"_My soul fleeth unto the Lord! before the morning watch I say, before the morning watch_," he chanted; he had gone on blindly from psalm to psalm intent on the desire to lead those voices behind. "Have a care, _baba-jee!_ thou and thy God!" said a half-tender, half-jesting one as he stumbled among the stones, and a dark hand stretched itself out to steady the old priest, and a dark face turned to nod approval at other saffron robes; since here was a true pilgrim, a true madman, forgetful of this world, to judge by the face lifted towards those distant hills. Yet the desire in him to reach them seemed to the wise old heart something that must be set aside. He must return. Yes! he must return. To do what? What could an old man do who had left life, a useless life, behind him? He crushed down that thought also, and stumbled on. "_Man is like a thing of nought, his time passeth away like a shadow!_" His voice spent itself tremulously on that one certainty, and those behind him joined their testimony to his all unwittingly, as they called on Hârâ or Hârî; on the Creator, the Destroyer, as One and Indivisible. And in the rear again, Roshan in his search for Death, for annihilation, bore witness also, as he came, cursing those who stood in his way, his horse slithering among the stones in its effort to obey whip and spur, and sending a dry clangour of hoof-beats through the little stony valley to startle the sleepy snakes coiled on the distant rocks, and drive them back to their crannies with a hiss. So, every instant, the distance lessened between the old man and the young one, both weary of life. It was broad daylight now, though the sun was still low on the horizon. The mystery of dawn had left the world, the very pilgrims, between their recurring cries, were chattering, laughing, over the every-day details of life which would make to-day as trivial as yesterday, to-morrow as trivial as to-day. There had been a "Breathing" in the night, they told each other. Some shadow had fallen. Some God or Devil had had power. But the shackles of custom, of familiarity, were back again, the despotism of detail. Only in those two strangely different minds in the van, in the rear, the mystery still clouded the reality. And the distance between them lessened as Roshan drove his way through the saffron robes recklessly. Yet, fast as he went, when he reached the end of the dry watercourse up which the last part of the rough track had wound, and stood in the hollow, backed by a further rise of the hill, where the quaint, dumpy, black temple hid itself under the huge blotch of the _banyan_ tree--the only green thing visible, far or near--the figure he sought was not to be seen among the crowd.