their writings, he discovered, again with glad emotion, that bees had stirred the fancy of each, stimulated their conceptions of service and communistic blessedness; furnished their symbols for laws of beauty and cleanliness, brotherhood, race-spirit, the excellence of sacrifice—­a thousand perfect analogies to show the way of human ethics and ideal performance....  But beyond all their service to literature, he perceived that these masters among men had loved the bees.  This was the only verb that conveyed Bedient’s feelings for them; and he found that they literally swarmed through Hindu simile in its expressions of song and story and faith.

Northward, he made his leisure way almost to the borders of Kashmir, before he found his place of abode—­Preshbend, a little town of many Sikhs, which clung like a babe to the sloping hip of a mountain.  He was taken on by the English of the forestry service, and liked the ranging life; liked, too, the rare meetings with his fellow-workers and superiors, quiet, steady-eyed men, quick-handed and slow of speech.  With all his growth and knowledge of the finer sort, Bedient carried no equipment for earning a living—­except through his hands.  There was no hesitation with him in making a choice—­between patrolling a forest, and the columns of a ledger.  All the indoor ways of making money that intervene between the artisan and artist were to him out of the question.  When asked his occupation, he had answered, “Cook.”

One week in each month he spent in the town, and he came to love Preshbend and the people; the tall young men, many taller than he, and the great lean-armed, gaunt-breasted Sikh women.  The boys were so studious, so simple and gentle, compared with the few others he had known, and the women such adepts at mothering!  Then the shy, slender girls, impassable ranges between him and any romantic sense; yet, he was glad to be near them, glad to hear their voices and their laughter in the evenings....  He loved the long shadow of the mountains, the still dusty roads where the cattle moved so softly that the dust never rose above their knees; the smell of wood-smoke in the dusk, the legends of the gods, scents of the high forest, the thoughts which nourished his days and nights, and the brilliant stars, so steady and eternal, and so different from the steaming constellations of Luzon;—­he loved it all, and saw these things, as one home from bitter exile.

And then with the cool dark and the mountain winds, after the long, pitiless day of fierce, devouring sunlight, the moon glided over the fainting world with peace and healing—­like an angel over a battle-field....  The two are mystic in every Indian ideal of beauty, and alike cosmic—­woman and the moon.