another in pure sport: and as she flung back the loose flap of her doolie to get a wider view of it all, Desmond trotted up to her. "It's less alarming than it looks," he reassured her. "We have only turned off into the Paizu Pass. It's a nasty dangerous bit of road; but our own men are on ahead, so we're safe enough. We shall be climbing the hill directly; and I'll be uncommonly glad of my _chota hazri_." "You deserve it, you poor fellow! But it sounds an anachronism! I can't believe that anything so commonplace as a bungalow, with servants and tea and toast, exists within a hundred miles of this primeval nakedness." But in the fulness of time, bungalow, tea, and servants were all forthcoming: and between three and four of the morning their fantastic journey culminated in a prosaic meal of eggs and buttered toast. When it was over Quita vanished, leaving Desmond alone with his wife; and before moonset he was speeding back along the road they had come; covering the fifty miles at a hand-gallop, in something less than five hours. A fortnight later two very unwilling grass-widows were rescued by Lenox, who had secured his sick leave; and who escorted them from Dera Ishmael as far as Lahore, where he left them to go on into the mountain region beyond Kashmir. Hillmen have a saying, 'Who goes to the hills goes to his mother'; and Eldred Lenox, a hillman both by love and lineage, confirmed it for the hundredth time, as he pushed his way upward, by leisurely enchanting stages, from the steaming Punjab, through the great natural gateway of the Baramullah Pass, a towering defile, thunderous with full-fed torrents and waterfalls, into the familiar Valley, . . a very sanctuary of peace; its terraced slopes splashed with the vivid green of rice-fields, the russet and gold of ripe orchards and cornlands; up through Srinagar, 'the City of the Sun,' of carved and gilded temples, thronged waterways, and flat house-tops blazoned with flowers; and yet again upward, by ways well known to him, into the hidden mysteries of the mountains massed about the valleys; a mighty conclave of immortals brooding in majestic meditation; shrouded at this season by dazzling continents of cloud; and plunging green arms to the rivers and lakes, that gleamed like molten silver under a pale sky.