Now and then some bold child would be allowed the honour, and
Purun Bhagat would hear him drop the bowl and run as fast as his
little legs could carry him, but the Bhagat never came down to
the village. It was laid out like a map at his feet. He could
see the evening gatherings, held on the circle of the threshing-
floors, because that was the only level ground; could see the
wonderful unnamed green of the young rice, the indigo blues of
the Indian corn, the dock-like patches of buckwheat, and, in its
season, the red bloom of the amaranth, whose tiny seeds, being
neither grain nor pulse, make a food that can be lawfully eaten
by Hindus in time of fasts.

When the year turned, the roofs of the huts were all little
squares of purest gold, for it was on the roofs that they
laid out their cobs of the corn to dry. Hiving and harvest,
rice-sowing and husking, passed before his eyes, all embroidered
down there on the many-sided plots of fields, and he thought of
them all, and wondered what they all led to at the long last.

Even in populated India a man cannot a day sit still before the
wild things run over him as though he were a rock; and in that
wilderness very soon the wild things, who knew Kali's Shrine
well, came back to look at the intruder. The langurs, the big
gray-whiskered monkeys of the Himalayas, were, naturally, the
first, for they are alive with curiosity; and when they had
upset the begging-bowl, and rolled it round the floor, and
tried their teeth on the brass-handled crutch, and made faces
at the antelope skin, they decided that the human being who
sat so still was harmless. At evening, they would leap down
from the pines, and beg with their hands for things to eat,
and then swing off in graceful curves. They liked the warmth
of the fire, too, and huddled round it till Purun Bhagat had
to push them aside to throw on more fuel; and in the morning,
as often as not, he would find a furry ape sharing his blanket.
All day long, one or other of the tribe would sit by his side,
staring out at the snows, crooning and looking unspeakably wise
and sorrowful.

After the monkeys came the barasingh, that big deer which is
like our red deer, but stronger. He wished to rub off the velvet
of his horns against the cold stones of Kali's statue, and
stamped his feet when he saw the man at the shrine. But Purun
Bhagat never moved, and, little by little, the royal stag edged
up and nuzzled his shoulder. Purun Bhagat slid one cool hand
along the hot antlers, and the touch soothed the fretted beast,
who bowed his head, and Purun Bhagat very softly rubbed and
ravelled off the velvet. Afterward, the barasingh brought his
doe and fawn--gentle things that mumbled on the holy man's
blanket--or would come alone at night, his eyes green in the
fire-flicker, to take his share of fresh walnuts. At last, the
musk-deer, the shyest and almost the smallest of the deerlets,
came, too, her big rabbity ears erect; even brindled, silent
mushick-nabha must needs find out what the light in the shrine
meant, and drop out her moose-like nose into Purun Bhagat's lap,
coming and going with the shadows of the fire. Purun Bhagat
called them all "my brothers," and his low call of "Bhai! Bhai!"
would draw them from the forest at noon if they were within ear
shot. The Himalayan black bear, moody and suspicious--Sona, who
has the V-shaped white mark under his chin--passed that way more
than once; and since the Bhagat showed no fear, Sona showed no
anger, but watched him, and came closer, and begged a share of
the caresses, and a dole of bread or wild berries. Often, in the
still dawns, when the Bhagat would climb to the very crest of
the pass to watch the red day walking along the peaks of the
snows, he would find Sona shuffling and grunting at his heels,
thrusting, a curious fore-paw under fallen trunks, and bringing
it away with a WHOOF of impatience; or his early steps would
wake Sona where he lay curled up, and the great brute, rising
erect, would think to fight, till he heard the Bhagat's voice
and knew his best friend.

Nearly all hermits and holy men who live apart from the big
cities have the reputation of being able to work miracles with
the wild things, but all the miracle lies in keeping still, in
never making a hasty movement, and, for a long time, at least,
in never looking directly at a visitor. The villagers saw the
outline of the barasingh stalking like a shadow through the
dark forest behind the shrine; saw the minaul, the Himalayan
pheasant, blazing in her best colours before Kali's statue;
and the langurs on their haunches, inside, playing with the
walnut shells. Some of the children, too, had heard Sona singing
to himself, bear-fashion, behind the fallen rocks, and the
Bhagat's reputation as miracle-worker stood firm.

Yet nothing was farther from his mind than miracles. He believed
that all things were one big Miracle, and when a man knows that
much he knows something to go upon. He knew for a certainty that
there was nothing great and nothing little in this world: and
day and night he strove to think out his way into the heart of
things, back to the place whence his soul had come.

So thinking, his untrimmed hair fell down about his shoulders,
the stone slab at the side of the antelope skin was dented into
a little hole by the foot of his brass-handled crutch, and the
place between the tree-trunks, where the begging-bowl rested day
after day, sunk and wore into a hollow almost as smooth as the
brown shell itself; and each beast knew his exact place at the
fire. The fields changed their colours with the seasons; the
threshing-floors filled and emptied, and filled again and again;
and again and again, when winter came, the langurs frisked among


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